Démocratie Réelle Maintenant des Indignés de Nîmes

Day 117-XLIII, from Tolve down the river valley, 20 km.

Day 118-XLIV, rest in the country side.

In the countryside, March 4

Dear people,

There is not a single inhabited centre for thirty kilometres in this region, so for the first time we decided to camp out in the open.

In Tolve our assembly attracted lots of people, but all of them were very shy. They only came to see, not to participate. On the other hand they were most generous. They brought us food, and they didn’t stop until we left. I myself couldn’t sit down on a bench to relax, without people coming to me with sweets, coffee and home-made sausages.

It was so much that we had to refuse at a certain point. Our shopping carts are bulking with pasta, bread, lentils, beans, fruit and pastries.

Yesterday we started to follow the river. That’s all we have to do from here on. Follow the stream, down to the sea. We take the old national road. There are no cars, only a tractor every now and then. We pass by little patches of forest and miles of green sloping hills, where the young winter grain is about to burst up towards the light.

Wild wild West

The river valley of Tolve

Some of the fields are blue. But those are not crops, on closer inspection. They are solar panels. It could be a view of the future. As a small scale biological farmer you would sow your fields with all that you need. Beans and corn and patatoes and hemp. Then you have a vegetable garden and an orchard, a vineyard and an olive grove. And finally, one field well exposed to the south you could use to cultivate energy.

At the crossing with the road that leads to Tricarico we halt. Above us there are half a dozen homes from the fascist era. They are all abandoned but one. The home of a sheperd.

Sowing energy

The abandoned farming community

This used to be such a farming community. But then the times changed, the shepherd tells us. After centuries of feudal servitude the peasants had finally inherited their land, and then they left it. They went to live in the villages and the cities, like their overlords had done, and they used machines instead of manual labour to work their estates.

The shepherd's herd in our camp

Around the fire

For once we have a real day off. No popular assemblies, no encounters with the locals, no electricity and no internet. I make use of this favourable circumstance to catch up on some reading. Something appropriate. The autobiography of one of the most famous briganti that ever roamed these lands. Come divenni brigante, or ‘How I became a desperado’, by Carmine Donatelli Crocco.

Comrade José Miguel out of socks

It’s a great narrative. Crocco takes you by the hand and leads you through the valley of his childhood, where his parents worked as peasants on the land of a local nobleman. He shows you around the little hut where they lived, eight people in a single space, the roof and the walls blackened by the ashes of the fire. Theirs was a life of misery, but Crocco recalls it with nostalgia and with immeasurable love for his parents, who worked like mules to grant their family a bit of happiness.

Then came the day that his mother was irrevocably offended by a local signorino. She had thrown herself at his throat in the defence of her children, and she had been heavily wounded by the aggressor.

Crocco wouldn’t forget the scene, and he wouldn’t forgive.

Later on, the same little nobleman barely escaped an assassination attempt. Crocco’s father was arrested by the royal guards, together with many others, even though he had a valid alibi. He served months of prison, until the real offender turned himself in. During that time, Crocco’s mother lost her mind, and Carmine and his brothers and sisters were scattered to work as underpaid peasants for various little nobles.

His mind had been poisoned, Crocco would write almost fifty years later in prison. He admits that he committed cruelties of all types, he has brought mourning into thousands of families. He doesn’t ask for forgiveness, he simply mentions the reasons of his anger.

When he reached eighteen years he was conscripted into the army of Naples. He had no choice. Only if you had enough money you could pay to avoid military service. If not you had to pay with your obedience, your time and possibly your life.

He got drilled as a soldier, and the experience definitely came in useful.

 One day he received a letter from his sister. Her honour had been blemished by a local townsman. Upon reading about it, Crocco immediately deserted. But before he fled the army he committed his first homicide by killing a fellow soldier who had offended him.

Back in town, he killed the townsman who had tried to ‘merchandise’ his sister’s honour, he took to the hills and he formed a gang of desperados.

La 'brigantessa' Michelina de Cesare

Crocco wasn’t planning to live his life as a fuggitive. When the south was annexed by the north, he adhered to the new regime, hoping to be able to start all over. Later on, when he conquered Aliano – the village where Carlo Levi would spend most of his exile - he admits that he would gladly and peacefully live in this town as the local lord.

