1 Paper, 2 Worlds : L’Italo-Americano, the Voice of Immigrants in the Southland Since 1908

In San Francisco, New York, Chicago and elsewhere, Italian-Americans who live in the comfortable anonymity of the suburbs can return to their roots in the remnants of old Italian neighborhoods, where the language and culture have withstood change.

Although Los Angeles has the fourth-largest Italian-American population in the country, it has no such urban enclave serving as a symbolic cultural hub. But Los Angeles does have L’Italo-Americano, a bilingual weekly newspaper published in the San Fernando Valley and distributed statewide. It is the voice of the Italian language and immigrant experience in California.

“The neighborhoods are gone, but something else has replaced them,” said Kenneth Scambray, a literature professor and writer at the University of La Verne, and L’Italo-Americano’s book critic. “The newspaper is an extremely valuable instrument for maintaining communication between groups as they spread out.”

L’Italo-Americano (The Italian-American) was founded in 1908 and has been published since 1971 at Villa Scalabrini, a Valley retirement home run by an order of priests serving Italian immigrants worldwide, the Scalabrini Fathers. The newspaper has grown from a two-page local paper published exclusively in Italian and dominated by Cleto Baroni, a Florentine immigrant and editor for almost 60 years.

In the last 15 years, the paper has added a section covering the San Francisco Bay Area and an English-language section. Because of its dispersed and diverse audience, L’Italo-Americano plays several roles simultaneously.

“You have a segment of our readers for whom our newspaper is the main, if not the only, avenue of information,” said Father Mario Trecco, editor since 1971. “We are here to please a variety of different tastes. Some people may come to it because of the recipes and find cultural news. Some may look at the cultural and discover social events. . . .”

About 1.1 million people of Italian descent live in California, according to government studies, nearly half of them in Southern California. But there are only a few outposts in the Los Angeles area where Italian-Americans can make pilgrimages to their roots.

The Casa Italiana cultural center and adjoining St. Peter’s Church in Chinatown are solitary vestiges of a former Little Italy nearby, on North Broadway. There are scattered social clubs, stores and restaurants in San Pedro, Alhambra, Arcadia, Eagle Rock.

In Southern California and elsewhere, language and urban geography are no longer the pillars of ethnic identity. The fluid nature of society in California speeded the process by which immigrants became assimilated, dispersed and “upraised,” the term used by historian Andrew Rolle in his book about Italian immigration in the West.

“What we are looking at is simply the fact that Italian-Americans have gone on to another level of the pluralism in American society,” Scambray said.

Trecco and assistant editor Luigi Smaldino produce the newspaper for an estimated 35,000 readers from basement offices in Villa Scalabrini. Up-to-the minute news and soccer results come from the Italian news wire, ANSA. Correspondents contribute from overseas and around the state.

L’Italo-Americano is “two papers in one,” Trecco said. The Italian-language section presents news from Italy and the world on the front pages, followed by U.S. and California news focused on Italian people and events.

Columnists include Hollywood chronicler Argentina Brunetti and “Donna Carlotta,” a mysterious gossip columnist whose targets have included Zsa Zsa Gabor and comedian Billy Crystal, the latter for a joke he made alluding to organized crime while hosting the Oscar ceremonies. The statement was condemned by Italian-American groups.

Donna Carlotta’s identity remains top secret despite insistent inquiries by readers such as Carlo Rambaldi, the Oscar-winning special effects craftsman, Smaldino said.

The front section attracts immigrants who prefer to read and speak Italian, even if they have been here for decades. Jenny De Santis, 88, is among older women who follow weekly excerpts from a historical novel about Sicily.

“I enjoy reading Italian,” she said in Italian during a telephone interview. She said she has lived in this country 66 years. “I’ve learned to speak American, but to write,” she said, switching to English, “for-getabout. “

Advertisers target readers for groceries, legal and medical services, mortuaries, travel agencies. Trecco said the response shows that an enduring consumer population prefers to do business in Italian.

“Sometimes advertising becomes for a lot of Italians a recommendation,” Trecco said. “If they are served badly they hold us responsible. We have to be careful.”

Similarly, in the years after the paper’s acquisition and switch to nonprofit status, which prohibits political involvement, readers called in asking for the political endorsements they had followed during Baroni’s time.

Other readers say they want to learn or keep in touch with the language. Students in Italian classes, such as those of UCLA professor Althea Caravacci-Reynolds, subscribe at a discount. “It is a good vehicle for promoting the study of Italian,” Caravacci-Reynolds said.

Mark Fabiani, Mayor Tom Bradley’s chief of staff, counts himself among subscribers who struggle through the paper in hopes of improving the Italian they never quite learned.

“I can read a little bit,” said Fabiani, 32. He is the grandson of southern Italian immigrants and grew up in Pennsylvania. “I do my best every week.”

Fabiani then turns to the English-language section, which makes up one-third of the paper and is geared to younger readers and others looking for information about community and culture.

Trecco writes an overview in English of Italian politics and prints excerpts of books on travel and history. Topics range from the government crisis generated by the kidnap-murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in the 1970s, to a local Sicilian cultural festival, to a film project about the architect of the Watts Towers, Simon Rodia.

Readership increased with the addition of English, Trecco said, although the language division is the subject of contention.

One disgruntled former subscriber is Tom Ruatta. He gathers with other senior citizens of northern Italian origins for bocce matches in the festive, spacious clubhouse of the Garibaldina M.B. Society in Highland Park, where Italian and English echo in unison.

Ruatta canceled his subscription because of the predominance of Italian pages. He thinks the newspaper should bow to the inevitable, switch to English and appeal to the bulk of the ethnic group.

“That’s the reason I quit,” he said. “How many of us read Italian? I don’t have time to sit there and try to read it.”

Nearby, Secondo Actis demurred. The retired businessman and his wife divide their time between their native Turin and “Il Vallone,” as he calls the San Fernando Valley. Actis said the paper will not be Italian if it loses the language.

But he predicted that the language and groups like the Garibaldina, a mutual benefit society-turned social club with 900 members, are doomed because young people are not interested.

“We are too spread out,” he said in Italian. “In 20, 25 years, when the people in this place have died, these things will disappear.”

This debate about the future of the Italian-American press and community has taken place around the country.

In Chicago, for example, a city with a more numerous and visible Italian-American community than Los Angeles, the Fra Noi monthly is thick and thriving. But it has traditionally devoted only a few pages to Italian and many pages in English to columns by local politicians.

On the opposite extreme, readers around New York still support an Italian-language daily, America Oggi.

Caravacci-Reynolds and Scambray said the Los Angeles paper will endure in its current form because the study of Italian is increasing, spurred by the efforts of Italian-American organizations and interest on the part of Italians and non-Italians.

“I think the underlying connection has to be made through the language,” Scambray said. “We must continue to put pressure on people to read the language.”

Trecco said he sees his mission as fomenting love of the language, but not necessarily as protecting its survival.

“I think it’s destined to disappear as a living language used for everyday communication in this country,” he said. “However I see an increasing need in the second and third generation of pursuing the study of the language for cultural reasons.”