anarchists

Who were Chiocchini and Camillò?
by Massimo Lunardelli

Completely unknown, not even present in the Biographical Dictionary of Italian Anarchists, Casimiro Chiocchini and John Camillò were two original figures of men and militants.

 

CI wonder how many know the stories of anarchists Casimiro Chiocchini and John Camillò. Probably very few, there is no trace of them even in that inexhaustible source of information that is the biographical dictionary of the Italian anarchists published in 2003 by the BFS. Yet by their criminal records kept at the central policy, there are two parallel lives that deserve not to be lost, if only in a dignified respect for consistency that never gave them up.
Casimiro Chiocchini, born in 1873, is a Tuscan from Calcinaia di Pisa he moved to Rome in his late teens: "It 's dark font, bold and fanatical nature of his ideas. In 1891 he attended all the meetings that prepared the anarchic criminal offenses of 1 May and since then has never stopped being a very active propaganda and to excite the minds of the workers. Strait in an intimate relationship with the most dangerous anarchists, was several times suspected as an accomplice in several explosions occurred in Rome in the winter of 1892-1893 and was for that title and that of conspiracy arrested in February 1893, but then in July same year acquitted of the charges because of insufficient evidence, "read the biographical notes compiled by the Prefecture of Rome in the crucial 1894, the year in which Sante Geronimo Caserio stabbed in Lyon French President Carnot to death and in Italy, an anarchist from Lugo, Paolo Lega, was threatening the life of Prime Minister Crispi, who had immediately responded by enacting the so-called anti-anarchist laws in hopes of curbing social unrest that many bloodied Italy from Sicily to Lunigiana: "Sir, the anarchists of Massa and Carrara, making armed gangs roaming through those countries for criminal purposes, breaking telegraph wires, blocking roads, attacking the police insidiously. From demeanor, from the file, the program with all that enemies of the Fatherland, the presumption arises that the legitimate cases of Massa and Carrara are linked to those of Sicily. Should strike at birth this retching barbarism with a ready and determined intervention" the wrote to the king in the note that accompanied the decree of martial law. Inevitable that in the overheated atmosphere of a young boy came out of found fuel for his desire to change the world. And with no fear of facing a claim it made any authority: "He himself confessed to repeatedly in this office to be an anarchist revolutionary and that they want the subversion of existing order by violent means both individual and collective" noted the prefect resigned on 31 November 1894.

Casimiro Chiocchini and Giovanni Camillò

Serve the cause of the revolution

Casimiro Chiocchini works as a carpenter. He married Guerrina Carloni and exercises in a small shop owned by the father-in-paris avenue that police called "a filthy hut." In these parts go and stop, according to the police, "the worst anarchy Roman thugs, including certain Luigi Zucchini, Ernesto Emiliani, Montesi Antonio Lubrano Vito". Yet knowing how Casimiro should do with the work if in a few years that filthy hovel with paris becomes a thriving factory in Via Capo d'Africa, which employs several workers. When in 1932 a few days off will be granted to introduce his wife to his native country, the Prefecture of Pisa detects perplexed: "Staying in this city in a first class hotel and was equipped with a rich set of discrete and means so much to raise suspicion for its changing economic conditions. " But at the end of the Roman police Clelio will admit: "A tireless worker, has been able to get a good name in the industrial Roman and form a good financial position."
In those years, Casimir is described as "a tall 1.65 meters, of slender build, graying brown hair, brown eyes, clean-shaven, pale, walking quickly, with a mole on the right eyebrow." Its changing economic conditions are certainly not denying the idea: "The money I earned must serve the cause of the revolution" and likes to say the police wrote: "Continue to maintain faith in the anarchists principles professed and while not always taking part in meetings or suspicious handle, they usually finance the anarchist press, comrades and even the most needy poor people who come to him. " When the morning of 11 September 1926 at Porta Pia Gino Lucetti fails to assassinate Mussolini, he is in the bank: "He was taking money from his banking account and immediately phoned his secretary on the door of the factory because it raised the national flag and afternoon of that day simply to pay the workers' early warning of an informant swore then I heard it regretted that the second time the blow has gone bankrupt: "He said that it will not try a third time will be longer because of one. "

