Introduction
This contribution aims to analyse the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World. The anniversary originates from the mining accident that occurred in Marcinelle in 1956, which caused the deaths of 136 Italian migrant miners. Thanks to the recent opening of the Fondo Tremaglia, it has been possible to reconstruct the genesis of the anniversary and its commemorations during and after the lifespan of the Ministry for Italians in the World (2001–6).
The context of the national holiday, as already extensively analysed by Maurizio Ridolfi (Reference Ridolfi2021), is characterised in this case by a pronounced funerary significance. There are no triumphal parades, as the occasion is one of silent and sacred recollection. Marcinelle became the perfect place of encounter between the living and the dead. This was facilitated by a number of factors, which probably included the recovery of the memory of the massacre at Cephalonia and the glorification of the Aqui Division since the early 1990s (Rochat and Venturi Reference Rochat and Venturi1993; Rusconi Reference Rusconi2004; Klinkhammer Reference Klinkhammer, Janz and Klinkhammer2008). Furthermore, following his election in 1999, the president of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, spearheaded a comprehensive revitalisation of the concepts of sacrifice and attachment to the motherland (Gentiloni Silveri Reference Gentiloni Silveri2013; Viroli Reference Viroli2021), in part through the revival of the Festa della Repubblica (Ridolfi Reference Ridolfi2021). In this regard, a strong effort was made to build a shared national history and to address the issue of divided memories (Germinario Reference Germinario1999; Focardi Reference Focardi2005), as well as to cope with the Lega Nord and its separatist, if not independentist, aspirations.
The mining accident was recalled within a sacred context. The miners who left Italy in search of a better life were transformed into heroes and martyrs. In his discourse, Minister for Italians in the World Mirko Tremaglia persistently reintroduced the triad of religious, romantic-chivalrous and familial concepts, concepts that were already associated with the rituals of sacrifice and atonement in the origins of the Italian Republic (Schwarz Reference Schwarz2010). Therefore, this narrative aligned perfectly with the so-called mistica del martirio (martyrdom mystique), in which weapons, blood and holiness were seen as a unified whole (Banti Reference Banti2000, Reference Banti2005).
A new ministry is born
During the longest-lasting government of the Italian Republic, the second Berlusconi government, the Ministry for Italians in the World was established. Along with its associated department, it constituted a key element for the renewal of Italy after the end of the First Italian Republic. The renewal was not only political; it was also civic and cultural and often aimed at the discovery or rediscovery of Italian identity. In the case of the aforementioned ministry, this recovery was made possible by the involvement of the heirs to the historical Italian diasporas, who, it was said, represented the best of Italy for at least two reasons. First, despite the lack of interest from the political ruling classes, they had never ceased to love their distant homeland. Second, they embodied the positive values of resilience, strength and hard work.
The need to find a new order also emerged in the aftermath of the radical transformation caused by the tangentopoli affair – that is, the power vacuum that resulted from the ‘disintegration of the parties in the governmental area’, which ‘opened up gaps in the antifascist barrier’ (Ignazi Reference Ignazi2023, 415). The Ciampi government (29 April 1993–11 May 1994) was the first to experience this situation. During his brief tenure as prime minister, Ciampi endeavoured to establish a stable balance, seeking a compromise between old and new dynamics (Gentiloni Silveri Reference Gentiloni Silveri2013, 39). However, the disruptive forces were strengthened by the ‘persistence of a strong climate of tension around the issue of justice and among the powers of the Italian State’ (Ginsborg Reference Ginsborg2007, 526). Ultimately, the power vacuum was filled by Berlusconi’s decision to ‘take the field’ (discesa in campo), which saw the emergence of a true ‘guerra di movimento’ (Ginsborg Reference Ginsborg2007, 539). Despite its short duration, the first Berlusconi government (11 May 1994–17 January 1995) introduced a series of innovations that would continue to shape Italian political life in the following years. The clearance (sdoganamento) of Alleanza Nazionale, which became the third largest Italian party, with 13.5 per cent of the vote (Ignazi Reference Ignazi2023, 417), seemed to end the isolation of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). This process started at the beginning of the 1980s, thanks to the ‘historicisation of Fascism and the deradicalisation of the political conflict’. In fact, these dynamics created ‘the conditions for an integration into the system’ (Ignazi Reference Ignazi1997, 105) of those who had been excluded.
