title: Italian Americans

text: Little Italies were, to a considerable extent, the result of Italophobia. The ethnocentrism and anti-Catholicism exhibited by the earlier Anglo-Saxon and northern European settlers helped to create an ideological foundation for fixing foreignness on urban spaces occupied by immigrants. Communities of Italian Americans were established in most major industrial cities of the early 20th century, such as Baltimore, Maryland; New York City, New York; Newark, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Hartford, Connecticut; Waterbury, Connecticut; New Haven, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; St. Louis, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York; and Kansas City, Missouri. New Orleans, Louisiana was the first site of immigration of Italians into America in the 19th century, before Italy was a unified nation-state. This was before New York Harbor and Baltimore became the preferred destinations for Italian immigrants. In sharp contrast to the Northeast, most of the Southern states (with the exception of Central and South Florida and the New Orleans area) have relatively few Italian-American residents. During the labor shortage in the 19th and early 20th centuries, planters in the Deep South did attract some Italian immigrants to work as sharecroppers, but they soon left the extreme anti-Italian discrimination and strict regimen of the rural areas for the cities or other states. The state of California has had Italian-American residents since the 1850s. By the 1970s gentrification of inner city neighborhoods and the arrival of new immigrant groups caused a sharp decline in the old Italian-American and other ethnic enclaves. Many Italian Americans moved to the rapidly growing Western states, including Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and California. Today, New York and New Jersey have the largest numbers of Italian Americans in the U.S. while smaller Northeastern cities such as Pittsburgh, Providence and Hartford have the highest percentage of Italian Americans in their metropolitan areas.


title: Italian Americans

text: New York City is home to the largest Italian-American population in the country and the second-largest Italian population outside of Italy. Several Little Italy enclaves exist in New York City, including Little Italy, Manhattan; the Lower East Side in general; Italian Harlem, Morris Park, Belmont, Bensonhurst, Howard Beach, Ozone Park, Carroll Gardens, Italian Harlem, Greenwich Village, Middle Village, Italian Williamsburg, Bay Ridge, and the South Shore of Staten Island. Historically, Little Italy on Mulberry Street in Manhattan extends as far south as Canal Street, as far north as Bleecker, as far west as Lafayette and as far east as the Bowery. The neighborhood was once known for its large population of Italians. Today it consists of Italian stores and restaurants. The Italian immigrants congregated along Mulberry Street in Manhattan's "Little Italy" to celebrate San Gennaro as the Patron Saint of Naples. The "Feast of San Gennaro" is a large street fair, lasting 11 days, that takes place every September along Mulberry Street between Houston and Canal Streets. The festival is as an annual celebration of Italian culture and the Italian-American community. Today, much of the neighborhood has been absorbed and engulfed by Chinatown, as immigrants from China moved to the area.


title: Italian Americans

text: Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of New York City's northernmost borough, The Bronx, is one of the many neighborhoods considered the Bronx's "Little Italy", with Morris Park, Pelham Bay, Throggs Neck, and other Bronx neighborhoods also serving as centers of Italian-American culture. Robert De Niro's directing debut, "A Bronx Tale", takes place within Little Italy, however, it was largely filmed in Astoria, Queens. The series "Third Watch" was initially based on Arthur Avenue, with the first episode referring to the firehouse as "Camelot", based on its location at the intersection of King Street and Arthur Avenue. The 1973 film "The Seven-Ups", starring Roy Scheider, was filmed on Arthur Avenue and Hoffman Street. In 2003, a scene from the HBO series "The Sopranos" was shot in Mario's Restaurant. Leonard, of James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces", grew up in this area. Much of the novel "Underworld" takes place near Arthur Avenue. The author, Don DeLillo, himself grew up in that neighborhood.


title: Italian Americans

text: Bensonhurst used to be heavily Italian-American, and it used to be considered the main "Little Italy" of Brooklyn. Since the late 1990s most Italians have moved to Staten Island. The Italian-speaking community remains over 20,000 strong, according to the census of 2000. However, the Italian-speaking community is becoming "increasingly elderly and isolated, with the small, tight-knit enclaves they built around the city slowly disappearing as they give way to demographic changes". Its main thoroughfare, 18th Avenue (also known as Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard) between roughly 60th Street and Shore Parkway, is lined with predominantly small, Italian family-owned businesses—many of which have remained in the same family for several generations. 86th Street is another popular local thoroughfare, lined by the arches of the elevated BMT West End Subway Line. The 18th Avenue Station was popularized in opening credits of "Welcome Back, Kotter". Rosebank in Staten Island was another one of NYC's main area of Italian immigrants since the 1880s, and their descendants have continued as its predominant ethnic group, exemplified by the location of the Garibaldi Memorial in the community. In recent years the town has experienced an influx of other ethnic groups, including Eastern Europeans, various Latin nationalities as well as Asians, particularly from the Philippines. Today the South Shore of Staten Island is the most heavily populated Italian neighborhood in the City of New York. Over 95% of the South Shore is Italian. The neighborhoods of the South Shore with large percentages of Italians are Huguenot, Annandale, Eltingville, and Tottenville. Howard Beach in the Queens is also home to a large Italian population.


title: Italian Americans

text: During the beginning of the Cold War, immigration into the United States from Italy was almost impossible. The American government did not want foreigners entering during an intense period of history, especially those immigrating to New York City. Americas were frightened that these immigrants could be terrorists, thus preventing Italians from gaining citizenship. As the Cold War continued, organization groups such as the “Italian American Organization” and the “American Committee on Italian Migration” (ACIM) started to form. They created vast efforts to provide assistance and aid to Italian immigrants coming into the United States. Throughout the Cold War, these organizations increased rapidly with many American Italian members as well as many new coming Italians. ACIM also took a leading role in directing the efforts of other Italian American and Catholic organizations that helped contribute to Italian immigration. These organizations provided new migrants with housing, clothing, access to job interviews, and education for children. Italians already living in America volunteered by making house visits to those immigrants who have just settled down in their new homes. These house visits made the intense and rigorous migration journey easier while allowing the Italian American community within New York City to grow. Immediately after the Cold War period, Italian Americans further consolidated and solidified their status as members of the American mainstream.


title: Italian Americans

text: Philadelphia's Italian-American community is the second-largest in the United States. Italian Americans compose 21% of South Philadelphia's 163,000 people, and the area has numerous Italian stores and restaurants. Philadelphia is well known for its Italian Market in South Philadelphia. The Italian Market is the popular name for the South 9th Street Curb Market, an area of Philadelphia featuring many grocery shops, cafes, restaurants, bakeries, cheese shops, and butcher shops, many with an Italian influence. The historical heart of the market is the area of 9th Street between Christian Street and Washington Avenue, and is now generally considered to extend from Fitzwater Street at the north to Wharton Street at the south. The term Italian Market is also used to describe the surrounding neighborhood between South Street to the North and Wharton Street to the South running a few blocks to the east and west of 9th Street. It is entirely contained in the Bella Vista neighborhood. The "outdoor" market features bright, colorful metal awnings that cover the sidewalks where vendors of fruit, vegetables, fish, and housewares conduct business year round. Ground floor shops in traditional Philadelphia rowhouses line the street. Owners would have originally lived above their shops, and many still do.


title: Italian Americans

text: The market has also played a role in the culture of Philadelphia, and is often included in cultural depictions of the city. For example, the Italian Market was featured in the "Rocky" films, most notably the running/training montage where a vendor tosses the boxer an orange in "Rocky". The television series "Hack" also filmed several episodes that featured the Italian Market. The Italian Market was also featured on a Season-5 episode of the television show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". Philadelphia has played a large role in Italian-American cooking, featuring numerous cheesesteak shacks such as Pat's and Geno's throughout the city and suburbs. Italian Philadelphians have strongly influenced the creation of Philadelphia's brand of cuisine with cheesesteak sandwiches, hoagies, Italian ice, Italian roast pork sandwiches, pizza, stromboli, and bakery styled tomato pies.


title: Italian Americans

text: South Philadelphia has produced many well-known Italian American popular singers and musicians, including:


title: Italian Americans

text: Tony Mottola (famous for the "Tony Mottola" or "Danger" Chord), Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Mario Lanza, Al Martino, Jim Croce, Fabian Forte, Joey DeFrancesco, Buddy DeFranco, Fred Diodati (lead singer of The Four Aces), Buddy Greco, Charlie Ventura, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Mark Valentino and Vinnie Paz, Vincent "Jimmy Saunders" LaSpada.


title: Italian Americans

text: The North End in Boston since the early 20th century became the center of the Italian community of Boston. It is still largely residential and well known for its small, authentic Italian restaurants and for the first Italian cafe, Caffe Vittoria. The influx of Italian inhabitants has left a lasting mark on the area; many seminal Italian American. Prince Pasta was begun by three Sicilian immigrants Gaetano LaMarco, Giuseppe Seminara, and Michele Cantella. Pastene was formed by Sicilian immigrant Luigi Pastene. Both companies have grown into million-dollar-a-year businesses, and continue to be successful to the present day. To fully understand the sheer size of the Italian immigrant population, one must look back at the groups that preceded them. The Irish, at their peak, numbered roughly 14,000 and the Jews numbered 17,000. The Italians, however, peaked at over 44,000.


