Covered in sand

Today I would like to talk about Micia (little kitten in Neapolitan dialect).

Not a fancy name. Not a stage name. This was the name that Oreste, a former colonel of Italian colonialism, gave to this little girl. ( 1)

Once the colonial period came to an end, Italy was expelled from Ethiopia, lost the war and opened a new phase that saw the transition from a Fascist-governed monarchy into a Republic. However, not everyone has moved on. Many former colonels remained in Ethiopia. Oreste was not alone, on the contrary, he was more fortunate. He was a so-called "insabbiato" and already had a family in Ethiopia. He had women around him whom he referred to as his "servants." He ate alone at a table and symbolically exercised his authority as pater familias over the many children, some of which he didn't know if they were all his. A heterogeneous social group over which many different relationships do overlap: ex-lovers, daughters, servants, adoptive daughters. It is in this sick context that Micia comes in. Micia was a little girl, aged 6 or 7 at the time, who Oreste found on the streets of Addis Ababa near a brothel. Later on, the man adopted the little girl and established with her a turbid, abusive, and pathological relationship. He called this obsession "child mania." The little girl called him "padroncino" (read, little master) because he had imposed his dominion over her identity and body. She used to striptease and dance naked in the bedroom of the man who combined in his sick persona the role of the father, husband and lover —a story indeed of perversion and dehumanisation. When Oreste was close to death, Micia (aged 14) even thought of taking her own life.

We are not talking about human events very distant in time. This story dates back to the early 1990s and it tells us how some stories and past sufferings can go on for a long time.

But what did these colonels have on their minds?

Fascism made extensive use of sexual images where Ethiopian and Eritrean women posed naked to excite men to war and conquest. The fascist government intended to legitimise the use of force in the eyes of public opinion through the forced exposure of black women's bodies perceived as foreign, exotic, virgin, inferior, and weak. The relationship between Micia and Oreste was based on power like Italy has tried to impose on Ethiopia. (2) Men like Orestes had power because they were part of the occupation forces on foreign land. Imperialist forces because Italy's aim at the time was to baptize the newborn Kingdom of Italy with blood and transform it into an Empire (as well as avenge the defeat of Adua in the last century ). The men that Italy sent were able to exercise power without the constraints of their native land's tradition. This power arises from the state of exception, unlimited because transnational, cosmopolitan (because the Ethiopians would have been defeated as the Libyans were), scientific because all this was not the result of the mere opinion. Racism was not intended as an opinion differing from civil coexistence: it was science, and it was law. The myth of "Faccetta Nera" (in English, little black face) was born. It was still shamelessly sung in 2021 by the Regional Councilor for Education, Training, Work, and Equal Opportunities Elena Donazzan (FDI) on the radio. After her exploit, the politician has gotten a lot of heat to which she responded the following days, saying: "If someone on the left was offended, I apologise" (3), confirming once again that black bodies are merely objects for political struggle. The song extols the fetishism of those who called themselves "insabbiati" (literally, covered in sand), pointing at the extensive and profound culture that these men were supposed to have accumulated through their carnal experiences without borders at the expense of their victims.

While it is true that we cannot condemn men and women who have already died, it is nevertheless in the power of posterity to decide which inheritance to live in their present and what to pass on to those to come. Some of you may find it difficult to accept that those who have committed such atrocities may very well be their grandfather's playmate, but I invite you who are reading this to understand and transcend these limitations and embrace the greater cause of future generations. Because if there is anything they certainly deserve, it is not to continue to suffer the pain of the past.