One of the protagonists of the second and third Berlusconi cabinets was Mirko Tremaglia (1926–2011), a charismatic and devoted politician. Having volunteered in the Repubblica Sociale Italiana at the age of just 17, Tremaglia never denied his past. On the contrary, he celebrated it with fervour and conviction until his death. Tremaglia was a prominent figure in the MSI from its foundation in 1946 and one of the closest collaborators of Giorgio Almirante. Their relationship of mutual esteem is exemplified by a letter that Almirante wrote to Tremaglia on the occasion of the latter’s visit to the Kremlin on 8 April 1988:
Dearest Mirko, as president of the entire party, but even more as your camerata and friend for 40 years, I want to say that with your gesture at the Kremlin, as the ideal, moral and political representative of the anticommunist Italy, you have restored our pride in being Italian and calling ourselves Italian. My gratitude therefore does not end in just an affectionate embrace but wants to be and is a personal acknowledgement that honours me, that makes me happy as an indelible gratitude. You have erased so much bitterness in a single gesture. It is good to feel Italian next to you.Footnote 1
On 10 June 2001, Tremaglia was appointed minister without portfolio by decree of the president of the Republic. The following day, he was assigned the role of Minister for Italians in the World by decree of the president of the council of ministers. The ministry was formally established on 13 June 2001. Tremaglia was given the task of ‘co-ordinating and promoting initiatives, including regulations, in matters concerning Italian communities abroad’,Footnote 2 with particular attention to general policies, integration, information and cultural promotion, as well as the enhancement of the entrepreneurial role of Italians living abroad. He is best remembered for law 495 of 27 December 2001 (better known as the Legge Tremaglia), which regulates the right to vote for Italians abroad.
However, two new national holidays were also established during his tenure, at his request: the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World, celebrated every 8 August, and the National Day of Christopher Columbus, celebrated every 12 October. The creation of these national holidays is remarkable for at least two reasons. In the first place, it served the purpose of making a newly established ministry noteworthy, despite lacking a portfolio and being led by a former saloino, who even as a minister always claimed his fascist past. In doing so, Tremaglia could have acted as primus inter pares within a Republic that was born after and thanks to the end of Fascism, a Republic in which he continued to suffer from a sort of ‘siege mentality’, perceiving himself an exile at home, constrained by the detrimental political dynamics of the hated partitocrazia (partitocracy). Second, it elevated the minister and his actions above his peers, reflecting his tendency to recognise the role of Italian migrants. In fact, Italian migrants have consistently been marginalised and devalued by liberal and republican Italy. This has resulted in a persistent association with a sense of shame in the face of what Emilio Franzina has effectively called the ‘exportation of misery’ (1999, 296). These migrants probably appeared to Tremaglia as the other ‘excluded pole’ of civil and political society, to borrow the term with which Piero Ignazi defined the MSI in the context of the First Republic (Ignazi Reference Ignazi2023). Emigrated abroad and abandoned by their motherland, they were the heirs
to a history of mass migration that has spanned over a century, with the majority of these people being working class and proletarian. These migrants have received … very little attention from the ancient motherland … In fact, the Italian state, from the liberal to the republican era, demonstrated a striking lack of interest in addressing the needs of this significant phenomenon. (Franzina Reference Franzina, Tarozzi and Vecchio1999, 295)
One of the key strategies used by Tremaglia to position Italians as protagonists on the global stage was precisely the creation of these two national holidays. Tremaglia always tirelessly spoke up for Italians abroad, to the point of defining them ‘now, my family’.Footnote 3 The image of the family – of Italy as a mother who has been unnaturally deprived of the possibility of nurturing all her children (a natural biological task) – is a recurring theme in the papers of the Fondo Tremaglia. The ‘natural–unnatural’ dichotomy is intensified in the commemorations of the mining disaster that occurred in Marcinelle’s Bois du Cazier, a coalmine in the Charleroi district of Belgium, and in the consideration of the bilateral agreements made in the immediate second postwar period between Italy and Belgium. Particular reference is made to the ‘trade and payment agreements’ of 18 April 1946 and to the so-called ‘miner–coal agreement’ of 23 June 1946 (Ricciardi Reference Ricciardi2016, 51). The situation was described as a true ‘battle of the coal’ (Marzi Reference Marzi2014; Ricciardi Reference Ricciardi2016):
To cope with the labour shortage in the [Belgian] mines … German prisoners of war were initially deployed. Then, the diplomatic authorities sought allies for the ‘battle of the coal’ from abroad and in particular in Italy. In June 1946, shortly after the institutional referendum had been held, several agreements that had been made in the preceding months were formalised in Rome. These included the notorious note verbale in which Belgium undertook to reserve a quantity of between 2,500 and 5,000 tonnes of coal for export to Italy for every 1,000 Italian workers. (Marzi Reference Marzi2014, 607)
Considering only official estimates, ‘overall, from 1948 to 1955 … more than 180,000 Italians arrived in the mines’ (Ricciardi Reference Ricciardi2016, 62). The Italian miners and their families lived in barracks located in the former concentration camps. These barracks ‘had no water, gas or electricity and the bathrooms, all strictly outside and collective, were roofless’ (Ricciardi Reference Ricciardi2016, 85). Aldo Moro, at that time undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was similarly disconcerted after spending a few days in the various coalfields of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in June 1949 (Ricciardi Reference Ricciardi2016, 86). He described the work of the Italian miners as ‘gruelling, inhuman, conducted far from the light of day, and frequently in conditions of danger and fear’ (Ricciardi Reference Ricciardi2016, 87).
