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Chapter 2

Meet the Grecanici

A prolific number of studies on minorities have shed light on the historical and political genealogies of what is meant by minority status in Europe (see Cowan 2000, 2010). Scholars such as Jennifer Jackson Preece (1997), Mark Mazower (2004), and Jane Cowan (2010) examine the historical predicament of developing a comprehensive UN framework toward the protection of minority populations after 1918. Looking at the issue of the minorities from a top-down perspective, these studies delve deeply into the logics of treaties and the thorny position of minority recognition on a pan-European level. Subsequently, nation-state recognition of minorities was a criterion of identification and UN membership to accord with a vision of a multicultural Europe (Prato 2009; Cowan 2010). From a bottom-up perspective, other studies in Europe have highlighted the precariousness of the term “minority” for the inclusion of alloglot populations as meaningful constitutives of the national fabric (Karakasidou 1997; Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2001; Ballinger 2003; Zografou and Pipyrou 2011). Language as a semantic web of collective identification is interlinked with xenophobic evocations of “second-class” citizenship, violence, fear, inclusion and exclusion (Herzfeld 2011b; Knight 2013a; De Munck and Risteski 2013).

With twelve languages officially recognized by the state, Italy can boast the greatest diversity of regional and minority languages in Western Europe (Dal Negro and Guerini 2011). The legal framework concerning the governance and protection of linguistic rights is drawn directly from the EU and the Council of Europe. Moreover, under the auspices of UNESCO and other international bodies the debate over the preservation of endangered minority languages has gained momentum in the last two decades. With an ever increasing engagement in recording endangered languages and promoting linguistic rights of minority populations all over the world there is a fundamental need for anthropological research to investigate the links between purely linguistic research, the social and political interests of linguistic minorities and the various scales of governance where minority politics are realized. We can no longer deny that the complex web of views of minority populations themselves, local and national government, as well as European Union guidelines, synthesize a picture that introduces practical and theoretical incommensurabilities into minority studies (Fishman 2002; Pipyrou 2012). The Grecanici find themselves in a paradoxical position; from the outside they are viewed as a vulnerable minority on the verge of extinction, yet they simultaneously exercise fearless governance of their own language and culture.

Speaking Grecanico, a language categorized by UNESCO as “severely endangered,” the Greek linguistic minority of Calabria is one of two Greek speaking populations in South Italy.¹ A considerable number of national associations for the protection of endangered and minority status languages in Italy, such as the Lega per le Lingue delle Nazionalità Minoritarie (LeLiNaMi) and the Comitato Nazionale Federativo Minoranze Linguistiche d’Italia (CoNFeMiLI), talk of the Greek linguistic minority of South Italy as occupying an isola (island). The metaphor of an island existing within inland Italy is a strong cognitive sign that captures notions of marginalization, economic, and social isolation and victimhood. The metaphor of the “island” not only echoes the closed and static communities, prevalent in the anthropology of the 1960s with all the inherent problems of contextualization and analysis, but somehow reinforces stereotypes of the subjugated, hegemonic, and marginal.² At the beginning of the new millennium, governmental structures such as the sportelli linguistici (linguistic helpdesks) connect the interests of linguistic minorities to regional, provincial, and municipal schemes, where once they were solely the concern of local civil society. The sportelli are excellent examples of where layers of governance coexist in a creative manner and require more critical and holistic anthropological attention.

The Grecanici, the protagonists of this study, are Italian subjects, devoted Catholics, citizens of Reggio Calabria, and primarily originate from the area Grecanica in the villages of Aspromonte, Calabria. Of outstanding natural splendor, Aspromonte is believed to be the home of the narade^GO, mythological nymph-like creatures. Such cultural capital, as poetically portrayed in Franco Mosino’s preface to Angelo Romeo’s Naràde d’Aspromonte (1991), may be of service to Grecanici in their quest to save the ancient language of Magna Graecia. Romeo captures a fascinating dual perspective by placing the future of the minority in the hands of Modern Europe and Grecanici folklore. The region known as area Grecanica coincides with the regional autonomous institution Comunità Montana “Area Grecanica” (Già “Versante Jonico Meridionale Capo Sud”) and includes the comuni (municipalities) of Melito, San Lorenzo, Bagaladi, Roghudi, Roccaforte del Greco, Condofuri (with the frazioni [wards] of Amendolea and Galliciano), Bova, Bova Marina, Staiti, and Brancaleone (see Figure 1).

