Démocratie Réelle Maintenant des Indignés de Nîmes

Day 107-XXXIII, from Contursi Terme to Bivio Palomonte, 8 km.

Christmas stable

Palomonte, February 22

Dear people,

The road is winding, the sky is dark. It has been storming all night. Ever since Naples the locals told us that this weather is abnormal. They say it’s the coldest winter in thirty years over here. In these circumstances, people are intimidated by the mountains. They fear the snow.

Today, once again the agreed schedule was changed. The slowest among us command the rhythm. Instead fifteen kilometres – and four hundred meters of ascent – we only did eight kilometres to the nearest inhabited village.

Acampada Contursi

Lifting camp in Contursi

Pushing on

It’s a good walk. After all the days we spent crossing the metropolitan area of Naples and Salerno, we are finally out in the open. On all sides there’s the sloping river valley appearing out of the haze. We are slowly leaving the bright lowlands of the coast behind us.

This is where the hinterland of Naples begins. But it’s not a complete wilderness, I have to admit. People have past here over the years.

Hannibal roamed the south of the peninsula for ten years after he had defeated every Roman army that was sent against him. For whatever reason he never dealt the final blow to the eternal city. He waited. And while he was here, the luxury and the laziness degenerated his army. The jealous lords of Carthage never sent him reinforcements. But in the meantime, Rome itself was reorganising, and when the time came, she pointed straight at the heart of her rival.

Hannibal was recalled to Africa. And for the very first time, he was defeated.

Palomonte

But the story that I want to tell you is that of a peasant’s son who one day became the king of Naples.

Joachim Murat joined the French army under the ancien régime. He knew he would always be a soldier, because you had to be a noble to enter the officers’ corps. But then came the revolution, and suddenly you could make a career also as a common soldier.

From the very start, Murat has been by Napoleon’s side. He was the one who brought the cannons with which Napoleon fired on the citizens of Paris to quell a royalist uprising and save the French Republic.

In battle, Murat was brave beyond the point of wrecklessness. In almost every major campaign he commanded Napoleon’s cavalry. His charges have been decisive more than once. And in great part, they were theater.

Murat was extremely vain. He liked to dress up in the most extravagant outfits, to intimidate his opponents and to encourage his troops when he led them into battle, shouting.

In 1808 Napoleon was emperor of France, and lord and master of Europe. He had made all his brothers kings, except for the reluctant one. It was the year that he promoted his older brother Joseph from king of Naples to king of Spain. And he granted the Neapolitan throne to his faithful cavalry commander Murat.

As king, Murat came along with Napoleon almost until the very end. He was with the emperor in the advance to Moscow, and he was there when the remainders of the Grand Armée retreated over the Berezina.

Aside from the extreme cold, the cossacks represented a lethal danger for the French. They were the jackals of the Russian plains and they preyed on isolated soldiers. But they had a sacred respect for Murat. They loved him because of his bravery.

Whenever the cossacks sighted the colourful outfit of Murat, they would ride up to him as close as possible, they would stand up, salute, and shout at the top of their voices: “Hail to the king of Naples!”

Then they would gallop away, and the next of them would come up to do the same. Whoever dared to come closest to Murat, would have proved himself to be the bravest of cossacks.

Like most of the other marshalls, Murat betrayed Napoleon after the Russian disaster. He made a deal with the Austrians. But he knew well that they wouldn’t leave the son of a peasant on the throne of Naples.

To defend his reign and expand it, Murat tried to head a first attempt to unify the Italian peninsula. He issued a nationalist proclamation and rallied his troops to battle against the Habsburgs. But however brave he was, he was no great general. He was defeated and sent into exile.

During the Hundred Days, when Napoleon fled from Elba and reconquered France without firing a shot, Murat thought he could do something similar in Naples. But evidently, he never really got to know his subjects. When he landed in Calabria, he was immediately captured. For the locals, one king or another didn’t make any difference.

King Murat of Naples was executed on the beach at Pizzo Calabro. He was vain until the very last. He refused to be blind folded, and he commanded the firing squat himself. “Aim straight at the heart! Spare the face! Fire!”

Camping in the sanctuary

The march this morning at Battipaglia

 

Eboli, February 19

Dear people,

The characters you meet on a march make it all worthwile. At Battipaglia we were welcomed, among many others, by a local hermit. Barefooted, with a long beard, he stopped to talk to every one of us about a different world closer to nature.

He invited us all to lunch, today, in his cave up the hill. He would make risotto con funghi, even though he wouldn’t join us himself. He only eats fruit and vegetables.

The hermit

At night the hermit showed me and comrade Mary the road to his home, so we could guide the rest there today. It was amazing. Just out of town, on the slope of a hill, there stood the skeleton of a building that was never finished. Only floors, no walls. You find lots of these ruins in the south. They are one of the marks left by the underworld.

The hermit adopted this particular building, he cleaned all the surroundings from the trash and built his cave inside. He did so in part by constructing a wall like the ancients did, without cement, and in another part by using wooden planks. All materials are recycled, and the result is a cozy little space with a large table, a television set, and room for six people to sleep. Outside, under the roof, he created a living space with sofas, a wood fire and a stereo.

When we arrive, we meet two friends of the hermit. They are all fellow countrymen from the Czech Republic, visiting. “It’s a nice home isn’t it?”

It’s great. Completely postmodern, as comrade Max described it. Next to the television set there are shelves full of old VHS and music cassettes, CDs and books. Everything recycled from the trash. But not just any movie or album. The hermit only took the best he could find.

We are offered tea and fruit, and the hermit tells us how he found this place, how he made his home here, how he got into trouble with the owner and the police and how he had to dismantle everything, three times.

Now, since a couple of years he is finally appreciated for all the work he has done around here, he gets to stay officially, and his electricity is on the house.