The agreement thus represented a genuine commodification of Italian emigrants. This dynamic was not only ‘a backbone of the social memory of the Italo-Belgian community and of the veteran miners, who defined themselves as “meat for the slaughter”’ (Marzi Reference Marzi2014, 608), but also the rhetoric employed by Tremaglia both externally and internally on the subject of the 8 August commemorations. For them, only ‘a shovel, an axe, a helmet, a lamp, and off into the darkness’.Footnote 4
Pilgrimage of martyrdom
The National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World was designated by a prime ministerial directive of 1 December 2001. As outlined in the brief text of the directive, the genesis of this commemorative event can be attributed to the ‘social relevance of the rediscovery of the historical and cultural values that accompanied the process of mass emigration from Italy – in particular, to the recognition and appreciation of the work and sacrifice of compatriot emigrants’. Therefore, there was an opportunity to advance the pursuit of these objectives through ‘the holding of a National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World, to be held annually on 8 August, the anniversary of the mining disaster that occurred in 1956 in Marcinelle (Belgium), where 136 Italian workers perished’.Footnote 5
The marking of the anniversary of the mining disaster was central to the activities of the ministry. This can be easily understood from the massive corpus of archival material pertaining to this holiday within the Fondo Tremaglia. The documents are of a diverse nature and encompass a range of formats, including private communications, public messages and the official ceremonial orders, and cover a spectrum of controversies, such as the involvement of a former saloino in Belgium.
As much as Tremaglia was convinced of the necessity to reach out to any Italian community in the world and of the fact that all Italians residing abroad were kin by blood, constituting an extension of his biological family, Marcinelle held a particular meaning for him. The anniversary of the mining disaster provided an opportunity to honour not only the living, but also, and more importantly, the dead, who had made the ultimate sacrifice. This sacrifice could now be celebrated and immortalised in the public memory of Italy. It is no coincidence that the inaugural visit to Marcinelle in August 2001 occurred shortly after Tremaglia’s appointment as minister and even before the national day was officially established. For this reason, the speeches written for the occasion adopted a notable tone. For Tremaglia, a visit to Marcinelle represented an opportunity to demonstrate ‘how much we have acquired and understood of the great sacrifice, suffering and pain of the Italians who have emigrated over a century of history … [They were] treated like beasts, working in burrows 50 centimetres high.’Footnote 6 But it also meant using this suffering to highlight their redemption.
On the occasion of the anniversary in 2001, the minister wrote a speech in which the power of miracles and the exaltation of death completely transformed the Italian miners. We are no longer in the presence of men who died in a desperate attempt to ensure a better life for themselves and for their families, far from their motherland. For Tremaglia, these miners became soldiers who had lost their nazione in armi, who had been abandoned like animals and buried under that dark earth without any tribute or honour. In the 2001 speech, triumphal images were painted and repeated, along with scenes that could be linked to those of an underground pitched battle. Tremaglia’s desire was to ‘line up all our Fallen and offer a reminder of them to new generations who are not aware of this tragic event’.Footnote 7 He recalled the image of a pilgrimage to a sacred place, invested almost with military sanctity, blessed with the blood of atypical soldiers:
I recall our first pilgrimage to this sad mining basin, where mortality, peril and the perception of exploitation illuminate the significance of one’s obligations, solidarity and respect for labourers. And how cynical, selfish and cowardly is the behaviour of those who dare to live alone, prioritising their own selfishness and their own money [over the collective good].Footnote 8
Tremaglia undertook his personal pilgrimage (pellegrinaggio personale) to Marcinelle for the first time in 1996 with Pietro Fassino (undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), who had been selected to preside over the commemorative event. The portrayal of the visit as a pilgrimage evokes a sense of absolute religiosity, within which the minister and the tragedy positively affected each other. The result is the image of a minister entrusted with a responsibility greater than any other. Tremaglia became the bearer of the sacred fire, of an inescapable moral obligation to soldiers in a battle without rifles and swords, but a battle that was no less glorious for that. Tremaglia portrayed himself as the author of a new and renewed state of equilibrium.
