ITALY: Land for a Song

At dusk, throughout the Roman countryside, loudspeakers suddenly blared an incitement to landless farm workers: “Landless poor, collectively occupy the land of those who have too much. …” The signal for the expropriation: church bells tolling at dawn. The inciting voices were Communists and left-wing socialists. But the motive force for expropriation was months of disappointment at the Republic’s failure to satisfy the land hunger of the rural proletariat.

When the tocsin rang, motley mobs formed in village squares. Headed by local labor leaders and squeaky village bands, they marched on what they called “invasion.” In some cases, priests and acolytes with holy water trudged behind.

As one band tramped down the Salarian Way, along which Romans had once marched to capture the Sabine women and found ancient Rome, the grim thump of drums woke Adolfo Boscaini. Farmer Boscaini kept 200 milk cows, 600 sheep on 220 hectares (about 490 acres). His barns were freshly painted. So was his tractor, ready for autumn ploughing. His cowsheds smelt only of sour-sweet silage.

Fruits of Labor. Boscaini hurried into a dairyman’s light blue linen pants, white coat and shirt, and rushed down. He was too late. A crowd of 200 men was already dividing up his land. On the road stood another 300 expropriators. The band played merrily as a priest blessed the subdivisions, which men with stakes were marking out.

Boscaini looked at the land which had been his—at the intricate system of reclamation ditches, running down to the Tiber River. He had dug them with his own hands through what had then been oozy swampland. In his mind, he saw the farm reverting to swamp while the new owners squabbled. He decided to stay on his farm on any terms. Said he to the new owners: “You have no ploughs, no cattle. I will work this land for you. You will give me a share in the crops.” So, after a lifetime of hard work, Boscaini became a sharecropper on his own land.

Not only private farm lands were seized. Near the much-bombed village of Monte Libretti, the Government owned a 2,000-hectare farm for breeding and training army mounts, and for the general improvement of horses in Latium. The farm caught the eye of Crispino Ottavi, Communist president of the Monte Libretti Labor Federation. Ottavi is a tall, immensely powerful man, with big boxer’s arms. He wears outsize brown riding boots, checked breeches, U.S. Army sweaters. He has a sunburnt bull neck, small, calculating, brown eyes set in a network of humorous wrinkles. For Monte Libretti’s poor, he demanded 520 hectares of the horse farm. He got them, asked for 260 hectares more, got them, asked for another 175, got them.

Then the overseer of the farm asked Ottavi who would pay for the ceded land. Ottavi’s answer (in huge handwriting): “To the Commander of the former Royal Estate, erstwhile property of the now defeated Monarchy, greetings from a representative of the noble, glorious, social, democratic Republic. Replying to your invitation to this administration to pay 21,500 lire for … ceding 191 hectares to hungry peasants, I have the honor to inform you that the peasants will pay nothing. They will give you one-fifth of the crop and keep the remainder as the just reward of the sweat they pour out to build a new Italy where Justice, not kings, shall reign. I am, sir, your most obedient servant.”

Down with Cavalry Horses. To clinch the argument, Ottavi, at the head of 12,000 landless peasants, seized 500 more hectares of the horse farm. Said Ottavi: “We don’t want any more wars; we don’t want cavalry horses; we want bread….”

In the Constituent Assembly Premier Alcide De Gasperi wanly faced a bitter opposition. Said he: “The land invasion is unjustified, because seeding time comes in November.” Said World War I Finance Minister Francesco Nitti, 78: “De Gasperi is like the sick man who, when the doctors told him to give up wine, women, and song, answered, ‘I’ll do it very gradually. For the moment I’ll give up song.’ “