Grecanici are multilingual. They speak Grecanico (also termed Griko and Greco), which is comprised of archaic Doric, Hellenistic, Byzantine as well as local Romanic and Italian linguistic elements (Karanastasis 1984; Caracausi 1990; Petropoulou 2000). They also speak the local Calabrian dialect and the official Italian language. The Greek presence in Calabria commences with the colonization of South Italy and Sicily between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE and with the foundation of the first cities of Magna Graecia (Greater Greece): Reggio Calabria, Sibari, and Croton. Consecutive relocations from Greece during the Byzantine and Norman eras enriched the Calabrian populations with Greek linguistic elements and provoked a positive economic and social effervescence. For instance, in 1148 a considerable number of the population living in the Byzantine areas of Corfu, Cephalonia, Negroponte, Corinth, Thebes, and Athens were ravaged by the Norman king Roger of Sicily and relocated to the area of Reggio Calabria, altering the demographics of the city (Spano-Bolani 1979:197; Kean 2006:136). From the end of the ninth until the eleventh century Calabria flourished economically, politically, and artistically (Spano-Bolani 1979). After the fourteenth century the Greek language rapidly started receding, mainly due to political and economic instability provoked by a succession of conquests in Calabria. The decline of the Greek language during the following centuries was further associated with the abolition of the Christian Orthodox denomination, with ceremonies no longer being performed in Greek.³ The Diocese of Bova in the area Grecanica was the last to follow the Orthodox ritual to be performed in Greek until 1573⁴ (Teti 2004:60).

At the time of the unification of Italy (1861) the Greek language was spoken in twelve villages in Aspromonte, while by the beginning of the twentieth century it was spoken in nine: Galliciano, Roghudi, Chorio di Roghudi, Amendolea, Bova, Bova Marina, Roccaforte del Greco, Chorio di Roccaforte, and Condofuri. In the 1970s German linguist Gerhard Rohlfs noted that the language was not in use any more in the villages of Condofuri, Roccaforte del Greco, Chorio di Roccaforte, and Amendolea. During the same period the area was struck by devastating landslides and floods (1971 and 1972–73)⁵ that provoked the evacuation and abandonment of the villages of Roghudi and Chorio di Roghudi. The displaced populations were initially scattered around the areas of Melito di Porto Salvo, Bova Marina, and Reggio Calabria. After 1988 many relocated to the newly built settlement of Roghudi Nuova near Melito di Porto Salvo. To the present day Grecanico is spoken by the elders of Roghudi Nuovo, and less so by the elderly populations of Bova and Bova Marina. In the village of Galliciano, the language is still in use even though the Calabrian dialect is now dominant (Petropoulou 1997). Referring to the considerable publicity and tourist marketing of the area within and outside Italy, Greek anthropologist Christina Petropoulou bitterly notes that “if the motive to visit area Grecanica was to find Greek speakers then the visitor will be disappointed since the language is hardly spoken anymore” (1995:152). Petropoulou refers here to the regular disappointment generated during touristic excursions to the area Grecanica by Greek nationals who expect (and regularly demand) that local populations respond to them in Grecanico.

Figure 1. Area Grecanica

Area Grecanica is known in Greece as Ta Ellinofona (the Greek-speaking areas), and the Greek public has become more familiar with the area since the visits of philologist Angela Merianou in the 1960s and the various publications that followed.⁶ At first these publications created an idyllic, exotic, and generally distorted picture of the populations and their living conditions. Notions of common race and kinship were put forward as important links emphasizing the relatedness between Grecanici and modern Greeks. In a nutshell, Grecanici were portrayed as the “descendants of an Aryan race” (the Ancient Greeks), who, living among the “barbarous” populations (other Calabrians), managed to preserve their “Homeric Greekness” and their “immortal Greek soul and splendor.” They were further colored as “blessedly backward” with qualities such as hospitality “unique in the whole world” and philosophical, poetical, and musical dispositions. The extremely harsh conditions of Grecanici life and the miseria (socioeconomic poverty) that plagued them before and after World War II were romanticized and ultimately mis-portrayed.

During the 1970s, from within Calabria, various publications were more inclusive in their treatment of “Greekness,” arguing for “the Greek roots” all Calabrians share and the “lost grandeur” of a “higher civilization.” Here, location rather than race, kinship, and blood, was emphasized as the connecting thread between the Greeks who colonized South Italy in the eighth century BCE and modern-day Calabrians. These arguments played a pivotal role for other local populations of non-Grecanico origin to develop substantial claims to cultural patrimony that since the turn of the twenty-first century has ignited heated debates on rights and origins (Pipyrou 2014a).

Responding to the exoticism cultivated in Calabria and Greece regarding their “origin” and “heritage,” Grecanico cultural associations founded at the end of the 1960s in Reggio Calabria engaged in profound historical constructivism in order to address what they termed the Questione Grecanica (the Grecanico Problem). Petropoulou defines two distinctive periods regarding the trajectories of the management of Grecanico language and culture. The first period—what Petropoulou (1997:243) calls the “Awakening”—refers to the 1970s and the action of the first associations on religious and linguistic matters. During this time there was a systematic effort to convert Grecanici to Orthodox Christianity.

