Familia y Raíces

Half Argentine, half Angeleno, and mostly Italian, my ancestry is not atypical and my national allegiances are varied. My mother, Mirta Solimo, was born in Trelew, a small Welch city in south-east Argentina that originally served as a frontier town at the starting point for the Central Chubut Railway line. My abuelo was born in Southern Italy but immigrated to Argentina at a young age where he met my abuelita who was born in Trelew, though her parents also hailed from Southern Italy. My abuelita was a mischievous young lady and the two of them often talk about surprisingly ridiculous adventures given the time and place. Love was in the air, and the couple soon wed and brought a son and daughter into the desert lowlands of Chubut.

Chubut, Argentina

Through the 1940s and early 50s, my abuelo worked as an aircraft mechanic, and his mechanical inclinations ultimately led to work opportunities in the U.S. Following countless immigrants before them, my mother's family boarded a steamer bound from Buenos Aires to New York City. When my mom was five, her family checked through Ellis Island and took up residence in Brooklyn, a place that my abuelo still regards as the only neighborhood worth living in. Having grown up first speaking Italian, then Spanish, and ultimately English, my mother and her parents soaked up the rich mixture of cultures in New York and quickly made friends spanning the globe. Ultimately (and as a result of a great, but lengthy story), my mother's family moved to Culver City, California and their lives began again so to speak.

My father's family is equally interesting in its eventual settlement in the U.S. My grandfather was born in Sicily to family that had a long history in the region. His father was a consummate swindler, fast talker, and opportunist and moved to Chicago to pursue the nefarious and lucrative work of a bootlegger. As his exploits caught up to him in Chicago, he abruptly moved his young family to northern Mexico where he partnered with a local governor and opened a distillery that ran liquor into the Southwest. Eventually, as so much of my great grandfather's work seemed to go, the deal went bust and, for reasons still unclear to me, my great grandfather self-deported himself back to Italy while my grandfather, his siblings, and his mother immigrated back to the U.S., this time settling in Culver City.

My grandmother on my father's side is the only non-Italian in my recent family tree. Her grandparents were German Jews with Hungarian heritage somewhere in history. Her father was fairly religious and believed firmly in the creation of a Jewish state. Some time before Israeli statehood he moved to Palestine and founded a Kibbutz, where he and my great grandmother started their family and had my grandma. After a few years of a communal, agrarian life, my great grandfather  pounced on a work opportunity in Los Angeles and relocated his family to California.

With both of my parent's families settled in Culver City the winds of fate blew this way and that, and eventually the story catches up to the present...