Reversal Of Fortune

NICK CORNISH for TIME

A BETTER LIFE: Italians went to Argentina last century to work, now their descendants, like Antich, pictured, are coming back

The rugged land to the north and west of Venice was dirt poor in 1918 when Carlos Antich's great-grandfather packed up his family and struck out for the New World. Antich's ancestors, the Bolgan clan — like boatloads of others who fled the Veneto region's relentless poverty — wound up in Argentina, where expanding agriculture and construction projects required cheap and eager labor. Even after Antich's grandfather, Carlo Fortunato Bolgan, worked his way into the Argentine middle class, nostalgia for Italy ran deep through three generations of the family. But it wasn't until Antich's arrival in Veneto eight months ago that...

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