The Grecanici of Southern Italy. Stavroula Pipyrou
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The relocation sites—Gaeta a prison fortress and the military camp in L’Aquila—and the conditions of confinement lend plausibility to the extermination scenario. Christina Petropoulou, conducting research in the village of Galliciano during the 1980s, often attempted to access the state archives of Reggio Calabria. Her attempts were ultimately unsuccessful as she was “discouraged” by the archive administrators on the grounds that “no such thing as population relocations ever took place” (Petropoulou 2011, personal communication).
Internal aid after the relocation was tarnished due to allegations of favoritism, political mismanagement and mafia infiltration in the reconstruction programs that followed (Stajano 1979). In his bold research in the village of Africo, Corrado Stajano (1979) reveals the prolific cooperation between the ’Ndrangheta, Church representatives, and local government in building new houses in the stricken villages.26 In 2007 when I visited the state archives of Reggio Calabria I was given plenty of information and support for my research by the director and staff. This archival research not only complemented narrative accounts but further highlighted the depth of imbroglio (deception, cheating) on the part of the government, including money that never reached its destination and local uprisings in Grecanici villages as people demanded their lawful compensation after the landslides. The multiple “hidden histories” (Wolf 1982) referred to in the accounts of relocations reveal the multifaceted forces that dislodge people from their physical and emotional environments and the orchestration of political and humanitarian initiatives (Schneider and Rapp 1995; Pipyrou 2016).
Mannaggia Alla Miseria
Mannaggia (also mannàiaCD) alla miseriaCD is a common saying in Reggio Calabria, employed in discourse by people of all ages, irrespective of their political or economic disposition. The term is used to express frustration when one wants to swear or curse. As an object, Mannaggia is a wooden construction that resembles the guillotine and was used for decapitation (Condemi 2006:250). In local imagery the mannaggia could decapitate the miseria that surrounded people, allowing them to forever escape socioeconomic poverty. Mannaggia alla miseria is also an existential warning located in the collective memories of relocation, poverty, and death. “It is in the mountains of Calabria,” Rudolph Bell (1979) argues, that “miseria takes its most complete form. It means being underemployed, having no suit or dress to wear for your children’s wedding, suffering hunger most of the time and welcoming death. La miseria is a disease, a vapour arising from the earth, enveloping and destroying the soul of all that it touches” (113).
The village of Africo has become iconic of the Calabrian miseria. The report of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno in Italia (National Association for the Interests of South Italy) in 1928 highlights the dramatic living conditions of the villagers in terms of nutrition, sanitation and extremely high mortality. According to the report, in 1927 forty-one people were born. In the same year forty-one people died, of whom twenty-five were children under four (Stajano 1979:24–29). Emigration was deemed by many “an economic necessity” (Kenny and Kertzer 1983:15; Minicuci 1994; Pipyrou 2010) if they wanted to escape from the miseria that surrounded them. At the beginning of the century many Grecanici migrated to the United States and Argentina, and seldom did they decide to return.27 Grecanici migrated in high numbers to Switzerland and Belgium, while the internal migration was usually toward the north of Italy, as well as to the city of Reggio Calabria.28
According to Serafino Cambareri and Pietro Smorto, people from Aspromonte who relocated in waves (especially after the landslides) to nearby cities created “quartieri abnormi” (abnormal quarters) into which were inserted victims of the floods, unskilled building migrants, and families who left their stricken villages in search of any kind of survival (1980:117–37). Geographical mobility of this kind transformed the political context with the reemergence of the old notabilato29 (notabilities/nobles), and the subsequent manifestation of the phenomena of parasitism coupled with administrative corruption (Cingari 1982:380; cf. Pardo 2004). According to a number of local politicians claiming to belong to the old notabilato of Reggio Calabria, the newly arrived populations drastically altered “il pensiero politico” (the political reasoning) of the Reggini. “Not only did they bring with them their misery and incomprehensible languages,30 but also their political deliberation that was reflected in a peculiar system of voting.” Suddenly a larger than usual number of votes were directed to certain politicians “out of nowhere.” These politicians, as one self-proclaimed “Reggino vero” (real Reggino) politician argues, brought with them an attitude of “di essere sempre in giro” (to be always dashing around everywhere), meaning that from time to time they were in a position to literally “take” their votes and change political coalitions.31
The phenomenon of trasformismo, the flexible formation of government coalitions with the aim to consolidate power, is by no means new in Italian politics. It was the policies of Agostino Depretis who exploited a trend that already existed in order to “express or rationalise the absence of party coherence and organised action” (Smith 1997:103; Schneider and Schneider 2001:436). Depretis justified and rationalized the “replacement of distinctive parties and programmes by fluid personalistic parliamentary groupings negotiating their support for a government in terms of purely local and sectional interests” (Woolf 1979:479). Until the mid-1950s, the politics of Reggio Calabria were dominated by center-right coalitions, while over the next decades, despite still being in power, the local DC experienced intraparty conflicts (Walston 1988:189). This was the result of many factors. The ’Ndrangheta, first, was increasingly implicated in Reggini public life, infiltrating public contractors and political circles. Second, and perhaps predominantly, instead of developing the infrastructure of Reggio Calabria the government was exploiting the tertiary sector in return for electoral support (Cingari 1982:380).
In the Gardens of Eden
The quartieri of San Giorgio extra, Sbarre, Gebbione, and Ravagnese, similar to many peripheral quartieri32 during the 1950s, were inhabited by coloni (peasant workers), military and police force pensioners and middle- and upper-class families of Reggio Calabria, who were also small land owners. The areas that surrounded the centro storico were characterized by their giardini (gardens) and sparse residences. In his study of the Plain of Gioia Tauro (in the province of Reggio Calabria), Pino Arlacchi describes the gardens as “the elementary unit of the agrarian system based on medium-sized property and medium-sized enterprise, that is, a piece of territory thickly covered by fruit trees and specializing in the production of one crop only, whose sale on the market furnished a median yield among the highest in Italian agriculture” (1983:77; also Petrusewicz 1989). This mode of agriculture had a further effect on the development of the local market and the “periodic movements of the economy from cereal to pasture and back” (Arlacchi 1983:78) minimizing the annual unproductive periods (Giacomini 1981:13).
The agrarian reforms of the 1950s (see Biagini 1952) provided the opportunity for some of the lower classes such as the coloni to step onto the economic and social ladder. Apart from the land to which they were entitled according to their particular tenure contracts,33 they also “inherited” the status of the nobles for whom they were working. This shift in social status needs to be understood in a context of consolidating political power through land ownership (Rossi-Doria 1958:52). Despite the fact that Manlio Rossi-Doria refers to agrarian reforms that took place between 1880 and World War I—a period also characterized by the beginning of transoceanic migration (51)—land purchase in the peripheral quarters of Reggio Calabria during the 1950s followed the same logic of reconfigured power relations.
Doctor Colleti is one such example. He is a medical doctor and his family—originating from the Grecanico village of Staiti—used to be coloni for Baron Taconi’s mansion in Reggio Calabria. They lived in a house within the garden walls, which eventually passed into their possession after the reforms. Colleti’s professional occupation and residence are significant factors contributing to his socioeconomic mobility, also reflected in the respect the members of his family enjoy in wider society. His mother, the baron’s former housekeeper, is now greeted with respect and considered one of the “first ladies” of local society.