Beyond the Workplace; Sicilian Matriarchy and Canneries in Monterey
Sicilian identity is wrapped in the landscape of Sicily. The heat is punishing, and the land is equally so—the ocean and its limitless potential for food and prosperity remain. When Sicilians began to arrive in Monterey, California, in the early 20th century, it was no surprise that the men and women who moved 5,000 miles from their homes found themselves once again looking towards the ocean to provide for themselves and their families.
The town of Monterey had only recently become an American town; commercial fishing for whales, abalone, salmon, and a variety of other species had fed the region for centuries, largely done by immigrant laborers from Asia and Mexican residents who had lived there longer than the American government had authority.
However, sardine fishing only became a commercial enterprise in 1902, when one cannery was established on Fisherman’s Wharf. The cannery owner, Frank Book, recruited Norweigian immigrant Knute Hovden to help develop the cannery into a full-fledged scalable business and, in turn, hired a young Sicilian fisherman, Pietro Ferrante, and his brother-in-law Orazio Enea, to organize a group of fishermen to focus on sardine fishing. The industry exploded, and the sardine fishing boom continued for twenty-eight years.
The industry's challenges were that fishing for sardines was easy, but processing them was difficult. It was also a short-season industry, offering employment only for seven months a year. For Sicilians, however, the sardine was a reminder of home and a rare opportunity to work in a nation that treated Italians and Sicilians as second-class citizens.
For Sicilian women, in particular, it was an opportunity to marry economic freedom with the other freedoms they had. For Sicilian households with long traditions of fishing, women were often decision-makers, actors, and independent members of families. This wasn’t because Sicily was a progressive paradise but rather a reflection of their lived reality, where husbands’ boats would never come home. Fishing is considered to be the most dangerous profession on Earth, and it was necessary not just for women to manage family affairs but for that designation to be socially acceptable. With long stretches of departure, inevitably, fishing communities became overwhelmingly female spaces. Marine anthropologist James McGoodwin describes it as:
The life situations of fishermen’s wives and their central role in the economic and social affairs of their communities contribute importantly to the distinctive character of fishing cultures… [and] many fishing communities manifest tendencies towards matriarchy and matrifocality.
In short, like many fishing communities across South India, West Africa, Japan, and elsewhere, women were much more responsible for keeping the community and family organized and functioning and often fulfilling the duties of both father and mother. Leonarda Vaccaro uses the term “little matriarchies” to describe these small Sicilian fishing villages and their gender roles. Their ability to exist both independently for their families while nested within a small consortium of other women prepared them for the fierce demands of the intense canning season, when cannery whistles would blow at any hour of the day or night, calling them to work.
Working-class Sicilian women were hired en masse to fill the assembly lines for processing sardines. They provided the labor to build a new industry. As it grew, immigrants from across the continent arrived to fill the demand for labor. They followed the lead of the Sicilian women, who had since organized under the industry’s attempt to exploit their non-citizen labor force.
To understand the significance of the wave of Sicilians who arrived, consider that in 1910, the population of Monterey County was 11,300, thirty-six of whom were Italian. By 1914, nearly 4,000 Sicilians had arrived. The strong identity of the Sicilian women meant that when they entered the workforce, instead of the work forcing them to assimilate into American culture, they assimilated the work into their ways of doing and living. By the 1930s, as influxes of new immigrants arrived, they shrank down to one-third of the cannery workforce but remained culturally the largest block.
Many Sicilian women focused on Sicilians first, speaking Sicilian on the factory line and defending one another against shortfalls on the job. The extreme stress and poor working conditions followed them when they returned home— the smell of fish would stick to their clothes and hair, which they wore as a badge of pride. It was proof of their ability to get critical labor done for their community and offered Sicilian women a new way to retain power in a new nation.
