Chronicles of ordinary racism 2011 - Cronache di ordinario razzismo

as a decommissioned oil mill, the former Opera Sila, the former la “Rognetta” plant and
several ruined, isolated farmsteads with no sanitary installations. And there is more.
The gunshots on 7 January are not the first to be fired: attacking immigrants with
stones, sticks or firearms is a popular local “game” dating back to at least 1990, when a
young Maghrebian man, Mohammed El Sadki , was shot in the legs. 253
Exploitation, disgraceful living conditions, trampled civil and human rights and
gunshots: for twenty years this has been the life that immigrants who work in the fields
of Rosarno have been leading.
The protest held on 7 January 2010 is not the first of its kind: on 12 December 2008, after
yet another shooting at the expense of two young Ivorians who were seriously injured,
immigrants organized a peaceful protest march, which did not, however, elicit any form
of acknowledgement from the state.
On 7 January 2010, in the context of a crisis that heavily affected a local agricultural
economy which found itself overwhelmed by the competition posed by Southern
Mediterranean countries, disastrous EU policies and the Mafia’s constant speculating,
all the rage and frustration accumulated by the foreign farm hands in the course of
years of exploitation and abuses spilt out into open rebellion. At around 6 PM, four
hundred immigrants organized two road blocks on highway 18 and in another part of
the town, and then proceeded to march through the centre, destroying cars and shop
windows and upturning rubbish bins. The protest continued the following day, this
time with no material damage involved. The riots came as a surprise to everyone: the
local population, police authorities, the media and the general public, perhaps precisely
because this was the first time that the protest had progressed into a fully‐fledged riot,
despite the endless history of intimidation and violence directed against the immigrant
workers. It is even more surprising in an area where the “’ndrangheta” controls
everything and nobody dares to speak up. The State’s influence simply does not reach
as far as Rosarno: locals know this well and immigrants soon pick up on it. This is the
key to understanding the reasoning behind the facts that occurred between 7th and 10th
January. The real piece of news from those days concerned the pogrom carried out
against African workers by groups of Rosarno citizens. “Vigilante patrols” of locals
conducted a proper man‐hunt against black people for several days: they managed to
injure several immigrants with iron bars, truncheons, billiard cues, stones and firearms;
the old farmhouses where some of them lived were burnt to the ground. 254 A
“delegation” went so far as to occupy the town council (replaced by a state‐appointed
official while it is investigated for bowing to mafia pressure since 2008) to publicly
advocate the deportation of all the African workers. The spreading of utterly unfounded
information, such as the news that a pregnant mother had lost her baby as the result of
a blow suffered during the rioting, only served to escalate the tension.
253 Alessio Magro reconstructs the history of the attacks suffered by African and Maghrebian immigrants in Rosarno for Il
Manifesto. Cf the article published on 16 February 2010 Calabria infelix, 20 anni di violenze e di accoglienza, (Calabria infelix,
20 years of violence and reception) also contained in the invaluable “Arance insanguinate. Dossier Rosarno”, (bloodstained
oranges. Rosarno dossier) by Associazione Da Sud, http://www.dasud.it.
254 Later, Human Right Watch documented at least nine assaults that resulted in the injury of at least eleven immigrants. Cf.
Human Rights watch, L’intolleranza quotidiana. La violenza xenofoba e razzista in Italia (Everyday intolerance. Racist and
Xenophobic violence in Italy), 2011, pag.28. 21 injured foreigners were sent to Calabrian hospitals during those days according
to the Interior minister.
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