title: Italian Americans

text: In its heyday, Seventh Avenue in Newark was one of the largest Little Italy neighborhoods in the U.S., with a population of 30,000, in an area of less than a square mile. The center of life in the neighborhood was St. Lucy's Church, founded by Italian immigrants in 1891. Throughout the year, St. Lucy's and other churches sponsored processions in honor of saints that became community events. The most famous procession was the Feast of St. Gerard, but there were also great feasts for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Our Lady of Snow, the Assumption, and St. Rocco. Joe DiMaggio loved the restaurants of Seventh Avenue so much that he would take the New York Yankees to Newark to show them "real Italian food". Frank Sinatra had bread from Giordano's Bakery sent to him every week until his death, no matter where in the world he was. New York Yankees catcher Rick Cerone also grew up in the First Ward. One of the nation's largest Italian newspapers, "The Italian Tribune", was founded on Seventh Avenue. Seventh Avenue produced stars such as Joe Pesci and Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons. Congressman Peter Rodino, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee during its impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon was a native of the First Ward as well. Seventh Avenue was notoriously devastated by urban renewal efforts during the 1950s. Eighth Avenue was obliterated by the city council, scattering the Italian American residents. Most of its businesses never recovered. The construction of Interstate 280 also served to cut the neighborhood off from the rest of the city. After the devastating urban renewal, some of the First Ward's Italians stayed in the neighborhood, while others migrated to other Newark neighborhoods like Broadway, Roseville and the Ironbound.


title: Italian Americans

text: The neighborhood around Chicago's Taylor Street has been called the port of call for Chicago's Italian-American immigrants. Taylor Street's Little Italy was home to Hull House, an early settlement house, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr in 1889. Chicago's Italian American experience begins with the mass migration from the shores of southern Italy, the Hull House experiment, the Great Depression, World War II, and the machinations behind the physical demise of a neighborhood by the University of Illinois in 1963.


title: Italian Americans

text: Italian Americans dominated the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood, 1890s–1930s. One of the first newspaper articles about Hull House ("Chicago Tribune", May 19, 1890) is an invitation, written in Italian, to the residents of the Hull House neighborhood signed, "Le Signorine, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr".


title: Italian Americans

text: The 1924 historic picture, "Meet the "Hull House Kids"", was taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr., one of the Hull House directors. It served as a poster for Jane Addams and the Hull House Settlement House. All twenty kids were first generation Italian Americans...all with vowels at the end of their names. "They grew up to be lawyers and mechanics, sewer workers and dump truck drivers, a candy shop owner, a boxer and a mob boss."


title: Italian Americans

text: As suburbs grew in the post-World War II era, Chicago's Italian American population spread from the central city. Chicago's northwest side and the neighboring village of Elmwood Park has the highest concentration of Italian Americans in the state. Harlem Avenue, "La Corsa Italia", is lined with Italian stores, bakeries, clubs and organizations. The Feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel, in nearby Melrose Park, has been a regular event in the area for more than one hundred years. The near-west suburbs of Melrose Park, Schiller Park, Franklin Park, River Grove, Norridge, Chicago Heights, and Harwood Heights are also home to many Italian Americans. West suburban Stone Park is home of Casa Italia, an Italian American cultural center.


title: Italian Americans

text: The far-northwestern suburb of Rockford has a large population of Italian Americans. Other historical Italian American communities in Illinois include Peoria, Ottawa, Herrin, Quad Cities and the Metro East suburbs of Saint Louis, Missouri.


title: Italian Americans

text: Italians first came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the late 19th century. Then in the 19th and 20th centuries large numbers of Italian immigrants began to come in mainly from Sicily and southern Italy. Brady Street, the historic Third Ward and the east side of Milwaukee is considered the heart of Italian immigration to the city, where as many as 20 Italian grocery stores once existed on Brady Street alone. Every year the largest Italian American festival in the United States, Festa Italiana, takes place in Milwaukee. Italian Americans number at around 16,992 in the city, but in Milwaukee County they number at 38,286. There is also an Italian newspaper called "The Italian Times" printed by the Italian Community Center (ICC).


title: Italian Americans

text: Los Angeles is home to the largest Italian-American community in California (and on the West Coast), with 95,300 people identifying as Italian-American. San Pedro is Los Angeles's Little Italy, which is estimated to contain some 45,000 Italian-Americans. Most worked as fisherman during the first half of the 20th century. The traditional center of Los Angeles' Italian American community, was the area north of the historic Los Angeles Plaza. It survived somewhat intact until the construction of Los Angeles Union Station, in 1939. The station was built in the center of Los Angeles' Old Chinatown, displacing half of the total Chinese community. The Chinese were allowed to relocate to Little Italy, where they quickly outnumbered the Italian community. Only a few relic-businesses survive, such as San Antonio Winery (the only winery, out of 92, to survive prohibition). The Italian American Museum of Los Angeles opened in 2016 in the historic Italian Hall. Lincoln Heights, northeast of Little Italy, also was a center of the Italian-American population in Los Angeles.


title: Italian Americans

text: According to the 1940 census, 18.5% of all European immigrants were Italian, the largest in the city. North Beach is San Francisco's Little Italy, and has historically been home to a large Italian American population. The American Planning Association (APA) has named North Beach as one of ten 'Great Neighborhoods in America'.


title: Italian Americans

text: The first ethnic Italian in Detroit was Alphonse Tonty (Italian name: Alfonso Tonti), a Frenchman with an Italian immigrant father. He was the second-in-command of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who established Detroit in 1701. Tonti's child, born in 1703, was the first ethnic European child born in Detroit. Tonti became the commander of the Detroit fort after Cadillac left to return to France.


title: Italian Americans

text: In order to preserve the fur trade, the French administrators and the British administrators discouraged immigration, so the Italian population had slow growth. Growth in immigration increased after Detroit became a part of the United States and the Erie Canal had been constructed. Armando Delicato, author of "Italians in Detroit", wrote that Italian immigration to Detroit "lagged behind other cities in the East".


title: Italian Americans

text: In 1904 the City of Detroit had 900 Italians. In Metro Detroit there were several thousand ethnic Italians by 1900. The concentrations of the population lived in Eastern Market and east of the area presently known as Greektown. Of those Italians in 1900 most originated from Genoa, Lombardy, and Sicily. Some Italians stayed in Detroit temporarily before traveling onwards to mines in northern Michigan.


title: Italian Americans

text: The increase in the automobile industry resulted in the increase of the Italian population in the 20th century. By 1925 the number of Italians in the City of Detroit increased to 42,000. The historical center of Detroit's Italian-American community was in an area along Gratiot Avenue, east of Downtown Detroit. During that period, Italian immigrants and their children lived throughout the City of Detroit, and several neighborhoods had concentrations of Italian immigrants. There were larger numbers of southern Italians than those from the north. Armando Delicato, author of "Italians in Detroit", wrote that "Unlike many other American cities, no region of Italy was totally dominant in this area". Steve Babson, author of "Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town", wrote that "Many northern Italians, coming from an urban and industrialized society, had little in common with local Sicilians, who came from the rural and clannish south." In Detroit's history, within the crafts Italians concentrated on tileworking.


title: Italian Americans

text: During World War II, Fort Wayne (Detroit) served as home to Italian prisoners of war (POWs) captured during the North African Campaign. After Italy's surrender in September 1943, the POWs were given the opportunity to work as servants, cooks, and janitors. At the end of the war many chose to remain and settle in Detroit.


title: Italian Americans

text: The National Italian American Foundation estimated that in 1990, Metro Detroit had 280,000 ethnic Italians. As of 2005 the closest remaining large Little Italy near Detroit was Via Italia in Windsor, Ontario and there was a group of remaining Italian shops and restaurants along Garfield Road in Clinton Township. In 2005 Delicato wrote that "Unlike some other national groups, like the Poles, who still look to Hamtramck, or the Mexicans, who have Mexicantown, Italian Detroiters no longer have a geographical center".


title: Italian Americans

text: Cleveland's Little Italy, also known as Murray Hill, is the epicenter of Italian culture in Northeast Ohio, a combined statistical area reporting 285,000 (9.9%) Italian Americans. Little Italy took root when Joseph Carabelli, immigrating in 1880, saw the opportunity for monument work in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery and established what soon became the city's leading marble and granite works. Most fresco and mosaic work in Cleveland was accomplished by Italian artist immigrants. Local Cleveland industrial billionaire John D. Rockefeller took a special liking to the Italian immigrants of the neighborhood and commissioned the building of the community center Alta House, named after his daughter Alta Rockefeller Prentice, in 1900. In 1906, Italian immigrant Angelo Vitantonio invented the first hand-crank pasta machine, which made pasta much easier to produce by eliminating the need to flatten and cut it by hand. Some other famous Italian Americans from Northeast Ohio included Anthony J. Celebrezze (49th Mayor of Cleveland), Ettore "Hector" Boiardi (Chef Boyardee), Frank Battisti (Federal Judge), and Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio.


title: Italian Americans

text: Ohio's largest outdoor Italian-American street festival, the Feast of the Assumption ("Festa dell'assunzione"), takes place the weekend of August 15 every year and draws over 100,000 people to the Little Italy neighborhood. The festival is sponsored by the congregation of Holy Rosary Church, which was founded in 1892 with the current church built in 1905.


title: Italian Americans

text: Italian immigrants from the northern Italian region of Lombardy came to St. Louis in the late 19th century and settled in the region called The Hill. As the city grew, immigrants from Southern Italy settled in a different neighborhood north of Downtown St Louis. Professional baseball players Joe Garagiola and his boyhood friend, Yogi Berra, grew up on The Hill. Americans of Italian descent in St. Louis have contributed to local cuisine, i.e. Imo's Pizza and toasted ravioli. As of 2021 there are approximately 2,000 native born Italians living in St. Louis, few of whom live in The Hill neighborhood. Italians today live mostly throughout the St. Louis metropolitan region. The Italian Community of St. Louis (Comunita' Italiana di St. Louis), an organization which promotes the Italian language and culture, has several popular events which include Carnevale which occurs every February and Ferragosto which occurs each August. The St. Louis Italian Language Program also exists on the Hill at Gateway Science Academy on Fyler Avenue.