The paradox of the ‘presence of death’ was inherent to every ritual and was associated with the memory of a past era that was fairer than the present, a view that was particularly prevalent in relation to the republican period. This memory was characterised by an enduring sense of gratitude for the sacrifices made in the past:
We bow before our dead and do as we once did, because we believe in them and in the sanctity of their sacrifice. We observed a moment of silence in the cemetery and recited a prayer to God, in recognition of the supreme act of devotion to the Caduti and their families. Today there are no more Reduci … Their memory has been largely erased. Forty-five years have passed, yet we stand before a mosaic of these labour heroes, who symbolise the countless others who have been completely forgotten.Footnote 9
According to Tremaglia, Italian politics had ‘no time to sow within itself these dates of authentic martyrdom, as it is engaged with pursuing strategies of a different nature’.Footnote 10 The minister asserted that politics, and more specifically the Italian partitocracy, had killed ‘morality[, which] no longer exists, together with the teaching of the memory of our dead’.Footnote 11 The sacrifice of these timeless martyrs could only be fully integrated into Italian memory and public ritual by overcoming every ‘political, trade union, cultural and religious division … Everyone knows well what I think of certain dates and their unitarity significance. There can be no partisan demonstration. Marcinelle cannot be claimed by anyone but the entire Italian and European people.’Footnote 12
The transformation of the Italian miners into soldiers (or, at best, into miners-soldiers) had been successfully completed. Their death was not a mere tragedy at work, but rather a sacred offering, an authentic martyrdom. It can be argued that, for a long time, the miners-tuned-soldiers found themselves in a similar condition of isolation to that experienced by the ragazzi di Salò: that is, ‘strangers to the nation, uprooted and stateless individuals, looked upon with indifference or hatred by other Italians’ (Germinario Reference Germinario, Janz and Klinkhammer2008, 204). It is therefore unsurprising that, alongside the ‘historic victory of the right to vote abroad’, the anniversary of Marcinelle is also included in the ‘beauty of the battle of civilisation and resurrection’Footnote 13 of Italians in the world.
In addition, the two dimensions of war and martyrdom are inextricably linked to other aspects of Tremaglia’s rhetoric, most notably the cult reserved for Italian migrants in general. Moreover, the transformation of the migrant miners into soldiers was also beneficial in enhancing the figure of the minister as an ‘eternal fighter’. Tremaglia himself portrayed this image, which is the prevailing representation derived from press coverage and from the words of numerous other Italian politicians.
The weight of one’s fascist past
The heavy influence of Tremaglia and his self-celebrated albeit politically polarising past was not always viewed positively. While many politicians and intellectuals in recent years have strived to reunite the great historical rifts caused by Fascism, it was not uncommon for Tremaglia to be perceived as a ‘loose cannon’, both domestically and internationally. The events of tangentopoli and the Mani pulite investigations marked a pivotal point in the Italian political landscape. The process of tracing the identity of Italians led to another crucial objective of the Second Republic: national pacification.
One of the most prominent advocates of this reconciliation between opposing political, cultural and ideological factions was Luciano Violante, as evidenced by his inaugural address as the newly elected president of the Chamber of Deputies on 10 May 1996 (Woolf Reference Woolf, Bini, Daniele and Pons2011, 11–12). In the same year, Pietro Scoppola felt that it was more necessary than ever to emphasise the positive value of antifascism. Scoppola, together with Gian Enrico Rusconi, had stressed the connection ‘between the antifascist tradition and the “new” Italian political system’ since at least 1993 (Baris Reference Baris, Bini, Daniele and Pons2011, 135–7). Reflecting ‘on the losers of yesterday’, Violante questioned why thousands of ‘boys and especially girls [decided to side] with Salò rather than the side of rights and freedom’. Violante expressed regret that Italy, ‘unlike other European countries’, still lacked ‘commonly shared national values’:
I wonder, colleagues, I humbly ask myself, in what manner might that part of Italy that believes in those values and that seeks to preserve and fortify [them] in their universal aspect of the fight against tyranny and the emancipation of peoples, not as an exclusive domain … I wonder what this Italy must do so that the struggle for liberation from Nazi-Fascism may truly become a national and general value and so that we may emerge positively from yesterday’s lacerations.Footnote 14
The archive contains numerous instances of another speech that Violante addressed directly to Tremaglia after the premature death of Tremaglia’s son Marzio on 22 April 2000. The speech, delivered with the intention of conveying a sense of proximity and solidarity in the wake of tragedy, also served to outline a further initiative aimed at fostering pacification through the re-composition of the parties involved. Despite Tremaglia’s persistent affirmation of his fascist legacy, Violante portrayed him as a person who ‘all of us, of whatever political party, have always appreciated [for] his loyalty, his resilience and commitment and [we] have also had great respect for his pain’. Violante went on to say that ‘we are all equal here: we enter with equal standing and must gain authority day by day … You [Tremaglia] have done this for so many years and you have also done it during this legislature.’Footnote 15
In this context of national pacification, the significance of Marcinelle is further highlighted. It served as an exemplification of the collective suffering endured by Italians worldwide, who, despite the circumstances, have always remained faithful to their love for their distant motherland. It is that unconditional devotion, which would lead them to the extreme gesture of martyrdom, that could be used to overcome existing rifts. The system of honours awarded to the piccole patrie in the postwar period appears to have been reinitiated. Similarly, the Italian diasporas constituted small homelands outside Italy that served to ‘convey an identification with the broader national collectivity’ (Schwarz Reference Schwarz, Janz and Klinkhammer2008, 217), which, according to Tremaglia, was more alive abroad than at home, far from any polarisation – particularly in relation to antifascism. Although these events were not ‘recent tragedies’ but the timeless symbol of the pain that expatriate Italians had to endure all over the world, the result was intended to be the same – that is, ‘the projection of the pain and pride of individuals beyond local borders, into a fully patriotic and national dimension’ (Schwarz Reference Schwarz, Janz and Klinkhammer2008, 217). This was a challenging and unlikely scenario, particularly given the depths of the rifts, the high degree of political polarisation, and the minister’s assertion that Marcinelle commemorations should remain apolitical. But perhaps this was precisely Tremaglia’s desire: to overcome the past without denying it but at the same time by freeing it from all the political implications of Fascism that still remained alive in certain parts of the parliamentary arena and in certain parts of Italian public opinion. The de-politicisation – and not the total cancellation – of Fascism through a public commemoration may have resulted in its de-legitimisation, but it would also preclude any accountability for its inheritance and its legacies in the present time.