His hopes were vain. Crocco, together with most of the southern people were deceived by the new king. Deceived, and once again offended. The Piemontese never failed to show their utmost contempt towards the locals of the south.

Changing sides is an old Italian tradition. Crocco did so as well, more than once. Not out of cowardice, but out of deception. After the Piemontese had shown that they weren’t any better than the old regime, Crocco headed the reactionary resistance, collecting all discontent peasants and nobles under the banner of the old kingdom of Naples.

In many places the villages opened their gates, and Crocco was hailed as a liberator. If they didn’t surrender, they were conquered, plundered and destroyed. For a brief while Carmine Dontalli Crocco ruled over these lands like Hannibal and Spartacus had done before many centuries before.

The king of Italy sent an army to destroy the menace of the desperados. But the army was defeated. Crocco was more than a simple brigante. He was a valourous condottiero. And different from many of his ferocious generals, he was capable of acknowledging the valour of his opponent, and of being merciful.

 During the height of his power, his name was on everybody’s lips. But some of the people who had adhered to the new kingdom spoke about him with contempt. The mayor of one of the villages near Crocco’s headquarters boasted that he could easily beat the desperados with the help of the local guard.

Crocco heard about it. He wrote a short letter to the mayor. ‘Dear mayor. I urge you to send me the flag, the portrait of the king, the portrait of Garibaldi and the village treasury. They are to be brought to me by the commander of the guard. If you don’t comply, I will come and get it myself. You have eight hours.’

Six hours later, the commander of the guard delivered all the requested goods and implored Crocco to spare the village.

In the long run it couldn’t last. The state kept sending down troops to the rebelious region, and many of the people who had supported the cause of the ancien regime switched sides again, depending on the how the wind was blowing.

Crocco was forced to keep fighting for his own survival and that of his two thousand men and women, without any political friends. He kept on plundering villages, he kept on committing cruelties, but slowly the balance slid to the other side.

During the last three years of his career as a desperado, he was limited to isolated attacks on coaches, travelers and farms. Many of his men got caught or gave themselves up, or got killed.

In the end, Crocco was betrayed by one of his generals. The Piemontese had offered this Judas life and liberty if he would lead them to his leader. He didn’t succeed, but the days of the desperados were at their end.

With twelve of his faithful men, Crocco continued to flee from justice, heading north to the Papal States, where he turned himself in to the pope.

The pope had him imprisoned, he didn’t extradite him to the Italian state, because that would mean he also had to extradite the small fortune that Crocco had on him when he reached Rome.

Six years he spent in a papal prison. Then Rome was turned over to Italy, and Crocco sent to trial.

He was sentenced to death, a sentence that was later changed into forced labour for life. In between, near the turn of the century, Carmine Crocco, the most legendary of desperados, found time to write his memories.

Those memories were handed to me in the form of a book by comrade Max. I had told him to look out for stories about the briganti in the towns we passed. Like I said, I had tried to speak to the elderly of Vaglio, but they didn’t tell me a thing. While reading Crocco’s autobiography I found out what might be the real reason why they didn’t want to remember the briganti…

“We attack Vaglio, a village at six miles from Potenza which resists with admireable valour. The menace of destruction in case they don’t surrender only strengthens the tenacity with which the inhabitants defend their village. Our messengers are received with bullets and fire. Various of our men die in the process. Divided into four columns, we attack from four different sides. We occupy the village while the heavily fortified monastery continues to resist. Our troops, enraged by the unexpected defense, slaughter anyone they come across, men and women, and they set fire to the monastery. The village is plundered. Anyone steals whatever he can. We leave the monastery burning. The 16th day of November [1861].”

(from the autobiography of Carmine Crocco, pp. 117-18, translation yours truly)

They heyday of the desperados came to an end a few years later, after equally ferocious persecutions by the state. But it wasn’t the end of the phenomenon of brigantaggio.

Sporadic acts of guerilla continued all over the south throughout the 20th century. As late as the 1970s, the authorities in Calabria admitted that they couldn’t guarantee the safety of citizens in the wild mountains of the inland.

 Up until this very day, so the story goes, if you venture far off into the forests of Calabria, you might encounter the last of the desperados, living in their caves, preying on remote farms and unsuspecting wanderers…

Popular assembly in Potenza

Potenza, February 29

Dear people,

Our group is growing stronger. We have been joined by another Neapolitan, we have almost reached the mountain top, and we are seriously starting to focus on Greece.