title: Italian Americans

text: Attracted by employment in its growing railroad and meat packing industries, Italians primarily from Calabria and Sicily immigrated to Kansas City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kansas City's Calabrese mainly passed through the port of New York, sometimes stopping in industrial cities like Pittsburgh along the way, en route to their final destination in the Midwest. Meanwhile, Kansas City's Sicilian community generally came through the port of New Orleans, staying there for a decade or more before bringing their families north. In Kansas City, these communities settled close to one another, often overlapping: the Sicilians taking root in what is now known as the River Market and Columbus Park neighborhoods, and the Calabrese mainly settling in the adjacent "Old Northeast" area.


title: Italian Americans

text: Economics in Louisiana and Sicily combined to bring about what became known as the Great Migration of thousands of Sicilians. The end of the Civil War allowed the freed men the choice to stay or to go, many chose to leave for higher paying jobs, which in turn led to a perceived scarcity of labor resources for the planters. Northern Italy enjoyed the fruits of modern industrialization, while southern Italy and Sicily suffered destitute conditions under the system of absentee landowners. The peasant was still essentially the serf in the system. Emigration not only offered peasants a chance to move beyond subsistence living, it also offered them a chance to pursue their own dreams of proprietorship as farmers or other business owners. On March 17, 1866, the Louisiana Bureau of Immigration was formed and planters began to look to Sicily as a possible solution to their labor needs. Steamship companies advertisements were very effective in recruiting potential workers. Three steamships per month were running between New Orleans and Sicily by September 1881 at a cost of only forty dollars per person.


title: Italian Americans

text: In 1890 the ethnic Irish chief of police, David Hennessy was assassinated. Suspicion fell on Italians, whose growing numbers in the city made other whites nervous. The March 14, 1891 New Orleans lynchings were the largest ever mass lynchings in Louisiana history. The use of the term "mafia" by local media in relation to the murder is the first-known usage of the word in print.


title: Italian Americans

text: Italian immigrants first came to the area around Syracuse, New York (a city named for Siracusa, Sicily) in 1883 after providing labor for the construction of the West Shore Railroad. At first, they were quite transient and came and went, but eventually settled down on the Northside. By 1899, the Italian immigrants were living on the Northside of the city in the area centered around Pearl Street. The Italians all but supplanted the Germans in that area of the city and had their own business district along North State and North Salina Streets. By September 2009, Syracuse's Little Italy district received millions of dollars of public and private investment for new sidewalks, streetscapes, landscaping, lighting and to set up a "Green Train" program, which trains men to work in green construction and renovation industries. In recent years, the neighborhood is a mix of Italian shops, restaurants and businesses that cater to the area's South Asian and African population. Although the neighborhood is far less Italian than in past years, banners throughout the district still read "Little Italy". By 2010, demographics showed that 14.1% of the population in Syracuse was Italian descent.


title: Italian Americans

text: Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, is best known for its Italian American community and abundance of restaurants. The first two decades of the 20th century witnessed heavy Italian American immigration into Federal Hill, making it the city's informal Little Italy. Though the area today is more diverse, Federal Hill still retains its status as the traditional center for the city's Italian American community. The neighborhood features a huge square dedicated to Giuseppe Garibaldi, a monumental gateway arch decorated with La Pigna sculpture (a traditional Italian symbol of welcome, abundance, and quality) and a DePasquale Plaza used for outdoor dining. Providence's annual Columbus Day parade marches down Atwells Avenue.


title: Italian Americans

text: The community of Ybor City in Tampa, Florida is a cigar-centric company town founded in 1885 and originally populated by a unique mix of Spanish, Cuban, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, with most of the Italians coming from a small group of villages in southwestern Sicily. At first, Italians found it difficult to find employment in the insular and guild-like cigar industry, which had moved to Tampa from Cuba and Key West and was dominated by Hispanic workers. Many founded businesses to serve cigar workers, most notably small grocery stores in the neighborhood's commercial district supplied by Italian-owned vegetable and dairy farms located on open land east of Tampa's city limits. The immigrant cultures in town became better integrated as time went by; eventually, approximately 20% of the workers in the cigar industry were Italian Americans. The tradition of local Italian-owned groceries continued, however, and a handful of such businesses founded in the late 1800s were still operating into the 21st century. Many descendants of Sicilian immigrants eventually became prominent local citizens, such as mayors Nick Nuccio and Dick Greco.


title: Italian Americans

text: Birmingham, Alabama, was representative of smaller industrial centers. Most Italians in the early 20th century came to work in the burgeoning iron and coal industries. Dorothy L. Crim founded the Ensley Community House in the Italian district in 1912 at the behest of the Birmingham City Mission Board. From 1912 to 1969, Ensley House eased the often difficult transition to American life by providing direct assistance such as youth programs and day care services, social clubs, and 'Americanization' programs.


title: Italian Americans

text: Historically, Little Italy in San Diego was the home to Italian fishermen and their families. Many Italians moved to San Diego from San Francisco after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in search of tuna and other deep-sea sport and commercial fish. When Interstate 5 was constructed through Little Italy in the early 1970s, 35% of the neighborhood was destroyed and during the same time the California tuna industry was declining, which caused the neighborhood to suffer nearly 30 years of decline. With the creation of the Little Italy Association in 1996, the neighborhood has gone through gentrification and has seen a renaissance as Community Benefit District specializing in Italian food, boutique shopping and maintenance that makes this shopping district the place to live in Downtown San Diego. Prior to gentrification, the neighborhood was mainly composed of low-density commercial businesses and single-family detached homes. Currently, the neighborhood is mainly composed of residential units, mostly mid-rises, high-rises, and lofts, with ground floor retail stores and a few commercial buildings.


title: Italian Americans

text: Tens of thousands of Italians came to West Virginia during the late 1800s and early 1900s to work in the coal camps. As pick-and-shovel miners, Italians hold most of the state's coal production records. One Carmine Pellegrino mined 66 tons of coal by hand in a 24-hour period. Italian miners created the pepperoni roll, a popular snack throughout the region. Many of these immigrants left for larger cities once they earned enough money, but some of their descendants remain, particularly in the north central counties. The communities of Clarksburg, Wheeling, and Bluefield each hold their own annual Italian Heritage Festival. Fairmont puts on a street festival every December that pays homage to the Feast of the Seven Fishes, an Italian tradition of eating seafood dishes on Christmas Eve instead of meat. The senior U.S. senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, is of Italian descent.


title: Italian Americans

text: There was a historical trend of immigration of Italians into the U.S. state of Arkansas in the 19th and 20th centuries.


title: Italian Americans

text: Austin Corbin, the owner of the Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County, within the Arkansas Delta region, decided to employ Italians there during the post-Reconstruction period. The Mayor of Rome, Don Emanuele Ruspoli, connected to Corbin, found potential employees who originated in Emilia-Romagna, Marche, and Veneto, convincing them to go to Sunnyside. 98 families boarded the "Chateau Yquem" in Genoa with New Orleans as the destination. In November 1895 the ship docked in the United States, and the surviving passengers traveled onward to Sunnyside. The climate and drinking water conditions were difficult. A descendant of these Italians, Libby Borgognoni, stated that 125 of them died during the first year of operations. Corbin had misrepresented the nature of the plantation to the potential employees. Italians came to Sunnyside even after Corbin's death in 1896.


title: Italian Americans

text: Italians began to settle in Baltimore during the late 1800s. Some Italian immigrants came to the Port of Baltimore by boat. The earliest Italian settlers in Baltimore were sailors from Genoa, the capital city of the Italian region of Liguria, who arrived during the 1840s and 1850s. Later immigrants came from Naples, Abruzzo, Cefalù, and Palermo. These immigrants created the monument to Christopher Columbus in Druid Hill Park. Many other Italians came by train after entering the country through New York City's Ellis Island. Italian immigrants who arrived by train would enter the city through the President Street Station. Because of this, Italians largely settled in a nearby neighborhood that is now known as Little Italy.


title: Italian Americans

text: Little Italy comprises 6 blocks bounded by Pratt Street to the North, the Inner Harbor to the South, Eden Street to the East, and President Street to the West. Other neighborhoods where large numbers of Italians settled include Lexington, Belair-Edison, and Cross Street. Many settled along Lombard Street, which was named after the Italian town of Guardia Lombardi. The Italian community, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, established a number of Italian-American parishes such as St. Leo's Church and Our Lady of Pompeii Church. The Our Lady of Pompeii Church holds the annual Highlandtown Wine Festival, which celebrates Italian-American culture and benefits the Highlandtown community association.


title: Italian Americans

text: The August 2016 Central Italy earthquake affected Baltimore's Italian community, as many Baltimore Italian-Americans have friends or relatives living in Italy. Most Italians in Baltimore are of Southern or Central Italian descent, especially from Abruzzo, a region of Southern Italy close to the epicenter of the earthquake. St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Little Italy held a vigil and sent prayers to the victims and survivors of the earthquake.


title: Italian Americans

text: Italians have settled in the state of Mississippi since colonial times, although numbers have increased over the years. Since the 18th and mainly the 19th century, Italian settlers have been located in cities and towns across Mississippi. In 1554, Mississippi began to have a real Italian presence, because of the Hernando de Soto expedition. The first Italians who visited Mississippi came in explorations conducted by the French and Spanish governments.


