Today, 25th April 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Liberation Day, the Liberation of Italy from the Fascist Italian Government and from the occupation of Nazi Germany.
Liberation from such an authoritarian, anti-democratic, and repressive regime did not happen on a whim. In fact, this day is also known as Anniversary of the Resistance, as it commemorates the Italian Resistance Movement against the occupation of Nazi Germany and its Italian puppet state. This means that people in Italy, men and women, had to resist actively the abuses of the violent fascist regime. Indeed, the postcolonial framework of resistance that so often informs our archaeological narratives of imperial period, is largely inspired by the resistance to the “Ventennio Fascista”.
But as liberation from Fascism did not happen over night, so it does not last forever. Umberto Eco’s book pictured above is the Italian translation of his article for The New York Review of Books. The famous semioticians, novelist, and philosopher, remembers the excitement of those days, when the Partisans took over Milan first, and the small tows later, like Alessandria, where he lived. This essay is full of interesting anecdotes, like where Eco recalls that “I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise.” Eco also reminds the readers that Liberation is, like freedom, an unending task, while tracing the uncanny characteristics of Ur-Fascism: traditionalism, rejection of analytical criticism and diversity, machismo, obsession for the birthplace as foundational of social identity, repudiation of the individual, glorification of uniform groups and targeting of the “different” ones. Does it ring a bell? Men and women who resisted Fascism traced a route we shall continue to pursue.
Those men and women were not only of Italian origins: partisans in Italy belonged to over 50 nationalities. One of these Partisans was Menen Abegasc, Ethiopian woman victim of colonialism and of the exhibition “Terre d’Oltremare” held in Naples in 1940 to showcase, and strengthen amongst Italian citizens, Italy’s “image of colonial power”. The article below, by writer, music producer, and photographer Marilena Delli Umuhoza, describes hers, and other stories of Afro-descendant people, for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto.
Buon 25 Aprile!
Mauro Puddu 