In the 1970s a prolific collaboration between Greek monks from Mount Athos, the Greek state and the Greek-Italian college of Rome, Saint Athanasios, resulted in a considerable number of masses, baptisms and marriages following the Orthodox rites to be performed in the villages of the area Grecanica (Petropoulou 1997:216). Despite the fact that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, under whose aegis the Orthodox Church of South Italy falls, would never openly admit initiatives of organized proselytism targeting Grecanici populations,⁷ ethnographic evidence and an extensive monastic network between Greece, Calabria, and Constantinople highlight the effort to “convert” Grecanici to Orthodoxy. This lengthy though fascinating story goes beyond the scope of this book.

The Questione Grecanica and the subsequent salvation and protection of the Grecanico language and culture were hot political topics of local, national, and international import debated by the Grecanico cultural associations. Their policy advocated new outreach initiatives to engage with as many Grecanici as possible, both in the city of Reggio Calabria and the Grecanici villages, proposing a new ideology regarding Grecanico language, heritage and patrimony (cf. Palumbo 2003; Herzfeld 2009a, 2011b). The Grecanico language being considered superior (due to its Ancient Greek elements), the Grecanici were encouraged by the associations to embrace their roots and origins. They further aimed to initiate substantial links with the Greek-speaking populations of Puglia and to evoke an emotive response from the Greek public regarding the minority status of their “brothers” in South Italy.

During the same decade, further associations were formed in Greece with the aim to “help” the “Calabrian Greeks” who are constantly threatened morally and financially. These associations put forward irredentist propositions based on diasporic arguments, promoting Greece as the motherland and conceptually expanding the borders of the nation. As a result the Grecanici were, and still are, portrayed in Greece as Greeks of the diaspora, brothers, and “of the same blood,” but scarcely as an autochthonous Italian population.

During the 1980s, the second period of dealing with Grecanici minority politics, there was a combined effort from the public institutions in Reggio Calabria and the Grecanico associations to develop the area for tourism. Apart from the language, culture as well as music, food, and dance were advertised as exclusively distinctive and unique Grecanico products, resulting in numerous annual tourist visits to the area. Despite the general euphoria of these events, provoked by alcohol-induced high spirits and the tarantella (traditional dance) performed by exceptional local music groups, I was frequently asked by Greek nationals “why do these people not speak Greek?”⁸

Defining area Grecanica in purely linguistic terms is not a straightforward matter because Grecanico is spoken only in a handful of villages. Viviana Sacco (2007:70) notes that the present delineation is based on language, history, and culture, thus there are comuni Ellenofoni (with the presence of the Grecofoni) and comuni Ellenofili (friendly to Hellenic culture). In such categorizations terms such as Ellenofoni (Hellenophone), Ellenofili (Friendly to Hellenes), and Grecofoni (Grecophone) confuse matters farther and reveal deep-rooted political and sociological discrepancies. Applied liberally and interchangeably such criteria do not adequately justify the inclusion in the area Grecanica of comuni (municipalities) such as Bagaladi or Brancaleone (non-Greek-speaking in the modern era) and the exclusion of comuni such as Cardedo (Greek-speaking until the beginning of the twentieth century) (70). How far back in history do policy makers need to dig to determine inclusion in the area Grecanica? As many anthropologists have pointed out, notions such as culture, language and history are only partial sources people draw on in their quest for representation (Herzfeld 1985, 1987; Jenkins 1997; Brown 2003; Ballinger 2003; Hirsch and Stewart 2005). Provisional identities as they are, history, culture, and language can be manipulated to serve contextual political and economic purposes. At present, the confines of the area Grecanica provoke a conflict between the interested comuni, materialized on many levels and appropriated according to diverse political views. As many Grecanico associations protest, the desire exhibited by residents of nearby areas to be included in the area Grecanica is mainly dictated by the benefits of financial subsidies (from Italy and the EU) and has little relevance to the Grecanico language.

A Few Words About Reggio Calabria

Research on which this monograph is based was primarily conducted in the city of Reggio Calabria on the toe of Italy, in neighborhoods inhabited by Grecanici after their migration to the city at the end of the 1950s. The city of the agrumi (citrus fruits) and gelsomino (jasmine), Reggio Calabria is the largest urban settlement in the region of Calabria, situated between the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas. Calabria⁹ is the most southern region of mainland Italy between Basilicata and the island of Sicily. Mainly mountainous,¹⁰ Calabria is divided into five provinces, Catanzaro, Cosenza, Crotone, Reggio Calabria, and Vibo Valentia, all maintaining a certain degree of administrative autonomy.

The province of Reggio Calabria is divided into 99 comuni. The comune of Reggio Calabria covers an area of 236 square kilometers, split into 15 quartieri (neighborhoods). Of a population of approximately 184,500, over 42 percent are employed in wholesale, 11.5 percent in manufacturing, and 10 percent in the construction industry, while only 4.5 percent are involved in agriculture.¹¹ The city itself is an architectural melting pot of the old and the new, a blend of different styles, epochs, and attitudes, with architectural reminders of destitution and despair. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Reggio Calabria was a border town under the Spanish viceroy’s direct administrative control and was repeatedly destroyed by Turkish and Saracen pirates. From the seventeenth century until 1860 it was part of the Kingdom of Naples under the Bourbon dynasty. In places, Reggio Calabria is reminiscent of the medieval city that once was, circled by 17 towers. In 1783 large parts of the urban area were totally destroyed by an earthquake, only to be rebuilt by the Bourbon army under the instructions of the engineer Giovan Battista Mori.

