An earthquake is an event that always deeply shakes those involved in it. Yet unlike wars, an earthquake tends to be removed from people’s memory, despite their having experienced in a few seconds a shock that can cause great bewilderment in the entire community. This removal has two different meanings. The first concerns the community, because the need to forget is the prerequisite for starting
anew, while the second affects the individual, because the earthquake experience is almost impossible to recall with words. This “forgetful-ness” is also favored by historians, who often see natural disasters as a sort of “accident” and instead concentrate much more on wars as historical events. This is why the 1980 earthquake in Irpinia – by far the most catastrophic event in Italy since World War II – is still not fully recognized as a watershed, with a “before” and an “after.

Francesco Dandolo

English

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T. Ricciardi, G. Picone, L. Fiorentino, Il terremoto in Irpinia (TheIrpinia earthquake), Donzelli, Rome, 2020, pp. 199; G. Picone, Pae-saggio con rovine (Landscape with ruins), Mondadori, 2020, pp. 222An earthquake is an event that always deeply shakes those involvedin it. Yet unlike wars, an earthquake tends to be removed frompeople’s memory, despite their having experienced in a few secondsa shock that can cause great bewilderment in the entire community.This removal has two different meanings. The first concerns thecommunity, because the need to forget is the prerequisite for startinganew, while the second affects the individual, because the earthquakeexperience is almost impossible to recall with words. This “forgetful-ness” is also favored by historians, who often see natural disasters asa sort of “accident” and instead concentrate much more on wars ashistorical events.This is why the 1980 earthquake in Irpinia – by far the most catastrophicevent in Italy since World War II – is still not fully recognized as a wa-tershed, with a “before” and an “after.” Still, the quake did mark aturning point in the State’s approach to seismic phenomena, in twomain respects. First, a national monitoring and surveillance systemwas formed, and in 1982 the new position of Minister for the Coordi-nation of Civil Protection was instituted, to avoid having to name anew commissioner for each emergency and re-creating an organizationalmachine from scratch. Beyond these general reflections, however, it isimmediately clear that in the popular mind the 1980 earthquake verysoon lost its image as a tragedy, supplanted by mostly reductiveimages of corruption and the squandering of public money.Review Articles15305-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 153Starting from these assumptions, the two volumes reviewed herereaffirm the value of remembering rather than forgetting, framing theearthquake and its consequences in a wide-ranging context along withmany documents. From this perspective on the quake’s fortieth an-niversary the authors of Terremoto in Irpinia, whose views and professionalexperiences are very different – Toni Ricciardi is an historian ofemigration, Generoso Picone a journalist and writer, Luigi Fiorentino asociologist – offer an overview that goes beyond purely journalisticreadings; nor do they focus on the “Irpiniagate” scandal, which is tosay subsequent investigations spotlighting the corruption that markedthe long and troubled reconstruction. In Paesaggio con rovine GenerosoPicone deepens the reflection, presenting this story as a “mirror” forSouthern Italy and for the country as a whole. His focus is above all onthe people involved, starting with himself: “I realize that in these fortyyears [...] in every book I have read, whether it was a novel or an essay,in every page that could contain any reference however remote inspace and time, in every place that has recorded a similar experience, Ihave searched for the answers to the questions that arose that evening.”1The need for historical analysis of these events is underscored by theauthors, who note the many and readily perceptible “fractures” causedby the earthquake: 3,000 dead, 9,000 injured and 300,000 homeless,plus the material losses of over 77,000 dwellings destroyed and 275,000severely damaged. This event also imposed the need to redesign entireinhabited centers in a different way from the traditional urban phys-iognomy of the small cities and towns of Irpinia. This urban physiognomy,in the light of the current Covid epidemic, calls into question long-standing dualisms that have dominated Italian history. “In otherwords”– as the authors say in the epilogue to Il Terremoto – “we nolonger have an underdeveloped, retrograde South in contrast with arich and advanced North, but instead an empty Italy that – fromREVIEW ARTICLES154 THE JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY1 G. Picone, Paesaggio con rovine, p. 32.05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 154Piedmont to Calabria – should claim a strong symbolic role withrespect to the full part of the nation” (pp. 165-166).2Beyond a renewed reflection on the kind of settlement that has takenover in modern Italy and created an alternative between “empty” and“full” areas, one of the main drives here is the need to “measure pain.”This is a way to escape from the logic of “forgetting in order to keep onliving” and “until the next disaster” (these, in fact, are section heads inPicone’s first chapter, significantly entitled “Autobiography of anearthquake”). This analysis of the 1980 earthquake can also help usbetter understand the contemporary reality now threatened by thepandemic.3Actually the localistic political climate that accompanied reconstructioncontributed substantially to the mostly scandalistic interpretation ofthe events. Reconstruction became the source of a harsh confrontation,one might even say it marked the birth of the North-South clash thathas been present in Italy since then and has come down to today’sworld with increased force. The comparison focused chiefly on the in-ability of the mayors in the small Irpinian urban centers to manage thesubstantial reconstruction funds – which came to about a quarter