Commentary
Following the ‘Riace model,’ life returns to inland Italian villages
Throughout Italy, inland areas that have welcomed immigrants have been able to counter depopulation, keeping agro-pastoral and artisan activities going that would have disappeared otherwise.
Now that the judiciary pursuit of Mimmo Lucano has ended with a positive outcome [note: the former Riace mayor was definitively acquitted of all migration-related charges], we should ask ourselves why there was so much fury against a man who became the symbol of a positive welcome for those fleeing wars and hunger, environmental disasters and criminal governments.
One can now understand why a model of reception that put inland areas to good use was highly inconvenient, especially at a time when a media campaign alleging an invasion of foreigners was being obsessively pushed – one which, unfortunately, has taken deep root in Italy. It is no coincidence that the criminalization of the Riace project came at the same time as the criminal agreements with Libya signed by the Gentiloni-Minniti government, under which Italy and Europe are paying off the gangs in Tripoli as long as they detain migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
It doesn’t matter how and by what methods they do it. The scandal of General Elmasry, a torturer and rapist who was freed and repatriated on a state flight, shows just how powerful and dominant this commodification of human beings still is.
In the meantime, the so-called “Riace model” has set the standard: it is no longer an exception, even though the charismatic figure of Mimmo Lucano has made Riace a particularly special place. There are other municipalities that have followed the same path, starting with Camini, just seven kilometers from Riace, with the result of reversing the downward population curve. Throughout Italy, inland areas that have welcomed immigrants have been able to counter depopulation, keeping agro-pastoral and artisan activities going that would have disappeared otherwise. Just like in Riace, thanks to immigrant families, schools have been reopened and the trend of closures of pharmacies, post offices and other services has been bucked.
Nowadays, Lucano is a member of the European Parliament and is trying to carry this vision forward. In all the hilly and mountainous areas of Europe which lie outside the major tourist flows, the phenomenon of depopulation has become increasingly serious and worrying. Depopulation means the loss of care for the land, with the well-known consequences: landslides, fires, soil subsidence and a degradation that starts from high altitudes and proceeds down into the valleys. It is no coincidence that at the beginning the Riace project in 1999, in was supported not only by CRIC (an NGO that was very active at that time) but also by the anarchist community of Longo, based in Forcalquier (Aix en Provence) and with a cooperative/community presence in a number of hilly and mountainous areas of France, Switzerland, and Germany. The importance of this form of welcome for the revival of marginal areas was particularly well understood in the Longo community.
Especially in Italy, one of the most fragile territories in Europe, it is necessary to envision a plan for the recovery of inland areas, a second “agrarian reform” with an ecological orientation that would aim to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events and would bring back care for the land and its preservation in the many abandoned hill and mountain areas. From this point of view, the role of migrants, along with the young Italians who have decided to stay or return, will become crucial.
This is why nowadays, as the government is still trying to prop up the failed Albania model with endless decree-laws, in defiance of the fundamental rights of migrant people, one can fight that approach with a hope for a viable future, opposed to the encroaching barbarism and the hatred being sown. This is what Riace has to teach us, which at the start was nothing more than a daydream.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/una-speranza-per-le-aree-interne-che-fa-scuola on 2025-02-13