The Secrets of Italy Page 11
Antonio Meucci lived on Staten Island, the least accessible of New York’s five boroughs, and invited Garibaldi to be his houseguest. The Meucci household was small, just Antonio and his wife Ester, who was gravely ill. The poor woman was virtually bedridden, so her husband divided his time between the kitchen and working at several trades; he had developed the “telectrophone” precisely so he could communicate directly between his workshop and their bedroom. He earned a living by various minor inventions, small jobs, and fleeting enterprises. His poor command of English was a real obstacle, and it is not hard to imagine the American lawyers making mincemeat of him when it came time to hash out the rights to his strange invention. He had recently set up a candle-making venture to produce a new kind of three-color candle using white, red, and green stearin. Garibaldi showed up, looked around, and liked what he saw—the little house was at the edge of a wood, ideal for early morning hunts. Seeing Meucci bent over a crucible melting wax, he did not think twice, and offered to help out. And so the Hero of the Two Worlds and the inventor who was about to be robbed of his best idea solely because he could not afford an adequate lawyer worked side by side, pouring wax into the casts and rolling out lots of fine tricolor candles. Thus these two men, from such different places, headed toward such different destinies, were momentarily united by their shared status as immigrants.
As Garibaldi wrote in his memoirs:
I worked for [Antonio] Meucci for a few months and, although I was his employee, he treated me as family, quite lovingly. But one day, tired of making candles—and perhaps driven by my usual, natural sense of restlessness—I went out with the idea of finding a new line of work. I recalled having been a sailor, and I knew a few words of English, so I went to the shore [of Staten Island], where I came across a few coastal navigation boats busy loading and unloading goods. I went up to the first one and asked if I might be taken aboard as a sailor. They hardly listened, and everyone—at least, everyone I saw aboard—carried on working. I tried again, going up to another vessel. Same reply. Finally I went up to another, where men were unloading goods, and asked if they might allow me to help out—and received the reply that they had no need of help. “But I am not requesting any compensation,” I insisted. Their reply? Silence. “I only want to work so I can shake off the cold,” I said (there really was snow on the ground). More silence. I was mortified! I thought back to the time when I had the honor of commanding the entire fleet of Montevideo—I had commanded an immortal fleet at war! But what did it matter? They did not want me! I suppressed my sense of mortification, and went back to making tallow candles.
I bring up this touching, slightly off-topic episode because it helps us understand why Garibaldi was the only Northerner who earned widespread popularity in the South. He instinctively understood what its people were made of, and it did not hurt that the conditions he had experienced in the United States were similar to those that millions of emigrants would soon experience over the coming years.
Italian or not, Rome and Naples were nevertheless destined to succumb to the winds of change and the rigid laws of economic development.
But that does not mean that the differences between Garibaldi’s troops and the Bourbon military were quelled before turning into outright civil war, accompanied by the usual acts of violence that come along with such conflict. The Bourbon forces unleashed summary executions, pillaged and razed countless villages, and destroyed civilian homes as retaliation. On the opposite side, “Piedmontese” soldiers who were captured were often tied to a tree and burned alive or crucified and mutilated. Here, as before, the general population frequently viewed brigands as heroes of the common folk, since they were often local acquaintances, if not relatives or neighbors. And anyway, as soon as you go beyond the most vulgar and easily judged cases of brigandage, individual brigands were often complex mixtures of many conflicting aspects, both positive and negative. Sometimes their delinquent side might be redeemed by a vivid social vision, as well as the presumption that what they viewed as political tyranny could only be put in check by armed resistance. The famous, sometimes idealized case of Sergeant Pasquale Romano is a perfect example.
Pasquale Domenico Romano was born to a family of shepherds in the Apulian town of Gioia del Colle in 1833. After enlisting in the Bourbon army he swiftly rose to the rank of sergeant, but when his unit was then decommissioned following unification, he decided to launch an armed resistance against the Piedmontese forces. One of his most sensational actions was the occupation of his hometown, where, aided by the local population, he forced the Savoy troops to retreat. At the same time he continued his brigandage, destroying the farmhouses of local liberals and Garibaldi’s former supporters, now considered “traitors of the Southern People.” The hunt for Romano closed in on him, and in 1863 he was tracked down in the woods near Gioia del Colle, subdued, and executed. People say—although this may just be legend—that just before dying he shouted out “Evviva ’o rre!” (“Long live the king!”). But local farmers’ veneration of his martyred remains is no legend; we have concrete proof of it. The French writer Oscar de Poli compares him to a hero of the War in the Vendée, leaving us this vivid description of the scene:
Sergeant Romano had been slashed with a sabre, torn to shreds on the road to Mottola, by the Piedmontese troops … All the townsfolk wanted one last glimpse of the unrecognizable remains of this heroic bandit; they showed up in droves, as if on a pilgrimage made holy by way of martyrdom. The men doffed their caps, the women kneeled, almost everyone cried; the deceased went to his grave showered by the condolences and admiration of his compatriots.10
Compare that with a depiction of the same episode filed in a report sent to the parliament of the Italian kingdom, and you get dramatic, eloquent proof of how radically two views of the same event can differ:
A gang of scoundrels led by one Pasquale Romano from Gioia, former Bourbon sergeant, saddened those delightful and fertile districts with all sorts of robberies and murders; early last January the cavalry of Saluzzo, commanded by the valorous Captain Bollasco and backed by Gioia’s courageous national guard, assailed the infamous gang, killed its leader, destroyed its members, and from then on the area surrounding Gioia is free and safe.
