Pino Aprile,Giù al Sud: Perché i Terroni salveranno l’Italia

Reviewed by: Emily Romanello, Stony Brook University, USA

This work is a follow-up to Aprile’s previous book, Terroni (2010), his response to the aggressive anti-southern sentiments of Bossi and the Lega Nord. In Giù al Sud, Aprile continues his defense of the South and emphasizes the potential of the southerners to unite Italy. The year of publication for this book, 2011, is fitting as it coincides with the 150th anniversary of Italy’s unification. Aprile takes this opportunity to call into question what, exactly, the Italians are celebrating. Aprile points out the social and economic gap between the North and South, which is as wide as ever, even after a century and a half of ‘unification’. According to Aprile, the South remains an internal colony of the North, and the only hope for a united Italy is if the southerners regain enough pride and respect for themselves to do something about it.

Aprile organizes this book into 52 chapters which correspond to various legs of his travels throughout southern Italy. His reactions to the people and places he sees are intermingled with historical facts and current statistics, effectively emphasizing that the Southern Question is not just a matter of economic statistics but one which involves the lives of living, breathing people. At the same time, Aprile explains why there exists an internal division between the North and South, illustrates the injustice of southern suppression, and shows what the nation would be like if the South were to realize its full potential.

According to Aprile, the South was never meant to be equal to the North, but to be its colony. Aprile sustains the argument of meridionalista Pasquale Zavaglia that the goal of the Piedmontese after the Risorgimento was not to join the peninsula together to create a unified nation but to hold the South in a subordinate position. Aprile alternates between recent anecdotes and descriptions of historical events during the Risorgimento to effectively link the present with the past, showing that even today the South still can be considered an internal colony of the North due to an imbalance in the distribution of economic resources.

Aprile also dedicates several chapters to the southern rail system, which still remains inferior to that of the North despite the fact that before unification the southern train system was actually more advanced than the northern one. Aprile shares the frustrations of various travelers that he meets, as well as his own aggravations, to illustrate the extent of the problem. For example, Aprile points out the fact that, even in 2011, it is faster to go by train from Naples to Florence (2 hours and 35 minutes to travel over 470 km) than from Naples to Taranto (over 4 hours to travel 310 km). Coupled with details about the rail system before and after the Risorgimento, he convinces the reader that there has been little progress in bringing equality to the South, which was actually as prosperous, if not more so, than the North before the arrival of the Piedmontese.

Aprile uses personal anecdotes to emphasize that the main culprit of the North–South divide is ignorance. For instance, he tells of a man from Ponte, Campania, who went on vacation to Trentino and could name all of the mountains in his photos, yet he could not answer his child when asked for the name of the peaks just outside their own village. Therefore, the gap between the North and South is not just the fault of the northerners but of the southerners as well, whose disinterest in their past, as well as their loss of pride, has worsened the problem. However, Aprile insists that things are changing. Southerners are beginning to take an interest in their past, and youth have begun to uncover their history and culture, resulting in a desire to stay and make things better instead of emigrating to the North.

Aprile urges the southerners to take a stand and bring light to the North–South imbalance, not attempt to hide it. Instead of emigrating from their homes to find greater opportunities elsewhere, youths should stay because, without them, the future for the South is lost. Aprile once again turns to the rail system to illustrate metaphorically what must be done to save Italy: the southerners should create a pedestrian train from Milan to Matera (no train with these destinations exists today) in which passengers who have paid for their boarding tickets receive blows to the head in order to gain permission to board, making the violation of their rights explicit for all to see. Aprile says, ‘Non riesco a credere che gli onesti di questo Paese possano rendersi complici, con il loro disinteresse, di un’ingiustizia rivelata; e, una volta che avremo reso visibile la prima, le altre lo saranno più facilmente’ (p. 452). In order to end injustice for the South, first the people must be made aware that it is occurring. Aprile is blunt in the expression of his opinion that southerners have everything they need to end the North–South divide, and if they do nothing it is because they lack the will to do what is necessary to accomplish this.

This work is eye-opening for those unaware of the extent of the gap between the North and the South, as well as for those who knew of this imbalance but remained impassive to it. Aprile has taken the steps to instigate a desire for social change in his readers by emphasizing that humans must implement the changes that they wish to occur and that nothing will be accomplished by passively accepting their fate.