title: Italian Americans

text: In the 19th century, many Italians entered the United States in New Orleans and traveled onwards to Mississippi. Over 100 immigrants lived in Mississippi as the American Civil War started. In the late 19th century, Italian immigration increased in the United States, which made a tremendous impact on the area. Some of them went to work in the so-called "Mississippi Delta" in the cotton plantations, and even helped the development of the blues music with their mandolins.The late 19th century saw the arrival of larger numbers of Italian immigrants who left Italy seeking economic opportunities. Some Italians from Sicily settled as families along the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Biloxi, Ocean Springs, and Gulfport, preserving close ties with those in their homeland. They worked in the fishing and canning industries. Others were merchants, operating grocery stores, liquor stores, and tobacco shops. Biloxi's prosperous tourist industry in the early 20th century created opportunities for ambitious young (Italian) men ... Italians also settled in the Mississippi Delta. The first immigrants came there in the 1880s, working to repair levees and staying as hired farm laborers on plantations. Some of these families became peddlers selling goods to farmers. In 1895, the first Italians came to the Sunnyside Plantation, across the Mississippi River in the Arkansas Delta. That plantation would become the stopping off place for many Italian settlers along both sides of the river. They were mostly from central Italy and experienced in farm work.


title: Italian Americans

text: Large numbers of Italians first came to Colorado in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some settled in industrial Pueblo or in Welby, which was then a farming community, but the largest Italian community in twentieth century Colorado was in Northwest Denver, or as it was known at the time, "the North Side" or "North Denver."


title: Italian Americans

text: Italians first put down roots there because St. Patrick's Catholic Church, a largely Irish-descended congregation, already existed in the neighborhood. In 1894, the Italian community on the North Side formed its own Catholic church called Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. The community remained strong through the early twentieth century, but in the decades after World War II, many Italian-Americans left Denver proper. Today, descendants of the old North Side Italian-American community are spread across metro Denver, particularly in its inner northwestern suburbs like Wheat Ridge, Westminster and Arvada. The Sons of Italy's Denver-area lodge is on 32nd Avenue in Wheat Ridge. Many Italian-Americans without deep roots in Colorado have also settled in the Denver area and other parts of the state throughout the last decades of the twentieth century and in the new millennium.


title: Italian Americans

text: Reminders of the old Italian community in Northwest Denver are few and far between today. Many of the remaining landmarks are on 38th Avenue. One is Gaetano's, a storied Italian-American eatery on 38th Avenue and Tejon Street once owned by the Smaldone family, which was involved in bootlegging in Denver. Many members of the Italian-American community in Northwest Denver could trace their roots to Potenza, a comune in Basilicata. A fraternal organization called the Potenza Lodge was founded in 1899 and still exists today on the corner of Shoshone Street and 38th Avenue. Leprino Foods, a company founded by a Denver Italian-American which makes mozzarella cheese and other dairy products, has its global headquarters on 38th Avenue across Shoshone Street from the Potenza Lodge.


title: Italian Americans

text: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is still important to some Italian-American families with roots in Northwest Denver, but there are Catholic churches with sizable Italian-American populations spread throughout the Denver area today.


title: Italian Americans

text: In the 2000 U.S. Census, Italian Americans constituted the fifth largest ancestry group in America with about 15.6 million people, 5.6% of the total U.S. population. Sicilian Americans are the largest subset of numerous Americans of regional Italian ancestries, with 83% of Italian American being from Sicily. As of 2006, the U.S. Census estimated the Italian-American population at 17.8 million persons, or 6% of the population, constituting a 14% increase over the six-year period.


title: Italian Americans

text: In 2010, the American Community Survey enumerated Americans reporting Italian ancestry at nearly 17.6 million, 5.8% of the U.S. population; in 2015, 17.3 million, 5.5% of the population. A decade thereafter, in 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau recorded slightly more than 16.5 million Americans reporting full or partial Italian ancestry, about 5.1% of the U.S. population. As ancestry is self-reported, the decline in Italian identification in the 21st century may merely reflect growing Americanization and cultural assimilation of Italian Americans into the broader identity of White Americans, with younger generations increasingly intermixed with other European Americans: the number of Americans who reported being solely of Italian ancestry alone fell by 928,044—from 7,183,882 in 2010 to 6,652,806 in 2015 to 5,724,762 in 2020. However, by contrast, the number of Americans who reported being of Italian ancestry mixed with another ancestry grew by 436,334—from 10,387,926 in 2010 to 10,632,691 in 2015 to 10,824,260 in 2020.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ( or ; ; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of 31 years, from 28 November 1876 to 6 December 1876, 17 February 1877 to 1 December 1880 and from 1 December 1884 to 25 May 1911. The entire period from 1876 to 1911 is often referred to as Porfiriato and has been characterized as a "de facto" dictatorship.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: A veteran of the War of the Reform (1858–1860) and the French intervention in Mexico (1862–1867), Díaz rose to the rank of general, leading republican troops against the French-backed rule of Maximilian I. He subsequently revolted against presidents Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada on the principle of no re-election. Díaz succeeded in seizing power, ousting Lerdo in a coup in 1876, with the help of his political supporters, and was elected in 1877. In 1880, he stepped down and his political ally Manuel González was elected president, serving from 1880 to 1884. In 1884 Díaz abandoned the idea of no re-election and held office continuously until 1911.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: A controversial figure in Mexican history, Díaz's regime ended political instability and achieved growth after decades of economic stagnation. He and his allies comprised a group of technocrats known as "científicos" ("scientists"), whose economic policies benefited a circle of allies and foreign investors, helping "hacendados" consolidate large estates, often through violent means and legal abuse. These policies grew increasingly unpopular, resulting in civil repression and regional conflicts, as well as strikes and uprisings from labor and the peasantry, groups that did not share in Mexico's growth.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Despite public statements in 1908 favoring a return to democracy and not running again for office, Díaz reversed himself and ran in the 1910 election. Díaz, then 80 years old, failed to institutionalize presidential succession, triggering a political crisis between the "científicos" and the followers of General Bernardo Reyes, allied with the military and peripheral regions of Mexico. After Díaz declared himself the winner for an eighth term, his electoral opponent, wealthy estate owner Francisco I. Madero, issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí calling for armed rebellion against Díaz, leading to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. In May 1911, after the Federal Army suffered a number of defeats against the forces supporting Madero, Díaz resigned in the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Porfirio Díaz was the sixth of seven children, baptized on 15 September 1830, in Oaxaca, Mexico, but his actual date of birth is unknown. 15 September is an important date in Mexican history, the eve of the day when hero of independence Miguel Hidalgo issued his call for independence in 1810; when Díaz became president, the independence anniversary was commemorated on 15 September rather than on the 16th, a practice that continues to the present era. Díaz's father, José Díaz, was a Criollo (a Mexican of predominantly Spanish ancestry). Díaz's mother, Petrona Mori (or Mory), was a mestizo woman, daughter of a man of Spanish background and an indigenous woman named Tecla Cortés. There is confusion about Jose Díaz's full name, which is listed on the baptismal certificate as José de la Cruz Díaz; he was also known as José Faustino Díaz, and was a modest innkeeper who died of cholera when his son was three.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Despite the family's difficult economic circumstances following Díaz's father's death in 1833, Díaz was sent to school at the age of 6. In the early independence period, the choice of professions was narrow: lawyer, priest, physician, military. The Díaz family was devoutly religious, and Díaz began training for the priesthood at the age of fifteen when his mother, María Petrona Mori Cortés, sent him to the Colegio Seminario Conciliar de Oaxaca. He was offered a post as a priest in 1846, but national events intervened. Díaz joined with seminary students who volunteered as soldiers to repel the U.S. invasion during the Mexican–American War, and, despite not seeing action, decided his future was in the military, not the priesthood. Also in 1846, Díaz came into contact with a leading Oaxaca liberal, Marcos Pérez, who taught at the secular Institute of Arts and Sciences in Oaxaca. That same year, Díaz met Benito Juárez, who became governor of Oaxaca in 1847, a former student there. In 1849, over the objections of his family, Díaz abandoned his ecclesiastical career and entered the Instituto de Ciencias and studied law. When Antonio López de Santa Anna was returned to power by a coup d'état in 1853, he suspended the 1824 constitution and began persecuting liberals. At this point, Díaz had already aligned himself with radical liberals ("rojos"), such as Benito Juárez. Juárez was forced into exile in New Orleans; Díaz supported the liberal Plan de Ayutla that called for the ouster of Santa Anna. Díaz evaded an arrest warrant and fled to the mountains of northern Oaxaca, where he joined the rebellion of Juan Álvarez. In 1855, Díaz joined a band of liberal guerrillas who were fighting Santa Anna's government. After the ousting and exile of Santa Anna, Díaz was rewarded with a post in Ixtlán, Oaxaca, that gave him valuable practical experience as an administrator.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz's military career is most notable for his service in the struggle against the French. By the time of the Battle of Puebla (5 May 1862), Mexico's great victory over the French when they first invaded, Díaz had advanced to the rank of general and was placed in command of an infantry brigade.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: During the Battle of Puebla, his brigade was positioned centered between the forts of Loreto and Guadalupe. From there, he successfully helped repel a French infantry attack meant as a diversion, to distract the Mexican commanders' attention from the forts that were the French army's main targets. In violation of General Ignacio Zaragoza's orders, after helping fight off the larger French force, Díaz and his unit pursued them; later, Zaragoza commended his actions during the battle as "brave and notable".