Things got a lot more relaxed ever since comrade Marianne left. In the end there was complete incommunicability between her and many of the French.

The French, like I said, are the soul of the march. Two of them have been on the road all the way from Nice, and others have been with the march for most of the time.

Aside from them there are two persons who are true pillars of the march. Comrade Max, and comrade José Miguel.

Max is Sicilian. He is an indefatigable organiser of popular assemblies. He is also a translator with an admireable ammount of patience. He is our main link with the Italian population.

José Miguel is from Barcelona. He speaks perfect Italian and he is a charming communicator. Wherever we arrive, he goes to the bar, and he starts to chat with the locals. It’s the most effective way of doing diffusion. He is also the last to leave the square whenever we move on. He wants to make absolutely sure that we leave the place cleaner than how we found it.

Max is a biologist, José Miguel is an archeologist. Both of them left university to come along with the march.

There are many more people who make a fundamental contribution to the march in different ways. But me, I’m not one of them.

I don’t cook, I don’t do a lot of diffusion, I clean my own things but little more, I don’t push a cart with common stuff, I don’t translate. I walk, I observe, and I write. That’s all. So if the march becomes a success, it won’t be because of me.

Today, however, I increased my level of participation a bit. We held an internal assembly about the route to Bari, and about the great controversy… The date of arrival in Athens.

For once, I volunteered to moderate the assembly.

I can’t remember the last time we held an internal assembly that didn’t turn into a farce. So I prepared some things in advance. First of all I talked to the Old Man. He can be reasoned with, and I’m actually starting to appreciate him. The other day, when everyone - me included – loaded his or her stuff onto the van of the protezione civile, the Old Man refused. He pushed all of his stuff up the mountain for fifteen kilometres. I made a deep bow when he arrived.

We talked about the proposed route to Bari, he made a few corrections, and I presented it in the assembly.

We reached a consensus in eight minutes. I don’t know if it’s a record, but it was definitely better than the five hours it took to reach a consensus about the route to Potenza.

It was the first time I moderated an assembly. Normally, the moderator has to guide the proces of collective reasoning, without making use of his role to highlight his own opinions or try to impose them. This sounds very horizontal, but if the moderation is too weak, it leads to chaos.

So I did away with it. I started off with an appeal to the assembly to bear in mind our common objective: arrive in Athens as a group, to the greatest possible satisfaction of ourselves, of the people who are expecting us, and of all the people who are following our march or have contributed to it in any way.

I forced the assembly to focus and to be constructive. Maybe I was a bit too strict, but in the end my moderation was appreciated by almost everyone, and within two hours we finally reached a first consensus about an approximate date of arrival.

We aim to be in Athens somewhere between April 26 and May 5. In a future assembly we will try to narrow it down further.

One of the people from Potenza offered us a bottle of rum to celebrate the consensus. But we shouldn’t get carried away. There’s a new controversy looming. The port of arrival.

There are two options. Igoumenitsa in the north of Greece, at over 500 kilometres from Athens, and Patras at just over 200. Many people seem to be in favour of Patras. They fear that Igoumenitsa is not a reasonable option, given our current pace.

Others say that Patras is too close to Athens. After marching through Italy for almost four months, we can’t really take ourselves seriously if we only take a short stroll up to our final destination.

So, our troubles are to be continued. Finding a consensus will be hard, maybe impossible. But for now, we have a reason to rejoice. The popular assembly this evening was a success. Despite the strong wind, people resisted. And yet again, after Salerno and Vietri, the locals decided to start their own assembly.

The appointment is for March 8, at five clock, in the faculty of Letters and Philosophy.

The same popular assembly in Potenza

 

 

Day 112-XXXVIII, from Vietri to Picerno, 16 km.

Candle light assembly in Vietri

Picerno, February 27

Dear people,

It could have a been a classic revolutionary painting. We were standing on the porch of the old town hall, inciting the citizens of Vietri to rise up. It was raining and windy, but there was a crowd under their umbrellas listening to us. Many people came straight from church. We had waited until the sunday service was over.

Slowly we convince people to gather in a circle. There was no light under the entrance of the empty building. So we lit candles. It was a marvellous sight, a perfect atmosphere, and it became a memorable assembly.