Unfortunately, in Italy, the legacy of past generations' shrewdness, arrogance, and political tribalism make this salvific act difficult. The country is having difficulty becoming aware of its past to overcome it. (4) Montanelli is the perfect in-vitro product of those times. Post-war symbol of Italian transformism. This man has taught millions of Italians his History of Italy with his way of being wavering, contemptuous, and opportunistic. Immediately after the conflict and the Resistance's victory, the United States and the United Kingdom were concerned with creating a secular and Anglophile area to oppose the Catholic and Communist forces present in the country. This area refused prejudicially new political parties in the name of an anarchist indifference, individualism, and a visceral anti-communist stance with uncertain lines and ambiguous democratic boundaries. An area that later became dominant in the country and that Montanelli helped to form to save himself and that allowed him to shape in his own image and likeness the collective memory on Fascism. Thanks to him, the Italian public opinion still gives the colonial era the importance of a romantic experience that ended badly. Like all sick love stories, it is remembered over time more for what it could have been rather than for what it was. (5) Montanelli is the symbol of low-cost integrity, an ordinary man who gave the Italians of those years of intense political tension a safe area, an open space where there was nothing to be forgiven for and no mistake to amend. His fortune may well be explained under this light. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to explain how it is possible that even dead his courtiers are still ready to defend the rough events that see him as body double.

At Gianni Bisiach in '69 he said: «She was a beautiful 12-year-old girl. Excuse me, but in Africa it is a whole different story». To Enzo Biagi, in 1982: «Don't take me for a girolimoni because at 12 they were already women. I needed a woman, of course at that age. I bought her together with a horse and a rifle, all for 500 lire. She was a docile animal. When I left, I gave her to General Pirzio Biroli, an old colonial officer who was used to having his own little harem, unlike me, who was monogamous because I couldn't afford great luxuries. " In La stanza, in Il Corriere della Sera, in 2000 Montanelli writes: "I struggled a lot to overcome her smell due to the goat tallow that was soaked in her hair, and even more to establish a sexual relationship with her because she was infibulated since birth: which, in addition to opposing an almost insurmountable barrier to my desires (it took the brutal intervention of her mother to demolish it), made her completely insensitive.»

Montanelli represents a trait of those old blokes who are very strong in Italy who, because of their age, enjoy many privileges in terms of accumulated wealth and social standing. Unfortunately, there is also the social prejudice of considering an adult man and woman less capable compared to more seasoned individuals. However, what is evident is that the gray-haired (of whom Montanelli is undoubtedly a representative) if there is anything they do enjoy, it is this: the privilege of self-absolution. It is difficult to hold them accountable for their present and past actions, which are hidden, diminished or systematically silenced. There is no shame for these individuals. The political and cultural struggle of the 60s to the early 90s meant that those who were on the right or left had their idols, their prophets. The political battle has become the justification of this senseless silence. Each accusation seemed biased, arbitrary, almost suggesting the impossibility to refer to shared values, morals, decency, to a sense of limit; everything was forgotten on the ground of a sterile political feud, all violence was silenced, all judgments were suspended, suffocated. Montanelli, however, took part in an adventure "at the limit." Imperialism and the desire to conquer defenseless civilians is overstepping the line. When you describe a forced sexual relationship with a minor treating the small creature as a flawed appliance, and you are smug about it, that too is crossing the line.

The city of Milan granted him a statue a few years after his death, and I question such installment, but what is really baffling is the spectacle of those who rushed to serve and defend this bloody account of his.

Angelo Del Boca (the most important historian on Italian colonisation period) perfectly represents how the scientist and the research he conducts are totally separated from personal considerations because, otherwise, one might wonder how it is possible that the historian can say what is below reported. I assume that Del Boca is far from the present-day awareness of sexism, classism, racism, and disrespect.

So he said in the Rolling Stones (6) about the paint spilled by feminist movements and the request to remove the statue by the anti-racism movements.

Specifically of the story - told by Montanelli himself - during which he married a 12-year-old in Abyssinia, he is accused of having been a rapist, even worse a pedophile. How do you contextualize that episode? In those days, but perhaps still now, it was common to marry girls of that age in Africa. It was encouraged in the first phase as an element of fraternization, but it was subsequently forbidden in 1937 for a reason, yes, racist, in order not to mix our race with the indigenous ones. So you, instead of an act of racist prevarication, do you consider it an attitude of integration? Yes, I consider it an element of integration especially because Indro Montanelli maintained affectionate relations with her for many years.