It wasn’t long until union discussion began in the canneries. Canneries in the 1930s were dark, noisy workplaces, cool and moist, water running on the floors as the sound of machines pulsed through your bones.1 It was a hard environment for anyone, and the pay was low. Many Sicilian women had recently watched as many of their husbands had organized with the American Federation of Labor and believed that their labor was focal to the success of their husband’s new venture and were seemingly less interested— but not against— unionizing the canneries.2 For them, money wasn’t necessary for their survival, and their identity was more closely tied to supporting their families and the long-term implications of their husband’s success.
In Carol Lynn McKibben’s book Beyond Cannery Row, she describes her interviews with many women who had worked the canning lines who articulated that “Sicilian women expressed a perception of identity as working class as too limited, and never seemed to believe that unions alone would allow them the upward economic mobility they sought.”3 Another woman, Dolly Ursino, articulated a similar feeling: “We were cannery workers, sure… But the most important thing was being Italian, being part of our families.” Their capacity to blend cultural identity into their work and their husband’s work, which were all part of a similar thread, allowed their identity to be sufficient without the need to prioritize work and the dignity of their perception of themselves at work, and this ability also kept their Sicilian identity from bleeding away in the American landscape.
As the AFL included the workers in its ranks, the unique challenges of women were largely ignored—specifically, child care. While this was a major issue for many of the women on the factory line, for the Sicilian women, traditional gender roles did not necessarily apply. Many fishermen took on more domestic roles when they were home for long stretches at a time, in the words of George Salimento: “I would keep an eye on the kids, give them a bath, clean up the house a little. I would hang up the clothes and clean the kitchen floor. She was tired— sometimes, I would put on a pot of soup or something.” While this may not appear radical in 2025, it strikes at the stark differences between these communities and the rest of the United States in the early 20th century.
On-site child care came in the 1940s but Sicilian women had little interest in utilizing it, instead relying on kin networks instead. Mothers who didn’t work often would take on their siblings' children, allowing those women to work when necessary. Again, it highlighted the capacity of Sicilians to snub piecemeal proposals from employers; their communities provided the resources they needed— work simply provided financial support. And for many Sicilian women, their jobs were never meant to be permanent but simply a stepping stone.
Beyond childcare, many Sicilian women participated in communal money lending for other immigrant Sicilians. This allowed for higher divorce rates in Sicilian communities and reinforced their interdependency. Further, when women did need to divorce, it was socially expected that their parents would support them and provide them with a place to live.
Interdependency existed beyond fiscally related needs (whether it was watching kids for work or funding someone’s new venture). It was embedded within a great work of kinship—of hospitality and frequent visits to friends and family. This diversity of community support allowed women to invest, including buying rental properties in Monterey in their own names as early as the 1920s— including 20% of rentals in the city in 1924. For context, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974, forcing banks to allow unmarried women to get mortgages.
The lives of Sicilian women in the region were complex. Cannery work was a tool to earn extra income, which allowed them to avoid relying on seasonality and the inevitable ebb and flow of the sardine industry, which ultimately collapsed in the 1950s. Their roles in the canneries were not just about making money but also about supporting their husbands' industries and making sure that the fish caught would turn into profits for their household—many times, women would be canning the exact fish their husbands had caught only hours before.
These groups of women organize around what’s called a festa in Sicilian. According to legend, in approximately 1100, Santa Rosalia, a young girl from the aristocracy, renounced worldly goods and chose instead to live in a cave as a religious recluse, where she would eventually die. Her bones were later found, and a man searching for help for his wife was told in a vision to carry the bones through the town and give her a proper burial. In return, God would take his life in place of his wife’s life. The black plague left town, and while he died, his life lived. Thereafter, Santa Rosalia was worshipped as the patron saint of Palermo, the largest Sicilian city for the fishing population on the west coast. The celebration carried to the New World, where women looked to Santa Rosalia for guidance and hope.
