One cannot discuss the Strait of Messina without mentioning one of
Nature's most spectacular phenomena, which, years ago, became the objectof observation for a handful of naturalists. Little more than a handful,
camped out in what were three old caravans in the woods. The illusion
(as they were judged) was that they could stem a serious poaching
epidemic: entire mountains, just beyond the outskirts of Messina, dotted
with veritable reinforced concrete bunkers from which to shoot at
migrating birds of prey and storks. Their flight was shattered by lead.
An aberrant situation, tolerated and even more widespread on the
Calabrian side, from where even armed customers once arrived, joining
the establishments, welcomed by the sort of "businessmen" who rented
them. Yet, instead of encouraging them, there were those who said that
"it's always been done this way" and that "nothing could change." Things
didn't go that way, and utopia prevailed. The key figure in all this,
now at the barricades for the No to the Bridge, was Anna Giordano of
Messina, awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1998, effectively a
Nobel Prize for the Environment. Threats and actual attacks didn't stop
her. Those birds represented an ideal of freedom, realized by seeing
them finally free to soar amid the often harsh winds of the Strait.
Today, poaching in that stretch of the Messina province is virtually
extinct. A new phenomenon, however, now seems to be aiming high; it
would be placed (with its pylons, tie rods, and spans) right in the
center of that dangerous passage. All according to the law, of course,
but it will bring unprecedented quantities of concrete for such a unique
project. Concrete obtained by crushing limestone taken from who knows
what mountains, and mixed with clay for the highly energy-intensive
kilns. Water will be needed, lots of fresh water, although it's not
clear where they'll find it. Steel, concrete, bolts, lights: this seems
to be the fate of the Strait. To think that all this doesn't pose a risk
to the millions of migrating birds is, to say the least, risky. However,
we no longer observe the rhythms of nature; we withdraw, dazzled by
advertisements and statements that seem to refer to the same tones of a
monotonous musical score. These key signatures now characterize our
daily lives. Those who identified pure wisdom in science (unconstrained
by power) observed those rhythms, drawing lessons for human society.
Kropotkin did so when, studying animal communities, he deduced, without
contradicting Darwin, that competition is not the only important factor
and that mutualism is at least as important. Reclus did so, observing
the mountain, the sounds of the cracking ice, its moods. Let us try,
then, to consider the Strait as a passageway for millions of birds and,
as discovered more recently, also for butterflies. Many of them come
from sub-Saharan Africa, crossing the Sahel and then the Sahara. Once
upon a time, they found hundreds of rifles towering above them, ready to
block their path forever. It seemed all over, but now the Bridge is
coming. When, not entirely on their own initiative, someone had to use
radar to more accurately assess the migration, incredible numbers
emerged: millions of birds crossing just a "corner" of that Strait in
just a few months. These animals, in some cases, are extremely rare,
belonging to species that concentrate almost their entire global
population in the most central Mediterranean route. Do you know what
their main problem is, in the Strait of Messina? The wind, sudden and
often violent. The birds can suddenly change course, rising up to
hundreds of meters or barely flying above the sea waves. Once upon a
time, they were demolished by people who were not always crude and
ignorant, but also great storytellers, who organized "conferences" and
who, sometimes almost at night, came to visit that handful of
protectionists camped among the trees in the three semi-trailers. They
expressed "solidarity" to them. But times change. Doubts remain. Let's
try asking the great supporters of the Bridge what they think of birds
and butterflies. It's already happened: look into their eyes, into their
smiles. They speak a different language, follow different laws, but they
certainly aren't convincing, given the enormity of the criticism raining
down on them. The Bridge and NATO, the fault lines on the seabed, plate
tectonics, the river of money. Evidently, their reasons are like
powerful engines, given that they're moving forward. The Strait will
change shape; it will no longer be the Strait, and Sicily will be even
less so. How much of that wealth will go to Messina, like Villa San
Giovanni, where local communities have already expressed their views on
that immense construction? They don't want it. The land will be rezoned
for vehicular traffic, which is increasingly declining. Hundreds of
people will be displaced, and the structure of an already precarious
society will change. New concrete and steel will arrive in a place that,
after Etna, is perhaps the most iconic in Sicily, its struggles, its
rebellions born right in Messina against a distant power and the local
maharajahs, just as they did in the days of the English in the East
Indies. If we resign ourselves, it will be like accepting an impossible
island, made up of single-track railways, provincial roads that are
reminders of ancient roads, people leaving, highway bridges perpetually
under maintenance, recklessly planted across rivers by a state that, in
the 1960s, denied or glossed over questions about the Mafia. Can we say,
regardless of fault lines and earthquakes, that we prefer the flight of
butterflies to the Bridge?
Giovanni Guadagna
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten