Buenos Aires, Argentina: March 18, 2024. “Arrival of the ship Amerigo Vespucci”

In view of the arrival of the ship Amerigo Vespucci in Argentina, the Italian Consulate in Buenos Aires, the Italian Embassy, together with the Ministry of Defense, the Italian Cultural Institute of Buenos Aires, the ICE Agency, organized a series of events that took place in different points of the city, with the common theme of Italian emigration to Argentina.

Anchored in the old port of Buenos Aires, near the Hotel degli Immigrati, the Amerigo Vespucci, after 70 years, has arrived in Buenos Aires for the second time. The main attraction was the opportunity for tourists to visit the “most beautiful ship in the world”, a historical symbol of the Italian navy. At the same time there was the exhibition of a beautiful photographic exhibition by Maki Galimberti and Massimo Sestini, set up along the ancient basin of descent from passenger ships. The same basin that, more than a hundred years ago, led emigrants to the emigration office, where all those who would reside in the hotel during the 5 days that the Argentine government granted them had to register, in order to find a job, reunite with family and friends or simply wait for the train ticket that would take them to their new city, in their new homeland.

At 17.00 the scheduled debate began in which Daniel Arcucci (biographer of Diego Armando Maradona) spoke about Maradona’s bond with Napoli; Daniel Bertoni (former Argentine international and player of Maradona’s Napoli, Udinese and Fiorentina); Paolo Masini (President of the MEI Foundation) and Romina Deprati (member of Italea Liguria). The event was also attended by the official historians of the clubs of Boca, River, San Lorenzo, Carboneros and the secretary of heritage of the Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Event on 20/03 at the Centro Cultural Kirchner – Buenos Aires, Argentina

At 5.00 p.m., on the fifth floor, the official launch of Roots Tourism took place with a conference conducted by Luigi Maria Vignali (Director General for Italians Abroad and Migration Policies) and Giovanni Maria De Vita (Coordinator of the Roots Tourism project of the MAECI). The new tourist proposal that the Ministry is developing together with the 20 official associations, one for each region of Italy, aims to offer returning travelers the opportunity to organize personalized itineraries through which they will be able to discover the customs, history and places from which their ancestors departed.

At the end of the conference, the photographic exhibition “El mar que nos une” was officially inaugurated. Proposal created by Massimo Sestini (winner of the 2015 Word Press photo) and Maki Galimberti (well-known celebrity photographer).
At the same time, the proposal of the MEI Museum was presented in the presence of the President of the MEI Foundation, Paolo Masini: an experience in the immersive room where Italian immigration to Argentina is told, through sport. Retracing the history of the characters who were protagonists of the birth of the great clubs, sports realities and athletes of Italian origin who became icons of sport worldwide. In the immersive room there was also an excerpt from Genoa’s tour of South America in 1923. As a background to the contents, the images proposed by the Liguria Region and the city of Genoa with many beautiful locations including the majestic palaces recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The old post office in Buenos Aires (now the Kirchner Cultural Center) has once again become an important component of history, of this shared history that tells of the ties between Italy and Argentina. Like a hundred years ago, its rooms bring news from Italy, like when letters arrived from Italian families trying to be present in the daily lives of all those emigrants who had to leave their homes, their friends and their loves to build a future in faraway Argentina.