With 19th-century roots as a fishing village of immigrants from Genoa and Sicily, San Diego's Little Italy came into its own in the 1920s as a vibrant neighborhood and tuna capital of America.
Fishing was plentiful, but so were opportunities for seafood processing and marketing. Other Italians chose to open restaurants where they served the fish that locals caught.
But World War II brought change.
Italian residents without U.S. citizenship were labeled "enemy aliens." And in San Diego, fishermen (like their peers on the East Coast) were restricted from their livelihood. In some cases, boats were requisitioned for military use.
The city's tuna clipper fleet would shrink nearly 30% by 1959, and when Interstate 5 opened, it sliced through Little Italy. But while families were displaced, many held onto their businesses and places of worship, like Our Lady of Rosary Church.
Today, Little Italy stands as downtown San Diego's oldest continuous neighborhood business district, supported by civic and heritage organizations, including Convivio, founded in 2003.
Executive Director Tom Cesarini grew up immersed in Italian culture and language, with parents who emigrated to the United States from Aspra, Sicily, in the 1960s. He launched Convivio with a focus on preserving and promoting his heritage and its contributions to San Diego.
We discussed the factors that informed that decision, the key challenges he and his team have faced, the most impactful programs they have developed, and their plans for the future, including the establishment of a new Italian-American cultural center and museum.
Men stand in the racks along the edge of the boat, three-pole fishing for tuna in rough seas. The larger tuna often ranged between 100 and 200 pounds, requiring two to three men to pull the fish on board. (Courtesy of the Portuguese Historical Center)
What led you to launch Convivio?
Our Little Italy in San Diego was getting redeveloped at the time, after having almost disappeared altogether through the 1980s. The Merchant Association brought that back, but culture and history were disappearing rapidly.
I had volunteered in San Diego for several arts and cultural groups, all promoting Italian culture. But there was a lot of infighting. And so as a volunteer, I was left in the cold, wondering, "What just happened?"
I decided to give it a go myself. I had enough knowledge as a volunteer and was self-educated on nonprofits in general, but I looked at the gaps in knowledge that I had to fill to do it properly. I applied to a nonprofit leadership program at the University of San Diego, got accepted, and that opened up the doors.
Between 2003, when I founded Convivio, and 2005, when I started the program, I was just putting it together—events and programs—and looking for support slowly but surely.
Two years of the Master's program really helped a lot, and for 22 years, we've done a lot. We have a great track record. I'm really proud of it.
We have a good volunteer team, and it's still growing. We're always trying to get to the next level in the nonprofit world.
Washington Elementary School was architecturally modeled after the White House. When this photograph was taken in 1940, the interior was made predominantly of marble, and lion heads originally marked the front entrance but were later removed. The school served the entire Italian community. Sadly, the original building was torn down in 1980. The school, however, was rebuilt for another generation of young San Diegans. (Courtesy of Fran Marline Stephenson)
Describe Convivio's focus.
One of our core components is our heritage preservation program. We establish digital archives to save those stories through photographs and oral histories. It's one of the things we do, but it's a very important one.
We do a lot. There's something for everybody. Films, author presentations, a book club, a film club, concerts, Italian classes… You name it, we are open to it. The goal is to provide a space for people just to come together, congregate, and build relationships.
Why is creating a community space so important?
Other ethnic communities have cultural centers and shared spaces. We had Little Italy, we had the neighborhood, and we had the church that served as an anchor for a hundred years. But I wanted to do something a little bit different, expand our vision for the community.
I asked people, "What are your ambitions as an Italian-American, as a leader, as a community member? What are your aspirations? What are you looking for?" And across the board, they all said the same thing: we need a home.
It aligned with what I already knew, but I needed that data. It's not just me saying it, it's the entire community saying it, and this is what we have to try to deliver. So we try to fill in those gaps in programming.
Processions were of vital importance to the parishioners, and remain so to this day. In this image, circa 1945, the San Diego County Administration building is prominent in the background. The procession is heading toward the wharf, as was customary, culminating in the return to the church. (Courtesy of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish)
How does collaboration play a role?