The Editor-in-Chief of the Fatto Quotidiano Marco Travaglio (7) said the following in this regard: «[..] He wanted to become Abyssinian. On one hand, he had gone to Africa because of the myth of the Duce, on the other one of Kipling, of whom he was a great reader. He loved adventure. He had left for Africa as any typical European fascinated by exotic adventure and indigenous peoples. He had immersed himself in the traditions and culture of the place. His African comrades told him: "You are single, you have to get married". And he, unlike other soldiers, who went to prostitutes, preferred to take a wife. Then there was also the so-called "madamato", a sort of provisional marriage , created mostly to avoid prostitution and disease. Something in-between our marriage and theirs. It was quite normal then for Abyssinian girls to get married from 12, as he himself has explained several times. This is why the accusation of racism makes me smile».

I think I can say that I have seen everything with Del Boca and Travaglio who clumsily rushed to revere Montanelli talking about sexual violence as if it were the happy and generous consequence of an Erasmus experience ante litteram. Montanelli almost appears as a pupil to scold. And he had absolutely no desire to "integrate", as he himself clearly stated in those years: «We will never be rulers if we do not have the full awareness of our fatal superiority. You do not mingle with niggers. We must not. At least until they are given a civilization." »

So here you are, the enemies of ours: shrewd, indecent, in denial, with no chance whatsoever to be hold accountable and without any opposition. Opposition that they triumphantly suppress and humiliate with their newspapers, double standards, power, blackmail, silence, arrogance. However, watching the events closely, one cannot help but notice that the two gentlemen deal with the whole issue with lightness, friendliness and inappropriate cordiality. Mr. Travaglio speaks of Montanelli like a pupil would describe his teacher, that is, in a very affectionate fashion. Del Boca approaches the whole a thing almost as a mere case of study. The former in the Tuscan journalist's office while the latter in the newspapers.

In fact, in the newspapers, Italy's use of chemical weapons in the conflict was amicably debated. Montanelli showed off his precious linguistic prowess by addressing the historian in this fashion: "Del Boca again with its gasses and porky pies. I was there in Africa, and I never smelled the mustard gas".

Suppose he is a good journalist as some people say. How is it possible he failed to his right/duty to collect, process, and disseminate with the greatest possible accuracy any data or public interest news? How can it be just enough for such a large scale conflict one's own eyewitness account? And is this ever the reliable, professional, and scientific way to conduct a dispute?

Deposited in Geneva, in 1936, in the archives of the League of Nations (what is now the United Nations) is the speech of Haile Selassié, Emperor of Ethiopia, who addressed the assembly (8) as follows:

"[..] Special sprayers were installed on board aircraft so that they could vaporize, over vast areas of territory, a fine, death-dealing rain. Groups of nine, fifteen, eighteen aircraft followed one another so that the fog issuing from them formed a continuous sheet. It was thus that, as from the end of January, 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were drenched continually with this deadly rain. In order to kill off systematically all living creatures, in order to more surely to poison waters and pastures, the Italian command made its aircraft pass over and over again. [..] Men and animals succumbed. The deadly rain that fell from the aircraft made all those whom it touched fly shrieking with pain. All those who drank the poisoned water or ate the infected food also succumbed in dreadful suffering."

This or text represents a qualified testimony, but it is not the only one that can help us to give substance to the question. Swedish and British Red Cross ,were on the field, too, and lent their service to both parties. The Italian imperialist forces refused aid; the Ethiopian forces instead accepted it immediately because they did not have sufficient structures and means of relief. It was not long before Italy accused the operators of collaborationism, so many field hospitals were bombed. Doctor Marcel Junod was there too. He cheated death after Italian forces had blown up his plane parked in a remote area.