Reggio Calabria was unified with Italy on the arrival of Giuseppe Garibaldi on the 21 August 1860. On 28 December 1908, the city was again devastated by an enormous earthquake that left almost 15,000 people dead (Dickie et al. 2007). Aid arrived immediately from many sources and the city started being rebuilt (Pipyrou 2016). Complexes of baracche (temporary hutments) were constructed in order to accommodate the homeless, with most of the new settlements being named after the benefactors (Villaggio Svizzero, Villini Svezzesi e Novegesi, Baracche Nazionali, Inglesi, Barracchamenti Militari of the Ferovieri, Americani). The baracche, visual reminders of the aid received, were situated on the northern periphery of the city, crowded between the Santa Lucia, Caserta, and Annunziata relief drains and the gardens of the quartiere Santa Caterina.

Citizens of Reggio Calabria, Reggini, exhibit pride in living in the city of Fata Morgana,¹² a mythological mirage formed by the reflection of the Sicilian city of Messina on the water of the Messina Strait. Situated on the southwestern coast of the Calabrian region, right opposite the Sicilian port of Messina and facing the snow-capped peak of Mount Etna, Reggio Calabria is blessed with one of the most beautiful coastal promenades in Italy,¹³ Via Marina (also known as Via Lungomare), which has inspired much poetic and philosophical prose. It is here that monuments and archaeological sites from the classical periods—the Greek Walls and the Roman Baths—are located. On warm and fragrant summer nights Reggini stroll along Via Marina exchanging views on politics, philosophy, culture, and love.

One of the most important locations in Reggio Calabria is Corso Garibaldi with the homonymous Piazza Garibaldi. Together with Via Marina, Corso Garibaldi is the city’s heart, the historical center and the main place for philosophizing, socializing, shopping and flirting. In the area of Callopinace, in the Piazza Duomo situated on Corso Garibaldi, stands the neoclassic cathedral of Reggio Calabria, dedicated to Maria Santissima della Consolazione who, together with San Giorgio, is the beloved patron of Reggio Calabria. The former is celebrated on the second Saturday of September when the devoted Reggini form a glorious procession from the Santuario di Santa Maria della Consolazione, in Eremos, to the cathedral of Duomo. San Giorgio is celebrated on 23 April. In the Piazza Duomo during the patronal celebrations the Reggini honor their patrons by dancing the tarantella amid the sound of the Organeto and the Tamborello.

Grecanici started migrating to Reggio Calabria from their rural villages of origin in Aspromonte at the end of the 1950s to join the small number of relatives that relocated before World War II. Nowadays, the biggest concentration of Grecanici are found in the quartieri of San Giorgio extra¹⁴ and Sbarre, while a considerable number also inhabit the quartieri of Ravagnese and Gebbione. They live in kinship clusters where three generations of family occupy the same palazzo (a multilevel building). On their arrival to Reggio Calabria, the Grecanici were met with hostility and contempt because they were perceived as the embodiment of two “negative” traits. First, they were alloglots and as such faced the hostility of non-Grecanico-speaking populations. Second, they were peasant Southerners, thus already “second class citizens” (Pipyrou 2014c). Grecanici thus experienced the stigma of inferiority (Petropoulou 1994:191–92, 1995:4), often called paddhechi,¹⁵ parpatuli,¹⁶ and tamarri^GO17 (all derogatory of peasantry) by the local Reggini. On their part, the Grecanici cultivated a discourse of isolation and superiority toward the locals, further enhanced through endogamy. As far as the Grecanici were concerned, the local Reggini were stupid, inferior, and dirty. Young male Grecanici were instructed by their mothers never to marry a Reggina, for she incorporated all the negative traits of a forestiera (foreigner): dirty (morally and physically), inferior in terms of blood, and destined to deceive him. Many of my Reggini research participants argue that Grecanici are like a tribu Africana (African tribe) because they continue to this day to favor endogamy. Reggini regularly argue that “not changing the blood for centuries has a knock-on effect on their intelligence let alone the health of their children.”

