“An immigrant is not a burden but a gift”
This essay was originally published on 10 July 2022 for subscribers to our newsletter.
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As announced, I am going to tell a story that will hopefully rekindle your faith in human nature even after forty years of reheated nineteenth-century laissez-faire. But first of all I want to give you the opportunity to see the French film made by Catherine Catella and her crew, which will tell you a great deal more about what was going on there than I ever will. The link is here and the password is “calabria” (all lower case). Catella, who gave me permission to provide this information, comes from a family of Calabrian emigrants to Southern France, and the film establishes a link between Calabrian emigration of the past and Calabrian immigration today, though the latter at least in Riace has been greeted with open arms. The presence of this film crew was my one stroke of good luck, as I got quite a bit of information second-hand from them, as I will explain.
In April of this year I finally set off on a study trip I’d been wanting to do for years or in fact a couple of decades. It concerned two experiments in welcoming and supporting immigrants in the long term – in fact perceiving all refugees from war or famine, and so-called economic migrants who are driven by forces no less ineluctable – and these were two hilltop towns in Calabria no more than thirty kilometres apart, but very different in many ways. I cannot say that I have the last word on this complex subject, and perhaps I don’t even have the first word, but I can tell you of what little I have learnt and yet that is not so little because it is definitely a story of sacrifice and idealism. It is also one of love – love for humanity in all its forms and cultures, though that word was never claimed in any conversation I had there. It was a dream that was remarkably practical and achievable, and its ruination was entirely due to the vicissitudes of national politics.
The story starts with the first Gulf War in which the Kurds, having been encouraged to rebel against Saddam Hussein by the Western coalition, were left unprotected against his fury once that same coalition decided to stop one hundred miles short of Baghdad having massacred an army in rout all the way there. When news of the Kurds’ trek over the snow-covered mountains reached the Mayor of Badolato, he decided that the abandoned houses of upper Badolato could be gifted to the Kurds in an attempt to regenerate the town. This thirty-year-old story has always fascinated me and even haunted me. It seems so distant from attitudes in Britain, notwithstanding the dedication of the valiant few around Britain and even in Calais where some have gone to help and express their anger at the lack of humanity of successive British governments culminating in the current one which is the worst of them all.
In the early 2000s some friends arranged a meeting in which I was able to interview an employee of the UNCHR who had experience of the Badolato story. Even then it was clear that things had not gone as planned, but first I should explain the background of the borghi, most of which are what we think of as “Italian hilltop towns”. In the South and some parts of the Centre, banditry had encouraged the peasantry to live in tight-knit communities on hilltops (also to avoid malaria which was endemic before the war in some areas). These towns have been depopulating dramatically since the fifties and the sixties, and this has led in some cases to doubts about their viability, while also threatening another of Italy’s remarkable architectural heritages. Pitigliano at Tuscany’s southern border with Latium is an example and I have noticed the problem of an ageing demography over the twenty years I have been living here on and off. Badolato, on the other hand, was an even more serious case when its mayor made his move. The man from the UNHCR explained that after a few years the Kurds started moving away, quite a few of them to larger Kurdish communities in Germany. He then gave me a little hope, perhaps because he noted my disappointment: after some time Kurds had started to reappear and began to restore the houses they’d been gifted. I cannot confirm whether this was true or, if so, to what extent this occurred, but I can say that today the Kurdish presence is miniscule. Paradoxically, the fame this mayor’s honest intentions generated has regenerated the town by increasing tourism and buyers of second homes – or indeed even better, people who have moved there permanently and become part of the community – and this is a positive outcome in itself. However the original aim was not achieved. It is a beautiful town on a high hill which starts almost immediately after leaving lower Badolato which straddles the coastal road and lives off a typical seaside economy. That is a different world of new builds and seasonal work, and it is where most of the population of Badolato now live. I wasn’t in the upper town for long enough to say that it was a happy place, but it certainly seemed like that. I met many interesting and likeable people, but the migration question avoided me. There was one Kurd who had survived there from the first wave and he had a family he’d created there, but he didn’t want to talk to me and that was quite understandable. Two more families had come in recent times or returned, but we’re no longer talking about a significant event.