After all, it is challenging to dissociate Tremaglia’s work from his past when we consider that the minister himself always defended it, to some extent even in the autobiographical account presented during an episode of Il mio Novecento, broadcast on Rai 3 on 23 August 2005. In Tremaglia’s long speech, the contrast between the glories of the past and the bitterness of the present stands out sharply, for example in the celebration of Donna Rachele Mussolini and her efforts to secure a survivor’s pension, as well as the return of Mussolini’s body. For Tremaglia,
Italian politics should not forget … that for 12 years a corpse was concealed and also that this corpse was denigrated [vilipendio di cadavere] because [Mussolini] was returned in a soapbox 75 centimetres long, so his corpse was broken up and divided into three parts. I went to Predappio when the body was returned. It was an act of devotion by someone who had served him as a soldier.Footnote 16
These images of strict devotion contrast with the negative triumph of the Italian partitocracy, which took concrete form in the Mani pulite investigation:
We welcomed Mani pulite as a breath of fresh air, a fact of purification because there were too many people who had mistaken politics for a dirty business … I recall [the march] led by [Gianfranco] Fini, [during which] we wore white gloves … [and] praised this indispensable cleansing. Then there were troubles, reversals, deformations and even this dream of ours ended rather badly … I have the impression that [the same] partitocracy is back in our country. This is one of the basic reasons for the low voter turnout among Italians.Footnote 17
The influence of Tremaglia and his ministry’s propaganda was not always well received, even abroad. The anniversary of 2001 presented some challenges. Indeed, some articles in Italian and Belgian newspapers painted a rather disconcerting and opaque portrayal of the 8 August commemoration. According to L’Unità, ‘the news of Tremaglia’s arrival was not welcomed by [Belgian] authorities, who decided not to reserve any official welcome for the minister’. These were the words of Charleroi’s city council, which also explicitly declared that it ‘does not wish to have any relationship with [Tremaglia] … [because] he is a member of Alleanza Nazionale, and he participated in the Mussolini Youth. A fascist past that cannot be tolerated.’Footnote 18
The Belgian generalist newspaper La Libre Belgique reported that Tremaglia was ‘criticised by some members of migrant workers’ associations’ in front of the Marcinelle cemetery, where the word ‘“fascist” was also shouted’.Footnote 19 Many former miners did not appreciate Tremaglia’s hyper-politicised visit, despite his attempts to disassociate himself from partisan politics to inaugurate an event devoid of any claims. After these statements, Tremaglia remarked:
What is happening is deplorable … The memorials for the miners of Casarno and Corsano, located in the province of Lecce, are visited without any controversy … When the Charleroi authorities come [to Italy] to honour the Italian victims of Marcinelle, they agree to be received by us in Lecce, in the municipalities led by the right.Footnote 20
The Italian authorities responsible for organising the ceremony and the reception of Italian representatives in Belgium were also aware of the situation. An illustrative example is the exchange of communications between Gaetano Cortese (Italian ambassador in Brussels), Carlo Marsili (minister plenipotentiary and director general for Italians abroad and migration policies) and Gerardo Gerardi Crocini (Italian consul general in Charleroi). All three of them were concerned by the potentially predictable rejection of Tremaglia by the Charleroi municipality and some of the city’s population. An analysis of the available documentation in the Fondo Tremaglia reveals a complex and challenging situation, characterised by efforts to minimise as much as possible any exacerbation of the existing tensions between the parties involved.