Examined in a broader historical framework, Grecanici cannot be contextualized separately from numerous other cases where local communities and disenfranchised peoples find themselves living in the shadow of the Global North, albeit geographically belonging to it (Pipyrou 2013, 2014a). Historically, Calabrians, let alone the Greek linguistic minority, were always conceptualized as peripheral and oriental (Schneider 1998; Moe 2002; Perrotta 2014). Nevertheless, anthropologists have recently brought attention to what can be viewed as a systematic push—mainly by bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—toward a rigid classification based on national competence and hierarchies of value (Wilk 1995; Palumbo 2003; Herzfeld 2004; Pipyrou 2012). What Berardino Palumbo (2003, 2010) calls “Global Taxonomic Systems,” are institutionalized paths through which transnational agencies shape and organize the global imaginary and act as instruments of governance that shape attitudes, emotions and values on a global scale (Palumbo 2010:38). Categories of national competence thus become essentialized measures of economic, political, and moral success (Knight 2013b:157, 2015). In this classificatory schema, large populations are inserted into “hollow dichotomies” such as progression and backwardness. They are not only classified as “such and such,” being denied ideological, political, and historical process, but pervasively imagined as possessing a future disposition firmly located in present imaginaries. These classificatory schemata are contemporary social cartographies that, as Richard Wilk (1995) argues, attempt to succumb local particularity to global uniformity.

Nelson Moe (2002) argues that social cartographies concerned with the Italian south as radically different from the north were shaped before the unification of Italy. The origins of these cartographies are to be found in the formation of European cultural identity between the mid-eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries. The “Southern Question” is the outcome of such classification, with deep political and scientific roots (see Schneider 1998; Moe 2002; Perrotta 2014). Furthermore, the work of criminal anthropologists—developed between 1870 and 1914—claimed scientific objectivity through positivistic methods that pervasively bound civic groups: “refusal of the rights and obligations of citizenship to those beyond this boundary could therefore rest on rational, scientific arguments” (Moss 1979:484).

It is commonplace to return to Cesare Lombroso when discussing physiological determinants with far reaching ideological and political implications. Rightly criticized by scholars inside and outside Italy, Lombroso’s (1980:11) argument concerning the Grecanici of Calabria concentrated on specific physiological and social characteristics that provided a negative deterministic basis for portraying populations. He tells us that Grecanici are of medium height, stubborn, wild of heart and spirit, and with a passion for dominance. For Albanians in South Italy, he notes that they used to resemble the Slavs and the Serbs, being tall, with straight teeth and nose, small eyes, and nervous. They are excellent runners and hunters. Their hearts are fearless and they consider vendetta imperative (Lombroso 1980:40). Similar to other criminal anthropologists such as Alfredo Niceforo (1987) working on delinquency in Sardinia, Lombroso’s work was detrimental in the sense that it created the basis for ongoing discussions regarding the “delinquent zone”: the South (Moss 1979:483).

In “Calabria in Idea,” Augusto Placanica (1985) calls for in-depth social studies that do not attribute a priori validity to such biology-based classifications. Nevertheless, Lombroso’s “scientific” arguments about the Grecanici and the Albanians of Calabria are important in this discussion for another reason. They are creatively reworked by local intellectuals and then redistributed in a more intimate fashion to become important tools in the hands of policy makers and civic groups. Locals tend to play with reworked Lombrosian arguments that in some cases justify familiar classificatory schemata about the Other. Present physiological, moral, and political human taxonomies tend to have a pervasive past. We read in Edward Lear, the famous English author, artist, and poet who traveled to Calabria and Sicily in the 1830s and 1840s,

According to our friend, Bova (… all of whose inhabitants speak a corrupt Greek and are called Turchi (Turks) by their neighbors) is a real old Grecian settlement, or rather, the representative of one formerly existing at Amendolía, and dating from the time of Locris and other colonies. The Bovani are particularly anxious to impress on the minds of the strangers that they have no connection with the modern emigrants from Albania. (Lear 1964:53)

Taking into consideration that the above snippet was written during Lear’s journeys in the autumn 1847 in the provinces of Calabria and Basilicata (Lear 1964:11), there are clear traces that negatively colored differentiations were cultivated among adjacent populations in the area Grecanica¹⁸ (Brögger 1971:29).

The initial stages of my fieldwork were influenced by my own pessimism regarding the future of my research. Acting on the advice and warnings of local gatekeepers, and myself alien to the ongoing local conflicts, the first three months I spent collecting material on the minority through all possible resources other than the Grecanici themselves. Without access to the people, I was under constant fear that my research would spell disaster. Such was my terror during these initial months that I could not appreciate the depth of data one can collect through peripheral resources. One such source was a historian from a southern university with whom I spent endless hours historically contextualizing Grecanici. Many of our fascinating conversations would end with him maintaining that the Grecanici “non hanno paura di niente” (have no fear of anything). “They are fearless” he told me many times. Did he share Lombroso’s positions? I have regularly asked him to elaborate on what he means by “fearless.” Does this relate to political, financial or kinship affairs of the minority? Is a fearless minority a paradox or oxymoron? But perceptions of Grecanici as fearless were shared by other local actors and, as I was to find out, by many Grecanici themselves.

