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The Fresno Bee

The Fresno Bee in its effort to be a leader among leaders in the San Joaquin Valley assigned numerous reporters and other writers to attempt to write what they hope will pass as a history of the last 150 years of Fresno County.

Unfortunately, the 166 page paperback issue completely ignores the contribution that Italian immigrants and their offspring have made in Fresno County over the last 150 years.

Worse, where it does make a feeble effort to include one outstanding Italian immigrant contribution to Fresno’s history, the Underground Gardens, it likens this celebrated folk art site to a garbage dump.

The omissions and errors in the Bee’s amateurish history are so numerous and egregious that it could be summarily dismissed if I did not believe that they have done irreparable harm to the history of Italians in the San Joaquin Valley and California.

There are mentions here and there of Italians. But at no time do any of the writers acknowledge the central role and importance of one of the largest European ethnic groups that settled West Fresno.

At one point writer David Masumoto, a writer and farmer, points out that Fresno County is the “state leader in the number of family farms.” He then lists that the largest of these are Asian, Hispanic, African-American, and Native American.

Why doesn’t Masumoto mention the Simone Farms, among the largest individual family farms in the valley? I could go on with numerous other names of Italian family farms dating back to before 1900. Though central to the valley’s agricultural industry for decades and obvious to even the casual observer, why are Italian immigrants left out?

In another section of their attempted history, under Winemaking, the editors list Fresno State’s Viticulture and Enology Program. Why aren’t Italian Swiss Colony, Gallo, Cribari, Nonini, and Roma wineries mentioned?

Though Roma and Cribari were bought out years ago, they are an important part of Fresno history.

At one point, according to John Cribari, the Cribari Winery owned more than 10,000 acres of vineyards in Fresno.
According to Al Cribari, John’s uncle, in 1935 the Cribari family bought the Las Palmas Winery from Italian Swiss Colony Winery, established in the 1890s, located on the corner of Olive and Clovis Avenues. Andrea Sbarboro and his partner, Pietro Rossi, established Swiss Colony in Sonoma Valley.

According to Al Cribari, a writer and wine historian, the Cribari winery in Fresno “became the biggest winery in the world before the Gallos even began bottling.” The Gallo Winery now owns and operates at that historic site in Fresno.

It would seem that this site should be designated a state historical monument, considering the importance of the wine industry in Fresno and California.
The Cella family brought Roma Winery from Lodi to Fresno in the 1930s.

When Fresno’s Italian immigrants created the largest wine producing facilities in the world, how can anyone who writes about either farming or winemaking in Fresno ignore the contribution of Sbarboro, Rossi, Cella, Nonini, Cribari, and Gallo?
The California wine industry began in Southern California with, among others, Secondo Guasti, Joseph Felipe, and Domenico Galleano, the last two still in operation. The Galleano Winery, established in 1927 and located in the Cucamonga Valley, is both a Riverside County Historic Landmark and a State of California Point of Historical Interest.

Should it not be the role and responsibility of Fresno’s major newspaper to bring distinction and recognition to Fresno County rather than erase its history? Why doesn’t the Bee acknowledge the centrality of the Italian immigrant winemakers in Fresno, which is so obvious even to the casual observer?

Nowhere is Perfection Brand Macaroni mentioned, owned and operated by Alfonso Borelli. (A pasta factory is mentioned, but not Borelli’s). The Perfection Brand factory was an important employer for West Fresno’s immigrant residents, mainly Italian.

Robert Scambray reminded me that the factory was on E Street before it became a world-wide brand name when Kraft bought Borelli out.

How much more space would it have taken to list an important member of the largest West Side ethnic group and a contributor to the world-wide distribution of Fresno food products?

Sbarbaro, Rossi, Nonini, Gallo, Borelli, Cribari, and Simone: these aren’t nickels and dimes, but the very stuff of what defines Fresno and its contribution not only to Fresno or California, but world agricultural production. And they represent just a few names among the many small Italian immigrant valley farmers. It is curious that they are all missing.

I could go on and on with other prominent Italian American names in Fresno. But it seems to me that if the Fresno Bee were interested in history, the Bee’s reporters could have simply made a telephone call to the local Dante or Verdi Club presidents or simply used the web.