Gerardi Crocini informed Cortese that the Belgian authorities had declined to play the Italian national anthem because ‘the ceremony concerns several countries whose citizens died in the Marcinelle tragedy and consequently is not bilateral’. Crocini also reported that Belgian authorities had no intention of changing a programme that was ‘already decided some time ago’ on the basis of Italian requests, which were probably becoming more pressing following the creation of Tremaglia’s ministry. The risk – the consul general continued – was that of provoking ‘possible reactions from the local side that could be instrumentalised’ against the Italian delegation.Footnote 21
One of the communications sent by Cortese to Marsili also spoke of the risk of ‘possible instrumentalisations by “parallel elements”’ in relation to the speeches that the minister would have liked to make at the cemetery:
My interlocutor … confirmed that no speeches had been made at the cemetery during previous ceremonies, except for the fortieth anniversary, which was attended by the Belgian royal family. In consideration of the explicit reservations articulated by the Charleroi municipal administration and reflected in some articles in the local press, the Belgian ambassador in Rome, Patrick Nothomb … proposed that it would be preferable to give official speeches [at an alternative venue].Footnote 22
A mother and her infant
In 2001, Tremaglia received support from a series of messages written by several prominent figures on the Italian political scene. These included President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, President of the Senate Marcello Pera, President of the Chamber of Deputies Pierferdinando Casini and President of the European Commission Romano Prodi. The messages demonstrated a general acceptance of the parallelism between Italian historical mass migration and the migratory waves of the present directed towards the peninsula.
After recalling the ‘solidarity nourished by common roots, shared histories, and tragic and painful events among European nations’, Pera emphasised:
[T]his is why Marcinelle has become a place of remembrance. It enables us to remember the recollection of how immigration, a problem that today concerns other peoples, only a few decades ago fully affected our national community. It makes us better consider the individual dramas that institutions and their work can alleviate.Footnote 23
For his part, Casini employed the rhetoric of martyrdom and the dynamic of the ‘extended family’ so dear to Tremaglia:
In this place, today Italy remembers her sons who died in search of a better future, and the sacrifice of so many Italians who fell to increase the wealth and prestige of Italy and the nations that hosted them … Forty-five years after the tragedy, the memory of what happened at Marcinelle remains in the conscience of all Italians, who today live in a country that has grown economically and is civilised to the point of becoming itself a destination for workers from other nations.Footnote 24
A little over a month after the 2001 commemorations, Tremaglia himself issued a series of noteworthy and yet ambiguous declarations through which he announced that he did not agree with the text of the immigration law passed by the council of ministers:
We must not have the spirit of aggression and instead make an investment plan in North Africa to give work to 20 million Africans. It is not with expulsions that the danger of a European ‘invasion’ is averted … Fortunately, the crime of clandestinity has been cancelled for those who arrive. Arresting the mother who disembarks with her infant in her arms to escape hunger would have constituted a moral outrage.Footnote 25
During the inaugural official commemoration of the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World in 2002, Tremaglia returned to the issue, asserting that ‘we will never forget our past’, in what was once again described as a ‘pilgrimage to the places of memory’. At least publicly, Tremaglia maintained this line of thought even after 2006. Now very old and visibly fatigued by Parkinson’s disease, Tremaglia nevertheless decided to attend the 2009 event. On that occasion, the Italian delegation was headed by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Gianfranco Fini. Following the reading of the speech written by the president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, and a brief address by Tremaglia, Fini proceeded with his own discourse: ‘Let us condemn and let us forget the ideological utopias of the last century that caused immense harm to the peoples of the Old Continent. Let us look at the human person.’Footnote 26 It is worth mentioning here that on the same day the crime of illegal immigration, regulated by law 94 of 15 July 2009, came into force. And it is pertinent to recall another coincidence that could be defined as ironic. Shortly after the creation of Tremaglia’s ministry in 2001, the Berlusconi government proposed the new Bossi–Fini law, which aimed to limit the inflow of immigrants into Italy and introduced the crime of illegal stay. Law 189 was approved on 30 July 2002, anticipating the Marcinelle commemorations.
Given these assumptions, Marcinelle can be seen as a symbol of a sort of humanitarian aid and the prospect for a brighter future for new migrants. In an interview with L’Eco di Bergamo shortly before the 2009 commemoration, Tremaglia split his identity in two when discussing the anniversary. On the one hand, he was indeed a man associated with the extreme right; but, at the same time, he has been
the Minister for Italians in the World … We used to be ‘them’ … Right-wing politics is what took the Italian emigrants [into consideration] and gave them the right to vote, and now sees these poor people who come to Italy in search of a future branded as criminals with an invented crime [reato di clandestinità] that does not exist … We Italians were treated as some would like to treat these people today.Footnote 27
If the rediscovery of historical Italian mass migration seemed to be positively exploited by a part of Italian politics as means of understanding the recent influx of immigrants in Italy, an analysis of the archival material suggests a more nuanced scenario. It would be a contradiction in terms to define oneself as the ‘father of Italians in the world’ and to manifest against any form of immigration to Italy at the same time. Consequently, if the public line of the ministry was one of compassion and welcome, this did not always correspond to the political projections that Tremaglia personally elaborated.