Fluid Environments: Experiencing the Landslides

From the dawn of the twentieth century the area Grecanica has suffered from regular alluvioni (landslides) as the result of excessive flooding in Calabria, with irreversible effects on the economy and physiognomy of the region. Such was the power of an ever changing landscape that the novelist Corrado Alvaro was prompted to argue for a sense of fatality and conceptualization of life as enmeshed in images of torrents (1950:234, also Teti 2008).

The floods of 1951 and 1953¹⁹ that struck Messina, Metramo, and Reggio Calabria left hundreds of families homeless (Pipyrou 2016). The hydrogeological problems of the area Grecanica had long been identified but it seemed that there was no governmental desire to deal with the situation effectively, highlighting a more general neglect of the Italian periphery. In the 1950s floods, and again in the 1970s, Grecanici literally experienced the soil disintegrating beneath their feet, destroying their properties and leaving them homeless. Human lives, homes, and livestock were lost in the floods. After the floods of 1951 the Italian government implemented a scheme concerned with relocating whole villages to other parts of Italy (see Pipyrou 2016). To this detrimental political decision science gave consent. Ironically, according to the report of the government technical committee that accessed the hydrogeological conditions of Calabria, “the necessity to transfer the populations is not only dictated by the danger provoked by the landslides but also by the fact that in some areas the populations will never achieve a stable economic level.”²⁰ Voices that proposed resolutions to the extensive environmental and financial problems exacerbated by the floods existed, but were overlooked.²¹

Vito Teti (2008) urges a critical appreciation of the relationship between people and environment through the study of the abandonment provoked by natural disaster. For instance, villages such as Africo (a mountainous settlement in Aspromonte, destroyed in 1951) were relocated to the Ionian coast, thus completely losing their former agropastoral economy. The case of Africo is just one among many that highlight the “dramatic reality that the torrents provoked” (Cingari 1982:346). At the national level, what was exposed in the aftermath of the major floods of 1951 and 1953 was that Calabria had always been used for political justification of various taxations imposed on all Italians. After the disastrous earthquakes of 1905 and 1908 the government²² passed special laws (particularly the 12 January 1909 law), according to which Italians were taxed for the reconstruction of Calabria. Yet, over the subsequent years, the enormous amount of money collected never reached its intended destination; it was rather used for other causes such as the Libyan war and World War II, compromising the social and economic rebirth of Calabria. Leftist parliamentary voices expressed their discontent regarding the legislation and the financial allocation, attacking the inefficiency and corruption of the Christian Democrat government.

Actually little or almost nothing has changed in Calabria since 1953; the special laws for Calabria have been used as an instrument of political power of the Christian Democrats, as a means to extend the electoral clientelism of the governmental party, as motivation for bureaucratic prosperity and corruption…. The sources from the special laws for Calabria were given to the son of the president of the consortium raggruppati di bonifica, an ex-second secretary in the public sector and Christian Democrat. (Atti Parlamentari—29105—Camera dei Deputati IV LEGISLATURA - DISCUSSIONI - SEDUTA DEL 12 DICEMBRE 1966)

What was important, however was the self-determination of the Calabrians, who

were waging their own battle to recuperate the enormous amount of damage provoked by the landslides. Those united committees, comprised of priests, peasants, intellectuals and workers, not only were not encouraged and financed by the government but also they were rather obstructed by it. (Atti Parlamentari—29103—Camera dei Deputati IV LEGISLATURA - DISCUSSIONI - SEDUTA DEL 12 DICEMBRE 1966)²³

The floods constitute one of the major problems in South Italy that, at least in a pre-election period, tantalize every government regardless of political disposition. In line with the Christian Democrat government that decided on the relocation of flood stricken populations, the center-left government in 1966 argued that

We must develop the protection of the soil via the evacuation of specific populations. It is not our fault that the Calabresi, in order to survive the Saracen invasions, have inhabited the forests over the centuries. Now, it is clear, that they can no longer live in the mountains; it is not through the mountains that the grandi vie which bring civiltà and prosperity pass. (Atti Parlamentari—29117—Camera dei Deputati IV LEGISLATURA - DISCUSSIONI - SEDUTA DEL 12 DICEMBRE 1966)

Comunità Montana—instituted with the law of 3 December 1971 n. 1102—appeared as the most important legal structure of the time toward the development of the mountainous zones as well as the “internal zones” indicated by article 4 of the Italian constitution. The new law was intended to stimulate economic development and protect the environment of the mountainous zones. A new “mountainous economy” was to be based on the professional and cultural preparation of the populations. Among the main objectives, Comunità Montana was set up to provide mountainous populations with the proper services, aspiring to “compensate them for their disadvantage of living in the mountains” (Foti and Suraci 1983:19–20).