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In 1863, Díaz was captured by the French Army. He escaped, and President Benito Juárez offered him the positions of secretary of defense or army commander in chief. He declined both, but took an appointment as commander of the Central Army. That same year, he was promoted to the position of Division General.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In 1864, the conservatives supporting Emperor Maximilian asked him to join the Imperial cause. Díaz declined the offer. In 1865, he was captured by the Imperial forces in Oaxaca. He escaped and fought the battles of Tehuitzingo, Piaxtla, Tulcingo and Comitlipa.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In 1866, Díaz formally declared loyalty. That same year, he earned victories in Nochixtlán, Miahuatlán, and La Carbonera, and once again captured Oaxaca destroying most French gains in the south of the country. He was then promoted to general. Also in 1866, Marshal Bazaine, commander of the Imperial forces, offered to surrender Mexico City to Díaz if he withdrew support of Juárez. Díaz declined the offer. In 1867, Emperor Maximilian offered Díaz the command of the army and the imperial rendition to the liberal cause. Díaz refused both. Finally, on 2 April 1867, he went on to win the final battle for Puebla. By the end of the war, he was hailed as a national hero.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: When Juárez returned to the presidency and began to restore peace, Díaz resigned his military command and went home to Oaxaca. However, it was not long before Díaz was openly opposed to the Juárez administration, since Juárez held onto the presidency. As a Liberal military hero, Díaz had ambitions for national political power. He challenged the civilian Juárez, who was running for what Díaz considered an illegal subsequent term as president. In 1870, Díaz ran against President Juárez and Vice President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. The following year, Díaz made claims of fraud in the July elections won by Juárez, who was confirmed as president by the Congress in October. In response, Díaz launched the "Plan de la Noria" on 8 November 1871, supported by a number of rebellions across the nation, including one by General Manuel González of Tamaulipas, but this rebellion failed. In March 1872, Díaz's forces were defeated in the battle of La Bufa in Zacatecas.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Following the death of Juárez of natural causes on 9 July 1872, Lerdo became president. With Juárez's death, Díaz's principle of no re-election could not be used to oppose Lerdo, a civilian like Juárez. Lerdo offered amnesty to the rebels, which Díaz accepted and "retired" to the Hacienda de la Candelaria in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, rather than his home state of Oaxaca. In 1874, Díaz was elected to Congress from Veracruz. Opposition to Lerdo grew, particularly as his militant anti-clericalism increased, labor unrest grew, and a major rebellion of the Yaqui in northwest Mexico under the leadership of Cajemé challenged central government rule there. Díaz saw an opportunity to plot a more successful rebellion, leaving Mexico in 1875 for New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas, with his political ally, fellow general Manuel González. Although Lerdo offered Díaz an ambassadorship in Europe, a way to remove him from the Mexican political scene, Díaz refused. With Lerdo running for a term of his own, Díaz could again invoke the principle of no re-election as a reason to revolt.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz launched his rebellion in Ojitlan, Oaxaca, on 10 January 1876 under the Plan of Tuxtepec, which initially failed. Díaz fled to the United States. Lerdo was re-elected in July 1876 and his constitutional government was recognized by the United States. Díaz returned to Mexico and fought the Battle of Tecoac, where he defeated Lerdo's forces in what turned out to be the last battle (on 16 November). In November 1876, Díaz occupied Mexico City, and Lerdo left Mexico for exile in New York. Díaz did not take formal control of the presidency until the beginning of 1877, putting in General Juan N. Méndez as provisional president, followed by new presidential elections in 1877 that gave Díaz the presidency. Ironically, one of his government's first amendments to the liberal 1857 constitution was to prevent re-election.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Although the new election gave some air of legitimacy to Díaz's government, the United States did not recognize the regime. It was not clear that Díaz would continue to prevail against supporters of ousted President Lerdo, who continued to challenge Díaz's regime by insurrections, which ultimately failed. In addition, cross-border Apache attacks with raids on one side and sanctuary on the other was a sticking point. Mexico needed to meet several conditions before the U.S. would consider recognizing Díaz's government, including payment of a debt to the U.S. and restraining the cross-border Apache raids. The U.S. emissary to Mexico, John W. Foster, had the duty to protect the interests of the U.S. first and foremost. Lerdo's government had entered into negotiations with the U.S. over claims that each had against the other in previous conflicts. A joint U.S.-Mexico Claims Commission was established in 1868, in the wake of the fall of the French Empire. When Díaz seized power from Lerdo's government, he inherited Lerdo's negotiated settlement with the U.S. As Mexican historian Daniel Cosío Villegas put it, "He Who Wins Pays." Díaz secured recognition by paying $300,000 to settle claims by the U.S. In 1878, the U.S. government recognized the Díaz regime and former U.S. president and Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant visited Mexico.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: During his first term in office, Díaz developed a pragmatic and personalist approach to solve political conflicts. Although a political liberal who had stood with radical liberals in Oaxaca ("rojos"), he was not a liberal ideologue, preferring pragmatic approaches towards political issues. He was explicit about his pragmatism. He maintained control through generous patronage to political allies. In his first term, members of his political alliance were discontented that they had not sufficiently benefited from political and financial rewards. In general he sought conciliation, but force could be an option. "'Five fingers or five bullets,' as he was fond of saying." Although he was an authoritarian ruler, he maintained the structure of elections, so that there was the façade of liberal democracy. His administration became famous for suppression of civil society and public revolts. One of the catch phrases of his later terms in office was the choice between "pan o palo", ("bread or the bludgeon")—that is, "benevolence or repression". Díaz saw his task in his term as president to create internal order so that economic development could be possible. As a military hero and astute politician, Díaz's eventual successful establishment of that peace ("Paz Porfiriana") became "one of [Díaz's] principal achievements, and it became the main justification for successive re-elections after 1884."


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz and his advisers' pragmatism in relation to the United States became the policy of "defensive modernization", which attempted to make the best of Mexico's weak position against its northern neighbor. Attributed to Díaz was the phrase "so far from God, so close to the United States." Díaz's advisers Matías Romero, Juárez's emissary to the U.S., and , a minister in Juárez's government, advised a policy of "peaceful invasion" of U.S. capital to Mexico, with the expectation that it would then be "naturalized" in Mexico. In their view, such an arrangement would "provide 'all possible advantages of annexation without ...its inconveniences'." Díaz was won over to that viewpoint, which promoted Mexican economic development and gave the U.S. an outlet for its capital and allowed for its influence in Mexico. By 1880, Mexico was forging a new relationship with the U.S. as Díaz's term of office was ending.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz stepped down from the presidency, with his ally, General Manuel González, one of the trustworthy members of his political network ("camarilla"), elected president in a fully constitutional manner. This four-year period, often characterized as the "González Interregnum", is sometimes seen as Díaz placing a puppet in the presidency, but González ruled in his own right and was viewed as a legitimate president free of the taint of coming to power by coup. During this period, Díaz briefly served as governor of his home state of Oaxaca. He also devoted time to his personal life, highlighted by his marriage to Carmen Romero Rubio, the devout 17-year-old daughter of Manuel Romero Rubio, a supporter of Lerdo. The couple honeymooned in the U.S., going to the New Orleans World's Fair, St. Louis, Washington, D.C. and New York. Accompanying them on their travels was Matías Romero and his U.S.-born wife. This working honeymoon allowed Díaz to forge personal connections with politicians and powerful businessmen with Romero's friends, including former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. Romero then publicized the growing amity between the two countries and the safety of Mexico for U.S. investors.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: President González was making room in his government for political networks not originally part of Díaz's coalition, some of whom had been loyalists to Lerdo, including , whose grandson Francisco would challenge Díaz for the presidency in 1910. Important legislation changing rights to land and subsoil rights, and to encourage immigration and colonization by U.S. nationals was passed during the González presidency. The administration also extended lucrative railway concessions to U.S. investors. Despite those developments, the González administration met financial and political difficulties, with the later period bringing the government to bankruptcy and popular opposition. Díaz's father-in-law Manuel Romero Rubio linked these issues to personal corruption by González. Despite Díaz's previous protestations of "no re-election", he ran for a second term in the 1884 elections.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: During this period the Mexican underground political newspapers spread the new ironic slogan for the Porfirian times, based on the slogan ""Sufragio Efectivo, No Reelección"" (Effective suffrage, no re-election) and changed it to its opposite, ""Sufragio Efectivo No, Reelección"" (Effective suffrage – No. Re-election!). Díaz had the constitution amended, first to allow two terms in office, and then to remove all restrictions on re-election. With these changes in place, Díaz was re-elected four more times by implausibly high margins, and on some occasions claimed to have won with either unanimous or near-unanimous support.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Over the next twenty-six years as president, Díaz created a systematic and methodical regime with a staunch military mindset. His first goal was to establish peace throughout Mexico. According to John A. Crow, Díaz "set out to establish a good strong "paz porfiriana", or Porfirian peace, of such scope and firmness that it would redeem the country in the eyes of the world for its sixty-five years of revolution and anarchy" since independence. His second goal was outlined in his motto – "little of politics and plenty of administration", meaning the replacement of open political conflict by a well-functioning government apparatus.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: To secure his power, Díaz engaged in various forms of co-optation and coercion. He constantly balanced between the private desires of different interest groups and playing off one interest against another. Following the González presidency, Díaz abandoned favoring his own political group ("camarilla") that brought him to power in 1876 in the Plan of Tuxtepec and selected ministers and other high officials from other factions. Those included those loyal to Juárez (Matías Romero) and Lerdo (Manuel Romero Rubio). Manuel Dublán was one of the few loyalists from the Plan of Tuxtepec that Díaz retained as a cabinet minister. As money flowed to the Mexican treasury from foreign investments, Díaz could buy off his loyalists from Tuxtepec. An important group supporting the regime were foreign investors, especially from the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as Germany and France. Díaz himself met with investors, binding him with this group in a personal rather than institutional fashion. The close cooperation between these foreign elements and the Díaz regime was a key nationalist issue in the Mexican Revolution.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In order to satisfy any competing domestic forces, such as mestizos and indigenous leaders, Díaz gave them political positions or made them intermediators for foreign interests. He acted similarly with rural elites by not interfering with their wealth and haciendas. The urban middle classes in Mexico City were often in opposition to the government, but with the country's economic prosperity and the expansion of the government, they had job opportunities in federal employment.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Covering both pro- and anti-clerical elements, Díaz was both the head of the Freemasons in Mexico and an important advisor to the Catholic bishops. Díaz proved to be a different kind of liberal than those of the past. He neither assaulted the Church nor protected it. With the influx of foreign investment and investors, Protestant missionaries arrived in Mexico, especially in Mexico's north, and Protestants became an opposition force during the Mexican Revolution.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Although there was factionalism in the ruling group and in some regions, Díaz suppressed the formation of opposition parties. Díaz dissolved all local authorities and all aspects of federalism that once existed. Not long after he became president, the governors of all federal states in Mexico answered directly to him. Those who held high positions of power, such as members of the legislature, were almost entirely his closest and most loyal friends. Congress was a rubber stamp for his policy plans and they were compliant in amending the 1857 Constitution to allow his re-election and extension of the presidential term. In his quest for political control, Díaz suppressed the press and controlled the court system. Díaz could intervene in political matters that threatened political stability, such as in the conflict in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, placing José María Garza Galan in the governorship, undercutting wealthy estate owner Evaristo Madero, grandfather of Francisco I. Madero, who would challenge Díaz in the 1910 election. In another case, Díaz placed General Bernardo Reyes in the governorship of the state of Nuevo León, displacing existing political elites.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: A key supporter of Díaz was former Lerdista Manuel Romero Rubio. According to historian Friedrich Katz, "Romero Rubio was in many respects the architect of the Porfirian state." The relationship between the two was cemented when Díaz married Romero Rubio's young daughter, Carmen. Romero Rubio and his supporters did not oppose the amendment to the Constitution to allow Díaz's initial re-election and then indefinite re-election. One of Romero Rubio's protégés was José Yves Limantour, who became the main financial adviser to the regime, stabilizing the country's public finances. Limantour's political network was dubbed the Científicos, "the scientists", for their approach to governance. They sought reforms, such as decreasing corruption and increasing uniform application of laws. Díaz opposed any significant reform and continued to appoint governors and legislators and control the judiciary.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz had not trained as a soldier, but made his career in the military during a tumultuous era of the U.S. invasion of Mexico, the age of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Reform War, and the Second French Intervention. A study of his presidential cabinets found that 83% of cabinet members old enough had fought in one or more of those conflicts. The tradition of post-independence Mexico of the military intervening and dominance over civilian politicians continued under Díaz. A closer study shows that over time prominent military figures increasing played a much smaller role in his government. Civilian politicians loyal to him rather than his military comrades in arms came to dominate his cabinet. His regime was not a military dictatorship, but rather had strong civilian allies. His replacement of military advisors for civilians signaled that it was civilians who held power in the political arena.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In office, Díaz was able to bring provincial military strongmen under the control of the central government, a process that took fifteen years. He provided opportunities for graft for military men he could not successfully confront on the battlefield. Ample salaries helped maintain the loyalty of others. Dangerous military leaders could be sent on foreign missions to study military training in Europe as well as nonmilitary issues, and thereby keep them out of Mexico. Officers who retired could receive half the salary of their highest rank. He created military zones that were not contiguous with state boundaries and rotated the commanders regularly, preventing them from becoming entrenched in any one zone, then extended the practice to lower ranking officers. “Diaz destroyed provincial militarism and developed in its stead a national army that sustained the central government.”