Tremaglia employed the category of ‘clandestinity’ – which he publicly banned as an ‘invented crime’ – in his own discourse. For example, the category was employed in the context of the closure of the Italian consulate in İzmir, Turkey: ‘It should not be forgotten that İzmir constituted an important observation point on the flows of clandestine immigration coming from the Middle East and passing through Turkey [towards Europe].’Footnote 28 On another occasion, the minister presented a comprehensive plan to address what he termed the ‘invasion of Europe’. The process was set to begin with a gathering ‘of representatives from riparian countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean’, along with their European counterparts, ‘within the context of an international conference scheduled to be held in Malta … in order to discuss a 30-year investment plan, starting in North Africa, to give work to 20 million Africans in Africa’. Among other things, these investments were supposed to ‘stop the otherwise uncontrollable massive exodus of migrants to Europe’ and to ensure an ‘extraordinary economic return for Europe’.Footnote 29
This project dated back to a proposal set out by Tremaglia several years earlier and approved by 127 countries ‘in Bucharest, at the end of a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1995, which was then formally accepted by the Italian Chamber of Deputies’. This proposal, Tremaglia added, was fully incorporated ‘into the Bossi–Fini law in its introductory section’. In order to comprehend the degree to which the investment framework was intertwined with the Bossi–Fini law, it is essential to recognise that Tremaglia considered the enactment of the law to be a ‘politically opportune moment’.Footnote 30
An article published by Il Manifesto on 9 August 2001 emphasised the inextricable link between this national day, the spirit of humanitarian aid and Tremaglia’s rejection of the Bossi–Fini law:
‘I will oppose all immigration laws that provide crimes of clandestinity wherever they came from.’ [These are] the words of Minister Mirko Tremaglia hailing from Marcinelle … [Tremaglia] stands against the Bossi–Fini law and takes a markedly different path from the leader of his party [Fini] … ‘The new law – he said – should provide neither the crime of clandestinity nor the institution of short-term contracts … We want those who are forced to seek work and a better life to have the same rights that we have demanded for our emigrants for many years.’ (Campagna Reference Campagna2001)
Despite Tremaglia’s assertion of distance from the Bossi–Fini law, the text of law 189 was quoted and attached to a series of private communications that provide evidence of a certain degree of affinity with the principles expressed in it. Moreover, in 2004, Silvio Berlusconi, Gianni Letta (undersecretary of state at the presidency of the council of ministers) and Giuseppe Pisanu (minister of the interior) were sent a copy of the file concerning the investments to be made in Africa.
These documents challenge the image of Tremaglia that has been part of the collective imagination for more than two decades: namely, that of the extreme right-wing santo patrono of immigrants of any origin.
Conclusions
The unpublished archive documents presented in this article elucidate the multifaceted meanings ascribed to the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World. The most significant aspect of the anniversary is its association with the sanctity of death, which, in Tremaglia’s rhetoric, is portrayed as a conscious and deliberate martyrdom. The transformation of Italian migrant miners into a distinct category of soldiers, engaged in a battle for their homeland with the tools of their trade, served to elevate the significance of their demise. The ritual of his annual pellegrinaggio personale served to enhance the purity of their sacrifice, thereby establishing it within an almost absolute religious context. Placing the deaths of the miners-turned-soldiers within a broader interpretative framework that encompasses other mining tragedies (such as Monongah and Dawson) created a ‘chain of sacrifice … capable of ringing up failures in view of a final success [in order] to overcome the question of the usefulness/uselessness of heroic death for the homeland’ (Balzani Reference Balzani, Janz and Klinkhammer2008, 14) and able to finally celebrate the redemption of life in death. But it is also useful to put the minister’s personal combat past under the spotlight for justification and re-signification purposes – not just any combatant past, but that of a saloino.