Dr. Junod (9) witnessed the rain of death reporting:

"That evening [18 March 1936 ] I had occasion to see with my own eyes an Italian aircraft spraying the ground with an oily liquid, dropping like fine rain and covering a huge area with thousands of droplets, each of which, when it touched the tissues, made a small burn, turning a few hours later into a blister. It was the blistering gas the British call mustard gas. Thousands of soldiers were affected by severe lesions due to this gas…"

In order to maintain its independence and impartiality, the Red Cross never forwarded such testimony to the League of Nations during the conflict; however, there were many witnesses among neighboring military forces, medical personnel in the field, witnesses, and especially victims. The declassified documents of the American Ministry of War document and confirm Italy's ability to wage chemical warfare. The report shows that Italy had used the weapons against the Ethiopian forces 4336 aerial bombs filled with mustard gas and 540 aerial bombs filled with diphenylchloroarsine. Italy maintained storage facilities in Libya in Benghazi and Tripoli during the war against Ethiopia. (10)

And there is a legal aspect of absolute importance for which the whole affair cannot be declassified as an affair linked to the Tuscan journalist's youth. Emperor Sélassié said in his speech before the League of Nation's Assembly.

[..] I assert that the problem submitted to the Assembly today is a much wider one. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression. It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured. It is the principle of the equality of States on the one hand, or otherwise the obligation laid upon smail Powers to accept the bonds of vassalship. In a word, it is international morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty value only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate interest involved?»

The poor emperor did not receive the consent he hoped for and had 23 votes against, one in favor and 25 abstentions. The episode made the League of Nations lose credibility. The government of Rome, galvanized by the result, tried to further rage by looking at the international institution that had just mortified any form of reparation, even moral, which was denied. A decidedly risky move that nevertheless had the purpose of legitimizing Italy's exit from the League of Nations as Mussolini later announced on 11 December 1937. This episode represents the lowest point in Italy's long-lasting legal history.

It was certainly not the only country to have acted in an unconventional way at the time, in a scenario dominated by powerful empires and transnational corporations, however, Italy has twisted the world political order with boldness and greed, leaving behind streams of blood.

At the end of the Second World War , with the Treaty of Paris of 1947 to which Ethiopia was counterpart, the Italian State formalized the renunciation of all colonies, implicitly admitting the illegality of the 1936 annexation, of which it is good to remember, there has never been any formal recognition at the international level.

Small details.

Pressed by De Boca, and having acknowledged the Italian declassified documents, Montanelli will apologise(11) by saying:

[..] you (Del Boca) remind me of the commitment that in our friendly controversy I had taken to apologize to the readers in the event the documents showed that the gases were actually used, so here I am ready to acquit it by acknowledging that the documents say I was wrong. They say the gases were actually used, as you wrote in the historical reconstruction of that undertaking. But since you in turn acknowledge my good faith, let me reiterate it. You know that I have not denied the use of gases to redeem and ennoble that enterprise of which, after having participated in it with all the enthusiasm of my twenties, I did not even wait for the end to realize its anachronism and on which catastrophic path was leading our country. No, I denied the gases simply because, on the spot, I had neither seen nor heard them.

It is curious to see how easy it is to write books covering periods that you have never lived, only to be so indolent in the face of the smell of flesh and the reason of your uniform in war territory. Montanelli was looking the other way. Before, during and after the conflict.

I think it is evident that if the man was not in bad faith, he represents an awful example of cognitive dissonance.

In his words there is too much ego, a holier-than-thou attitude, too much for a story bigger than him, and of which he accidentally ended up becoming a marginal testimony. His fault and his courtiers', is to have made a story bigger than them a private affaire.

To protect Montanelli means reducing the abuses perpetrated by the Italian colonial forces in East Africa and the fetishism and violence they generated and dragged on in the following years affecting the poor Micia. Not to mention how these events implicitly suggest that "Africans" are insensitive or accustomed to pain, that they live in a state of permanent violence, that the suffering broadcast in every advertisement and newscast is daily, that to redeem them they must be saved, exactly as Montanelli did.

Those who defend Montanelli do not know how heavy this legacy can be for all those Italian citizens of African descent in Italy and their families, especially the denial and misrepresentation of their indignation as a whim.

