The story of our family, like a great majority of families in the American continent, is a story of immigrants, and this story keeps prolonging itself in time through generations.
My grandparents from my father’s side were born in Europe in a place that reflects the history of that continent, rich and complex. Both of them came from a place called Trieste that nowadays is an Italian city near the border with Croatia.
When my grandfather was still a teenager, he was sent in the name of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to fight in World War I , since technically he was an Austrian citizen. You can imagine what was for him, still almost a child to fight with a bayonet in a bloody battle and what trauma left in his life.
When war was over, losing the army he was fighting for and becoming that territory part of Italy, my grandparents got married and in the city of Pula (or Pola in Italian) where they had their only child, my father, that was born under the Italian citizenship. All the changes in the region reflect the times we are going through, the city was first part of Austria, then Italy, then Yugoslavia and today Croatia.
My grandfather, was a very intelligent farmer. During those times Italy was under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. Everyday life started to get harder for those who didn’t share the ideology of the government and my grandfather, tired of political persecution and afraid that a new war could develop taking my father to the battle front, decided to emigrate to America, more precisely to Argentina. My grandparents on my mother’s side come from Spanish descent. Mi grandfather is the son of Spanish immigrants and was born in Chile. He spent most of his life traveling all over the world, collecting art and working as a diplomat.
Because of that job he went to work in Mexico as a Chilean consul. While he was in Mexico with my Argentinean grandmother (also the daughter of Spanish immigrants) my mother was born. My mother lived with her parents in Mexico until she was a teenager, and later they traveled to Argentina, where my grandfather abandoned the family. They never heard of him again.
Life in Argentina wasn’t easy, not for my grandparents nor my parents, but through hard work and study they made a life in the new land and society.
Not much time passed since my mother, still a new immigrant in Argentina met my father in a Romeo and Juliet kind of way, that is, without the approval of their families. They got married and had three children, two boys and a girl, me.
My brothers over time met two girls from Chile, one of them with native Auraucanian roots, also emigrated from their country to look for a better future.

The roots of my husband come from Eastern Europe. His grandparents on his mother’s side emigrated from Poland to Argentina with a son born in the old continent and later they had a daughter in the new land, my mother in law.
On his father’s side, Miguel’s grandparents came from Russia and once established in Argentina they had five children, one of them my father in law.
My roots are Catholic, Miguel’s roots are deeply Jewish.
We met and got married in Argentina joining cultures, religions and different ways to see the world. We later emigrated from our country to the United States, where our son Dylan was born, continuing the family story of immigrants that embraced a new culture and a new language.
This is the story that now find us here adopting two Ethiopian children, that will also be part of the next generation of immigrants in America, with another story on their shoulders, another culture and another language that will be added to the many that already are in our family.
Who knows what story lays ahead for them and what the new generation will do. My grandchildren, will they keep emigrating? Will they stay in this land for many generations? Whatever they choose, some day they will tell a story rich in cultures, languages and anecdotes like I tell today to my children.

After all, we all emigrated a long time ago, sons and daughters of Africa, where the first human beings stood on two legs, started to walk and decided to… emigrate.

AliciA