Come ricorderanno i nostri lettori, un numeroso gruppo di giornalisti della Stampa Estera aveva visitato Agnone e l’Alto Molise, su invito dell’Università delle Generazioni per lanciare, tramite loro, un S.O.S. al mondo intero per tentare di salvare queste montagne dal più completo spopolamento. Quella visita, durata due giorni (venerdì 9 e sabato 10 maggio), ha già prodotto due interessanti servizi giornalistici, uno dell’inglese Philip Willan e l’altro dell’egiziano Rifaat El Nagar.

Philip Willan ha scritto “Agnone’s agony” (l’agonia di Agnone) un bell’articolo di due cartelle ed una foto, pubblicato  il 26 maggio dal quotidiano inglese “The Italian Insider” (versione cartacea e internet). Willan, dopo aver sintetizzato le origini storiche, soprattutto  sannite e veneziane, di Agnone e il suo essere città d’arte e industriosa “Atene del Sannio”, si dilunga ad evidenziare le difficoltà attuali dovute essenzialmente all’emigrazione che ha fatto perdere alla cittadina il 70% della popolazione dal 1861 in poi. Riportando alcune frasi di Domenico Lanciano, Lorenzo Di Pasquo e Armando Marinelli, il giornalista inglese conclude il suo servizio con la speranza che “i moderni discendenti (dei fieri Sanniti, ndr) troveranno un modo per risollevarsi dal fallimento e dallo scoraggiamento e offrire un esempio alle altre comunità in via di spopolamento che stanno affrontando la stessa sfida”.

Rifaat El Nagar ha finora realizzato due servizi di 2 minuti e mezzo ciascuno per la TV satellitare “Al Arabiya” una emittente araba che, quotidianamente, è mediamente vista da 230 - 250 milioni di persone in tutto il mondo. Il primo servizio “Agnone, Italy” racconta dello spopolamento e della voglia dei suoi abitanti di reagire in tutti i modi. Il giornalista egiziano ha intervistato (nell’ordine) Maurizio Cacciavillani (vice-sindaco di Agnone), Adelina Zarlenga (giornalista di Primo Piano Molise) e Domenico Lanciano (fondatore dell’Università delle Generazioni). Le immagini riportano la migliore Agnone dei bei panorami del centro storico e delle sue vie, la Valle del Verrino, la fonderia di campane, la lavorazione dei latticini, altri scorci territoriali di grande suggestione.

Il secondo servizio “I premiati formaggi di Agnone” è interamente dedicata al settore dei latticini e dei formaggi che, secondo il giornalista di Al Arabiya, potrebbe interessare molto i Paesi Arabi (soprattutto i ricchi emirati del Golfo Persico). Infatti, esordisce con le immagini di una delle tante premiazioni avute dal Caseificio Di Nucci e poi con la lavorazione dei latticini anche nel Caseificio Di Pasquo. Le interviste riguardano (nell’ordine): Franco Di Nucci, Antonia Di Nucci e Lorenzo Di Pasquo. Sulla auspicabile esportazione di formaggi agnonesi e altomolisani nei Paesi Arabi si sta lavorando in collaborazione con il commercialista Vincenzo Ermocida con studio in Roma Via Barberini 11, esperto in import-export e in finanziamenti pubblici nazionali ed europei.

Chi volesse le registrazioni in DVD dei due servizi televisivi trasmessi da Al Arabiya può recarsi al negozio “All Computer” di Via Roma 11 in Agnone. Per avere il testo inglese e la traduzione italiana (fatta da Rosaria Di Sabato) dell’articolo “Agnone’s agony” può farne richiesta direttamente all’indirizzo mail “mimmolanciano@gmail.com” di Domenico Lanciano.