ofthe over 60 trillion lire – but it reveals how much these extremearguments can be politically exploited in the current debate. Insteadthere is a need to take account of the starting point, the broaderscenario that made this conduct possible and the different cases thatnevertheless existed and that should be interpreted in the frameworkof a more rigorous analysis.The end result of this mistaken approach is the dominance of thepresent to the detriment of memory, along with simplistic, de-historicizedinterpretations that are linked to partisan interests instead of a complexchain of events. Indeed, as noted in the prologue to Il Terremoto, aREVIEW ARTICLES155JEEH • 2/20212 T. Ricciardi, G. Picone, L. Fiorentino, “Epilogue”, in Il Terremoto in Irpinia, p.165-166.3 Paesaggio, cit., pp. 14-32.05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 155collective history of the 1980 tragedy “is still struggling to take shapetoday.” This omission appears to be anything but an exception. In thecase of the 1956 Marcinelle mine disaster in Belgium, in which 262miners died, 136 Italian migrants among them, over forty years had topass before the proclamation of a “National Day of the Sacrifice ofItalian Labor in the World” (p. 21). Also, in the specific case of the 1980earthquake we tend to forget because events clearly ran counter to thesuccess stories of “made in Italy” exports and “Italian lifestyle” thatbecame dominant in the 1980s.Thus the widespread image of political corruption, which coincideswith clientelism and dishonesty, took over the memory of the tragedyand was identified in the first place with the ruling group of theChristian Democratic Party in the Campania region. This picture, notsupported by any in-depth analysis, concealed the fact that “workswere contracted almost exclusively to large Northern companies,” anomission that was functional to the birth of the “Northern question.”As Ricciardi states, to acknowledge this reality is not to deny that therewas waste, which became more substantial when the decree proclaimingthe state of emergency was converted into law, extending the reliefarea well beyond the so-called crater, the original 36 municipalities ofthe three most seriously affected provinces – Avellino, Salerno andPotenza – with the addition of five more provinces – Naples, Benevento,Caserta, Matera and Foggia. It is also known that because of the earth-quake the Camorra criminal organization underwent a radical evolutioninto a “criminal entrepreneurial holding”, an element that wouldbecome an obligatory reference in research on this issue. Withoutdenying these elements, the authors concur that analysis on this subjectmust necessarily be more complex and must be set in the historicalscenario of those decades. The authors draw on various sources,including music, information and stories, to describe a context ofpoverty and marginalization and define Irpinia as “an unhappy stateof mind, representing an inferno of discontent, a kind of ‘secret night-mare’” (p. 49).REVIEW ARTICLES156 THE JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 156It is understandable that in the face of so much literal hunger therewas also a great hunger for modernity, as other Italian regions hadstaged extraordinary transformations in the short span of a few decades,which would persist in the 1980s, during the post-earthquake recon-struction. However, this desire for radical change in the urban and so-cio-economic fabric could not resolve the dramatic problem of Irpinianemigration: in 2010, 30 years after the earthquake, 55 municipalities inthe province of Avellino had lost at least 10% of their residents, and 31more than 20%, with peaks of 40% or even 56%. Thus not only demo-graphic “thinning” but also the rapid aging of the population becameinevitable: in 2020 the old-age index was 178.4 at national level and134.7 in the Campania region, but in the province of Avellino it was185.7.Emigration, as Ricciardi demonstrates, has been a constant in Irpiniasince the last decades of the nineteenth century. Originally it served asa sort of “safety valve” and did not become massive until the aftermathof the Second World War. Indeed even during the extraordinary inter-vention of the Southern Italy Development Fund (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno),migration remained the only viable way to significantly improve one’ssocio-economic condition. Manlio Rossi-Doria, one of the most famousSouthernists of recent decades, saw this tendency as “irreversible andsubstantially liberating.”4 Immigration, however, as the numerous tes-timonies reported in Ricciardi’s essay reveal, was a choice that imposedvery substantial costs, so it is no coincidence that the most common ex-pression among the tales of Irpinian emigrants was “They treat us likeslaves.”From this perspective the combination of emigration and earthquakes(four major quakes hit the Irpinia region in the twentieth century) canbe seen as the true, intimate essence of the history of the Apennines.This area, however, as Generoso Picone notes, has long remained inREVIEW ARTICLES157JEEH • 2/20214 T. Ricciardi, “History and stories of a territory between migration and earth-quakes”, in Terremoto, cit., p. 83.05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 157shadow, save for such events as the Avellino football team’s promotionto Serie A. The earthquake of November 1980 finally brought out, intothe light, the region’s mountainside “nativity-scene” villages, the menwith their characteristic caps, and the veiled women dressed in black:“the chorus of this countryside tragedy,” as Alberto Moravia wrote.At the same time a great solidarity movement was set in motion,thanks in part to the powerful denunciation by Sandro Pertini, thePresident of the Republic, of the delays and failures of emergencyrelief and the full-page headline of the Neapolitan newspaper Il Mattino,“Be quick”, conceived by Andy Warhol. The whole country was unitedas never before and for many this experience became “a formativeyouthful passage.”5 Yet before the eyes of the many who came to help,an unbelievable scene unfolded: “No one could imagine” – Piconenotes – “that in the Italy of the 1980s there might still be a part of theterritory in such apocalyptic conditions” (p. 100).6 At the same timemigrants from Irpinia organized countless fund-raisers, while theiremployers did what they could to offer hospitality to relatives fromthe disaster area. Although it had been originated by a tragedy, on thewhole this climate was promising. Picone comments that in those dayshe perceived – “perhaps with naïve optimism” – not only that theearthquake might give rise to “a new and better model of life” but alsothat all of Italy had learned the lesson.7But this perception was soon to dissolve: already on the occasion of thefirst anniversary, many voices critical of the reconstruction areas wereheard, eventually culminating with the Parliamentary Committee ofInquiry established in April 1989 and chaired by Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.