Marcinelle thus became a symbol of humanitarianism that was compromised by the fear of invasion and, even more, by Italy’s lack of national pacification, which was also unexpectedly reflected in foreign dynamics. The minister strived to ensure that the commemoration of this anniversary was not overshadowed by the Italian partitocracy. Consequently, the establishment of the two new national commemorations would perhaps make it unnecessary to ‘question the war of dates to be commemorated, as well as the values that those symbolic-ritual systems represent’ (Ridolfi Reference Ridolfi2021, 7). The intention appeared to be the mitigation of tensions by eliminating any discord created by competing political parties and their respective ideologies. Tremaglia considered the fall of the First Republic to represent a significant rupture in the Italian political landscape – a rupture so strong that it led him to write in his CV that he ‘always supported the decisive cleansing operation in bringing down the First Republic and the system of parties’.Footnote 31 It is noteworthy that the same CV states: ‘He was a supporter of the great national idea and has always been an advocate of respect and honour for all fallen soldiers, without discrimination, for national pacification.’Footnote 32
From the perspective of the minister and his ministry, this ‘war of dates’ may primarily refer to the anniversary of Italy’s liberation from Nazi-Fascism. The claim of a parallel memory in relation to 25 April is a longstanding one. Since the second postwar period, the concept of the ‘illegitimate identity’ of the MSI has shaped the history of the neofascist party. This was a specific dimension that Tremaglia carried with him right into the institution of his ministry:
Despite their isolation being primarily moral and cultural, rather than political … the missini found themselves in the position of the ‘internal foreigner’, a status that was both obligatory and pursued. Indeed, the defence of their identity was achieved through the combination of solid ideological allusions with the declaration of a radical divergence from the republican system. The portrayal of a political culture that evoked fascist traditions employed patriotic and nationalist discourse, thereby validating the image of missini as exemplars of ‘true Italians’. (Ridolfi Reference Ridolfi2021, 120)
In the case of Marcinelle, Tremaglia regarded the miner-soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their homeland as the exemplification of Italian identity – the old-new ‘true Italians’. Moreover, they were regarded as such to the extent that the homeland they never ceased to love was the same one that abandoned them. In the case of bilateral agreements between Italy and Belgium, that same homeland permitted the exploitation of its citizens to the extent that they were reduced to a condition of semi-slavery. Their eternal memory preserved by the Italian–Belgian communities should therefore become the lifeblood of a new ritual, characterised by an absolute distance from politics.
In fact, the broader political dimension was inevitably involved. First and foremost, it is imperative to acknowledge the role of Tremaglia, the driving force and principal supporter of this holiday. Given his saloino and missino past, his radical anticommunism and his strong alignment with neofascist ideologies, his figure was too polarised to be politically unaligned. After all, Tremaglia himself continually emphasised his position within a specific political landscape, which meant that he was the first to highlight the specificities of his politics and his cultural and ideological background.
It is also important to underscore that, in Italy, neither of the two festivities holds any significant weight beyond that associated with the state ceremony and the obligatory political ritual. The National Day of Cristopher Columbus has had more resonance, particularly in Liguria, given the navigator’s Genoese origins and the fact that the event was established on 20 February 2004 in the same year that the city of Genoa was named European Capital of Culture together with Lille (France).
The National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World, which should concern Italy more closely, is almost unknown among the Italian public and in the civic landscape. Communications from the state ceremonial department were meagre even when Tremaglia was serving as minister. These communications referred to a very general ‘minute of remembrance’ to be observed ‘at noon in [Italian] public offices in Italy and abroad’.Footnote 33
It is possible that the lack of national interest in this national day could also be attributed to Tremaglia’s endeavour to render the festivity itself apolitical. In a country such as Italy, where the polarisation of the divided memories (memorie divise) is still a prominent feature of the political, cultural and civic arenas, it is challenging to think of a national holiday as a purely apolitical event. Tremaglia’s past may also have discouraged exponents with differing political affiliations from a deeper connection with the commemorations of Marcinelle. Moreover, it could be argued that the deathly symbolism of sacrifice and martyrdom, coupled with an event that is geographically and temporally so distant, has contributed to a diminished general perception of the event. Indeed, for several decades, historians, intellectuals and politicians have observed a growing sense of weariness among Italians even towards national holidays that are perceived as more immediately relevant to their lives. Furthermore, polarised festivities such as Liberation Day serve a dual purpose for both those who celebrate them and those who oppose them. In both cases, these public holidays provide a means of contextualising and emphasising one’s political affiliation, something that would not be possible within the context of an apolitical commemorative event such as that represented by Marcinelle.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their work and my doctoral supervisors, Alberto Mario Banti (University of Pisa) and Massimo Baioni (University of Milan) for their valuable suggestions. This article is based on the revision of a chapter of my doctoral dissertation. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Alessandra Cavaterra, former director of the archive and library of the Fondazione Ugo Spirito e Renzo De Felice. Her guidance and incredible knowledge were crucial during my long archival research. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the ASMI executive committee for their decision to award the first version of this article the 2024 ASMI Postgraduate Essay Prize.
Karen Bertorelli holds a PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Pisa. Her doctoral research focused on the study of the Ministry for Italians in the World and the political experience of Mirko Tremaglia, especially from 2001 onwards. She was nominated as ASMI’s postgraduate representative in 2022.
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