On November 9 1989, we all remember, the fall of the Berlin wall, reshaping the subtle balances of the world.
The patriotic (and not only) remember with emotion that 24th May, "The Piave murmured calmly and placidly as the first infantrymen passed". These are some of the many famous dates that we find in the history books, rightly indicating what we have been, what we should be today, what we must learn for tomorrow. But, there are many memorable dates, many others. Just as crucial days, undeniably decisive events. Yet, no one knows why, the veil of oblivion obscures and buries various names, facts, dates and places in the deepest abyss of memory. The destruction of the past happens too often, motivated by the belief that the future needs only the present to exist. Thus, everything remains far-fetched, without a logic, without a time thread. It happens everywhere and it happens in Calabria: at school we teach the history of Italy, but what does it matter if our children ignore the wars for the bread of our farmers and the ancient sounds of Grecanico and arbëreshe. Going into the collective experience of a community seems too complicated and nebulous - a careless move that would reveal uncomfortable truths - we might as well stop at what is clear, universal, well defined. Fortunately, not everyone thinks this way: whether they are individuals or active associations, there are those who claim to discover what defines our identity. And it tries to clarify small libraries, archives and semi-deserted courtyards of remote countries. This is what Claudio Cavaliere, sociologist and journalist who avoids already tacked canvases, does. This is how "Riots - Peasant massacres in Calabria (1906-1925)" was born (Rubbettino publisher, with a preface by Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti): from the need to let people know that there is another story, or rather stories in history that deserve to enter the "official" circuit of national historiography. Because to make the history of our country are, also and above all, the unfortunates who flounder in misfortune. Unfortunate people to whom no one has ever stretched a foothold, brutally thrown into the pit of forgetfulness. Cavaliere writes: "I wanted to bring out those human factors always so underestimated by professionals in the field: humiliations, contempt of rulers, violations of dignity, the clash between a world that desperately tries to get out of fear and another that tries to keep it , humanity that hides behind historical and social phenomena that we are used to reading through consolidated beliefs made of apparently indisputable but often empty words and theories, through dates and numbers ». This world is that of the Calabrian peasants, who between 1906 and 1925 in every corner of the region rebelled against a condition of hunger and submission and simply claimed their rights. Massacres and massacres were the answer: blood shed "for dignity and democracy" of which almost no one, today, knows anything. Cavaliere explains: "Many of the episodes recounted here had already disappeared from the horizon of common knowledge for a long time. I met young mayors with no memory, communities in which those facts are, on the other hand wonderfully present in the recent political controversy and absent-minded citizens who thought that those names of the fallen go back to the First World War ». Many know the story of Giuditta Levato, the peasant woman from Calabricata shot in the pregnant belly while defending "the land of life", told in the book "The furious bee" (Rubbettino), written by Romano Pitaro together with Bruno Gemelli and Cavaliere . But how many know the tribulations of Anna Gallo, Filomena Marra, Armenia Dramisino, Rosa Bertucci, Maria De Caria, Barbara Veltri? Cavaliere crosses Calabria from north to south, looking for, asking, thinking about scattered, fragmented, distorted news over time. To then envelop them with an overview that contains causes and consequences, circumstances and ideals, together with the past of a disordered local politics always intertwined with that of central power. And here is the geography of blood that draws the path of betrayed hopes: Benestare, Firmo, Olivadi, Vallelonga, Sinopoli, Plataci, Aiello Calabro, San Calogero, Casignana, San Giovanni in Fiore. Nineteen years of struggle, dozens of deaths without distinction between men, children, the elderly and pregnant women. In the streets to claim the right to cultivate the land that will make up for the excruciating hunger, to roads and railways that finally free them from isolation, to the very urgent medical care that will save them from cholera, pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria. In the streets for the crazy taxation, for the weak, imperceptible intervention of the state in the aftermath of earthquakes that force the population into dirty shacks or among the ruins of houses. In short, in the square for a dignified existence. “They put everything they had into it: their bodies, their desperation, their anger at injustices. But never were they taken seriously ». Indeed, always accused of having fomented and incited violence by a state as far as to say, blind and absent; always treated sufficiently by a historiography that should have insisted on an unjustly buried social and political conscience and on a courage of which nobody knows anything today. So, urges Cavaliere, let's start enriching our calendar of anniversaries: on November 9, together with the fall of the Berlin wall, let's remember the women of Plataci; on 2nd August we pay homage to the victims of the Bologna massacre, but also to the dead of San Giovanni in Fiore; May 24th, let a thought go to Benestare, while we sing with the mind “Il Piave murmured…”.
