Esperanto and the Italian Subversives

Similar, but not Esperanto.

I don’t know what surprises me more: that there was an Esperanto group just for Italian speakers in New York, or that there was an Italian-Language newspaper in Vermont. It just doesn’t strike me as a place with a large Italian population. But they had the Cronaca sovversiva. Clearly with a name like “Subversive Chronicle,” this was a newspaper of the Italian anarchists of the early twentieth century. Sort of the thing you’d expect to see Sacco and Vanzetti reading.[1] The Library of Congress notes that the place of publication varied in its run from 1903 to 1920. No doubt when Lynn, Massachusetts became too hot for an anarchist publication, the editor packed off to Vermont.

We’ve have several threads here, weaving through the (unlikely) location of Barre, Vermont. Early on, Esperanto was picked up by the labor movement and to a degree it’s still there. The major Esperanto dictionary, Plena Ilustrita Vortaro (Complete Illustrated Dictionary) is published by SAT, the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, the World Non-National Association. They’re not just a dictionary publisher; their real goal is just what their name implies. Then there was the thought that in the near future Esperanto would indeed be the common tongue. So if you were an immigrant, why not learn Esperanto? And, of course, with the large immigrant Italian population of New York, why not give Esperanto classes in Italian?

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