Italian-Americans gather to remember Christopher Columbus and their heritage at cultural festival
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A sign at the 2011 Festa Italiana of D.C. commemorates the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Credit: Lydia Beyoud
The annual Festa Italiana celebrates the vibrancy of Italian and Italian-American culture in what was once the heart of Washington, D.C.’s “Little Italy” community.
Gesturing to the tables huddled around the intersection of Third and F streets, Nick Monaco, a festival volunteer for the past nine years, pointed out the many culinary offerings: canolli, a whole roast pork on a spit, bruschetta, olive oil, sausage and pepper and gelato. “We try to get all the various Italian food groups represented,” Monaco joked.
The anchor stone of D.C.’s Italian community is the Holy Rosary Catholic Church and the Italian cultural center huddled next to each other on Third Street, dwarfed by the surrounding federal office buildings. Monaco describes the area as “the only bastion that’s left” of the former immigrant enclave. “It’s been absorbed as the original immigrant population died out,” he said. He describes the current Italian-American community as “not as cohesive as in some places like New York,” adding that many members do continue to go attend church services at Holy Rosary.
Members of the Knights of Columbus attend a ceremony at Festa Italiana 2011
Local organizations joined in the celebration, including the Lido Civic Club, a 92-year-old organization that once helped Italian immigrants start businesses and integrate with American society, as well as the eye-catching fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus, sporting bright capes and plumed hats. Representatives from the various organizations gathered around a statue of Christopher Columbus, donated by the Lido Club to Holy Rosary Church, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Italian unification as well as the man many of them admire.
Thomas Hogan, president of the National Columbus Celebration Association, praised the Italian explorer. “Cristoforo Columbus is the patron of our order. Our order was named for him for some fairly profound reasons,” he said, “which combine the pride Americans have in being American but also this discovery of a new world.”
Thomas Mauro, president of the Lido Civic Club, addresses a crowd at a memorial to Christopher Columbus at Festa Italiana. Credit: Lydia Beyoud
Thomas Mauro, president of the Lido club, commented on his organization’s choice to commemorate Columbus through a statue: “The lido club in 1992 thought [it] important to create [a statue] in honor of Christopher Columbus. At that time, and I think it’s still true today, [Columbus] was criticized for bringing more harm than good to the Americas, and the Lido Civic Club thought…it was important to make a statement that [Columbus] is an important person [who made] significant contributions to not only to the United States but to Italy by virtue of the people that he led to Americas.”
Peter Gervais, with the D.C. chapter of the Knight of Columbus, expanded on where some of that anti-Columbus sentiment originates, saying “when the Europeans came, they brought a lot of diseases, so Columbus has a bad rap now as being someone who wiped out the native population.”
Overall, however, the tone was of the festival and the small commemoration highlighted the achievements of former immigrants and their descendants.
Hogan highlighted his views on the success of his community, once viewed with some negativity during the early waves of migration, in integrating into mainstream American culture. “It seems to me that our success in that integration has…succeeded in redeeming the image of our group and the prejudice that we experienced against us here.”
He reminded the crowd that President Obama, himself the son of an immigrant to the U.S., “characterized the Italian immigrants who came here as ‘determined, hardworking and leaders’ and I think it’s appropriate that we celebrate [that] here today.”
The few dozen attending the ceremony, crowded between the church and the cultural center walls, or the many hundreds waiting in line for a little taste of Italy, seemed keen to recognize the positive contributions of Italians to American culture.
Lydia Beyoud 