“The results of his work” – Picone highlights – “represent the point ofcaesura between the solidarity movement that had united South andREVIEW ARTICLES158 THE JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY5 Paesaggio, cit., p. 32.6 G. Picone, “A province between stereotypes and trauma: self-representationof a territory”, in Terremoto, cit., p. 100.7 Paesaggio, cit., p. 32.05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 158North and the split that led the North to distance itself from theSouth”8 (p. 103). “Irpiniagate” was officially born, targeting the politicalclass of Campania, which in those years held positions of power in thenational government and in the country’s leading political party, theChristian Democrats. In the collective consciousness, what prevailedwas an image of waste and corruption, while the apocalyptic catastrophethat had buried 2,914 people was forgotten.It was inevitable, then, that the reconstruction increasingly came to re-semble a wasted opportunity: “Isn’t there a risk,” Picone asks, “of ev-erything being sucked into the maelstrom of ideological conflict?”9Abuses and corruption certainly existed, as is clearly shown in the twovolumes, but the point is: how could it be that the word “tragedy” wastotally supplanted by the word “scandal?” In other words how could“the overflowing wave of solidarity without political distinction butexclusively in the name of humanity invoked by President Pertini …be overturned, transformed into resentment and indistinct accusationof waste, corruption and parasitism that feeds clientelism, bad governanceand bad business?”10Beyond the significant issues relating to the rise in public spendingwithout the expected benefits, another point that caused perplexitymixed with bitterness was the adoption of passively accepted, top-down urban planning models. The places reconstructed appear as“villages without a soul,” and this aspect was aggravated by the lackof collective participation in the architectural and urban-planningchoices made. Overall, the urban planner Vezio De Lucia offers ahighly suggestive summary of the rebuilding process. In choosing thetitle for one of his reports following a trip to the earthquake areas adecade later, in 1990, he used the following formula: “I saw a massacre,REVIEW ARTICLES159JEEH • 2/20218 G. Picone, “A province between stereotypes and trauma: self-representationof a territory,”, in Terremoto, cit., p. 103.9 Paesaggio, cit., p. 32.10 Paesaggio, cit., pp. 136-137.05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 159they called it reconstruction.”11 This element, however, is one thatIrpinia holds in common with other quake-struck areas, as in the casesof Umbria, L’Aquila and the Marche region; except that nowhere elseas clearly as in Irpinia has the representation of the earthquake astragedy, from the victims’ point of view, been replaced by accounts ofthe transformations of the territory and its anthropological mutation.This even though, as Fiorentino points out, inefficiency was not alwaysdominant on the operational or the legislative level.More generally, it is clear that “the earthquake had a significant effectin the paradigm change of the extraordinary Southern developmentintervention.”12 In 1980, indeed, the Cassa del Mezzogiorno had ceasedto play any role, so the earthquake became an opportunity to continuethe extraordinary intervention in the more backward areas of Italy, inorder to obtain financing to build infrastructure. After all, despite thebuilding of some important industrial plants in the 1960s, Irpinia con-tinued mainly “to provide a workforce for factories, farms and minesin Northern Italy and Europe and also semi-finished intellectual prod-ucts.”13In practice, the most important need today is to institute policies thatpromote “staying,” i.e. to offer reasons why it is worth staying in acontext marked by the sale of villages and more generally by the de-mographic crisis that is becoming the hallmark of the “Southernquestion.” This is a challenge that cannot be postponed, because it isdecisive for the very future of Southern Italy.This is an issue, as the two books briefly reviewed here indicate, whicheven in its most tragic aspects, such as the Irpinia earthquake ofNovember 1980, must be the subject of accurate historical investigation,in order to serve as sentinel to prevent the discussion from slippingREVIEW ARTICLES160 THE JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY11 Paesaggio, cit., p. 32.12 L. Fiorentino, “The reconstruction work between civil commitment andclichés”, in Terremoto, cit., p. 149.13 Paesaggio, cit., p. 32.05-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 160into the already overflowing repertoire of stereotypes and misleadingreadings that are only suitable for instrumental and spurious purposes.It is for this same reason that these two books are highly laudable,insofar as they re-establish, through careful reflection, the true termsof the greatest tragedy in the history of the Republic of Italy.Francesco DandoloFederico II University of NaplesREVIEW ARTICLES161JEEH • 2/202105-articles_151_162.qxp_05-articles_151_162  21/06/21  07:44  Pagina 161

The Irpinia earthquake

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The Irpinia earthquake

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