John Camillò however, is actually named Giovanni. He was born in Calabria, in Maropati, November 22, 1897. Son of a family of modest circumstances, attended the first three years of elementary and while learning the craft of shoemaking. Then the war of 1915 led him away, wh goes as a volunteer to fight in Gorizia on the Italian front to the sea and after Caporetto in France, the Argonne, seeing things "to be shivering even the hardest hearts of the rocks." Was discharged in 1920 and also for him, as for many other boys of the south, there seems no other way but to go to find fortune in the Americas. Giovanni goes first and then to Buenos Aires in the United States, New Jersey, Somerville, where he became John. It is of medium height, blond hair, blue eyes, round face, beard and mustache shaved. Adapts to do the most menial jobs, but life is getting harder and when it comes to the 1929 crisis, for him to make ends meet is becoming more complicated: "It goes on bread and onions, you'll save on slices of salami and the spaghetti. Cursed be the infamous capital, young, strong and robust we have reduced poverty in the most brutalized "he wrote to friends, without ever losing an unshakable optimism:" But the days are numbered, and the vile bourgeoisie our utopia of today will be tomorrow's reality and the rottenness of this corrupt and illegitimate societies dying exalted company grader." Not even one step ebb when, in the summer of 1933, hunger and misery took away a young son: "It would be better that we did the workers can not put the males in this world full of injustice, shame ed'infamia. We have removed everything but never come to that ideal that we rise up as a great beacon light, "says to Salvatore Vellucci confined to Ponza.

The meeting with Errico Malatesta

John Camillò became an anarchist when he still wore the uniform. What changed his life was a meeting in Ancona with Errico Malatesta: "Dear friend and brother, you can not believe what comfort I felt in pretty good feel. But I was much more grateful if you could see there as you saw when you return to Ancona from London. In these times with great sorrow of my heart unspeakable wearing the uniform of the king little soldier. With me there was another soldier, this Cegni Augusto, Macerata standing together on the front gave me your brochure among farmers that I have read and reread carefully, "he wrote in a precarious Italian in 1931. In the United States was first approached the group of "The Hammer" by Carlo Tresca and then to "The Gathering of Refractories." His main political references and humans are Zonchello Constantino and Vittorio Blotto. Writes regularly to Malatesta informing him of things American, unemployed soldiers hunted with poison gas, the shooting took place in Uruguay Severino Di Giovanni, February 1, 1931; on the health of Virgilia D'Andrea, who has just been made the ugly evil that would soon kill her, just taken place on many conferences or just programmed. He confesses that he too would like to talk sometimes, but that does not feel for his poor education. Sometimes he confides: "I'll tell you the truth, just see every day in all this injustice and infamy always to the detriment of workers can not help but become more and more nervous." But always reappears at the bottom of his letters to the optimism: "We have faith in a less sad place for the next generation. Science goes toward anarchy said Pietro Gori, "writes May 4, 1932
When July 22, 1932 Errico Malatesta dies, John understands that he has lost the most important person in his life: "We have lost a companion, friend, father, teacher. Not only us personally, but countless faithful to the idea that he so nobly personified. How we feel alone today without him. Remain forever in the history of the proletariat to the admirable example of his crystal clear life. Remain and we will study the works with even greater understanding of love, we will know with more intense faith and we will in all ways to ensure that it is still alive though dead and more than before in the great heart of all the oppressed and of all who thirst for justice, "writes Elena Melli few months later. And from that day will continue to remain in contact by letter with the companion of the late Italian anarchist leaders. The spurs, is the courage, the invites to go on enduring great pain and made a sharer of her: "Seeing the photograph of the tomb of our dear Errico, I cried like a baby. We throw a flower and a salute over the graves of our loved ones and continue the battle, there's nothing else to do, "writes the last day of the year 1933. Letters punctual, discreet, full of affection: "It has been two years since the death of our dear Errico..." "Now I'm three years late that our master has left us ...." And along with the minutes of May 1: "A full day to march past meeting many friends and comrades. You'll see, the day will come, it is inevitable. After the torment, sacrifice, persecution, will win. The gallows, the jail, the staff will not be to weaken the fascist. Next, on and on. " Or the trepidation for the facts of Spain: "Here we continue to experience moments of anxiety and hope for our loved ones scattered through the streets of the world," he writes in October 1936 and then tell the pain six months after the Barcelona killing of Camillo Berneri and Francesco Barbieri, known as "Ciccio", Calabrese as he: "I hope that this disgrace will not remain unavenged. The authoritarian communists would do well if in exchange for assassinating our comrades murdered the real enemies. "
Casimiro Chiocchini and John Camillò, separated by twenty years and many miles, have never met and most likely were unaware of the existence of each other. If there is a thread that somehow holds together their lives, it is the intimate relationship with Malatesta. Casimiro Chiocchini actually is, according to police, one of his biggest financial backers: "In the relationship so intimate that Errico Malatesta on his return to Rome from London took up residence in his house," it said in a statement. When Malatesta was nearing the end and lived largely segregated at home, forced to breathe with oxygen tanks, Casimiro did the impossible to go to visit him one last time. It took courage, even affecting an official good-hearted fascist who in January of 1932 wrote to his superiors: "In Rome, in Querceto 23, there is the Casimiro Chiocchini industry from nothing has created one of the main industries of the city and are taking important jobs for the united Nations building in Geneva. All his activity was to bring a subversive anarchist flapping black tie. Now you do not care that he works, has a family of twenty people, needs to work in peace and instead the police storm a little. For an act of kindness would go to visit Malatesta who is dying. But it is forbidden. They invoke a measure generous. "But there was no way. Had to be content to visit him at the cemetery and even ending his list of those 23 July 1932, "went to visit the remains of the famous Malatesta." It was the practice for a man who continued to be a scary place even in death.

