San Carlo, and Rocaforte, were transferred to a colonia grande (large colony) in L’Aquila.
From Condofuri to Rome we took the train. From Rome to L’Aquila we took the bus. In L’Aquila we stayed seven to eight months. It was nice for us youths. We had a cinema. I remember the first time that my beloved grandmother ever saw a train on the big screen. Poor woman, she closed her eyes and fell to her knees because she was afraid that the train would dash out of the screen and crush her. We were eating on metal army plates. I will show you. I brought mine with me when we left. After L’Aquila they transferred us to Messina where we stayed for two months. We were living in a school building. We had a priest as director. He had given instructions that the women should sleep separately from their husbands. The women were sleeping on one floor, the men on another. We did not like that and started protesting. We were given 2.50 lira per head every day. When we returned to Roghudi we were given new houses. My father did not like the new house. My father had a very beautiful house and he preferred us to stay in the house that we were living in before the evacuation. Other houses were destroyed though.
The Gallicianesi returned to their village in 1954. Due to the aid provided by “the great benefactor” Umberto Zanotti Bianco,25 whose love for Calabria was renowned (Lombardi Satriani 1985:39), the stricken populations were given assistance in order to restart their lives in the village. Nevertheless, internal aid was tarnished due to scandals of mismanagement (Stajano 1979). Domenico, sixty-seven, bitterly notes, “we were given livestock as compensation for the animals lost in the landslides. The distribution was supervised by the then consigliere communale (communal councilor) of the DC and he was deciding on allocation according to the political disposition of the Gallicianesi. The ones who were voting for DC were given livestock while the communists and socialists were not.”
As the above narratives testify, actors very often convey mixed feelings about the relocations. Overall, the texture of memory is rough and regrets regarding the level of exploitation and violence sweep into the narratives, as well as feelings of lost opportunities for further political manipulation and compensation claims (Petropoulou 1997). Nevertheless, there is another string of narratives that point to a completely different direction, albeit slightly conspiratorial. A small group of Grecanici leftist intellectuals approach the decision of the Christian Democrat government to relocate the populations so far away from Reggio Calabria with overt suspicion. Drawing from similar narratives of population relocation, such as implemented in Greece during the 1946–1949 civil war (known as “dead zones”; Clogg 1992), leftist intellectuals go to great lengths to speculate as to the real motives of the government. “We were trouble makers,” Leonardo argues, “and they [the DC government] wanted to smoothly get rid of us. We were always a pain in the ass for the government after the unification. They knew that in our area they could not pretend that they were the bearers of the law” (see Astarita 1999:4). The informant does not explicitly clarify why the Grecanici were viewed as troublemakers, even though he admits that historically “in our villages there was no such thing as state tax collection.” So the “anarchic fearless nature” of the Grecanici, as these informants put it, and the governance they were operating were presumably the trigger for relocation with the ultimate goal of cultural extermination. 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
