31/12/2010
VITO TETI Not much to celebrate, in 2011, one hundred and fifty anniversary of the unification of Italy: is there to think about. We could perhaps ask what is the idea that we have in Italy. My sense of "ownership" in childhood is linked to country-place, the wrinkles, the gardens, to my religious brotherhood. I felt vaguely of Calabria, I did not know that they belong to a "region". The expansion, extension and continuation of my country called Toronto, where my father lived, and where they rode out to my playmates and schoolmates. And Rome, Turin and Milan, where he lived relatives and villagers who were returning in the summer. Turin and Juventus, carp and Nencini, "Corriere dei Piccoli" and comics. In middle school I began to understand Calabria that there was a place where I was born and lived. With Sixty-eight - that the children of laborers, farmers, the immigrants - I learned to feel "American" and "anti-American", "peasant" from Dylan and the Beat Generation. I discovered the existence of North and South, centers and neighborhoods, outside of Africa and of the 'inner Africa', the 'Our Indies from here (the South and Calabria). Over time I discovered the authors Southernists: Salvemini and Nitti, Alvaro and Layers, Levi, and Silone. I have read (and written) of "bandits" killed, destroyed countries, the "conquest" of the military in the South, the countries that are emptied by starvation. I felt, rightly, southern Calabria. I discovered, too, "foreigners", the great intellectuals and scholars (Zanotti Bianco, Isnardi, Pavese) who understood and loved Calabria. I heard the stories of those who participated in the First World War and there were Italians. And the stories of farmers who occupied the land and returning emigrants and change the world. My sense of "ownership" is dilated, it curls. I became "Italian" for literature and cinema, language and art, for football and music: for what the current government is destroying and dismantling. Italian for the bonds of affection, respect and friendship that bind me to other Italian. I loved and I love Milan and Turin, Bologna and Venice, Naples and Genoa and I took the thousands of lines that connect these cities in Calabria. The identity involves additions and subtractions. Hear here and elsewhere, in places and out of place, wherever appaesato or foreign, is an adventure experienced over time. In 1993 I published "The accursed race. Antimeridionale origins of the injury "a disturbing racism antimeridionale, dating back at least to the late nineteenth century, was spreading in the North, with political objectives in the period in which Europe and the world exploded in terrible conflict," ethnic ". I imagined then that the political classes, intellectuals, many enlightened people of the South were able answers to political, economic and social, to the challenge of the times. I thought that the rites "archaic," and postmodern Bossi could respond with a high cultural tradition, that of Joachim of Fiore and Campanella, Vico and the Cross of Telesio and Padula, of those who, in the words of Alvaro , were able to provide decisive contributions to the national and European culture. I had hoped that the dreams of freedom and justice to robbers, farmers and laborers could be continued by groups capable, finally, to address the "Southern Question" as a national problem. Not so. We (I use an "us" from which I'm out), but instead contribute to encourage the invention of the "issue of the North". We spent to say "Neapolitan", "Calabrese", "Mediterranean", while the beauties were spoiled and landscapes devastated by mafia and politicians. Too quiet. Mille complicity. We have allowed politicians and criminals antimeridionali feeding stereotypes and self-interest of the North. The racist slogans at the end of the Northern League have resulted in a sort of "curse" that has been fulfilled. Crushing, pulverization, the mutation of Italy are not just threatened but also practiced daily, not just to the north. Fallen into the traps of the League, many imagine to get out Lega inventing the south. The inhabitants of Calabria have endless reasons to complain and feel dispossessed, but now, some elements to reflect, to avoid self-absolution general, not always blame the other, to find their own house in the grounds of "disunity" of Italy and even the "disunity" of their countries. Not convinced the authors that are beginning the history of the South with the unification of Italy, forgetting events of the oldest and the Southern Renaissance, which was betrayed and can not stand other betrayals. Write the story "true", complicated, painful revisionism of the past does not mean creating autoassolutori that lead to illiberal and divisive. They are scary books that consider the 'Ndrangheta heirs of the robbers. Feeling Italian and Calabrian today implies, perhaps, being "anti-Italian" and "anticalabresi" away from this political class, by these elites, from a middle class and criminal collusion. Because I love the places and people, I claim every right to reject the slimy "Calabrese" which should bring together victims and perpetrators, honest people living with difficulty and fixers who also thrive on disasters. The identity-based earth, blood, origin based separatism and "racism" and, as we see, massacres and tragedies. On these rules and regulations "identity" based on their consensus that crime in politics and "politics" become criminal. If we continue to destroy the region and self-destruction, we have more resources to be delivered to Italy we want. Belonging to a place, a nation, the world is not a fate, can not be a prison, is an achievement and a process without end and without borders. Tracking the "sense" of being "Calabria" and "Italian" everywhere and "nowhere else", with "persuasion". Places to live without the weight of the origins, every day without having to make statements of affiliation or invent "identity against."