While done in private, these gatherings would provide a space for the free flow of ideas and for the women to dare to imagine a future in Monterey. Public celebrations became a healing process for people who had settled in a new world, strained by new expectations, the anxiety of their decision to move, and, in later years, the increasing pressure of the impending war. Part of the success of these celebrations came from the political power Sicilians had within the community (more on this later), which forced the region to recognize the pagan nature of the festa despite the failures of Italian celebrations in many other parts of the country. Their goal was to create a ritual space where Sicilians could come together as one community of fishers and integrate new and old generations of immigrants into a common identity.
These festas fostered community-building and connection through informal women’s gatherings. These helped women develop deep relationships beyond their immediate family and village. These gatherings were often ritualistic and exclusive, excluding Italians not from Sicily. One example is the Rosary groups, which were informal prayer groups. The women would say a rosary and then have coffee and cake, using the religious formality to spend time together and forge relationships. Beyond Rosary groups, women built sewing, embroidery, and even card-playing groups. Consistency to the group was less important than commitment and each person would take a turn hosting the group, as folks would get involved with each of these groups based on their affinity. Because of their freedom, because of their husband’s work, their lifestyles demanded community support in a way conventional American culture could not provide.
The expansion of domestic management expanded beyond the traditional roles of nuclear families, and decisions were made through a wide circle of kin and commares that made up their communities and affinity groups. In practice, this would operate similarly to group chats today, where a forum voices their opinions on a situation and hashes out the pros and cons before a consensus is largely made. Children, for example, were given leeway to find independence in small ways, often with unofficial approval from their mothers and not their fathers (who often knew that their children were ignoring their commands but tacitly accepted the situation).
This often meant dating non-Sicilians, as long as daughters understood that they were expected to settle down with a Sicilian (and if not, an Italian, Portuguese, or, at the very least, Catholic). However, for example, if their husbands were abusive, they had support from these groups of women to leave their husbands, and these women demanded dignity for divorced women, despite its cultural power in the rest of America.
This isn’t to imply that things were perfect in their Sicilian community— intermarriage with non-Sicilians was frowned upon. Many times, it was expected that you only associated with other Sicilians. In many ways, the old world had arrived in the new world, and many didn’t want to forge a new path forward but remain static in the exact ways of the past.
In many ways, the community was too closely based on ethnic isolationism, cutting out anyone who married outside of the spectrum of ‘acceptable’ partners, which was magnified by the suitor’s economic means. It was one thing to marry a Spanish or Mexican man, and it could be potentially salvageable, but if they also did not have financial means to improve the family’s economic position, then that was one step too far. Daughters would contribute their entire checks to their parents, and upon marrying an unacceptable partner, their entire family would cleave them from their lives.
While their communities thrived within their own economic ecosystem, Sicilians did little to engage with the greater community. Despite making up most of the region's citizens, by the 1940s, as World War II ramped up, none of the government figures had an Italian surname. After a lifetime of abusive government policies in Sicily, Sicilians were uninterested in bringing government into their communities, for better or worse.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sicilians became a focal point of news in the community. This was exacerbated by the fact that many Sicilians supported Mussolini’s attempts to “bring law” to Italy, whose government had been fundamentally unable to provide basic services to Italians for decades. Further, Mussolini invested heavily in developing support from Italian Americans and funded Italian language education programs and other programs for Italian identity across the country, but specifically in places like California, where he advocated a “new ethnic assertiveness” for Italian American immigrants. It was only when Italy invaded North Africa, regions where many Sicilians had once worked prior to moving to Monterey, that the reality of Mussolini’s government became apparent, causing him to lose much of the support he had previously received from Italian Americans.
At this same time, the Alien Registration Act was signed into law (June 1940). This act required the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens aged fourteen and older, along with extensive questionnaires. Soon after, war was declared on Italy, and Sicilians were left without communication with their families overseas and were the recipients of hostility at home. The Roberts Commission issued a report in 1942, charging Japanese Americans with complicity in the assault on Pearl Harbor, which pivoted Americans towards a distrust of anyone of Italian, German, or Japanese descent. In 1942, a roundup of Italians included several men from Monterey of the 222 Italians arrested nationally by the end of the year.4 Italians who hadn’t become American citizens were considered “dangerous nationals” and were forced to evacuate the coast of Monterey for an indefinite period.
