We didn’t stay because of the calzone
By
Neenah Estrella-Luna
My husband and I first came to East Boston on the last day of a weeklong trip in the middle of March. We walked into a little hole-in-the-wall pizza shop on Chelsea Street and had a calzone for the first time. It was good. Little did we know that we would eventually make this neighborhood our home.
I remember at the time thinking that – while this place looked different than our neighborhood in California (and was certainly much colder) – there was something familiar about it. Now, after having lived here and done research on the history of East Boston, I realize that the immigrant flavor is what I found so familiar and so appealing. The accents are different from those I grew up with, but the story is the same.
Both places were originally settled by small bands of Native Americans. Neither was home to a year-round population, but was a regular destination by native tribes for agriculture, grazing and fishing. Eventually Europeans settled at both sites starting in the 1700s, but it would not be until the mid-19th century before there was any serious population growth.
At the same time that immigrants from Canada, Sweden and other northern European countries came to work in Eastie’s developing maritime and manufacturing industries, people came from “back East” to seek their fortunes in Sacramento’s rivers and streams and stayed to work in the fields of the Central Valley or in the factories of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
As history unfolded in these places on opposite coasts, the parallels are sometimes uncanny. The refugees leaving behind the Dust Bowl in the 1930s were no different than the Irish fleeing the Potato Famine in the 1840s and 1850s. Both were escaping an environmental catastrophe and their loss of livelihood.
Faced with political and social structures that simply didn’t care that entire families were dying of starvation, the “Oakies” and the Irish left everything they knew and risked their lives on the simple hope of survival. Although they were as white as those in power during their respective migrations, both groups were considered racially inferior in their new home communities and were treated as such.
Interestingly, the migration patterns of Italians at the turn of the 20th century are very similar to that of modern day Latin American migrants. Both Italians and Latin Americans have come to the United States primarily for economic reasons; simply put, there were more jobs here than “back home.”
Both groups exhibited the same pattern of coming and going in equal proportions. At least 40% of turn-of-the-century Italians went back and forth between the U.S. and their home country; it is estimated that 33% of Mexican migrants do the same today. Demographic research has found that at least one-quarter of Italian migrants who came prior to the 1924 immigration restrictions returned to the Old Country permanently; at least half of Latin American migrants did the same before modern-day restrictions made leaving and returning too dangerous.
The vast majority of the population in California is within three generations of migration – either from “back East,” the Far East or south of the border. When I walked down Chelsea Street 11 years ago during that cold day in March, I heard and saw the same variety of people living side by side in relative harmony just like in Sacramento and Los Angeles.
It doesn’t come any easier here than it does where I grew up. But, in the conversations that I have had with both long-time and newer East Bostonians, I believe that everyone who lives here treasures how welcoming this neighborhood has historically been to immigrants as much as they treasure their own personal family history. I think this is why we were attracted to East Boston and why we decided to make this our home.