Entre inmigrantes, socialistas y masones. La emigración Italiana en Colombia y en centroamérica y un fantasmal atentado a Mussolini

This article focuses on an aspect of Italian emigration barely studied so far, i.e., early emigration from Lucania and Calabria, mainly consisting of musicians and artisans who were socialists or masons and who chose not to go to areas preferred by mass migration to South America (like Argentina), but rather to Central America, Colombia or Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. After reviewing this presence in Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica and the Caribbean, the singular case of an alleged plot against Mussolini attributed to an Italian emigrant who had become notorious in the South American country is taken up by the author to analyze the multiple links between emigration, socialism and masonry, as well as the troublesome relationship between immigrants and Fascist Italy. Shading the old stereotype associating emigration to misery and despair, a different migration experience political and cultural nature, where mobility is often impelled by conscious entrepreneurial ambitions.