It’s late when we return to town. We already got a glimpse of what was coming, the others were in for a big surprise.

Comrade Blanca

The march arriving at the cave of the hermit

The living room

So today around noon we arrived at the abbandoned building with our shopping carts. We are only about a dozen, and we marvel at the panorama. The town of Battipaglia is right beneath us and in the distance you can see the Tyrrhenian coast from Calabria to Amalfi and Capri.

The hermit got up early in the morning, he went down twice into town to get water, he cut wood for the fire, and he spent all morning making lunch. It was more than excellent, it was a pleasure to be a guest in this modern cave and hear the hermit speak about his dreams.

Vegetable garden and the town of Battipaglia

He wants to return to Sardinia to live a natural life in a real cave. He has already chosen the spot and lived there for a while. It’s near the sea, and he planted fruit trees all around, just like he did here. He has his own vegetable garden, and the rest he gets from the market. They know him there, and they always leave him a few kilos of fruit.

The hermit doesn’t need much more. Whenever he wants to return to the world, he travels, with his sleeping bag under his arm. He knows people and places all over Italy, but only when he will have settled down with other enlightened people in the nature of Sardinia, will he have found his Ithaka.

The hermit and his cave

Marching on

After lunch we do a short march of only a few kilometres to Eboli. The name of this place was immortalised by Italian writer Carlo Levi, who was sent into exile in the inland of Basilicata by the fascist regime.

Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, is the title of his renowned account about the conditions he found there in the early 1940s. ‘Christ has stopped in Eboli’, meaning that he didn’t go any further than here. The inlands to which we are directed were never touched by the Greeks or the Romans or the christians. Eboli is the last outpost of civilization.

Dear people,

Some people joined us in Naples. By now only one of them is left. And we still keep losing pieces. The camper and the five comrades travelling on board had been briefly back in Naples. They stayed behind, together with four other marchers.

Now, the news coming in from Greece has had an electrifying effect on others. Comrade Getafe, who walked all but one of the legs of the march on Brussels, has departed this evening. With him comrade Laurentina, who has lately been trying to reconcile the different factions in our march.

Tomorrow we go inland, towards the snowy peaks. It will once again be a different march, and it will be hard.

I have been tempted to go to Athens as well, but for the moment I will stay. Of course I want to be there when the Greek people finally reclaim their sovereignty from the stranglehold of international finance, but I don’t think we’re there yet. I hope the Greeks will wait for spring.

On the way to Salerno, comrade Max told me about the history of the march from Nice to Rome. He is one of the veterans from the start, together with Marianne, and many of the rebels.

Comrade Pazzo

Camping on the boulevard of Salerno

I’ll briefly pinpoint the highlights of his account.

The march started under good auspices. In Cannes at the beginning of november, international and financial authorities decided on Greek and Italian matters. In Nice, the indignados staged a protest, and shortly after they set course to those very countries. Within weeks after departure, regime change was peacefully performed in Greece and Italy, and technocrat bankers were nominated as heads of government.

Up to Genoa, the march camped out on the beach and did little political activity. They were about fifteen to twenty persons, almost all of them French. In Genoa they held their first big assembly on the stage of Piazza dei Ferrari. After that, the march split.

Some people went on a litoral march, to carry on camping on the beach, and the rest crossed the Apennines into red Emilia, the traditional land of the partisans.

From Parma through Reggio and Modena to Bologna, they were received in social centres by left wing activists. But mostly this time is remembered as the days of Mimo.

Mimo was a schizophrenic. During the day he was an amiable and gentle person, but during the night he could turn into a screaming madman with a special love for knives. Especially when he drank, and especially in closed places.

He caused a stir by menacing people. He got thrown out more than once. In the end, the march declined to camp inside a social centre for fear of Mimo making trouble. Mimo took it personal, and he left.

In Bologna, the marchers were fined for camping on public soil. They burned the fines in front of camera’s and police.

During the second crossing of the Apennines, from Bologna to Florence the march temporarily decided to split again. Many went to the ‘Valley of the Elves’ above Pistoia, where tribes of agro-anarchical hippies are living in comunes.

In Florence the march arrived when three Senegalese were killed out of racist motives. Marchers participated in a demonstration, and camped on the squares where the murders had taken place.

In Siena, they camped outside of one of the oldest still active banks in the world, Monte dei Paschi di Siena. While the police was notifying people that they couldn’t camp there and that the two tents should be removed, other tents sprouted up, and more, and more. In the end, the police officers found themselves in the midst of a complete camp, and they left.

Christmas was celebrated in Cortona, in a desacrated church with lots of old musical instruments and wine. From the sound of it, it must have been a fabulous party.

In Perugia the camp was built in the middle of Corso Vannucci, one of the most beautiful streets of Italy. It was there that Timon the flamboyant Finn inspired the marchers to stop showing documents to the police.

Spoleto was a dark page in the history of the march. By now, it had been joined by a substantial Spanish contingent. From some of them I had already heard accounts of ‘the facts of Spoleto’.

It was the day before New Year, there had been party in the square. There had been a drunk person molesting the campers. At a certain point, the tribe reacted. Fired on by alcohol, the warriors went to the defense. They knocked out the molester, and they did so with excessive use of force.

The day after was one of collective shame. As pacifists, people had failed. Yet again they turned out to be humans after all.

A week later, the march arrived in Rome and got a great welcome on Piazza del Popolo.

From the eight persons who started the litoral march, only two reached Rome. They had lived such incredibly scarry adventures that none of them ever dared to talk about it. Most of the time, they just sat silent in the square.

So when I ask comrade Max his opinion on the current troubles of the march, he lifts up his shoulders and smiles. He has already seen a lot. Today is nothing special.

Scenes from an assembly in Salerno