A business man, a tycoon, a philanthropist. Filippo Gagliardi was a complex and contradictory character, beloved and criticized, always ready to help his native country and the one that accepted him, Venezuela. He wasn’t an usual emigrant: in 1927 he arrived in Caracas and shortly became one of the richest man of South America. “My uncle was a very particular, extraordinary, brave and clever man. He knew poverty and sacrifice, same as he knew success and money”, this is what his nephew, Felice De Martino, tells about him. De Martino is the author of the book “La repubblica dei gigli bianchi” dedicated to his uncle. “During the 50s and the 60’s – De Martino continues :- he invested a large part of his heritage in public works for Italy, in the province of Salerno, were he built houses, cathedrals and aqueducts. In 1925 he donated 25 millions liras for flood victims of Polesine and in 1954 100 thousand dollars for flood victims of Salerno. It was rare- De Martino explains – that in those years a southern Italian man could send all that money”. Gagliardi’s success was interrupted between 1954 and 1958, when the dictatorship of Marcos Pèrez Jimènez ended. Gagliardi died very young, in 1967, however his memory is still alive: the Nobel Prize Gabriel Garcia Marquez cites him in one of his book, the journalists Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo remember him in their work named “La deriva”. Filippo Gagliardi, called Don Felipe, built a lot of public works in Venezuela, among which the road that goes from the port of Caracas to the airport Montesano. “He has done so much charity and he was tied to his roots. He was a real example for all other Italian emigrants: he did for Venezuela what he did for Italy – De Martino says – : aqueducts, houses, schools”. In his book De Martino tells about “fortune and wealth”, the dream of all immigrants , and how his “America’s uncle” has marked his childhood and adolescence: “He was my hero. He symbolized the man who can do everything. He did a lot for Italy and Venezuela., and even if he run into difficulties, I’m sure if he was still with us, he would do the same again”.
