“You can’t put a price on the quality of life,” says Alfredo Cavaliere, a 41-year-old dual citizen of Venezuela and Italy currently residing here with a working visa. After arriving in the United States in 2017, Alfredo has lived in California, Florida, and has been in Reno since 2020.
Growing up in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, was overall a good and fulfilling experience for Cavahliere. He says that his neighborhood, however, was classist.
“There’s a thing in my country where if you have white skin and green or blue eyes like me, they think that you’re rich, so kids picked on me a lot growing up,” he said
In terms of education, Cavaliere attended an Italian private school as a child until he had to move to public school due to his family’s financial situation at the time. He attended college for a couple years after graduating high school, but was forced to drop out and start working again as he couldn’t afford the tuition.
Cavaliere’s father has worked as a jeweler and now works in the restaurant industry in Venezuela, while his mother didn’t work until her 40s when she began to teach karate to children as she is a black belt herself.
Cavaliere has been working since he was 15. He started work at a phone company and later worked in the fish, sound and transport industries. He is now an arborist and musician in Reno.
In terms of music, he started playing the guitar at 13. His father and uncle are both musicians as well and inspirations. He started performing after moving to Reno as he explains there is a tight-knit music community here.
“I knew enough about American culture through music, movies, movie references, and things like that that helped me fit in with people,” he says of adapting here.
On the topic of diets, Cavaliere misses the abundance of agriculture in his country that we do not have here.
He grew up in a house where they had the ability to grow their own fruits and juice them to constantly have a supply of fresh juice among other fresh produce.
Asking Cavaliere about his future plans to introduce his daughter to his family, he tells me that he wouldn’t want to bring her to Venezuela though.
“Considering how bad the things are there, I would like for my family to come here so they can experience the same things that I have,” he said.
“I don’t need fancy shit or money. I have a roof, three meals, a beautiful wife, and a beautiful daughter. Like, in my country, I didn’t have this mindset that I have now. I was in a black cloud, always sad, always depressed, I didn’t have any hope,” he concluded.