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: A potential opposition force was the Mexican Federal Army. Troops were often men forced into military service and poorly paid. Díaz increased the size of the military budget and began modernizing the institution along the lines of European militaries, including the establishment of a military academy to train officers. High rank officers were brought into government service. Díaz expanded the crack police force, the "Rurales", who were under control of the president. Díaz knew that it was crucial for him to suppress banditry; he expanded the "Rurales", although it guarded chiefly only transport routes to major cities. Díaz thus worked to enhance his control over the military and the police. By the time of the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the Federal Army had an aging leadership, disgruntled troops, and they were unable to control the revolutionary forces in active multiple locations.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Unlike other Mexican liberals, Díaz was not anti-clerical, which became a political advantage when Díaz came to power. He won over conservatives, including the Catholic Church as an institution and socially conservatives supporting it.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Radical liberalism was anti-clerical, seeing the privileges of the Church as challenging the idea of equality before the law and individual, rather than corporate identity. They considered the economic power of the Catholic Church a detriment to modernization and development. The Church as a major corporate landowner and "de facto" banking institution shaped investments to conservative landed estates more than industry, infrastructure building, or exports. In power after the ouster of Santa Anna, liberals implemented legal measures to curtail the power of the Church. The Juárez Law abolished special privileges ("fueros") of ecclesiastics and the military, and the Lerdo law mandated disentailment of the property of corporations, specifically the Church and indigenous communities. The liberal constitution of 1857 removed the privileged position of the Catholic Church and opened the way to religious tolerance, considering religious expression as freedom of speech. Catholic priests were ineligible for elective office, but could vote. Conservatives fought back in the Reform War, under the banner of "religión y fueros" (that is, Catholicism and special privileges of corporate groups), but were defeated in 1861. Following the fall of the Second Empire in 1867, liberal presidents Benito Juárez and his successor Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada began implementing the anti-clerical measures of the constitution. Lerdo went further, extending the laws of the Reform to formalize the separation of Church and State; civil marriage as the only valid manner for State recognition; prohibitions of religious corporations to acquire real estate; elimination of religious elements from legal oaths; and the elimination of monastic vows as legally binding. Further prohibitions on the Church in 1874 included the exclusion of religion in public institutions; restriction of religious acts to church precincts; banning of religious garb in public except within churches; and prohibition of the ringing of church bells except to summon parishioners.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz was a political pragmatist, seeing that the religious question re-opened political discord in Mexico. When he rebelled against Lerdo, Díaz had at least the tacit and perhaps even the explicit support of the Catholic Church. When he came to power in 1877, Díaz left the anti-clerical laws in place, but no longer enforced them as state policy, leaving that to individual Mexican states. This led to the re-emergence of the Church in many areas, but in others a less full role. The Church flouted the Reform prohibitions against wearing clerical garb, there were open-air processions and Masses, and religious orders existed. The Church also recovered its property, sometimes through intermediaries, and tithes were again collected. The church regained its role in education, with the complicity of the Díaz regime which did not invest in public education. The Church also regained its role in running charitable institutions. Despite the increasingly visible role of the Catholic Church during the Porfiriato, the Vatican was unsuccessful in getting the reinstatement of a formal relationship between the papacy and Mexico, and the constitutional limitations of the Church as an institution remained as law.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: This "modus vivendi" between Díaz and the Church had pragmatic and positive consequences. Díaz did not publicly renounce liberal anti-clericalism, meaning that the Constitution of 1857 remained in place, but he did not enforce its anti-clerical measures. Conflict could reignite, but it was to the advantage of both Church and the Díaz government for this arrangement to continue. If the Church did counter Díaz, he had the constitutional means to rein in its power. The Church regained considerable economic power, with conservative intermediaries holding lands for it. The Church remained important in education and charitable institutions. Other important symbols of the normalization of religion in late 19th century Mexico included: the return of the Jesuits (expelled by the Bourbon Charles III in 1767); the crowning of the Virgin of Guadalupe as "Queen of Mexico"; and the support of Mexican bishops for Díaz's work as peacemaker. When the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, the Catholic Church was a staunch supporter of the Díaz regime.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz sought to attract foreign investment to Mexico to aid the development of mining, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure. Political stability and the revision of laws, some dating to the colonial era, created a legal structure and an atmosphere where entrepreneurs felt secure in investing capital in Mexico. Railways, financed by foreign capital, transformed areas that were remote from markets into productive regions. The government mandate to survey land meant that secure title was established for investors. The process often obliterated claims of local communities that could not prove title or extinguished traditional usage of forests and other areas not under cultivation. The private survey companies bid for contracts from the Mexican government, with the companies acquiring one-third of the land measured, often prime land that was along proposed railway routes. Companies usually sold that land, often to foreigners who pursued large-scale cultivation of crops for export. Crops included coffee, rubber, henequen (for twine used in binding wheat), sugar, wheat, and vegetable production. Land only suitable for pasturage was enclosed with barbed wire, extinguishing traditional communal grazing of cattle, and premium cattle were imported. Owners of large landed estates ("haciendas") often took the opportunity to sell to foreign investors as well. The result by the turn of the twentieth century was the transfer of a vast amount of Mexican land in all parts of the country into foreign hands, either individuals or land companies. Along the northern border with the U.S., American investors were prominent, but they owned land along both coasts, across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and central Mexico. Rural communities and small-scale farmers lost their holdings and forced to be agricultural wage laborers or pursue or move. Conditions on haciendas were often harsh. Landlessness caused rural discontent and a major cause of peasant participation in the Mexican Revolution, seeking a reversal of the concentration of land ownership through land reform.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: For elites, "it was the golden age of Mexican economics, 3.2 dollars per peso. Mexico was compared economically to economic powers of the time such as France, Great Britain, and Germany. For some Mexicans, there was no money and the doors were thrown open to those who had." Economic progress varied drastically from region to region. The north was defined by mining and ranching while the central valley became the home of large-scale farms for wheat and grain and large industrial centers.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: One component of economic growth involved stimulating foreign investment in the Mexican mining sector. Through tax waivers and other incentives, investment and growth were effectively realized. The secluded southern Baja California region benefited from the establishment of an economic zone with the founding of the town of Santa Rosalía and the prosperous development of the El Boleo copper mine. This came about when Díaz granted a French mining company a 70-year tax waiver in return for its substantial investment in the project. In a similar fashion, the city of Guanajuato realized substantial foreign investment in local silver mining ventures. The city subsequently experienced a period of prosperity, symbolized by the construction of numerous landmark buildings, most notably, the magnificent Juárez Theatre. By 1900 over 90% of the communal land of the Central Plateau had been sold off or expropriated, forcing 9.5 million peasants off the land and into service of big landowners.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Because Díaz had created such an effective centralized government, he was able to concentrate decision-making and maintain control over the economic instability. This instability arose largely as a result of the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of peasants of their land. Communal indigenous landholdings were privatized, subdivided, and sold. The Porfiriato thus generated a stark contrast between rapid economic growth and sudden, severe impoverishment of the rural masses, a situation that was to explode in the Mexican revolution of 1910.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: During 1883–1894, laws were passed to give fewer and fewer people large amounts of land, which was taken away from people by bribing local judges to declare it vacant or unoccupied ("terrenos baldíos"). A friend of Díaz obtained 12 million acres of land in Baja California by bribing local judges. Those who opposed . The manufacture of cheap alcohol increased prompting the number of bars in Mexico City to rise from 51 in 1864 to 1,400 in 1900. This caused the rate of death from alcoholism and alcohol related accidents to rise to levels higher than anywhere else in the world.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz has been characterized as a "republican monarch and his regime a synthesis of pragmatic [colonial-era] Bourbon methods and Liberal republican ideals... As much by longevity as by design, Díaz came to embody the nation." Díaz did not plan well for the transition to a regime other than his own. As Díaz aged and continued to be re-elected, the question of presidential succession became more urgent. Political aspirants within his regime envisioned succeeding to the presidency and opponents began organizing in anticipation of Díaz's exit.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In 1898, the Díaz regime faced a number of important issues, with the death of Matías Romero, Díaz's long-time political adviser who had made great efforts to strengthen Mexico's ties with the U.S. since the Juárez regime, and a major shift in U.S. foreign policy toward imperialism with its success in the Spanish–American War. Romero's death created new dynamics amongst the three political groups that Díaz both relied upon and manipulated. Romero's faction had strongly supported U.S. investment in Mexico, and was largely pro-American, but with Romero's death his faction declined in power. The other two factions were José Yves Limantour's Científicos and Bernardo Reyes's followers, the Reyistas. Limantour pursued a policy of offsetting U.S. influence by favoring European investment, especially British banking houses and entrepreneurs, such as Weetman Pearson. U.S. investment in Mexico remained robust, even grew, but the economic climate was more hostile to their interests and their support for the regime declined.