The Grecanici of Southern Italy. Stavroula Pipyrou
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Thessaloniki) and Italy (Calabria and Puglia) with the aim to understand and address the multifaceted aspects of the Greek linguistic minority in Italy and more specifically in Calabria and Puglia. These communities appear to share common cultural, historical, and financial considerations. With the collaboration of the Grecanico associations … and the employees of the two Greek government institutions of…. we intend to unite as many Hellenophone associations around the world as possible. The ultimate aim of this “alliance” is the financial and political benefits of the subsidizing schemes toward the minority. Moreover, the appropriation of the Grecanico culture by various associations and individuals motivated by personal interest should stop. For this reason, the proposed union could only be positive for the development and promotion of the Grecanico language all over the world. The current multidimensional Mediterranean development demands a more centralized organization, one that could address any arising matters more efficiently.
Treating Hellenism as a preordained category of relatedness, what the founding members are pleading for in this constitution is a centralization of operations for the linguistic minority to yield better political and financial returns and the desire to take a local campaign global. The aim is prolific capitalization on subsidized schemes from sources such as the EU, Greek and Italian states, and UNESCO. The second point, emerging directly from the first, is that any exploitation of the Grecanico language by associations, institutions, and individuals driven by personal interests should be emphatically avoided. It is clearly suggested in the statuto that Grecanico language and culture are the victims of predatory appropriation. What we are confronted with here is an unprecedented event in the Grecanico associazionismo (associationism) toward centralization that would impose new forms of governance regarding the financial and political future of the minority.
2. I Glossama den ecchi na petheni! Ecchi na zì!GO(Our Language Will Not Die! It Will Live!)
In April 2010, in a very emotive but affirmative tone, the province councilor of the Partito Rifondazione Comunista—Federazione della Sinistra, Omar Minniti, attacked the Silvio Berlusconi government for a budget cut for the linguistic minorities recognized in Italy by the 482/1999 law. The annual amount allocated to the Greek linguistic minority had been reduced to 165,000 euros from the initially approved 460,000 euros. This amount of money was intended to cover the salaries of fifteen people employed in the eleven sportelli linguistici that operate in the province of Reggio Calabria. Closing down the sportelli, Minniti argued, would constitute the final blow to a language that is still in use by a few thousand people. That would be the ultimate chapter of a “cultural genocide” committed against the Greeks of Calabria, who constitute an important piece of national history. He went on to plead with the deputies and senators to pressure the government into reconsidering the cuts so that the Grecanici communities and civic associations would not lose their financial resources vital to maintaining “in life the flame of the Hellenophone diversity.”4
3. UNESCO and the Grecanico Language as Immaterial Patrimony for Humanity.
During 2013 the Calabrian regional government proposed that the linguistic minorities of the region be recognized by UNESCO as “heritage of humanity.” Complying with the UNESCO category of intangible heritage introduced in 2003, the candidacy was heralded by local civic associations, politicians, and regional government as the ultimate acknowledgment of minority contribution to humanity. In April 2013, Tito Squillaci of the Associazione Ellenofona Jalò tu Vua, Bova Marina, Reggio Calabria, appeared emotional as well as cautious about the effects of a positive outcome for the application. While he was optimistic that the candidacy would revitalize the study of the language and culture in a more scientific manner by competent people, he closed his announcement by adding that “it is well noted that today more people talk about the Grecanico language instead of actually speaking the language. If the candidacy serves to stimulate a serious and objective test of reality, demystified, and change the actual state of things, then it is welcome.”5
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The three short ethnographic vignettes presented above tie together questions of ownership, victimhood, and governance of minority issues. With scales of minority representation ranging across local civic associations, regional politicians, transnational state and non-state bodies, and minority policy, all with the burning desire to present local issues on global stages, there is also conflict and contestation as to who has the right to represent whom. In some cases, individuals have consciously championed themselves as living heritage: cultural artifacts with the authority to govern Grecanici affairs and condense the whole minority into their own persona (see particularly Chapter 6).
But what is the genealogy of such thinking behind conceptualizing Grecanico language as immaterial heritage of humanity and Grecanici as victims? What forms of governance brought about these developments? To explore the historical formation of such powerful governance influenced by global frameworks and local desires, we must keep in mind the multiple levels of interests that are invested in minority decision making processes. In some forms of governance the hegemonic position of the state is fearlessly challenged. Local civil society has always looked to civil society of global scale to find space to articulate rights to difference. More than ever, the power of the state for political representation is fragmented, as actors turn to UNESCO, the EU, other nation-states, and illegal organizations to provide accessible channels of governance and information communication.
Victimhood has been part of Grecanici experience for decades. Entwined with social discrimination, extreme poverty until the 1960s, and emigration, victimhood has an experiential, rhetorical, and pedagogical tenor. Since the unification of Italy in 1861, Grecanici villages have gradually become depopulated owing to extreme conditions of poverty, high levels of mortality, migration, and natural disasters (Martino 1979; Bevilacqua 1981; Dickie, Foot, and Snowden 2007). The torrid conditions of many Grecanici villages always attracted the interest of state institutions such as the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno (National Association for the Interests of the South) in 1928 as well as private media outlets such as the Milanese journal L’Europeo in 1948. Grecanici felt “in their skin” what it means to be second-class citizens. Narratives of victimhood of the early 1900s are systematically circulated in Grecanici civil society and families, communicating feelings of bitterness and ambivalence. At the beginning of the twentieth century, and especially under Mussolini’s policies that fiercely promoted monolingualism (Cavanaugh 2009:159–160), alloglot Grecanici children were often the target of discrimination and abuse from teachers who spat in their faces, feeling repelled by the language. Subsequently, many parents avoided speaking Grecanico in front of their children, shielding them from further stigmatization. The Grecanici migration from ancestral villages in area Grecanica to Reggio Calabria in the 1950s highlighted once more the degree of prejudice and the divisive line between urban and rural populations in Italy (Teti 1993). Uneasiness looms within every narrative regarding those years. Domenico, fifty four, remembers,
We were called paddhechi, parpatulli and tamariGO (all derogatory of peasantry). To an extent people still call us these derogatory terms. Until the beginning of the 1970s there was a street in my neighborhood called Lu Strittu di Paddhechi (The Street of the Peasants). Despite the fact that the majority of us are educated and have money we are still perceived as second-class citizens. Paradoxically, the language that once brought such problems is now worthy of praise. We must feel proud of our language for it is the language of the Ancient Greeks of Magna Graecia. Others want to capitalize on our language. They want to claim it for themselves. Once they were spitting in our faces, now they want to claim all the privileges of this language.
Domenico is hardly alone in articulating his claims to difference through victimhood as often Grecanici civil society appropriate buried histories in order to “authorise contemporary moral and political claims” (Ballinger 2003:14). Nevertheless, narrating victimhood has a rhetorical potential (Carrithers 2005). In the same manner that the trope of victimhood provides a framework to articulate bitterness and dissatisfaction about the past, it provides scope for future possibilities. In their seminal volume on social suffering, Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock have argued that cultural responses to the traumatic effects