Despite the high publicity of Comunità Montana as a promising autonomous structure that could possibly alleviate the economic and social problems of the mountainous and rural Italian periphery (Foti and Suraci 1983), the Calabrian countryside continued to be abandoned. In the national census of 1971—just prior to the publication of the Comunità Montana bill—the resident population of the mountainous Aspromonte region was 121,702, while that population in the city of Reggio Calabria was 165,822. When the next census was produced in 1981 the resident populations were 110,397 and 173,486 respectively. Not only had the population of the mountains fallen while that of the city had risen, but the difference between the resident populations had grown by approximately 50 percent in only ten years. When coupled with the relatively high internal Calabrian migration rate, it is clear that the results of the Comunità Montana bill in keeping the population in the highlands and ameliorating their lives are questionable. It is interesting to note that in the 2001 national census the resident population of Aspromonte was 97,209, with 180,353 in Reggio Calabria.²⁴ While these statistics do not necessarily suggest that the larger corpus of the Aspromonte population moved to Reggio Calabria, it is clear the Comunità Montana bill did not provide the impetus for people to remain in their place of origin over the past thirty years.

Relocating Populations: Farewell Beloved Village

After the landslides of 1951 severely damaged the Calabrian Ionian coast, the Christian Democrat government decided to relocate the stricken populations as a matter of urgency. People from the Grecanico village of Galliciano were relocated to the fortress of Gaeta in Lazio (Petropoulou 1997; Pipyrou 2016), while villagers from Amendolea and Roghudi were relocated to a military camp in L’Aquila, Abruzzo. Some people, very young at the time of relocation, recollect their time in L’Aquila as “very pleasant.” Mario, sixty-four, a teacher of mathematics at a high school in Reggio Calabria, vividly, and somewhat nostalgically, remembers the years he lived in Abruzzo as “some of the best years as we were attending a very nice local school and our parents were working in local jobs. A lot of families decided to stay in Abruzzo but my family eventually returned to Reggio after some years.” For people like Mario, relocation is part of a “romanzo of the ruins” (Teti 2008), yet for others it was a deeply emotional experience of forced expatriation. Echoing discourses of genocide and forced relocation as documented in various other European contexts, actors recite deeply experiential stories that irrevocably changed their sociopolitical trajectories (Hirschon 1989; Ballinger 2003; Bryant 2010; Danforth and van Boeschoten 2012).

The Gallicianesi were relocated to the fortress town of Gaeta in Lazio where they stayed until 1954, apart from fifteen families who remained in Galliciano. According to Leo, seventy-six, “the first months in Gaeta passed very quickly since we did not have anything to worry about and they were giving us a small amount of money for our needs. But we wanted to return.” Antonia also remembers that “some women got married there with local men but the rest of us returned.” She goes on to say that “we left the village (Galliciano) because it was declared non-habitable and we were evacuated. Our sindaco (mayor) evacuated us” (in Nucera 1984/5:144). During their time in Gaeta, testimonies account for physical confrontation between locals, police, and Gallicianesi as protests erupted due to the squalid living conditions. At one point the administrative authorities only provided the detainees with stale bread, which was duly turned into makeshift weapons and hurled back at police.

The relocations are still a highly emotive, distressing, and sometimes exasperating topic of conversation. Memories remain raw and conflict is easily reignited. Reflecting on the events of the relocations, informants criticized their own compatriots—local Christian Democrat politicians—who complied with central government demands and ultimately persuaded their co-villagers of the need to relocate, thus avoiding further friction. Hints that point to the corruption of the people in question and their immediate profiteering from the promised reconstruction of their villages are evident. One research participant criticized a fellow villager: “now he discusses the landslides as if it is something outside of his family and he seems to forget that it was his father (a DC councilor) who collaborated with the mayor in order to persuade us all of the vital need for the relocation.” Similarly, there is also heavy criticism related to the favoritism of the same local councilors who distributed assets to the stricken populations on their return to the villages. Houses and livestock were allocated to relatives of councilors and people of the same political disposition.

Domenico was eighteen when his family, together with more than thirty other families from Condofuri, Brancaleone, Roghudi, Chorio di Roghudi, Amendolea, 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 mannàia^CD) alla miseria^CD 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 the aim to consolidate power, is by no means new in Italian politics. It was the policies of Agostino Depretis who exploited a trend that already existed in order to “express or rationalise the absence of party coherence and organised action” (Smith 1997:103; Schneider and Schneider 2001:436). Depretis justified and rationalized the “replacement of distinctive parties and programmes by fluid personalistic parliamentary groupings negotiating their support for a government in terms of purely local and sectional interests” (Woolf 1979:479). Until the mid-1950s, the politics of Reggio Calabria were dominated by center-right coalitions, while over the next decades, despite still being in power, the local DC experienced intraparty conflicts (Walston 1988:189). This was the result of many factors. The ’Ndrangheta, first, was increasingly implicated in Reggini public life, infiltrating public contractors and political circles. Second, and perhaps predominantly, instead of developing the infrastructure of Reggio Calabria the government was exploiting the tertiary sector in return for electoral support (Cingari 1982:380).

