Wheat Pattern Wares, Fascism, and the Building of an Italian Identity in Southern Brazil

This article investigates the connections between Wheat Pattern refined earthenwares produced in Sao Paulo and the Italian immigration farming colony of northeast Rio Grande do Sul during the first decades of the twentieth century. It explores the wheat symbology to discuss the role that these wares exerted in the construction of an Italian identity in southern Brazil appealing to those immigrants´ core values: agricultural labor, family life, and Catholic religiosity. Meanwhile, the fascist regime diffused these same values to build a trans-Atlantic national identity which bounded immigrants to their homeland as civilization carriers for the New Roman Empire designed by Mussolini.