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: The U.S. had asserted that it had the preeminent role in the Western hemisphere, with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt modifying the Monroe Doctrine via the Roosevelt Corollary, which declared that the U.S. could intervene in other countries' political affairs if the U.S. determined they were not well run. Díaz pushed back against this policy, saying that the security of the hemisphere was a collective enterprise of all its nations. There was a meeting of American states, in the second Pan-American Conference, which met in Mexico City from 22 October 1901 – 31 January 1902, and the U.S. backed off from its hard-line policy of interventionism, at least for the moment in regard to Mexico.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In domestic politics, Bernardo Reyes became increasingly powerful, and Díaz appointed him Minister of War. The Mexican Federal Army was becoming increasingly ineffective. With wars being waged against the Yaqui in northwest Mexico and the Maya, Reyes requested and received increased funding to augment the number of men at arms.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: There was some open opposition to Díaz's regime, with eccentric lawyer Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda running against Díaz. Zúñiga lost every election but always claimed fraud and considered himself to be the legitimately elected president, but he did not mount a serious challenge to the regime. More importantly, as the 1910 election approached and Díaz stated he would not run for re-election, Limantour and Reyes vied against each other for favor.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: On 17 February 1908, in an interview with the U.S. journalist James Creelman of "Pearson's Magazine", Díaz stated that Mexico was ready for democracy and elections and that he would retire and allow other candidates to compete for the presidency. Without hesitation, several opposition and pro-government groups united to find suitable candidates who would represent them in the upcoming presidential elections. Many liberals formed clubs supporting Bernardo Reyes, then the governor of Nuevo León, as a candidate. Despite the fact that Reyes never formally announced his candidacy, Díaz continued to perceive him as a threat and sent him on a mission to Europe, so that he was not in the country for the elections.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In 1909, Díaz and William Howard Taft, the then president of the United States, planned a summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, a historic first meeting between a U.S. president and a Mexican president and also the first time an American president would cross the border into Mexico. Díaz requested the meeting to show U.S. support for his planned seventh run as president, and Taft agreed to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico. After nearly 30 years with Díaz in power, U.S. businesses controlled "nearly 90 percent of Mexico's mineral resources, its national railroad, its oil industry and, increasingly, its land." Both sides agreed that the disputed Chamizal strip connecting El Paso to Ciudad Juárez would be considered neutral territory with no flags present during the summit, but the meeting focused attention on this territory and resulted in assassination threats and other serious security concerns. The Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents, FBI agents and U.S. marshals were all called in to provide security. An additional 250-man private security detail led by Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, was hired by John Hays Hammond, a close friend of Taft from Yale and a former candidate for U.S. vice president in 1908 who, along with his business partner Burnham, held considerable mining interests in Mexico. On 16 October, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and Moore captured and disarmed the assassin within only a few feet of Díaz and Taft.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: The year 1910 was important in Mexico's history—the centennial of the revolt by Miguel Hidalgo, seen as the beginning of the Mexican War of independence. On the cover of the official program for the centennial, three figures are shown: Hidalgo, father of independence; Benito Juárez, with the label "Lex" (law); and Porfirio Díaz, with the label "Pax" (peace). Also on the cover are the emblem of Mexico and the cap of liberty. Díaz inaugurated the monument to Independence with its golden angel during the September centennial celebrations. Although Díaz and Juárez had been political rivals after the French Intervention, Díaz had done much to promote the legacy of his dead rival and had a large monument to Juárez built by the Alameda Park, which Díaz inaugurated during the centennial. A work published in 1910 details the day-by-day events of the September festivities.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: As groups began to settle on their presidential candidate, Díaz decided that he was not going to retire but rather allow Francisco I. Madero, an elite but democratically leaning reformer, to run against him. Although Madero, a landowner, was very similar to Díaz in his ideology, he hoped for other elites in Mexico to rule alongside the president. Ultimately, however, Díaz did not approve of Madero and had him jailed during the 1910 election.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: The election went ahead. Madero had gathered much popular support, but when the government announced the official results, Díaz was proclaimed to have been re-elected almost unanimously, with Madero said to have attained a minuscule number of votes. This case of massive electoral fraud aroused widespread anger throughout the Mexican citizenry. Madero called for revolt against Díaz in the Plan of San Luis Potosí, and the violence to oust Díaz is now seen as the first phase of the Mexican Revolution. Rebellions in many different places stretched the Federal Army's and the Rurales's ability to suppress them all, revealing the regime's weakness. Díaz was forced to resign from office on 25 May 1911 and left the country for Spain six days later, on 31 May 1911.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz kept his brother's son Félix Díaz away from political or military power. He did, however, allow his nephew to enrich himself. It was only after Díaz went into exile in 1911 that his nephew became prominent in politics, as the embodiment of the old regime. Even so, Díaz's assessment of his nephew proved astute since Félix never successfully led troops or garnered sustained support, and was forced into exile several times.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: On 2 July 1915, Díaz died in exile in Paris, France. He is buried there in the Cimetière du Montparnasse. He was survived by his second wife (María del Carmen Romero-Rubio Castelló, 1864–1944) and two of his children with his first wife, (Deodato Lucas Porfirio Díaz Ortega, 1873–1946, and Luz Aurora Victoria Díaz Ortega, 1875–1965), as well as his natural daughter Amada. His other children died as infants or young children. His widow Carmen and his son were allowed to return to Mexico.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz came from a devoutly Catholic family; his relative, José Agustín Domínguez y Diaz, was bishop of Oaxaca. Díaz had trained for the priesthood, and it seemed likely that was his career path. Oaxaca was a center of liberalism, and the founding of the Institute of Arts and Sciences, a secular institution, helped foster professional training for Oaxacan liberals, including Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz. When Díaz abandoned his ecclesiastical career for one in the military, his powerful uncle disowned him.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In Díaz's personal life, it is clear that religion still mattered and that fierce anti-clericalism could have a high price. In 1870, his brother Félix, a fellow liberal, who was then governor of Oaxaca, had rigorously applied the anti-clerical laws of the Reform. In the rebellious and supposedly idolatrous town of Juchitán in Tehuantepec, Félix Díaz had "roped the image of the patron saint of Juchitán … to his horse and dragged it away, returning the saint days later with its feet cut off". When Félix had to flee Oaxaca City in 1871 following Porfirio's failed coup against Juárez, Félix ended up in Juchitán, where the villagers killed him, doing to his body even worse than he did to their saint. Having lost a brother to the fury of religious peasants, Díaz had a cautionary tale about the dangers of enforcing anti-clericalism. Even so, it is clear that Díaz wanted to remain in good standing with the Church.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz married his niece Delfina Ortega Díaz (1845–1880), the daughter of his sister, Manuela Josefa Díaz Mori (1824–1856). Díaz and she would have seven children, with Delfina dying due to complications of her seventh delivery. Following her death, he wrote a private letter to Church officials renouncing the Laws of the Reform, which allowed his wife to be buried with Catholic rites in sacred ground.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz had a relationship with a soldadera, Rafaela Quiñones, during the war of the French Intervention, which resulted in the birth of (1867–1962), whom he recognized. Amada went to live in Díaz's home with his wife Delfina. Amada married Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, but the couple had no children. De la Torre was said to have been present at the 1901 Dance of the Forty-One, a gathering of gay men and cross-dressers that was raided by police. The report that de la Torre was there was neither confirmed nor denied, but the dance was a huge scandal at the time, satirized by caricaturist José Guadalupe Posada.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz remarried in 1881, to Carmen Romero Rubio, the pious 17-year-old daughter of his most important advisor, Manuel Romero Rubio. Oaxaca cleric Father Eulogio Gillow y Zavala gave his blessing. Gillow was later appointed archbishop of Oaxaca. Doña Carmen is credited with bringing Díaz into closer reconciliation with the Church, but Díaz was already inclined in that direction. The marriage produced no children, but Díaz's surviving children lived with the couple until adulthood.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: In 1938, the 430-piece collection of arms of the late General Porfirio Díaz was donated to the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Although Díaz is criticized on many grounds, he did not create a family dynasty. His only son to survive to adulthood, , known as "Porfirito", trained to be an officer at the military academy. He graduated as a military engineer and never served in combat. He and his family went into European exile after Díaz's resignation. They were allowed to return to Mexico during the amnesty of Lázaro Cárdenas.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: The legacy of Díaz has undergone revision since the 1990s. In Díaz's lifetime before his ouster, there was an adulatory literature, which has been named "Porfirismo". The vast literature that characterizes him as a tyrant and dictator has its origins in the late period of Díaz's rule and has continued to shape Díaz's historical image. In recent years, however, there has been an effort to rehabilitate Díaz's figure, most prominently by television personality and historian Enrique Krauze, in what has been termed "Neo-Porfirismo". As Mexico pursued a neoliberal path under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the policies of Díaz that opened Mexico up to foreign investment fit with the turn of the Institutional Revolutionary Party toward privatization of state companies and market-oriented reforms. Díaz was characterized as a far more benign figure for these revisionists.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Díaz is usually credited with the saying, "¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" ("Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!").


