A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilie Libertaria #451: Polizzi: Tourism and the South: a comparison of realities from Alavò (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On August 24th in Polizzi Generosa, on the Madonie, the Alavò laboratory 
organized a themed debate, inviting different militant realities to 
compare. The reaction to the hot word tourism was the participation of 
many people, who responded with reflections, doubts and testimonies, 
trying once again, as it happens more and more often, to highlight the 
lights and shadows of that industry represented cloyingly by sea, sun, 
food and souvenirs. ---- Alavò, embodied by Stefania and Francesco, was 
an exact starting point for the comparison, a reality born from the need 
to create a collective that was missing in an isolated and torn 
territory, like many, between depopulation and real estate speculation 
aimed at gentrification and the transformation of places into postcards 
of themselves, as well as forges of mere profit. By launching the 
question "is tourism our last resort?" passed the hot potato to the 
three invited militant editorial teams, not before having attempted to 
critically connect tourism with healthcare, the water crisis, wages, 
marketing, garbage.

The speakers were Sicilia Libertaria, Scorci and ZULU, who recounted in 
an assembly setting the attempts at investigation and reflection that 
had already been underway for some time, knowing full well that there 
are no easy solutions, but also that discussion alone is not enough to 
resolve things.

ZULU - la terra sotto i piedi, is the Salento magazine that presented 
the reflections set out in Issue 0 of June 2023, narrating without 
rhetoric the transformations that have affected Salento for thirty years.

"In the 90s we realized that we were unwitting protagonists of a 
significant and since then irreversible event: having left our land for 
study and work involved the involvement, with the periodic returns for 
the holidays and vacations, of new friends and people that we actually 
brought to visit for the first time what would become an obligatory 
destination for Italian summers" says Concetta of ZULU, continuing 
"There was a continuous evolution and this embryonic tourism, which we 
can define as do-it-yourself, began to structure itself with the birth 
of bed and breakfasts, the houses of grandparents and old fishermen that 
were being repurposed into holiday homes. Up until that moment, 
therefore, there seemed to be no real estate speculation. Then the leap 
to luxury tourism, which appears to be completely alienated from the 
management possibilities of the inhabitants. Just think of the center of 
Lecce, Otranto, Matera, places where those who live there cannot 
physically go to buy food. Inhuman places, not by chance defined as 
scattered hotels".

Scorci - Sicilian magazine of various humanity has briefly illustrated 
the structure it has chosen to give to the theme, to which Number 7 is 
dedicated, published in June 2024.

"Starting from the understanding that there is not just one type of 
tourism and above all starting from the attempt to make an issue on 
travel, understood in its broadest sense, and then realizing that it is 
impossible to talk about travel without talking about tourism, we have 
tried to investigate its most problematic aspects, those that, although 
they appear obvious, are very difficult to dismantle. By correlating 
tourism with the environmental crisis, the food sphere, the meaning that 
exploration has assumed for a long time, the relationship between 
tourism and cities, class struggles, what has emerged is that it is in 
all respects an industry and as such must be seen and opposed. There can 
be no half-measures, as, for example, so-called sustainable tourism 
presents itself" says Angelo.

The debate continued by emphasizing the thorny issue of European funds, 
the greater sustenance of those who want to do tourism in their small 
realities and dimensions that make the mouth water of a certain 
left-wing youth associationism, which uses words like sustainability, 
folklore, zero kilometer to sell a territory that in the past 
politically defended from the system and that, instead, now literally 
feeds it. This is how those bizarre phenomena like the Montalbano effect 
are born, the race to the shot to replicate, the polishing of every 
corner to make it adhere to the television image that has arisen, while 
just behind the wall urban decay, depopulation, poverty continue 
undisturbed.

This is what the reality of Catania Lupo tells, an occupied and 
under-eviction center, close to the hinge placed between two rival 
neighborhoods in being represented one of redevelopment and the other of 
absolute degradation. So Lupo made some flyers that try to provocatively 
hypothesize, through images and short texts, what the Fair would become 
if besieged by building speculation, like the Pescheria.

Not far from the other testimonies, the Anti-Eviction Assembly 
recounted, through the voice of those who were there to represent it, 
the complex dynamics that currently affect Rome, a city that due to its 
internal dynamics experiences continuous compressions and 
decompressions, but that perhaps due to status symbols and management, 
masterfully recounts the two speeds at which places go, especially those 
in the South, when they cease to exist for themselves.

Without reaching any conclusion, the debate left behind many lively 
reflections and exchanges, and basically the shared certainty that 
without the struggle from below, tourism, like all the other obscene 
heads of capitalism, will not fade and that waiting helplessly for its 
collapse would be fruitless as well as the worst act of complicity.

Désirée Carruba Toscano.

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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