Montanelli is the symbol of an old, decaying, irresponsible Italy, whose gray-haired representatives enjoy an overwhelming wealth and political power. They have values sidereally opposed to a younger, younger and impoverished part of Italy that simply does not have the social and economic weight to counteract this immorality, this offense to honor, to common sense.

It is not possible to present Montanelli as the best Italy has been able to produce. This is nonsense. It is not true. May the statue remain. May his writings remain. However, let us not be told the story that his bullying youth was the norm, that it still must be today, or that we must not stigmatize deplorable words, degenerate behaviours and raise transformism, arrogance, and recklessness as ideals of full participation in civil society.

This episode can not continue to be our present. Can we still dream of a different future?

Looking at the packages of pasta at the table, the future looks still hostage to the past, sadly. La Molisana in early 2021 advertised its products in this fashion: "In the Thirties, Italy celebrated the season of colonialism with new shapes of pasta: Tripoline , Bengasine , Assabesi and Abissine . Semolina pasta becomes a unifying element? Why not! [...] The Abissine Rigate, (you may read this line as "scored Abyssinians) of strong lictorian flavour, abroad the name turns into "shells."

I don't know who is responsible for commercial communication, or which agency had this responsibility, whoever wrote this went even further by saying about Tripoline # 68: "The name evokes distant, exotic places and has a colonial flavour ".

It doesn't matter what the ANPI (Partisans’ Italian Association) says, because it is not the principle of authority that must prevail in this speech to absolve those who can only be blamed but certainly not defended. Ignorance, self - absolution and total unwillingness to deal with this legacy are the key to this story and many others, because it would be shortsighted and dishonest not to recognise the many things in Italy are hidden with silence apart from the imperialist aggression. Today we say "What an Amba Aradam has just happened!" (“è successo un Amba Aradam! colloquial way to express surprise in front of a chaotic situation). But Amba Aradam is the scene of one of the most violent war scenes in Ethiopia in which the Kingdom of Italy was the protagonist. Would anyone ever say today "What an Auschwitz has just happened"? Because it is the exact same thing. We must go beyond the tribal struggles between fascists and communists, as well as the ignorance fomented by the desire to exalt massacres because romantically passed as heroic. Then, that tendency to dismiss any grim event in Africa brought by imperialist Europe as necessary and salvific endevaours. Because these things always happen. Today is La Molisana, yesterday the Councilor for Education of the Veneto Region, tomorrow I don't know who. The point is to talk about it. We all mourn and remember the Italian Jews and shed our tears because of the plight they had gone through at our hands, but I wish there were more sympathy for those slaughtered, raped, and gassed both in Lybia and Ethiopia. Eritrea, too. This is my problem with the arrogant part of the country that wants to impose this double standard and its silence on us.

Because before these old, tired, and arrogant eyes, the same black body suffers the same indifference, the same malice, and the same outrage.

It is worth remembering the story of poor Laura , an Italo-Eritrean girl. Laura was sent to an institute run by Italian missionaries (12). She (and many other unrecognized children), was educated to “Italianness” because in these so-called "mulatto", the Minister of the Colonies De Bono saw "an element of profound restlessness" and potentially subversive subjects, being able to undermine the legitimacy of the colonial power colonial simply by being alive. Well, this ten-year-old girl, while playing with stones, was hit by a nun and she fell and hit her head on the ground. The little girl got angry and insulted the nun and did it in Tigrinya. The nun did not turn the other cheek at all. Helped by three other sisters, they chased after the little woman, forced her to bed on her back, held her head still, shook her cheeks, and the offended nun got her revenge by cutting off the tip of the victim's tongue. A bit of bloody flesh that she took care to then hand to the victim in a handkerchief.

Unfortunately today there are those who still cut their tongues in Italy. There are those who steal the word. There are those who poison the wells. There are those who create the swamp to wallow in it.