In the Gardens of Eden

The quartieri of San Giorgio extra, Sbarre, Gebbione, and Ravagnese, similar to many peripheral quartieri³² during the 1950s, were inhabited by coloni (peasant workers), military and police force pensioners and middle- and upper-class families of Reggio Calabria, who were also small land owners. The areas that surrounded the centro storico were characterized by their giardini (gardens) and sparse residences. In his study of the Plain of Gioia Tauro (in the province of Reggio Calabria), Pino Arlacchi describes the gardens as “the elementary unit of the agrarian system based on medium-sized property and medium-sized enterprise, that is, a piece of territory thickly covered by fruit trees and specializing in the production of one crop only, whose sale on the market furnished a median yield among the highest in Italian agriculture” (1983:77; also Petrusewicz 1989). This mode of agriculture had a further effect on the development of the local market and the “periodic movements of the economy from cereal to pasture and back” (Arlacchi 1983:78) minimizing the annual unproductive periods (Giacomini 1981:13).

The agrarian reforms of the 1950s (see Biagini 1952) provided the opportunity for some of the lower classes such as the coloni to step onto the economic and social ladder. Apart from the land to which they were entitled according to their particular tenure contracts,³³ they also “inherited” the status of the nobles for whom they were working. This shift in social status needs to be understood in a context of consolidating political power through land ownership (Rossi-Doria 1958:52). Despite the fact that Manlio Rossi-Doria refers to agrarian reforms that took place between 1880 and World War I—a period also characterized by the beginning of transoceanic migration (51)—land purchase in the peripheral quarters of Reggio Calabria during the 1950s followed the same logic of reconfigured power relations.

Doctor Colleti is one such example. He is a medical doctor and his family—originating from the Grecanico village of Staiti—used to be coloni for Baron Taconi’s mansion in Reggio Calabria. They lived in a house within the garden walls, which eventually passed into their possession after the reforms. Colleti’s professional occupation and residence are significant factors contributing to his socioeconomic mobility, also reflected in the respect the members of his family enjoy in wider society. His mother, the baron’s former housekeeper, is now greeted with respect and considered one of the “first ladies” of local society. The family employ a Polish housekeeper as well as a gardener. Living in a house that constitutes part of the manor, and being a medical doctor, Colleti is considered by Reggini society as having a very high social profile.

During the 1950s the giardini of the peripheral quartieri of Reggio Calabria were cheap and thus affordable to the majority of the Grecanici. Kin clusters bought adjacent plots of land with the view to reside in close proximity. Gradually, with the men working as economic migrants abroad (mainly in Switzerland), they started building their homes. In the absence of their husbands and sons, women remained in the Grecanici villages tending their land and animals and raising their children. As soon as the houses in Reggio were habitable, women transferred to the city, ideally in time for the children to attend local schools. With the money collected from every year of labor, families added an additional floor to the house. The main aim was to build a number of floors that accorded to the number of children.

In the same period, Grecanici started entering the public administrative sector of Reggio Calabria. At this time Nicolo was assesore³⁴ of the comune of Reggio Calabria, married to a Grecanici woman. Kinship ties between Nicolo’s wife and other Grecanici families were instrumental for both parties. Nicolo “systemized” (inserted into the system) Grecanici males as public cleaners in the city, with their families offering electoral support in return. Coincidentally, at the beginning of the 1960s, an old ’ndranghetista Giuseppe, from the area Grecanica became close friends with the local Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI). Giuseppe came from a large family with an extensive kin network. He was in the service and a close friend of the president of the committee of the Istituto Autonomo per la Case Popolari (Autonomous Institute for Government Housing) in Reggio Calabria. When the institute started building government housing, Giuseppe exerted his influence on the president of the institute and persuaded him to favor the Grecanici as well as other Reggini who were linked to him. Owing to these relations, many families found themselves with a local authority house. Other families who already owned a house in the city sold their allocated “council house” and released the capital. At the beginning of the 1980s, the president’s (a Craxian Socialist³⁵) power was such that he could control the Istituto Autonomo per la Case Popolari without consulting the board. As James Walston notes, “He goes around with a rubber stamp, signs minutes and takes decisions without having had a meeting” (1985:97).

The province-based public housing authority Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari is one of the examples of many public agencies that were deemed to serve political clientelism. Walston argues that “public works and housing became another cornerstone of DC policy” (1985:96–97, 1988:55). Indeed, the committee of the institute, precisely due to its provincial character, was in the position to allocate houses, direct funding toward “favorite” comuni, and even distribute jobs. The ’ndranghetista of Grecanico origin, similar to the DC politician, created a kinship-based “clientele.” Grecanici clearly used their various systems of relatedness to find political representation and secure their new livelihoods in the city.

From internal rural-urban migrations to natural disasters and forced relocations, Grecanici social history of the past century is entwined with movement, aid, aggression, and competing orders of governance. The ethnographic chapters that follow show how Grecanici fearlessly seek political representation through diverse channels of governance, including civil society, kinship networks, and implication with the ’Ndrangheta.