I set off for my second hilltop town with very few expectations, and my lack of them seemed justified when I finally turned up. In the case of Riace, the borgo is seven kilometres away from its modern seaside offspring of the same name, and they appear to be almost completely separate. When I arrived it was drizzling but sufficiently bearable for a quick look around town. I was immediately struck by the great number of murals, often with very explicit messages, such as the one with a blacksmith and another man reshoeing a donkey, with the following caption I have translated: “Power is the rubbish tip of humanity and, even if we are two romantic wrecks, we’ll spit in the face of injustice day and night.” Another more complex and elegant one is a quote from Pasolini’s La rabbia (The Rage), first published in 1962 (also complete with images of more than one donkey and a blacksmith, and the work is signed by Simona Ponzù Donato): “When the classic world has run its course, when all the peasants and all the artisans are dead, when there will be no more fireflies, no more bees and no more butterflies, when industry will have rendered the production cycle unstoppable, our history will have ended.” That is an interesting one, as its message came up when I eventually spoke to Domenico (Mimmo) Lucano.
It was clear that a great deal had been happening at Riace, but unfortunately it felt as though the unpleasant events of last year had destroyed a great deal. I went to the bar in the main square which was still closed and a man told me that it would reopen at 3 pm, which meant a wait of two hours while rain was now beating down with tropical insistence and yet it was freezing cold. I wasn’t wet because of the overhanging roof on the bar, but the view before me felt like Great Yarmouth with palm trees on a wet December day, and not Calabria towards the end of April. I read a novel for a bit, but the cold had me walking up and down the veranda and I started to consider the possibility of doing a runner to Villa San Giovanni where you get the ferry for Sicily. Fortunately I didn’t. I held out until almost half past three when a van drew up at speed and the barman leapt out and opened up. Finally I got into the warmth and a plate of pasta with chili sauce. Alessio the barman gave me the first inkling that this was an original – even unique – place if his pleasant mix of brusqueness and kindness was anything to go by. I should add that the kindness didn’t surprise me, as I’d met it in Badolato and it is generally to be found in Italy for that matter. I asked about a bed for the night and he immediately started ringing around on his mobile phone. As time passed, others got involved in resolving the task of my head needing a roof, and someone insisted on driving me to the door because he didn’t trust me to find my way in the narrow lanes and I was very happy to acquiesce. I can’t actually remember who did find my home for the next six nights.
Conversations confirmed that Riace is a shadow of its former self, but it is still quite an impressive shadow. I already knew that Domenico (Mimmo) Lucano is the central element in this story and thus demonstrated that on occasions much can come from one man or woman, however the reason why I have mentioned Badolato at all is that Lucano himself admits it was his inspiration. One thing leads to another as we shall see. If you have watched the film, you will have seen Lucano who first appears in what is presumably his home talking about Calabria’s long experience of foreigners who also came as invaders – permanent ones or corsairs on raids. But other bore cultural innovations: “the Mediterranean is a crossroads,” he says. In the film he is a youngish man with plans and hopes, much of which he would achieve. When I interviewed him, it became clear that his vision did not stop at assisting immigrants during that moment of first impact which has such an effect on all of us who go to live abroad. Important as that is, he is also interested in creating communities and this also means an economy. He wanted to resurrects crafts, such as weaving (a common feature in such movements) and, at an even more everyday level, baking bread. I know from friends of my age brought up in the Tuscan countryside in the fifties and sixties that people used to produce a week’s supply of bread in outside ovens, often as a community. Since then these skills have disappeared, and Lucano, like John Berger and Pier Paolo Pasolini (and indeed Tolstoy if we go back even further), knows that the wholesale disappearance of European peasant culture is a tragic loss, but unlike them he thinks that it can at least in part be reversed through immigration from places where such skills still exist. In the film we are introduced to a Kurd who has made Riace his home (whether that is still the case, I do not know) and he feels that partly because Calabria looks just like Kurdistan, according to him. I heard that the Kurds who also use outside clay ovens to make their bread made one in Riace and demonstrated how it was done to the locals.
Some autochthonous practices are still very much alive, and the film shows this with various shots of a couple making cheese from sheep’s and goats’ milk as well as the sheep and goats climbing up and down the precipice across the way from a town square. In the morning and evening I liked to watch this spectacle, and if anyone visits this town, I recommend that you don’t miss out on it. A van comes round with local vegetables and fruit, and I can also recommend the oranges which tasted like no others I have ever eaten – like oranges used to taste, I imagine.