From there on, only “American citizens” were allowed to run fishing boats out of Monterey or work in the canneries moving forward. It was in their vested interest to gain citizenship and to find themselves as close to whiteness as possible, which allowed them to regain their basic civil rights5. However, Executive Order No. 9066 upended any chance to Americanize, as it gave the military full discretion in evacuating the coast of anyone considered an enemy alien, regardless of citizenship status.6 As the newspaper in Monterey read, in what is a damning reminder of the present time, “The original order covered enemy aliens living within 100 designated areas in California, Oregon and Washington. With its new power, the army if it wishes can sweep the state clean of not only enemy aliens but their American-born children as well.”7 The government used the executive order to scare Sicilians into leaving the region or nation and seized assets from Sicilians, even American citizens. Aliens were required to be inside their homes by 8 PM. The war upended their lives.
The challenges were particularly difficult for women. Many Sicilian women learned little English, and few were literate in Italian. Most could not pass a citizenship exam. Despite managing the household responsibilities, they were the most vulnerable in the eyes of the government. Even women born in the United States carried more risks when they married Italians from overseas, including surprise inspections and FBI raids. The newspapers read contradictory articles side-by-side, that alien raids were continuing but that the canneries and fishing ships were short-handed while also needing to meet higher and higher productivity to support the war efforts.
Despite these challenges, the matriarchy's strong fiscal management kept Sicilians from becoming public enemies alongside the Japanese. Sicilians and Italians collaborated to invest heavily in supporting the war efforts and donated publicly to the government through war bonds and fishing boat donations. This could only be done because of the community’s financial success; alongside newspaper articles describing how Americans were the only ones now fishing in Monterey, advertisements showed the donations made by Italian groups, proof of their good citizenship. The funds backed Italians running for office into the 1940s and put Italian translators in the police force.
After the war, it was integral for Sicilians and Italians as a whole to reinforce their American status. Citizenship papers were expected. Marriage with non-Sicilians was suddenly welcomed. The Santa Rosalia festa was Americanized. The leaders were still Sicilian, but the event was otherwise no different than any other parade across the country. The American hegemony had broken their back.
Despite the fact that Sicilians in Monterey have largely since lost their unique cultural identity compared to the past, many lessons can be taken from what worked and what didn’t work for their communities. The obvious point to address is their structures of matriarchal families where women retained autonomy and confederated together in order to set boundaries and consistency within the community. Decision-making was done slowly and within a greater context with vast success, as evidenced by their ability as an ethnic group to carve out space and to build economic capital, which is reflected today (much of the “high value” real estate today is owned by Sicilians, likely from money earned and invested a century ago).
Accountability within the community drove the success of Sicilians, even if some took advantage of this system of collaboration (some fishermen would go on to buy canneries and force their families to work for little or no wages, for example). Further, Sicilians often sacrificed those outside of their culture for their own collective gain; however, as we saw with their apathy towards union organizing for fears, it would negatively impact their husband’s fishing enterprises. However, if it weren’t for their capacity to organize and collaborate, the witch hunts of World War II would have broken their communities in a way that they would still be reeling today.
Despite these shortcomings, the Sicilian women of Monterey highlighted the ways groups of people with little access to funds can develop a thriving community through collaboration and action.
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Davis, Kate. “Sardine Oil on Troubled Water: The Boom and Bust of California’s Sardine Industry, 1905–1955.” N.p., 2002.
Gabaccia, Militants and Migrants; Glenna Matthews, Silicon Valley.
All of the quotes in this piece are from Carol Lynn McKinney’s Beyond Cannery Row.
DiLeonardo, Varieties of Ethnic Experience.
Guglielmo and Salerno, eds., Are Italians White?
U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, 2.
Monterey Peninsula Herald, February 20, 1941.