There are those who make sexist and racist arguments belittling the habit and the arrogance of the past as something to be accepted even today. Without opposition. With the usual smug smile of the privileged. However, we must be like Laura. We must be like Laura and do much more: speak the language of those who seek truth and reconciliation but set limits on those who want to impose on us an identity, a label, a future that does not belong to us. Italy has a historical legacy that does not consist in just twenty years. Perhaps we should also try to live up to the many ways of being men and women that this country has been able to produce over the centuries, without being stubborn about a time that asks us nothing but to be well remembered and never covered up again.

In honor of this memory so mocked and covered up, I extend my hands with a bouquet of lilies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. GENDER AND SEXUAL ABUSES DURING THE ITALIAN COLONIZATION OF ETHIOPIA AND ERITREA
THE “INSABIATTI”, THIRTY YEARS AFTER by Fabienne Le Houérou PAG 10-11-12-13
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01373824/document

2. THE TRUE STORY BEHIND FACCETTA NERA
https://www.internazionale.it/opinione/igiaba-scego/2015/08/06/faccetta-nera-razzismo

3. VENETO, ASSESSORA CANTA “FACCETTA NERA” IN RADIO, POI SI SCUSA. ZAIA: “DOVEROSO”
https://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/articoli/Veneto-assessora-canta-Faccetta-nera-in-radio-poi-si-scusa.-Zaia-doveroso-c7f5c459-1cf9-4e94-8cff-a99904b89901.html?refresh_ce

4. LILI MARLENE - LA GUERRA DEGLI ITALIANI (2020) DI PIETRO GUBER
https://www.mediasetplay.mediaset.it/documentari/lilimarlenelaguerradegliitaliani_b100003282

5. L’ITALIA DEL NOVECENTO. DALLA SCONFITTA DI ADUA ALLA VITTORIA DI AMAZON. PAG. 163-164-165
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mobs-kill-at-least-seven-foreigners-after-zulu-king-says-south-africa-should-be-purged-of-lice

6. MONTANELLI RAZZISTA? SECONDO LO STORICO DEL BOCA «QUEL MATRIMONIO È UN ATTO DI INTEGRAZIONE»
https://www.rollingstone.it/politica/montanelli-razzista-secondo-lo-storico-del-boca-quel-matrimonio-e-un-atto-di-integrazione/521513/

7. MARCO TRAVAGLIO DIFENDE INDRO MONTANELLI: "NON ERA UN PEDOFILO. AMAVA QUELLA RAGAZZINA, VOLEVA DIVENTARE ABISSINO E SI ADEGUÒ A UNA TRADIZIONE"
https://m.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/marco-travaglio-difende-montanelli-lui-pedofilo-e-stupratore-bisogna-contestualizzare-amava-quella-ragazza-voleva-diventare-abissino-e-si-adeguo-a-una-tradizione.htm

8. DISCORSO DELL’IMPERATORE DI HAILÉ SÉLASSIÉ A GINEVRA PRESSO LA SOCIETÀ DELLE NAZIONI NEL 1936
a) http://www.polyarchy.org/basta/documenti/selassie.1936.html
b) https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/selassie.htm

9. ETHIOPIA 1935-36: MUSTARD GAS AND ATTACKS ON THE RED CROSS, 13-08-2003 Article, Le Temps, by Bernard Bridel
https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/article/other/5ruhgm.htm

10. THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN THE 1935-36 ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR PAG. 4
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/Italo-Ethiopian-war.pdf

11 .LE CARTE MI DANNO TORTO
LETTERA A MIELI DI ANGELO DEL BOCA, LETTERA RISPOSTA DI MONTANELLI
https://www.bresciaoggi.it/home/cultura/lealt%C3%A0-di-indro-montanelli-le-carte-mi-danno-torto-1.3978509

12. BLACK MOTHERS, WHITE CHILDREN | EXPRESSIONS OF SUBALTERN IDENTITIES IN FASCIST EAST AFRICA by Angelica Pesarini, PAG .175-176
https://www.academia.edu/10649737/Madri_nere_figlie_bianche_Forme_di_subalternit%C3%A0_femminile_in_Africa_Orientale_Italiana_Black_Mothers_White_Children_Expressions_of_Subaltern_Identities_in_Fascist_East_Africa_