Agnone’s agony
May 26, 2014
By Philip Willan
AGNONE–This town owed its medieval fortune to a bitter power struggle in Venice, which drove a losing faction to seek refuge in the mountains of what is today Molise.
Here on the crest of a ridge overlooking the Verrino valley, skilled craftsmen devoted themselves to the production of artefacts in copper, gold and leather, endowing the town with a Venetian quarter, a church dedicated to St Mark, and reproductions of the Serenissima’s pre-eminent symbol, the lion.
Its cultural and economic success led the town to be dubbed the “Athens of Samnium,” and in later centuries its enlightened entrepreneurs invested in electrification – before the new phenomenon had reached neighbouring Naples – and a private railway line.
But with the unification of Italy in the late 19th century, national taxes and competition from the industrialised north of Italy marked the beginning of a long and painful decline.
Over the last century Agnone has lost 70 percent of its population, many migrating to the north in search of work, or travelling abroad, in particular to Canada and Bedford in the United Kingdom.
With just over 5,000 inhabitants remaining, Agnone has become a symbol of the depopulation of the rural centres of southern Italy, with a “corner of tears” in its access road from which departing migrants could get a last glimpse of their picturesque hilltop homes.
Now local businessmen have banded together in a group called “Traditions and Development” to try and market the area to wealthy foreigners willing to wander off the beaten track, and possibly to snap up an abandoned property as a holiday or retirement home.
Some 12,000 small towns and villages throughout Europe are currently threatened by depopulation, says Domenico Lanciano, a local journalist campaigning to keep his town alive.
“Depopulation threatens an entire rural and peripheral civilisation,” Mr Lanciano said. “While cities burst, the towns are dying. It is absolutely essential that we work to rebalance the territory, which is our only hope of salvation.”
The hilltop towns of Upper Molise offer a pleasant climate, low prices, uncontaminated nature, hospitable people, and are free of the baneful influence of the organised crime that stunts development and diminishes the quality of life in the neighbouring regions of southern Italy.
The businessmen of “Traditions and Development” have wisely chosen to steer clear of party politics, something of a novelty for an initiative of this kind.
“We’re not interested in politics. We simply want to develop our territory for visitors and tourists,” said Lorenzo Di Pasqua, a dairy entrepreneur who is vice-president of the organisation.
Mr Lanciano acknowledges that Italy’s national political vices are particularly acute in the economically backward south, and they do little to help his promotional efforts, aimed at northern Europe and North America.
The shortcomings of the southern political class were vividly illustrated in a report on a 2008 visit to Calabria by the US Consul General from Naples, subsequently published on Wikileaks.
Local politicians there were “uniformly seen as ineffective and/or corrupt” and the regional president had repeatedly declined requests for a meeting with the American official.
When he did agree to meet, he wasn’t keen to discuss his plans for using EU funds available for the region. “The President gave a vague reply and changed the subject,” the consul reported.
It was a similar story in Vibo Valentia, where the mayor “apparently hoped our meeting would yield nothing more substantive than a photo op. He and his coterie clearly became uneasy when the CG (Consul General) asked how the city is confronting the problem of organised crime, and he continually tried to steer the conversation to more superficial topics.”
The local representative of the Legambiente environmental organisation observed: “Calabria has very few good politicians – and none in leadership positions.”
In contrast, the south can offer examples of excellence in the sphere of business. Agnone hosts the 1,000-year-old Marinelli Pontifical Bell Foundry, which produces some 50 bells a year using techniques first developed in the 5thcentury BC.
“They say there’s a drop of bronze in the blood of every bell maker,” said Armando Marinelli, the current head of the millennium-old enterprise. “If my son told me he wanted to become a doctor I wouldn’t be exactly delighted.”
The Samnites have the distinction of having famously defeated the Romans, at the Battle of the Caudine Forks in 321 BC. But they were subsequently defeated themselves and subjected to a kind of ethnic cleansing, such that “the towns of Samnium have become villages, and most have vanished altogether.”
With such a rollercoaster history behind them, it is hoped that their modern descendents will find a way to rise again from defeat and demoralisation, and offer an example to other depopulated communities facing the same challenge.