We're all about collaboration. Who can we work with? How do we leverage each other's strengths, and how do we better our community and work more efficiently?
Instead of saying all the time, "I'm Sicilian" or "I'm Tuscan," let's also unite and not be so competitive. We saw many San Diego clubs competing for resources. I said, "We're not going to get anywhere this way. We've got to really focus our efforts on coming together."
We've partnered with San Diego Opera, San Diego Symphony, and non-Italian arts and cultural groups. With those, it's about "How do we leverage their power? How can they best work with us to benefit both us and them?"
That component of what's in it for us often has a negative connotation, but it's important. We have to look at ourselves if we want to keep going. It's almost like that self-care notion of if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else.
So, how does it benefit both our organizations? If we can look at that and come up with something, it's win-win literally for both parties involved in the project.
What have been your challenges to date?
The biggest lament is funding for all nonprofits, especially in the arts. We're constantly struggling to deal with either budget cuts or grant cuts.
We have private donors who support us. On the grant side, we have fee-for-service programs to raise money. We have retail that we try to raise funds for, so we're always exploring new funding streams.
As far as heritage goes, a big challenge has been overcoming stigmas with the community, and overcoming the fact that Italians can be very private. For example, we published a couple of books.
There were pictorial history books on the community. One was on San Diego's Little Italy, and a couple of years later, we did one on the fishing industry, which was huge in San Diego.
I was out knocking on doors, trying to collect photographs. That was a challenge. Some people donated photos, but others were concerned about what we would do with their photos.
We're trying to educate the community at large about the importance of our organization, mission, and vision. Our vision is to create a museum and a cultural center on a large scale. And so now we're introducing that in many ways and trying to gather everybody together.
It's getting better now. New generations have come into the existing organizations. We're seeing a lot of partnering with events with different organizations that you wouldn't have seen before. If the Italian community is going to prosper and move forward, we have to come together eventually.
The fishing canneries employed many of San Diego's residents, especially women, during the 1920s and 1930s. This group of young women worked for the Westgate Cannery and is pictured outside the company in 1936. Sarah Gangitano Bono is seen kneeling in the front row, on the left; others in the photo are unidentified. (Courtesy of Marie Bono Sohl)
Which program has had the most significant impact?
The Heritage Preservation Program. We've amassed thousands of images, done oral histories, and now, we're putting together a repository, moving toward an actual physical museum for San Diego and an arts and cultural center space.
I think that's the most important one, because that was severely lacking. We have other groups doing spaghetti dinners and fish fries, and similar events. We do a lot of those things, too. But as far as a more academic bent to organizations, that was lacking.
Is there a success story that stands out from your initiatives?
We had a donor buy property in Little Italy and donate the use of it to us. So we will be establishing a larger cultural center and finally a museum.
We have a small space we work out of now. It's a little cottage, a little fishing home that's been preserved, and it serves its purpose well for us now, but we want to expand and create a larger museum and cultural center.
We're in the planning stages right now. So after 22 years of knocking on doors and saying, "This is important," it's coming to fruition, and people are starting to buy into it.
My philosophy is essentially the Lao Tzu mantra: a leader is best when people barely know he exists; the people will say they did it themselves. When all is said and done, the goal is to get the people to do what they need to do. It's a huge deal for San Diego's Italian American community.
AMICIBAR in Little Italy, Convivio's current space
What do you ultimately hope to share?
It goes back to why I started the organization, which was to create and sustain a space where people can come together, put their phones down, sit at a table with strangers, start a conversation, and just learn from each other. That's what our space is meant to be.
There's this notion of a third space or place. The first place is your home. Second place is your work. Where's your third place? Where do you go for community?
That's really what Convivio is about in a nutshell: where you go for community. That's what we try to cultivate.
I ultimately hope to share a place where people can do that and learn about Italian culture, but also learn about each other.
When I chose the name Convivio, I was looking for a name that represented that, and hopefully it does. I can't find a better one. Uniting and coming together. That's what I hope to share with purpose.
Discover Convivio in person and meet me for this special book event.
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