Dr. Feltri,
Speaking of his reportage from San Luca in 1989, as in all the municipalities of Calabria, the population has also decreased in San Luca. I know of a single Calabrian municipality in which the population has remained almost stable. But it is explained: the municipal secretary was interested in that the population was of a number to allow the intake of a relative as a general practitioner. Then suggesting to the Neapolitans owners of the second home in this municipality to make their joints appear as a resident he obtained the result of increasing the number of inhabitants, and the owners avoid paying the IMU. For the rest we read that Calabria was then in full economic boom. They will have perfected the way of increasing revenue with old -age pensions, unemployment, accompaniment and various provisions. The integration runs but the olives always hang from the trees.
Leonardo Chiarelli
Dear Leonardo,
I do not know at all that a economic boom occurred in Calabria. The national indices have been certifying a general growth of employment, even youth and feminine, well -being, productivity for a couple of years, but certain regions of the South, Calabria primarily, remain in more or less tanging waters and the fault always to national institutions, to the government, to the state cannot be worked. Rather, I think that most of the serious liability on the local ones, which have devoured by public money, and that there is a basic mentality, difficult to eradicate, which generates a state of resignation in the populations of the deep south.
I have not been going to Calabria for decades, yet I have the impression, listening to friends and acquaintances who stay frequently in those areas or who live there, that little or even nothing has changed since, making my tour in that wonderful region as corrier’s envoy of Corriere della Sera, I was in San Luca and I wrote the report that you are referring to. The negative elements have not changed and not even the positive ones, which consist in the kindness, generosity and welcome of the Calabrians, people’s hard yet lovable, diffident but affordable people, or in the abundance that characterizes the cuisine, made of succulent dishes, or in the beauty of the landscape, both maritime and rural and mountainous. At Calabria there is nothing left, it is a land full of resources, perhaps the richest we have in Italy, however the least valued and exploited. Wealth is wasted. The mortified beauty. The mistreated nature. Beaches and neglected beaches. The little valued tourist vocation, indeed, also say at all, since there are no accommodation facilities. So the question would be there, but the offer is missing.
The idea has been imposed that salvation comes from outside, from the outside, that it is not the responsibility of the Calabrians to do something for themselves and for their motherland. Years and years of assistance have not benefited, as did not benefit citizenship income, which contributed to insinuating young people in the head that rolling up the sleeves is useless, because so much in some way you can stay afloat, someone will intervene, Providence, dad or mom, the state. Ambition is absent, pride is absent, that push that leads you to fight to do something great, to get your revenge, your redemption. You get used to mediocrity dangerously.
A risk that had denounced the great Calabrian writer Corrado Alvaro, author of a book that I loved, who engraved so much in my journalistic and human formation, or people in Aspromonte.
We are satisfied. Here, this is the point. And who is satisfied, dear Leonardo, does not enjoy, but dies, because he goes out, ceases to do, gives himself up. It is defeated.