Later that same year a parliamentary commission completed its investigation of brigandage, presided over by Giuseppe Massari (1821–84), a journalist and liberal Catholic who supported the historic Right and was himself from Apulia. Despite the sharp limits such commissions always have, the final report (known as the Massari Report), read at a secret session of the Chamber of Deputies on May 3 and 4, identified a few underlying causes of the phenomenon:
The bad counsel of abject poverty—untempered by any instruction or education, unhampered by the vulgar religion that is preached to the multitudes, and corroborated by spectacularly bad examples—prevails among those unhappy people, and delinquent habits become second nature. The faint voice of moral sense is suffocated, and robbery, instead of inspiring a sense of repugnance, appears to be an easy, legitimate means of subsistence and income.… The brigand’s life abounds in aspects that would attract any poor farmer, who, comparing it to the difficult and wretched existence he is condemned to eke out, certainly does not lead him to reach a conclusion favorable to the social order … and the allure of the temptation to behave badly is irresistible … Of 373 brigands who were imprisoned in the jail at Capitanata [near Foggia, Apulia] on April 15, 293 belonged to the low-level category of day laborers … He who has not an acre of land to call his own, who has not a belonging to his name, and is condemned to serve a wealthy landowner he sees grow richer by the day through his own sweat—not only poorly paid, but forced to labor under the harshest conditions—cannot possibly have the slightest patriotic feeling, nor can he feel any sense of respect toward society at large. But in those places where the relationship between landowners and farmers is better—where the latter is not reduced to a nomadic state, and feels some kind of connection to the land—in those p
laces brigandage might attract a few thugs, who can be found anywhere in the world, but it cannot grow deep roots, and can be more easily defeated.
The poverty of this population, utterly unfamiliar with any notion of organized society, was therefore seen as the primary cause of the rampant brigandage and “habitual delinquency” that had cast such deep roots as to become second nature. But the report also noted the phenomenon’s underlying political implications and “causes of import.” One was the Vatican’s underground actions that welcomed brigands within its territories and financed their undertakings, fully aware that sooner or later the “Roman question” would be resolved by force, and that any step it could take to weaken the unification movement would at least postpone the inevitable. The bishops became the spokesmen of the Vatican’s directives, which is another reason that the Jesuit magazine La civiltà cattolica issued a harsh review of the Massari Report. It emphasized how the text “greatly exaggerates reasons it refers to as social factors” in a vain attempt to find every possible cause for brigandage “outside political factors,” since “Neapolitans will hear nothing of this fictitious ‘unity.’ ”11
The magazine repeatedly returned to the topic. In 1874 it published an article claiming that “the Southern provinces consider themselves conquered, dominated, exploited.” The Jesuits did not hesitate to hit where it hurt the most. But, years before—on August 2, 1861, to be precise—even Massimo d’Azeglio, the former prime minister from Piedmont, had written a famous letter to Senator Carlo Matteucci expressing similar views:
In Naples we did indeed expel the sovereign in order to establish a government based on universal consensus. But it took 60 battalions, and it would seem that even those will not suffice to contain the kingdom. As is well known, whether they be brigands or not, no one cares to know. But one might say: what about universal suffrage? I know nothing about suffrage, but I do know that on this side of the Tronto River no battalions are needed, whereas on the other side of the river they are required. And so there must have been some error; and we must alter our actions and principles. We need to hear from the Neapolitans, once and for all, whether they want us—yes or no.12
Giuseppina Cavour Alfieri, Cavour’s niece, left written recollections of the great statesman’s final hours. Overcome by fatigue after days of agony inflicted by sudden illness, he muttered, “Northern Italy is complete, there are no longer Lombards, Piedmontese, Tuscans, Romagnans—we are all Italians. But there are still Neapolitans. Oh, there is so much corruption down there. It is not their fault, the poor souls, they have been so badly governed … One must set moral standards for them, educate their small children and youths, build nursery schools and military colleges: but one cannot change the Neapolitans through vituperation.”13
The same problem pops up even today. What might the southern masses have said back then, had they been given the chance to express themselves? I am talking about the people who helped defeat the French-backed Parthenopean Republic of 1799, who in 1857 grabbed their guns and pitchforks and stalked Carlo Pisacane and his fellow patriots all the way to Sapri, who welcomed brigands who were staunchly against unification—the vast masses who were left in an abject state of utter ignorance for centuries on end. Had they been allowed to speak freely, and had they been able to choose, what choice would they have made? The authors of the Massari Report do not touch upon that, nor do they say much about the Italian army’s actions, much less about the actions of the unified government. They merely flip the argument on its head, blaming the problem on the Bourbon government’s misrule, its long neglect of even basic education for its subjects, its corruption, and its coarse and cruel dominion, the other main cause of brigandage. To again quote the Massari Report:
Poverty alone would not produce such pernicious effects, were it not combined with the other evils that the inauspicious Bourbon reign created and left in its wake in the Neapolitan provinces. These evils are: a jealously preserved and ever-increasing ignorance; a widespread and substantiated belief in superstition; and, most markedly, an absolute lack of faith in laws and the justice system … The Bourbons did everything in their power to commit the most nefarious of patricides—that of denying an entire population its conscience regarding all that is right and honest.
