Hello everyone, I just got back from Italy and am incredibly jetlagged. I am not posting to boast about my vacation but wanted to share some political impressions from my time overseas.
My stay in Italy was about a week, driving around Tuscany in a rental car. We were based out of rented house in a tiny hilltop community called Vellano, near Pescia. We went as far south as Chiusi, but mostly stayed closer, making day trips to Pisa, Lucca,Florence, and Siena.
I, as an American, am inclined to think of rural communities and small towns as conservative. As a lapsed Catholic, I, in the past, have imagined that Italy was Ratzinger country, all aboard for the kneejerk destruction of Vatican II. But what I found in Italy was actually very different.
Just outside the house we rented was a small pillar with two names on it. It took a few minutes with a dictionary to translate it. It commemorated the murder, nearby, down the hill from the road, of two Italian partisans by the Nazis. Behind the monument was a huge laurel wreath which had been recently placed to commemorate the recent anniversary of the murders. Up the road a bit there was a larger monument to others who had been killed that night (I want to know more about this event, but don't know that specific dates by heart. I have photos of the monuments, and plan to get the names and dates from my photos for more research, just as soon as the jetlag stops making me feel like I'm underwater). Talking to a woman who lived down the road ( Hello, Grazia!) we were informed about the centrality of politics in Tuscany. Two things shocked and amazed me:
- In Tuscan politics there is no real urban/rural divide. The countryside is not reactionary just because it's population is older.
and, even more shocking
- To be a real lefty in Tuscany, not just a namby-pamby centrist Democrat type, is NORMAL. Most of the people who live there, even the rural grandmas, are further left politically than our so-called radicals. The mayor of Pescia, not a communist himself, went and gave the opening speech at the local communist festival. (People in Italy attend political festivals!)
If I described to you an organization dedicated to to "Arts and culture, citizen's rights, conflict resolution, human rights, international cooperation to development, and struggle against social exclusion, and women's rights (parity, equal opportunity)" you'd probably think of it is some kind of underfunded, boutique liberal college club, right? The ARCI, from the looks of it though, is closer in membership and community presence to a VFW (I don't know enough about Italian politics to say anything about the organizations history, I'm just commenting on it's apparent ubiquity and local activity. There were posters at the chapters I saw advertising parties for a kind of barbecue, for the roasting of wild boars, and it kind of reminded me of Rotary Club pancake breakfasts).
Okay this getting rambly. Time to go lay down.