Like custom, we introduced the sign language of our assembly, we introduced ourselves and answered questions. After that we invited people to speak about the local situation.

The main problem, here like anywhere in the south is that there is no work. To address this problem the government in Rome stimulates enterprises to move to the south by subsiding them. But generally, they take the subsidies, and whenever they end, they close their factories and go back north. It doesn’t create lasting employment.

Another more global problem is the advancing individualism, even here in a small village. People talk less and less about the common good. Every one has his or her own troubles and tries to solve them alone. One woman thanked us for being here, for holding this assembly, because it made people realise that everyone’s troubles are connected. She thanked us for encouraging the community spirit.

In the end we achieved the best we could hope for. The locals decided to organise another assembly themselves. In a month’s time, right after church.

The breakfast table

Goodbye to Vietri

Today is fifteen kilometres, but given the steep climb, it’s pretty far. The comrades of the protezione civile lend us a hand by transporting much of our luggage to the next village.

Up until a week ago there was a meter of snow here. Now we see the last remainders melting away on the side of the road. There’s still an icy wind howling around the tops.

We arrive in Picerno. From here it’s only two more legs up to the mountain pass. After that, we will descend into the plain, it will be spring, and all the seeds that our movement has sown will start to germinate.

Hello to Picerno

Comrade José Miguel occupying the bar

 

Day 110-XXXVI, from Romagnano to Vietri di Potenza, 12 km.

Day 111-XXXVII, Vietri.

Vietri di Potenza

Vietri di Potenza, February 26

Dear people,

We have received some precious reinforcements lately, from Naples, from France, from Belgium and from Barcelona. Our numbers our growing again, from about fifteen up to twenty. Also the weather is changing in our favour. The dark clouds have disappeared, the sun comes out every now and then. We can see the snow melting on the tops.

Leaving Romagnano

These days we have been following a quiet road high up the right bank slope of the river valley. Today we descended down to the water. There was no other way to reach our next stop.

While we march, the voice of our arrival is carried up the valleys by the wind. We are famous even before we set foot in the little villages on the route. The natives are expecting us.

This is the wilderness. It’s true that people have been crossing this region in modern times, they take the train or the motorway from Naples to Bari, but they don’t stop here. They have no reason to.

Autostrada

I don’t have a shopping cart. I walk with full gear. When I finish the final ascent up to Vietri di Potenza, I’m alone. In the first bar, I ask for a glass of water, and to my surprise I see a manifest on the window which announces the arrival of us, los marchantes.

Immediately the locals gather around me. Then the protezione civile arrive, they have been organising our arrival. Then there’s the local police, and the first of the shopping carts entering town. Within minutes of my arrival in the village, we have turned into a procession, and all the curious accompany us up to the tiny village square.

Before I started this march I knew we would be well received by the local population in the south. But almost every day they leave me flabbergasted.

All the village is in the square and on the street. The elderly are sitting on their bench, commenting. The boys and the girls of the protezione civile take us around the village on a tourist trip. They are proud of their history, their religion, their hospitality.

We have to see the monastery, they say. A real thorn from Jesus’ crown is guarded there. And we have to see the cave of Caesar. They say the great man stopped there to drink from a fountain once, on his way to Greece. But most of all, we have to tell the world. Come to Vietri! People will treat you well.

Just like the other towns here, Vietri was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake. It took more than twenty years to rebuild. Not because it was such an enormous effort, but because a lot of the funds for the earthquake disappeared. Many people lived in containers for years, and a handful of people got very very rich. Welcome to the south.

The mayor of Vietri in our camp.

The chimes are sounding in the morning, it’s sunday. When I get out of my tent, I encounter the mayor. “Good morning, Oscar,” he says. “Did you sleep well?”

I slept great.

He has brought pastries for all. He invites people to take a coffee. We have a good chat about sustainability, small scale farming, etc. And I’m convinced that the future starts here in places like this, on a human scale.

In the end, it’s too much, really. Yesterday and today, the protezione civile has cooked for us. This afternoon after lunch we were digesting in the square. All the bars were closed because of the siesta.

“Coffee!” one of us says, “my kingdom for a cup of coffee!”

A window opens, an old lady leans out. “Do you want sugar with that?”

“Yes please!”

Five minutes later her daughter comes down with a can full of coffee…

March to Athens

Day 109-XXXV, from Buccino to Romagnano al Monte, 7 km.

