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