150° anniversary

State massacres of the nineteenth century
by Gianni Sartori

Between all the unified and patriotic rhetoric, there are historical events that are worth knowing. They remind us that the unification process was not all roses.

Perhaps it had a point when Moretti, talking about some on the left, institutional and / institutionalized, claimed that "these are grown up watching the Fonzie."
Faced with the maneuvers of the right (in addition to the usual fascist, reactionary and fundamentalist, even a few years ago, Communion and Liberation and the League for some time) to take possession of the southern insurgency and brigandage anti-sabaude (uprisings against Napoleon but also of the Veneto, Trentino and the Tyrol, or the "country of mass theft" post-unification - Frederick Bozzini reread) one would expect a wave of indignation on the part of the "historical memory" of the left. But evidently the popular uprisings are almost a nuisance (old things in bad taste), evoking embarrassing plebeian origins of many "friends" prefer to get rid of. Instead of studying them to understand how they were manipulated by the ruling classes, you choose to ignore them or, worse, demonize, as with so many unorthodox liberation struggles (see the Luddites, criminalized because "anti-historical").
Yet even these characters should have been part (if not for the registrar, at least culturally) than generations in the late sixties and seventies of last century, resumed their discussion of worldviews and established certainties of convenience.
At that time, the reading of Italian history, did not fail on the left who played the conquest of the South as an operation of "internal colonialism". Instead banditry was recognized in an extreme form of rebellion of the rural population against the "gentlemen", a ground resistance of the lower classes against the order of the exploiters, old and new. The debate was not the monopoly of a few intellectuals, limited in academia, but also infected the popular arts, music, movies, comics, murals. The band of Six Flocks, after the "flight to India," the singer Carlo Rocchi, had become a landmark for the area of the Student Movement of Mario Capanna. Among other evidence, they left an LP fully dedicated to the Resistance (their "Stalingrad" can still be heard whistling in some parade antagonist) and a collection of revolutionary ballads reinterpreted. From Woody Guthrie to Theodorakis, from Amodei ("Deaths of Reggio Emilia") Mc Ilvogue ("Leaving Belfast Town"). But the piece that caused most stir is "Pontelandolfo" (inserted Lp Unit), in memory of the riflemen made by Cialdini in retaliation for the killing of some soldiers in Piedmont. On that occasion the Italian troops operated with Nazi methods, many women were raped before being killed and the church was razed to the ground. It should therefore be granted to the Six Flocks have revived the courage of this shameful page in history, making it into the public domain. Was performed (other times), even at a Cantagiro, causing considerable embarrassment and could harm their careers.

The red shirts, what a disappointment

In the film "Bronte, news of a massacre" (filmed in the same period in Six Flocks of song, in the early seventies) was recalled a popular revolt in Sicily (founded in the wake of the expedition of Garibaldi) against the rich, the landowners and even moderate liberals (though members of the ruling classes). During the insurrection the landowners were executed and their houses burnt. Among the rebels stood a charcoal, Calogero Ciraldo Gasparazzo. As is known, then the rebellion was bloodily repressed by the same orders Garibaldi Nino Bixio, who worked as the Stalinist Lister with the rural libertarian communities (in Aragon, August 1937). If you want, with a small Kronstadt sixty years in advance.
Along with the good few survivors managed to reach the mountains Gasparazzo becoming with time a famous brigante. Its spectrum will return to disquiet powerful and privileged in the next century. In the early seventies, the political cartoonist Robert Zamarin baptized with the name of Gasparazzo, referring explicitly to the hero people of Bronte, the Fiat worker (immigrant from South and regularly hosts pissed, bosses, cops and beams) of its stripes appeared in the newspaper (of which Zamarin, who died prematurely, had designed the famous logo with the letters that formed the closed fist).
This confirms that most of the "peasants" and the other dispossessed of the Two Sicilies had taken up arms for the sake of the revolt of the Bourbons, but as revenge against the "gentry", comes from the memories of the bandit Carmine Crocco Donatelli. Crocco while serving in the army, his mother died in the asylum in Aversa, leaving ten children, all younger than he. Crocco presented a petition to the King first and then another without ever answer. "One day I said to the king that I often had occasion to meet as soldier or arrange for these creatures to do or I will! To me this threat was dealt a month in jail. Fresh out fled the army, killed two policemen, I went into hiding. " Carmine Crocco many other rebels also had the illusion that with the arrival of the red shirts could change things.
Indeed, as previously Pisacane, Garibaldi, in 1860 had opened the prisons (many ex-convicts wore the red shirt) and had issued several decrees in favor of the farmers: the abolition of the ground, the abolition of duties, the division of land (to draw). But his orders were on paper and the farmers learned to their cost that "liberals" were redistributing the land to their advantage, occupying bureaucratic positions in profitable while the "new order". Crocco had followed Garibaldi in Capua fighting with his troops. "I and my fellow volunteers were part of this province who went to join the battalions of Garibaldi. We followed the General to Naples and took part in the battles of the independent homeland. After the war the governor assured us that he would throw a veil over our past sins. But he did not keep his promise. I took a second time because of the woods. ".

Poverty and banditry

In 1861, poverty and banditry in the South swept the abolition of protective tariffs in the former kingdom of the Two Sicilies led to the collapse of industries present here an extensive fueling unemployment. Seventy thousand soldiers were demobilized former Bourbon army and returned home, hungry and desperate. Even twenty thousand partisans, with the dissolution of the army of volunteers, found themselves in the middle of the road. The call to arms of young people from the state unit had produced thousands of deserters and stragglers. At this point the bands of armed robbers swelled assuming a true military structure. The dethroned king, Francis II of Bourbon, was not unprepared to finance by providing the uprising, the first and then from Rome to Gaeta. He was also contacted Carmine Crocco, promptly supplied with "eight hundred rifles and ammunition and eight hundred matching red republican caps (sic)." The guerrillas of the robbers, the government will respond with a state of siege and war tribunals.