Romagnano al Monte, February 24

Dear people,

In Buccino we had our ups and downs, as usual. The ups were the hospitality of the locals and the assembly we held with a hundred school kids at eight o’ clock in the morning.

The downs were the wine and the social problems.

Yesterday evening a local wine producer brought us ten liters of home made wine. After that, it was party time. Until very early in the morning a small group of people gathered around the fire, making noise and drinking. One of us at a certain point was fed up with it. He took the five liter bottle and threw what was left of the red wine into the fire.

When I heard about it the next morning I got angry like I never had before on the march. I wanted the perpretator brought to justice. I wanted to see him hang. Because there is no excuse – with the possible exception of a small ritual offering to the gods – to throw wine into the fire, especially when it’s local wine offered by the producer.

On the other hand it’s not right that a few people drink the common stack of wine and keep people awake. But that’s personal responibility. You can’t blame the wine, ever.

Buccino

senza titolo

We move on, slowly, to the next village on the road. Romagnano al Monte. When I get there, I’m told that there are three Romagnanos. There’s the old village, there’s the new village, and there’s the provisional village in between.

The old village was heavily damaged by the earthquake of 1980. People were evacuated and housed in prefab containers, the old town was abbandoned and rebuilt three kilometres up the road. The containers are still there. For decades the locals have been living in them. Now they are rented as holiday homes.

The prefab homes, from the central square of new Romagnano

The new village is nothing special. Large parallel roads, modern houses and lots of space for cars. But when I hear about a ghost town three kilometres away, I get excited. I drop my bags and I walk.

During the March on Brussels we encountered lots of phantom villages in the south of France. But none of those were completely abbandoned.

This one is.

They say that there are certain things you have experience in life, at least once. And as for me, walking through a real ghost town is one of them.

I arrive just before dusk. The quiet provincial road winds around the slope, and suddenly I see it, the remainders of the village, the stone bones of an extinguished society. I’m completely happy when I start the descent.

The moloch

At the entrance to the village there is an anonymous appartment complex like you find them anywhere in Italian outskirts. It must have been brand new when the earthquake struck, symbol of modernity that didn’t survive into adulthood. Now it’s empty, like all the other homes down in the village. A concrete moloch standing guard on the roadside.

The path into the village is almost completely overgrown by bushes. All the houses around are open, all of them are damaged, many roofs have collapsed, many walls as well. Inside the houses it’s a mess. They are full of debris. No-one ever bothered to clean them out.

Romagnano vecchio. Photos from morning after.

I descend to the beginning of the corso, the central road of the village. Adding to the surreal craziness of this place, there is a new town hall here, recently built, ready to be used, but closed and empty.

I walk on through the main street. I take a look inside the old houses. In some of them you can still see pieces of brown/orange 1970s wall paper. But that was just a fashion. What really strikes is the way of life through the centuries, right up until yesterday.

The houses are extremely small. They generally consist of a tiny room with a sink and a wood oven and sometimes a bathroom angle. This is where people lived. Families of up to ten people. Upstairs there was a single sleeping place for all.

Some of the houses have three rooms. It must have been the homes of the rich. Then there’s the school, in the middle of the corso. Three little classrooms and an office. Next to it, there’s the heart of the local economy. Il frantoio. The old olive press with its two giant stone wheels is still standing amidst the rubble.

At the end of the corso there’s the village square with the church and the mayor’s house. The church is only accessible through a hole in the wall. Inside it looks as if it were yesterday that the earthquake struck. Decorations came crumbling down. The stairs to the pulpit are no more. The roof is on the floor. All of it makes for an atmosphere that is out of this world.

When I leave the church, the sun has gone down. But there’s still enough light to venture through the alleys near the side of the ravine. Not all of them are accessible. Sometimes you have to climb over mountains of old stones, sometimes you have to find your way passed thirty year old trees. A number of houses have been split in the middle by the quake, and parts of them have tumbled down into the canyon.

It’s growing dark now. Carefully I walk back to the main road. I sit down on the doorstep of one of the houses, and I feel great. I’m in a ghost town, and I can’t see a thing. Only when I look up, between the silhouets of the ruins I can see the stars. The first moon is about to set. Everything and everyone who cannot stand the light of day come out at this hour. I keep quiet, I sit down, and I listen to the sounds…

Old Romagnano

New Romagnano