Searching Our Roots – Buscando Nuestros Orígenes

Almost 140 years ago, our great great grandparents; Antonio Sommavilla and Antonia Colle (along with their children) were one of the 64 families who took the big decission of migrating from Italy to Venezuela, event that would eventually lead to our current hustle.

“La Veloce” was a line of steam powered ships that used to transport inmigrants from Italy to South America, founded by the Captain Giovanni Battista Lavarello in 1865.

In February 17/1877, 64 families from Veneto – Italy, boarded the ship “La Veloce” (also recognized as “Il Veloce”) and embarked to Venezuela, a country that provided refugee and vast fertile lands which promised inmigrants "a prudent administration regime that guarantees individual security and the sacred right of property”.

The Sommavilla settled in Araira, where they raised the foundations of their houses and plowed the land while the gobernment supplyed them with candles and soap until food resources could be collected from the soil.

Documents and records didn’t play a crucial role by those times and since the arrival of our family to the country for the first time, our last name was remodelled (like many others) to make it more appealing or “simpler”, which was something pretty common in times of war. The result was a change from Sommavilla to Sumabila which would apply to next generations, yet our last name continued to degrade to other similar versions like “Sumavila”.

Over the years, the Sommavilla migrated to another region inside the country; The town of Guarenas, where Miguel Antonio Sumabila was born around 1880. After 42 years in Miguel’s life and marrying Magdalena Almagre, they gave birth to Probiste Antonio which was our grandfather.

Nowadays, Venezuela goes through both a masked communist dictartoship and a humanitarian crisis; common and first necessity resources like food or health care are literally just unexistent. Services that should be a must in most countries like clean water and electricity are only present between 2 to 3 days every week and the earnings you get from any job are so scarce that you cannot afford more than 2 kilograms of corn-dough (a day to day food for Venezuelans) and 1 Kilogram of butter.

Venezuela monthly minimum wage is only 5$. To backup my words, you can check all this data and more facts about the country easily on sites like Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

The situation is critical, money is scarce, our mother is terribly sick and the gobernment creates the craziest politics every day to retain Venezuelans into the country, making liberty and quality of life impossible, this is not about living anymore, but surviving. This is why my sister and I decided to migrate, but due to the country actual situation, the magnitude of this task is not to laugh about.

I’ve always used to say that in order to get something you cannot simply expect it to come but make an effort to make it happen, this time however, we need help. Both of us got 3 full time jobs at the same time to earn more money, though maintaining such routine sounds impossible I can affirm this is doable, but quite exhausting.

Going to a country “the Illegal way” is something that we have never accepted, if we are escaping from a country where rules are not being respected or are basically non-existent, breaking them somewhere is definetly not the way to do the things. Other countries like Canada offer special work visas but we’re overwhelmed by all the obstacles imposed by the goberment. This is why we landed here on GoGetFundMe as our last ressort.

We can inherit Miguel Sumabila Italian nationality, move to Europe, fix our records and literally start a new life. So why we need the money? Lawyers, 3 tickets to Europe, documents and at least 1 month rent to survive while we get a job. The main problem for getting important documents is, in 1990 and 2005 strong storms whipped the land of Araira, where the original documents resided.

This makes Miguel Sumabila a “missing link” in our family, because its documents are no longer present in Araira and in order to provide our nationality, one of the things that we obligatory need is a birth certificate, decease certificate, passport or something that proves the legacy of our family. Copies, documents and registries exist, but of course it’s quite a task to obtain them and the most important of them reside in Italy, where everything started.

140 Years after the events of Antonio Sommavilla and Antonia Colle we’re repeating the history; migrating to another land in search for refugee and the best for our family. We have been working a lot for years, making sacrifices, investigating and trying our best by ourselves but this time, the only thing we’re certain is that we can’t make it alone. The truth is, altough money doesn’t buy many things, it makes life much easier.

This is why we must travel to Italy and the reason of our pledge across the globe and here in GoGetFunding.com

To backup the statements of our inheritance, I’m leaving a “legend” or “history” with various links that you can read and verify by yourself, some of them might be in spanish or italian since no english translation are available.

This is a plate that resides in Araira till this day; built in 1988 commemorating 100 years of history, when the immigrants comming from Veneto - Italy finally disembarked in Venezuela – Araira. If you look at the 3rd row from left to right, near the bottom, you will see the “Sommavilla” last name along with the degraded version “Sumabila”.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fundadores_de_Araira.jpg

A simple google images search regarding “La Veloce” will show you a lot of this line of ships and the service they provided. Also, here is some of its story, where it’s described their travels to Venezuela and other South American countries.

http://www.histarmar.com.ar/LineasPaxaSA/50-LaVeloce.htm
http://familialavarello.tripod.com/id12.html

Information regarding the 1990 and 2005 storms that whipped the land, also know as “Tragedia de Mocotíes” are below the section called “Notas”.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araira

A more in deep section of the storms that whipped Araira. I restrincted myself of adding any links that may contain crude content but images about this disaster are easy to reach on google images if you would like to check the damages.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedia_del_Mocot%C3%ADes

You can also find here information regarding Araira and part of the immigrant story, specially below the section called “Fundación de la Colonia Bolívar”.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araira

We thank you for reading the history of our family, It took us almost a week to write this, not because we lack documents or information, but the constant blackouts and electric shortcuts that we experience almost every day.

Every penny counts, we know how hard sometimes is to lend a hand when money is involved, but if by any reason you landed here, read about us and can’t donate, please share our family history with your friends and social media, thanks to you maybe we can get even farther.

Thanks for reading!