A Village in Italy Embraces Paladino
Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy, is the ancestral village of Carl P. Paladino, who is running for governor of New York.
By GAIA PIANIGIANI
Published: October 24, 2010
SANTA CROCE DI MAGLIANO, Italy — To many in this hilltop village in southern Italy, Carl P. Paladino is simply known as “O’Mericano,” or the American.
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Times Topic: Carl Paladino
Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times
Carlo Rosati, right, a cousin of Mr. Paladino in Santa Croce, helps visitors from Buffalo search records for family information in the town hall.
Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times
Lucille Cannata Crimi, who said she lived near the Paladinos in Buffalo, was among the visitors learning about her roots in Santa Croce.
The New York Times
Most of the town’s 4,876 residents do not spend much time on the Internet and know little about United States politics. But word of mouth travels fast, and when the news hit that Mr. Paladino, whose family left here in 1926, was running to be governor of New York, residents were excited.
And even though Mr. Paladino, the Republican nominee, trails in the polls, here, at least, he has nothing but supporters.
“We are all happy and really proud of him,” Francesco Di Nunzio, 60, a construction worker with a tanned face and a hunter’s jacket said as he watched friends play cards at the local association of war veterans on a recent Saturday afternoon.
According to the phone book, 17 Paladinos still live in Santa Croce, which is perched between the Adriatic Sea and the Matese mountains. Mr. Paladino still has cousins in the area, and his side of the family here is descended from an uncle, Antonio Paladino.
Antonio Paladino was 13 when he left for Naples with his mother and three siblings, including Carl Paladino’s father, Belisario, on the first leg of their journey to join their father in Buffalo. But because of an eye infection, Antonio was not allowed to leave Italy, and did not see his family for more than 40 years, his grandchildren said.
Still, the Paladino bonds remained strong. Carl Paladino has returned about seven times since 1982, when he came with his parents to see the village where his father was born.
Mostly, he travels to attend weddings and funerals or just to relax.
His cousins say he likes to eat. His favorite menu includes Santa Croce parmigiana, with fried eggplant, minced beef and mozzarella, followed by tagliolini in chicken broth, and pizzaiola, a dish with beef, tomatoes, garlic and rosemary. He particularly enjoyed homemade meals at the home of his favorite cousin, Albina, who died in March.
“He’d just say ‘Albina, I love you,’ ” recalled her son, Carlo Rosati, 39. “And then he’d eat, eat and eat.”
Mr. Paladino also enjoys sipping cappuccino at a bar once owned by a cousin and driving to a nearby town to buy clothes.
The local dialect can be impenetrable, a mishmash of dialects from three neighboring regions, as well as Greek and Albanian. An interpreter often helps ease communication when Mr. Paladino visits.
Few townspeople are familiar with Mr. Paladino’s political campaign, especially his blunt and sometimes provocative and controversial verbal outbursts.
But Mr. Rosati and other members of the family keep up with the race, and Mr. Paladino himself is known to send them e-mails about how his campaign is going. Mr. Rosati also sends messages to relatives and acquaintances living in the United States asking them to support his cousin.
For all its natural beauty, there is not much sightseeing to do in Santa Croce. The ancient church of San Giacomo was severely damaged by an earthquake that struck the region in 2002. Many buildings are still undergoing major reconstruction or are kept standing by wooden poles.
For decades agriculture has been the main source of income in the area, but has never provided enough to keep many from leaving in search of more money. Today, many local carpenters and blacksmiths leave the village from Sunday night through Friday to work on construction sites in northern Italy.
The Paladinos are not the only family to have made their way from here to western New York.
“This is where it all started,” said Louis Casciano, 65, who was part of a group of Italian-Americans living in Buffalo who visited Santa Croce recently, where some of them had family ties. “I wanted to see where my father was from. We just had to come back here.”
Mr. Casciano said he played stickball in the street with Mr. Paladino when they were young boys living next door to each other in the East Lovejoy neighborhood of Buffalo.
“It was my dream to come back here,” said Lucille Cannata Crimi, 68, who said she used to live near the Paladinos in Buffalo. “You just feel the presence of your family here.”
Mr. Paladino’s Democratic opponent, Andrew M. Cuomo, also has roots in Italy, in a town not far from Naples. But in rural areas of Italy, the connection to the local soil is more important than bonds of nationality.
As Teodoro Colombo, 75, a retired construction worker from Santa Croce, put it, “We always like our paesani better
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