Researcher: Nina Quane, Stuyvesant '27

LaRocca was born in Sicily, Italy, on April 27, 1908. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1917, at 9 years old, and received citizenship in 1928, at 20 years of age. He was a sailor by occupation, and joined the CPUSA in 1932.

LaRocca’s father, John LaRocca, immigrated to the United States in 1911, ahead of his family. He could not read or write English, and worked as a shovelman at a lighting company, a broad term for an occupation of heavy physical labor. The rest of his family joined him in 1917, namely his wife, Theresa, his children, Peter, Mary, Joseph, and Gaetano, and his widowed mother. Peter and Mary did not attend school, but their younger siblings did, suggesting that the family was trying to achieve some form of upwards social mobility and create a better future for their children.

LaRocca was likely radicalized by a combination of the economic downturn of the time, prejudice against Italian immigrants, and the circumstances of his family. As the Great Depression began and unemployment spread, feelings of nativism that were already apparent in immigration restrictions increased, and Italians were often marginalized as “un-American,” villainized for immigrant poverty and stereotyped heavily. LaRocca’s family lived on Elridge Street, a long stretch of cultural communities located on the Lower East Side, which was heavily characterized by extremely densely packed tenement housing where working-class families crammed into dark and unsanitary conditions. LaRocca was initially an operator in a dress-making factory, but changed his occupation to a sailor, which was a job highly correlated with sympathy to or identification with left-wing and communist politics, partly due to the nature of the work. Communism, as a political ideology that seemed to resonate with many marginalized communities as a promise of a better life, drew him in after witnessing the discrimination and economic difficulties of his youth.

Thus, inspired by his ideological loyalty to the cause of the Republic, his own experiences in the U.S. as an immigrant, and Mussolini’s involvement in the war, LaRocca decided to join the Spanish Civil War. LaRocca sailed for Spain on August 4, 1937, aboard the Aquitania, five years after joining the CPUSA. He arrived on August 14 and attended Officer Training School, although there is no record of which school he attended, and then served with the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, Companies 3 and 4. He would have fought through the Aragon Front, the Battle of Teruel, the Great Retreats, and the final, doomed, Ebro Offensive. He was a rare figure who escaped the staggering death toll of the Spanish Civil War, returning to the U.S. only at the withdrawal of the International Brigades from the war on December 20, 1938, a year and four months after his arrival. He returned to New York and died in December 1977.

Sources

Ink, Social. “LaRocca, Peter.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, 23 Sept. 2022, https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/peter-larocca/.
Martí, Anna. “In the Footsteps of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion - the Volunteer.” The Volunteer, July 20212, https://albavolunteer.org/2012/07/in-the-footsteps-of-the-lincoln-washington-battalion/.
“Peter LaRocca.” Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6224/records/43347975.