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: Partly due to Díaz's lengthy tenure, the current Mexican constitution limits a president to a single six-year term with no possibility of re-election, even if it is nonconsecutive. Additionally, no one who holds the post, even on a caretaker basis, is allowed to run or serve again. This provision is so entrenched that it remained in place even after legislators were allowed to run for a second consecutive term.


title: Porfirio Díaz

text: There have been several attempts to return Díaz's remains to Mexico since the 1920s. The most recent movement started in 2014 in Oaxaca by the "Comisión Especial de los Festejos del Centenario Luctuoso de Porfirio Díaz Mori", which is headed by Francisco Jiménez. According to some, the fact that Díaz's remains have not been returned to Mexico "symbolises the failure of the post-Revolutionary state to come to terms with the legacy of the Díaz regime."


title: Spoons sex position

text: The spoons position or spooning is both a sexual position and a cuddling technique. The name derives from the way that two spoons may be positioned side by side, with bowls aligned. The sexual spoons position is a form of a rear-entry position, another form being the doggy style position. The spoons sex position has been called one of the "basic four" sex positions.


title: Spoons sex position

text: In the spoons cuddling position, one partner lies on one side with knees bent while the other partner lies with his or her front pressed against their back. The spoons cuddling position is not limited to two people.


title: Spoons sex position

text: In the sex position, the receiving partner would be in the inner spoon position and the penetrator is in the outer spoon in preparation for rear-entry penetration. For penetration, the partners may separate their upper bodies, with just the pelvises connecting, and their legs can also rest on top of each other. The receiving partner may lift the upper knee to allow for easier penetration.


title: Spoons sex position

text: During heterosexual sexual activity, the penetrating partner can caress the woman's stomach and stimulate her breasts, the back of the neck and ears, and clitoris. The woman can stimulate her own clitoris or her partner's scrotum. In addition, the penis stimulates the front of the vagina, and may stimulate an area that is commonly termed "the G-spot". Along with the doggy style position, this may be the best position from which to stimulate this area.


title: Spoons sex position

text: Variations on this position include the partners lying on their sides face-to-face or in the scissors position. Anal sex is also possible in this position, along with use of a vibrator.


title: Spoons sex position

text: The spoons position allows for a great deal of physical intimacy, as there is full-body contact which allows for cuddling. Both partners have control of the angle and depth of penetration, and slow, low-intensity sex can last for a long time because it usually takes longer for the man to reach orgasm. However, there is little visual stimulation for either partner, as they are not facing one another and cannot see each other's bodies fully. The penis can also slip out easily.


title: Spoons sex position

text: The spoons position may be preferred by couples who have just woken up or are very tired. It may be used if the woman is pregnant, even during the last trimester, because it does not put any pressure on the abdomen. It is also good for those recovering from illness or surgery, or the elderly, because it puts less strain on muscles.


title: German-occupied Europe

text: German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945, during and shortly before World War II, generally administered by the Nazi regime, under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. The German Wehrmacht occupied European territory:


title: German-occupied Europe

text: Outside of Europe proper, German forces effectively controlled areas of North Africa in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia at times between 1941 and 1943. German military scientists established the Schatzgräber weather station base (1941–1944) as far north as Alexandra Land in Franz Josef Land – arguably part of Asia. Manned German weather stations also operated in North America (Greenland: Holzauge, , – 1942–1944). Additionally, German Kriegsmarine vessels operated in all of the world's oceans throughout the war.


title: German-occupied Europe

text: Several German-occupied countries initially entered World War II as Allies of the United Kingdom or the Soviet Union. Some were forced to surrender before the outbreak of the war such as Czechoslovakia; others like Poland (invaded on 1 September 1939) were conquered in battle and then occupied. In some cases, the legitimate governments went into exile, in other cases the governments-in-exile were formed by their citizens in other Allied countries. Some countries occupied by Nazi Germany were officially neutral. Others were former members of the Axis powers that were subsequently occupied by German forces.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: Dhruva Natchathiram () is an upcoming Indian Tamil-language spy thriller film directed by Gautham Vasudev Menon, which stars Vikram. The film features music composed by Harris Jayaraj, whereas cinematography handled by Manoj Paramahamsa, Jomon T. John, Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran and editing done by Praveen Antony.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: The film was initially announced with Suriya and Deepika Padukone in 2013, but months after the announcement, Menon shelved the project citing creative differences with the actor. He later hinted a chance of possible revival during mid-2015, and met several actors to cast, before finalising Vikram in the lead role. The film which began production in 2016, was shot in seven countries, and has been languished in production hell since then owing to Menon's financial constraints.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: John, a New York-based undercover operative and his team, are entrusted with a secret mission to bring back their team leader, who has been missing mysteriously.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: Following the successes of "Kaaka Kaaka" (2003) and "Vaaranam Aayiram" (2008), director Gautham Vasudev Menon and Suriya began discussions on another project featuring the duo. After rejecting two scripts including films titled "Enai Noki Paayum Thota" and "Thuppariyum Anandhan", Suriya was impressed and accepted to work on the spy-thriller film "Dhruva Natchathiram", which Menon hoped to turn into a franchise. Revealed to be produced by Menon too, the team released a series of posters in April 2013 indicating that the film would feature 12 pivotal characters. The film was officially launched at the director's office in May 2013, with a few test shots also taken during the month.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: A. R. Rahman was confirmed as the film's music composer, while Rajeevan and Anthony were announced as the art director and editor respectively. Menon confirmed later in the month that Parthiepan and Simran had been added to the cast to play supporting roles. Actors Arun Vijay and Sudhanshu Pandey, were also signed on to play characters with negative shades. Trisha was signed on to play the lead female role in the film, after reports that Asin, Sameera Reddy, Amala Paul and Priya Anand had been considered. However, the film's first schedule was repeatedly postponed and ultimately by October 2013, Menon and Suriya parted ways citing creative differences. Suriya released a press note revealing that Menon had been tinkering the script for six months without any such progress and that he could wait no longer as he had committed to other films. He also recalled that the pair had a similar unfruitful experience when making a film titled "Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikaalam" in early 2004.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: Following the release of "Yennai Arindhaal" (2015), Menon revived "Dhruva Natchathiram" and revealed he was working on the script by March 2015. Vikram was subsequently signed for the lead role, while Nayanthara was also selected to play the leading female role. The project failed to find financiers, before he picked up pre-production work on the film again during November 2015, hoping to start the film with Jayam Ravi. Despite progress, the film did not take off as a result of Ravi's busy schedule. Menon then narrated the script to producer Kalaipuli S. Thanu, who set up a meeting for Menon to discuss the script with Rajinikanth. The actor liked the idea of the film, but later turned down the offer and chose to work with Thanu on "Kabali" (2016). In November 2016, Menon revived the project with Vikram and began working on the script again. Production began in early January 2017 in New York City, with a series of promotional posters released by the team. Harris Jayaraj who has worked on most of Gautham Menon's films, was confirmed as the composer. Actress Anu Emmanuel was added to the cast and also took part in an initial photoshoot. A two-minute teaser was released in the same month; it was shot in fourteen hours around Manhattan, New York City with a Canon 5D SLR camera by cinematographer Jomon T. John.


title: Dhruva Natchathiram

text: The film began production with only Vikram and Anu Emmanuel as confirmed members of the cast in January 2017. In early February 2017, Anu Emmanuel opted out of the film citing scheduling issues following Vikram's decision to alter his schedule, so that he could simultaneously shoot for "Sketch" (2018) directed by Vijay Chander. Gautham Menon signed on actress Ritu Varma to replace her, after being impressed by Varma's performance in the Telugu film "Pelli Choopulu" (2016). Aishwarya Rajesh was also then signed to portray another leading female character in the film. Prithviraj Sukumaran reported to be the main antagonist, but the news claimed to be false. The team also re-signed Parthiepan to act in the film, with his character tweaked from his role in the original script.