It is curious that the Bee focuses on the Warnors Theater but betrays no interest in the identity and heritage of the man, Frank Caglia, who purchased it and preserved it. The Bee writers feature other individuals, but not Frank.

At 94 years old, Frank Caglia is an icon in the Italian American community in Fresno. Why didn’t the Bee reporter ask Frank anything about the origins of his family or where he grew up?

The information that he has about the history of Fresno is priceless. It would be easy to call the reporter incompetent. Rather, what this article and all the others demonstrate is that the Bee is merely constructing is own version of Fresno history. It is not really interested in an accurate history of Fresno County.

Since the Bee mentions it, who performed at the Barton Opera House in the 1890s? Were they Italian? Would it have been so hard to follow that trail as well?
At no point is St. Alphonsus Church mentioned, built by the Italian community in West Fresno. All the artistic stained glass windows in the church were paid for by Italian immigrants.

The names of the Italian families are still listed under each window, there for even the casual observer to see. What is, after all, the source of the tradition that created these still magnificent windows? Where they created in California? I am sure Frank could have told the Bee volumes about the church, as well as West Fresno.

St. Alphonsus is among the oldest churches in Fresno and an icon of Fresno history, but gets no mention.
It is a remarkable example of late Mission style architecture, a style central to the history of California. All the Fresno Bee reporters had to do was to drive across Highway 99 to the church.

Again the reader is left to speculate: why didn’t they do the obvious?
We must begin to raise our eyebrows over motivations in the Bee’s historical construction of Fresno’s history.

Perhaps the most revealing gaff in the work is the editors’ listing of Baldassare Forestieri’s world-renowned Underground Gardens among sites such as the Pinedale Assembly Center, Kearney Park and Mansion, China Alley, and the Fresno Sanitary Landfill. In a region that has relied for decades on immigrant labor, why isn’t the Bee interested in this Sicilian’s cultural contribution to Fresno’s history?

Have any of the Bee reporters visited the Underground Gardens? Do they know of its significance in the world of folk art production? In what way is Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestieri’s Underground Gardens like an assembly plant, an alley, an old building, or garbage dump? A simple google would have listed the important books and essays on the site. By the way, Forestieri did not dig his grottoes just “to escape the Valley heat.”

Forestieri’s famous folk art site is not placed in the section listing the Fresno Art Museum, the African American Museum, the Danish Heritage Center, and the Fresno Art Museum. When Italian immigrant artistic contributions are relegated to undistinguished buildings and a garbage dump, we must begin to ask serious questions about what the Bee and its entire staff of writers are revealing about their attitudes toward Italian Americans.

What are the unstated social and cultural issues that guided the Fresno Bee editors in publishing their version of Fresno County history?
I noticed that a reference is made to the Japanese exclusion laws, but there is no mention of the 1924 exclusion laws designed specifically to stop the flow of Southern Italians into the U.S., since they made up the single largest national immigrant group before 1924. Racism was the reason they were denied entrance to the U.S. in 1924. Why are Italians now being excluded from the history of Fresno County, which they worked so hard over the last 150 years to build?

I prefer racist exclusion laws, mainly because they are overt and can be rescinded by enlightened people, as President John Kennedy repealed them in the 1960s. But the subtlety of Fresno County is difficult to oppose: its errors, omissions, and unstated attitudes will go unseen by even some of the most assiduous scholars.

I will repeat my charge here that I have already made in my initial letter to the Fresno Bee: Given the provincialism and lack of scholarship that guided the editing and writing of this work, a newspaper that refuses to publish book reviews, should not attempt to write books.

I am urging my readers to write an e-mail or letter to the editors of the Fresno Bee to protest the omission of Italians’ contribution to the history of Fresno County.
- keldred@fresnobee.com; Publisher, Roy Steele Jr,
- publisher@fresnobee.com, Betsy Lumbye, Senior Vice President,
- blumbye@fresnobee.com, Jim Boren, Editorial page Editor,
- jboren@fresnobee.com, Paddy Brown, Executive Assistant
- pbrown@fresnobee.com, Ken Hatfield, Director of Community Relations,
- hatfield@fresnobee.com, Valerie Bender, Director of Community Publications.

 

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