I have no idea what political label Lucano applies to himself or if he applies one at all. Anarchist may possibly be what he is, but he is also a very pragmatic man and I suspect that he is a man without a party and without a label – a cane sciolto, to use the Italian term (a dog without a lead). One of his most loyal supporters is the local bishop who came one day to an event and gave a wonderful speech which was both emotional and measured, if that is possible. The cleric, who came from Trentino in the north-east, as far away from Calabria as you can get in Italy, told us of Lucano’s visit in search of financial resources to help the people landing on the beach. The bishop immediately understood the importance of Lucano’s project and got permission from the committees raising funds for fireworks at religious festivals to syphon off some of those funds to help the new arrivals at the cost of restricting their displays in various small towns in that part of Calabria for a year. This demonstrates the haphazard and organic manner in which the experiment was born. Despite the repressive moves by government, Riace remains a place where stuff happens.
Salvini, a political weasel both cunning and obtuse who plays the xenophobic card as the Lega (ex Northern League) always has, was a sworn enemy of Lucano and also the captains of vessels saving immigrants from the waves across the Mediterranean. Once he became deputy prime minister, he initiated legal proceedings against Lucano (normally the prerogative of other bodies) and had him banned from Riace. Italian justice is not less reliable than that of other European countries, but it is slow, so many years later after Salvini had spent some time out of office and then returned in a more modest role within a large coalition, Lucano was eventually condemned and sentenced to over fourteen years of imprisonment. The verdict and the sentence are both outrageous, and also absurd given that in Calabria in particular the Mafia is doing business as never before (the power and influence of the better-known Sicilian Mafia have been dramatically reduced). Lucano is not rich and is not even interested in wealth which he considers to be a corrupting force, and Riace is the only council in the region that is not bending to the Mafia’s will, which takes courage and organisation. Naturally Lucano is not the same man or rather he is the same man politically but he is no longer mayor and he is considerably unnerved by the sentence he may be facing while his appeal is going through. Lucano has been condemned for his humanity which in our new and not-so-new neoliberal world is a sin – an unwanted interference with the mechanisms of the market.
There is of course a legal loophole which may or may not have been inserted in legislation intentionally. Either way it has had devastating effects on Lucano and those organisations patrolling the Mediterranean to save immigrants attempting to cross it (and there are unknown numbers who die on the way). Effectively the legislation against people-trafficking outlaws any assistance of refugees and illegal immigrants without making a distinction between those who do it for profit and those who do it for humanitarian reasons either out of their own pocket or by using charitable funds received from the public. It is to be hoped that Lucano’s conviction will be overturned by the Court of Cassation which has already done so in the Baobab decision on 21 April of this year. It stated that such assistance was not only legal but also a moral and legal duty. Andrea Costa and others involved in the humanitarian organisation called Baobab had been found guilty and Costa was facing eighteen years. The UN rapporteur tweeted that the case should never have gone to court, and it is indeed difficult to understand how such a thing could happen.
That decision was only a few days after I left Riace, so I very much hope that Lucano is sleeping better at night now there is this precedent. However the damage to Riace has been done, and it remains for me to assess as well as I can where Riace is going from here. The French film crew were doing precisely this while I was there so they will be better able to provide fuller understanding of the situation in their next film which will be released towards the end of this year. Mine is just an interim report mainly based on my conversation with them, because my attempt at on-the-ground journalism was something of a failure itself, and they were able to interview people I couldn’t reach (my time was not wasted, because I got on with my translation of Giovanni Verga’s I Malavoglia). I visited the nearby towns and there were signs of the immigrants’ presence. In Camini I heard a conversation in Arabic across a square but was unable to identify where they were speaking from. In one place I saw the names of children enrolled in the schools and a large number of them were not Italian. The film crew were able to inform me that while some immigrants had left for Milan and Rome after the frontal attack on Riace, many others had quietly shifted to these other towns and were independently implementing Lucano’s programme using the skills they’d learnt from him (in particular, I would think, the ability to deal with Italian bureaucracy). I have always found Italy a welcoming place which more than compensates for the inevitable racism and intolerance that also exists to some degree, as Salvini has so clearly demonstrated. The French crew also told me that the standard of the craftsmanship in these towns was now very high.
Badolato provided a model. Riace under Lucano’s leadership created some much larger and vibrant. Now something more rooted and wide-ranging is perhaps occurring within the interior beyond Riace, and that is something I and many others really want to believe in.
Allan Cameron, Pitigliano, July 2022
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