In truth, there were situations even more dire that the text did not even hint at. For example, there was often a close complicity between the landowners and the groups of brigands, veritable “pacts of coexistence” in which you can already catch a glimpse of the kinds of extortion that are still widespread in areas controlled by organized crime. The brigands would let the landowners know what they required in terms of foodstuffs, horses, supplies; the landowners or galantuomini would then assemble the requested material in one of their farmhouses. After a few days the gang would then break in and plunder the place, thereby allowing the landowner to file a claim for reimbursement from the authorities. It was a win-win situation for everyone but the government, which found itself combating brigandage with one hand while indirectly subsidizing it with the other.
Many have tried to attribute southern brigandage to the sole cause of political revolt, chalking it up as a symptom, however bloody, of a secessionist desire for independence. The numerous underlying causes of the ongoing battle are complex, even though a 1927 letter from Giustino Fortunato to Nello Rosselli contains this blunt summary:14
Down here, in the South, brigandage was not an attempt at restoration under Bourbon rule, nor was it an attempt at establishing a separatist autonomy … rather, it was a spontaneous movement that, historically, returned at the slightest sign of agitation and with each political change. This is because it is essentially primitive and savage in nature, and is the result of centuries of degradation stemming from the poverty and ignorance of our rural populations.
As always, the many factors contributing to the tragic situation included rising prices for staples like bread, oil, and salt, while at the same time people’s broader expectations—some legitimate, others illusory—were invariably let down. It was clear, for example, that the administrative jurisdictions and systems of local government had not changed a bit in terms of the sheer laziness, inefficiency, and corruption they had been famous for under Bourbon rule. And then there was the new government’s obligatory military conscription, which the southern farmers viewed as an abuse of power; more than a few decided it was better to become a brigand or cut off one of their own limbs rather than don the Savoy insignia.
But the Massari Report did have some direct consequences, including an influence in the passage of the Pica Act, named after Giuseppe Pica, the representative who authored it, originally from the southern region of Abruzzo. For four and a half months, from August to December 1863, the law that had been conceived of as an “exceptional and temporary means of defense” effectively put southern Italy under siege. It allowed for the arrest, without due process, of vagabonds, people with no permanent job, and anyone suspected of collaborating with brigands and organized crime.15 In a word, all civil rights and liberties were suspended, and exceptional measures like collective punishment for the crimes of individuals and reprisals inflicted on entire villages were introduced. In practice, the Pica Act put a legal façade on the very same practices that had been used in the past, including summary executions, and sidestepped the authority of the slow, corrupt justice system in favor of resorting to the all-too-rapid court-martial.
More people were killed in combat under the repressions resulting from the Pica Act than in all the wars fought during the Risorgimento. Fifty-five people were sentenced to death, and another 659 were sentenced to hard labor—some for a few months, some for years, and some for life. The repression lasted from 1861 to 1865, a period that, once again, it would be no exaggeration to call a civil war. Admittedly, when it was all over a certain degree of peace had been attained. But the fragility of that peace, and its hefty cost, remain visible even today.
6.
PARADISE AND ITS DEVILS
Everyone, over the centuries, has had something bad to say about Naples. As early as the first century C.E., Livy’s Ab urbe condita (History of Rome) included an eloquent anecdote of the situation around Naples two centuries before, during the second Punic war: “Cum Hannibal circa Tarentum, consules ambo in Samnio essent …”
Hannibal was still in the neighbourhood of Tarentum and both the consuls were in Samnium apparently making preparations for besieging Capua. Famine, generally the result of a long siege, was already beginning to press upon the Campanians, as they had been prevented by the Roman armies from sowing their crops.1
And so a few messengers were sent to Hannibal to ask for some corn. Upon Hannibal’s orders the Carthaginian general Hanno marched his troops into Campania, carefully avoided the Roman consuls’ encampments, set up his own camp about three miles from Benevento, and ordered allies in the area to bring all the corn they had stored up. Then, Livy continues: “A message was despatched to Capua stating the day on which they were to appear in the camp to receive the corn, bringing with them all the vehicles and beasts they could collect.” And what happens after all these complicated maneuvers to help out the starving Campanians? According to Livy: