Sacco nel Mondo · The Brazilian Diaspora
While thousands of Sacchesi crossed the Atlantic to New York, others sailed south — to the coffee plantations of São Paulo, the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro, the streets of Niterói. They carried the same faith, the same surnames, the same memory of a mountain village in the Cilento. They are our cousins.
Between 1880 and 1930, more than 1.5 million Italians emigrated to Brazil — the second largest Italian diaspora in the Americas. Campania was among the leading regions of origin, its peasants driven by the same poverty and displacement that sent others to New York.
The men and women who left Sacco in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced a simple arithmetic: there was not enough land, not enough work, not enough future for the children of the Cilento highlands. The village had already lost more than half its people to plague in 1656. Now it would lose more to poverty.
Some families went north — to Waterbury, New Haven, Providence, the brass mills and textile factories of New England. Others went south, boarding ships at Naples that would take them across the Atlantic not to New York's Ellis Island but to the port of Santos, gateway to the coffee-growing state of São Paulo.
The Brazilian government was actively recruiting European immigrants in this period — Campania, along with Calabria and the Veneto, was among the primary source regions. The promise was land, sometimes subsidized passage, and a place in an expanding economy. What awaited most was hard agricultural labor on the fazendas, not unlike the fields they had left behind. But some prospered, and they stayed.
The Sacchesi who went to Brazil settled primarily around Rio de Janeiro and Niterói — the city across Guanabara Bay from the capital, with its Italian immigrant community and its Catholic churches. They brought with them the surnames that still appear in those communities today. They brought the memory of the Madonna degli Angeli. And they built a community so distinct, so persistent, that it is still recognized and cultivated by the village of Sacco itself — more than a century later.
The second largest Italian diaspora in the Americas, after the United States. Campania was among the top contributing regions.
The coastal city across the bay from Rio de Janeiro became the primary settlement of the Sacchese Brazilian community — a bond that holds to this day.
Emidio Luisi arrived in Brazil on June 21, 1955 — one of the last Sacchesi to make the crossing. He celebrated 70 years in Brazil in 2025.
In January 2026, the municipalities of Sacco and Niterói met in Rome to discuss a formal twinning agreement — the culmination of a century of shared identity.
Niterói sits across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro — a city of about 500,000 people, known for its beaches, its Oscar Niemeyer museum, and, to those who know its history, its deep Italian immigrant roots. Among those roots: a community of Sacchesi that has maintained its identity across generations, across an ocean, across a century.
The ties between Sacco and Niterói are not merely sentimental. They are active, institutional, and growing. In August 2025, a Sacchese journalist based in Niterói spoke at a formal ceremony in the village council chamber. In January 2026, the municipality of Sacco met with the Mayor of Niterói in Rome to discuss a formal twinning agreement. The relationship is accelerating, not fading.
What has kept this bond alive across so many decades is something that cannot be explained by history or economics alone. It is faith. The same Madonna degli Angeli who saved the village in 1656 traveled to Niterói in 2023 — her image carried across the Atlantic, installed in a Brazilian church, venerated by the children and grandchildren of those who left.
A new statue of the Madonna degli Angeli — crafted by sacred art specialists in Naples — was formally received and enthroned at the Church of São Judas Tadeu in the Icaraí neighborhood of Niterói on August 19, 2023. The initiative came from Italian immigrants of Sacchese origin living in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, and New York — united across three continents by a shared devotion to the same Virgin who stopped the plague in 1656.
Funded with contributions from the Associazione Sacchesi D'America · Commissioned through the Municipality of Sacco · A mass was celebrated at the Church of San Silvestro Papa in Sacco on the same day
Two names stand out in the documented story of the Sacchese diaspora in Brazil — each carrying the village's identity into a new world in a different way.
Emidio Luisi is the most celebrated Sacchese in Brazil — a photographer of international stature whose work bridges the village of his birth and the great metropolis of São Paulo where he built his life. He arrived in Brazil at age seven, on June 21, 1955, and never left.
He began his photographic career in 1978 as a photojournalist at the Diário do Grande ABC in São Paulo. From the 1980s onward he concentrated on two disciplines: theatre photography — including a landmark 35-year documentation of the Ballet Stagium and a celebrated creative partnership with director Antunes Filho — and ethnographic documentary photography of São Paulo's neighborhoods and popular festivals.
In 1985 he worked as a photographer for Veja, Brazil's leading newsweekly. Between 1980 and 1997 he held sixteen solo exhibitions in São Paulo and participated in more than thirty group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. His images have been published by Penguin (UK), Rizzoli (Italy), Autrement (France), Yale University Press (USA), and Editorial Crítica (Spain).
His 2017 book Itália Mia! is a tribute to his homeland — conceived in 1988, after thirty years in Brazil, as a deeply personal return to the landscapes and memory of Sacco. His most recent work, Immagini di un Tempo (2025), spans three territories: Sacco, Roscigno Vecchia, and São Paulo — three places that made him who he is. In May 2026, the Municipality of Sacco received him in a formal ceremony of honor, presenting his book to every member of the village council.
Pietro Petraglia is the living bridge between Sacco and its Brazilian diaspora. Born in Sacco and now resident in Niterói, he is the founder and director of Comunità Italiana — the leading Italian-language magazine in Brazil, recognized by the Italian government as the primary voice of the Italian community in the country.
In August 2025, Petraglia spoke at the "Sacco nel Mondo" ceremony in the village council chamber on the feast day of the Madonna degli Angeli — the day the village formally reunited with its global diaspora. His publication has been instrumental in keeping the connection between Sacco and Niterói alive and politically visible.
The relationship between Sacco and its Brazilian community is not a memory — it is an active, living institution, strengthening year by year.
"Sacco is a community that extends across the world. There are no emigrants — only citizens who carry our cultural, human, and historical DNA wherever they go. Identity is not measured only in physical places, but in memory, in the heart, and in the will to continue feeling part of an active and shared history."
Brazil's authoritative cultural encyclopedia entry on Emidio Luisi — full biography, bibliography, and exhibition history. In Portuguese.
BiographyPortuguese-language Wikipedia entry on Luisi, covering his career as an italo-Brazilian photographer specializing in photojournalism and ethnographic photography.
News · May 2026Coverage of the May 2026 ceremony honoring Luisi in Sacco's council chamber — 70 years after his arrival in Brazil. In Italian.
Diplomacy · January 2026Report on the January 2026 meeting in Rome between Mayor Latempa and Mayor Rodrigo Neves of Niterói — laying groundwork for a formal sister-city relationship.
Community · August 2025Full account of the August 2, 2025 ceremony reuniting Sacco with its global diaspora, including Pietro Petraglia's address from Niterói.
Faith · August 2023Brazilian newspaper coverage of the August 19, 2023 enthronement of the Madonna degli Angeli at the Church of São Judas Tadeu in Icaraí, Niterói. In Portuguese.
The Brazilian chapter of the Sacchese story is still being written — and many family connections remain undocumented. If your family came from Sacco and settled in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, or anywhere in Brazil, we want to hear from you. Your story belongs here.