Articles by: Anna Di lellio

  • Op-Eds

    Pietro Ingrao. In Memoriam

    When I was offered a job in the Centro della Riforma dello Stato in 1978, I felt I had hit the jackpot. The Director of the Center, a research outfit affiliated to the Italian Communist Party, was Pietro Ingrao, who was also the President of the Italian Parliament. At the office, he was Pietro.
     

    I knew him only from TV. I had seen him in person only from the distance that separates the podium from a crowd of thousands at Festivals of L’Unita’. But I knew his speeches, and I loved his deep voice that always went deeper when talking about “the masses,” and his accent from southern Lazio.

    I must agree with Fabrizio Rondolino, who yesterday has written inc that “Ingraism,” a political/philosophical position within the Communist Party inspired by Ingrao, was synonymous with an irreconcilable dissent, but a strange form of dissent, one that was all internal to the dynamics of a closed and conservative organization.

    For many of us, who loved the ideals of social justice proposed by communism but did not like any realization of those ideals, Ingrao represented a solution: how to stay in the Party while feeling not completely ‘owned’ by the organization, in other words, how to continue to dream of a different world above the politics of the day.

    It took me a while to feel comfortable with the idea that Ingrao was my boss, that I could see him everyday, from across the desk. He treated me with respect but also some diffidence. I was younger, inexperienced, and really not a good Communist. When we organized a prophetic conference on the demise of the mass party, my first thought was to convene the best political scientists, no matter their political affiliation. His first thought was, can we trust them?

    I have precious memories of a few times I spent with him alone. I was obviously a groupie, but he never took advantage of this. On the contrary, he was always honest with me,  and at times self-deprecating.

    Once, I asked him about his experience of the anti-Fascist resistance and he told me of his attempt to escape from the police and cross the border to Switzerland. His story kept me on the edge of my seat, as he described the long trip from Rome to Milan, always in disguise. He was handled at different stops by a series of underground operatives, who gave him new passwords at every stop. In Milan, he knocked on a safe house’s door, gave his last password, and was welcomed by another partisan who presented him with an elaborate plan to reach the mountains, walk to the top and ski across the border.  “I don’t know how to ski,” said Pietro. He returned to Rome the next day.

    One late night, it was past midnight, he saw me in the center of Rome as I was climbing on my bike to return home. He had his driver stop his official blue car and told me I had to put the bike in the trunk because he would drive me home. It was not safe for a young woman to be alone in the street at that late hour.

    I was initially irritated by what I thought was a paternalistic intervention, I was, after all, a free woman. But the drive home was something to treasure forever. Once again, the intimidating leader and statesman spoke honestly about being in fact paternalistic, but not enough. He forgot to take care of his wife and daughters for so long, being always busy with politics.

    In 1981, having drifted away from the Party, I decided to come to the US and pursue a Ph.D. at Columbia University. Most of my friends were upset, some called me a traitor. I was afraid of telling Pietro that I was quitting, but I had to.

    I gingerly approached the topic of my departure, but there was no need for caution. “If I were your age I would do exactly the same,” he said.

    A few months later, when I was already in New York, he sent me a letter. It was after Jaruzelski’s coup d’etat in Poland. He wrote that this had been yet another blow to his dreams, the possibility that communism would not necessarily be hell on earth. He wrote me, I am paraphrasing now, that if he could, he would retire to Lenola, his home town, and listen to Beethoven.

    Yet, when the Communist Party transformed itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pietro left it and joined Rifondazione Comunista, the last incarnation of Italian Communism.

  • Facts & Stories

    Execution of Mayor Angelo Vassallo. Italy Mourns Another Camorra Victim

    Sunday night, in the small coastal town of Pollica, province of Salerno, the mayor Angelo Vassallo was gunned down execution style. The killer sprayed his body with nine bullets. They found Angelo in his car, the cell phone in his hand, though he had not been able to call anybody before dying. There are no witnesses, no suspects. It is very likely that nobody will be apprehended for his murder, or that the identity of those who commissioned the murder will be never known.

    Vassallo was a fisherman turned mayor who stood up to local organized crime. He had strongly opposed the camorra’s interests in big public contracts related to the harbor and other tourist infrastructures. Not a man to be bought off, he had become an obstacle to the shady business of organized crime. Or he had just become another anomaly in an Italian system that has long married the state with the mafia.
     

    He fought his fight alone, without the protection of law enforcement, which he thought was in collusion with the camorra. When he spoke out against the criminals, he was not heard by those fellow politicians on the left who reside in the big cities and in Rome. They are too preoccupied with their own petty power struggles to recognize the vitality and the civility of a society that is moving farther away from them. They give impassioned talks against mafia. They rarely walk the talk.
     

    Angelo Vassallo’s funeral took place this morning, in front of a crowd gathered from all over Italy to testify not only grief, but also anger. I felt anger for days after having heard the news of his death. I did not know Vassallo. In this past week I have learned that he was a progressive, an environmentalist, and a very much loved representative of his local community. I could not speak about him, but I believe it is appropriate here to remember him by some of his own words, which I translate from an article he penned for L’Unita’, and published on September 7 2010.

    “Vassallo: Our wealth is the land where we live.”

    .....

    This morning I was at sea since 5am. I caught two lobsters, I’m taking them to my son, who has a restaurant here in town. We feel close to our land... we understand that it is our greatest wealth. Look at our harbor: we restructured and fixed it ourselves, yet, at the end, the government will own it. We took a 40 years mortgage to invest in the harbor, develop it, and many of our youth now work there. What has the government done in return? In the assignment of contracts to develop the wharf it has favored private businessmen, who will make money, without leaving us a cent. The municipality instead would use revenues from the concessions both for maintenance and other public services.

    We established a literary cafe’ in the smallest village. We built a pedestrian area in the wharf of Pioppi, where people did not know where else to meet. We are building a boat club to be managed by disabled youth.
     

    By next sumer we will refurbish the square in front of the harbor. Obtaining the concession of this structure cost us a lot. We had to sue the government. It’s maddening. We are one of the few local governments in Italy that makes the national government richer. They instead profit on us.
     

    Mine is a left administration, but we are “leghisti.” And we hope that the Northern League will solve such problems as decentralization and the reform of local governments. We trust that the local level is where the interests of the citizens are better understood and served. Italy is the sum of its municipalities, and the most damning issue of national politics today is that it does not know the land and is not able to listen to the people.

    We don’t want anything from the government, and the least the government can do for us is to leave us our things.”