Fascism and War

The latest news about Casimiro back to the early forties. There was the war, he was about seventy years, had given birth to eight children including five boys, a couple of them called Cafiero and Angiolillo, and still it was shut down in the bars of Rome because "he was doing stupid appreciation of political facts." In 1942 he was obliged to submit an application for a certificate of morality and politics, without which he would not be easy to find work orders, but they denied it to him. So he took a pen and paper: "Since the Italian law allows any common criminal to obtain its certificate from criminal prosecution with a list of sentences passed, there can be no reason which is not an arbitrary act, which prohibits the Police to release to those considered a political criminal the certificate on their conduct, noting all the faults of the person, who may well prove to be a gentleman and always will continue their work without the risk of being confused with the scoundrels " wrote to the Royal Police.
John Camillò however, lost in the belly of America, where "you want him living in sin with an Italian woman, unidentified, with whom he fathered several children," he wrote in 1938 the Prefect of Reggio Calabria, the last track stops at the April 30, 1938. There's his signature at the bottom of an article published in the anarchist periodical "The Proletarian," that the Consulate in New York, sending it to the Ministry in Rome, defines ignoble. It's an article entitled "buffoon" comment that to the honor XI Pope has just granted to Mussolini: "The leader of the Blackshirts will now bring to genuflect in the Vatican, but the crowds will follow them to desert the churches where today please a God a liar. The walks free thought, not the Roman Inquisition arrested him, do not stop the dirty filthy black shirts of Mussolini but will have the golden spurs. The people waiting. To see them hanging together from the highest lamppost in St Peter's Square, in the name of the freedom that did not die in the name of that ideal that is not killed, but energized, regenerated, quickened by the last agonies, the last spasms. The lamppost clumsy buffoons!, The lamp! Who cares if it's today or tomorrow? It will be ".