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franciscretarola · 4 years

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Amatrice: how the L’Aquila earthquake predicts its future

(Poggio Picenze, near L’Aquila... all photos by Francis Cretarola) (from 2017) The day after the August 24th central Italy earthquake, we received numerous messages from Le Virtù customers, friends from all over North America, and friends in Italy. People on this side wanted to know how to help and those in Italy, especially those around L'Aquila, Abruzzo - which is very close to Amatrice and knows more than it cares to about this type of event - were telling us that, this time, they were okay. As we started to put together our relief efforts, we wondered if Amatrice, Accumoli, the villages in Marchè along the Tronto river, and the other badly damaged towns would ever be rebuilt, if life in them would ever be the same. Our knowledge of L'Aquila and the aftermath of its 2009 earthquake didn't make us very sanguine about the future.

But on the second day after the quake, I saw a Facebook post made from Amatrice by a friend of ours from Paganica (a small village just outside of L'Aquila). She was in Amatrice volunteering to help the victims. And seeing the post made me think about the last time we'd seen her. It was last summer, in her home village. She had wanted us to see how things were, many years post-earthquake, in Paganica.

What follows is reconstructed from my notes from and photos of that visit.

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Cathy and I park beneath the church of Santa Maria Assunta, in Piazza della Concezione, just off the main road that snakes through Paganica, a satellite town of L'Aquila. Like many of the villages around Abruzzo's capital city, Paganica suffered terrible damage during the April 2009 earthquake. It was at the epicenter of the event. Across the road from us, the baroque facade of Santa Maria della Concezione is scarred by fractures. Directly in front of our car, Paganica's monument to "ai caduti," those fallen in Italy's two world wars (a squat, massive rectangle of stone inscribed with the names of the dead), is rotated about 10 degrees counterclockwise on its base. The shaking had been fierce.

It's July of 2015 - six years after the quake - and our friend Germana Rossi, a native of Paganica, has promised to take us inside the zona rossa, the forbidden "red zone" protected by chain-link fence that's deemed too dangerous for habitation or visit.

In 2001, we lived up the road in the village of Assergi, also part of the extended city of L'Aquila. On days when we didn't want to drive the twenty minutes into the city to shop its daily market, we did our food shopping at a little mom-and-pop store in Paganica. We ate often just up the road at the Villa Dragonetti, a fresco-covered, 16th-century palace where the cuisine was as simply elegant as the hospitality was easy and warm. We met Germana later, in 2006 in Philadelphia, when she came over as part of the Abruzzese folk group DisCanto. We gave the group the keys to our row home in South Philly during their stay (and we crashed down the street on my brother's floor). In 2007, Germana returned the favor and offered us the use of her late grandmother's home in the oldest section of Paganica, the part of town now locked behind the fence.

Few people walk the piazza. The faces of those we do see seem preoccupied and drawn. And a little suspicious of us. In the weeks and months immediately following the quake, L'Aquila and its surrounding areas became destinations for "disaster tourism." Though we know this place well and are here by invitation, it's hard not to feel awkward and inappropriate.

After a short, uncomfortable wait, Germana arrives. She wears a brightly colored summer dress and greets us happily. Everyone in Paganica knows her and the other Rossi family members, which puts me at ease.

Germana wastes no time and we move toward the old town, the entrance to which is blocked by the fence. As though swinging open a garden gate, Germana moves part of the fence and enters the zona rossa. We follow closely behind her.

We walk up into the oldest part of the town along alley-like medieval streets. Many buildings are braced with wood or steel supports. Cracks web across facades; some interiors are exposed and visible from the street; the early evening sun shines through gaping holes in roofs. Germana points out - almost dispassionately - damaged architectural treasures, broken monuments of the town's ancient culture and history. And I am reminded of the tour she gave us in 2007, when she proudly pointed out some of these same details, the elements that gave Paganica part of its character and specific beauty. Nature has invaded the streets. Weeds rise chest-high, grass bursts from the cobblestones. At one tiny square, a man - also defying the authorities - appears from nowhere. Germana smiles and they exchange brief but warm greetings, speaking in a shorthand understood only by terremotati (earthquake survivors). She introduces us to him. He smiles wanly, but then walks over to a slim fig tree which has taken root in the street in the six years since the quake, plucks two pieces of fruit and gives them to Cathy and me.

We arrive at Germana's home. She pushes open the narrow wooden door and we enter. I remember the space well, even through its debris-covered chaos. All around us, the broken and dust-covered relics of a family history lie waiting to be reclaimed. We climb the steps to her parents' room. Their bed is exactly as it was immediately after the earthquake. Large chunks of masonry, which at 3:32 in the morning fell onto the sleeping couple, still cover it. It's terrifying. Nothing has been done since the quake. The Rossi family was allowed to return to take whatever articles they could, but no restoration has been attempted. The government has not acted and it will not allow the family to begin its own work.

It's tough to know what to say. Nothing comes to mind that wouldn't be said merely because I feel like I should say something, anything. Cathy and I returned here shortly after the quake in 2009. We visited all we could of L'Aquila, most of which was and remains cordoned off behind fencing, and met with Germana. Her parents, who were living in one of the many tent cities inhabited by the survivors, came to meet us at the Villa Dragonetti, which had miraculously escaped severe damage. They sat at our table and apologized for being disheveled, for not being better able to welcome us. The father's face was still scarred from the fallen masonry. We've come back to L'Aquila every year since, but this is our first time behind Paganica’s fencing.

Germana leads us back to the car and asks us to follow her to Poggio Picenze, another village inside the so-called "L'Aquila crater." It was also terribly hit. Her friend, Stefania Pace, wants to show us her home.

We pull over at a bar outside Poggio Picenze's fenced-off old town to meet Stefania. She's a blond woman in her mid-forties. It doesn't take long to understand that she's possessed of a strong wit and spirit. She's sad, as Germana’s sad, but not broken. Banked anger flashes in her eyes as she and Germana explain the bureaucracy that prevents action and the corruption and waste that informed then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's original reconstruction efforts. Berlusconi had treated the earthquake as an opportunity to salvage his scandal-damaged reputation and to funnel money to his supporters. In the mountains around L'Aquila, "new towns," characterless, (as it turns out) often poorly built warrens blight the landscape. Some are positioned in such a way that their inhabitants can stare down into the fenced-off ancient villages to watch centuries of history, tradition and culture slowly rot under the weight of the seasons. The psychological effect on the population, especially the elderly, is profound. Many, like Stefania, are still living in what was supposed to be temporary housing.

Again, we walk past the fence - no one is guarding any of these places - and into the old town. The devastation is terrible, and the place, centuries old as it is, looks more like an ancient abandoned ruin than a 21st-century town. Only a car, its roof crushed by fallen masonry, reminds of the present day. Stefania's husband Mariano has joined us and leads us to their former home. Stefania can't bear to enter, but we walk in. Part of the house is fairly intact, and he points out many of the improvements he'd made shortly before the quake, restoration projects designed to highlight the home's original rustic character. He laughs grimly while recounting the plans he'd had for the space. The property immediately next to the theirs has been obliterated. A second-story door opens on a room and floor that no longer exist.

Everything is overrun by insurgent grass, weeds, and saplings. Mariano bounds up the hill to a small tree, another fig, picks some fruit, and brings it back to Stefania.

When we received word of the L'Aquila earthquake, it was just after 9:30 pm in Philly and we were winding down a pleasant Sunday dinner service at Le Virtù. We spent the next six hours calling friends and relatives in the region. It wasn't until the next day that the scope of the disaster became clear. Much of the city, particularly its medieval center, was destroyed. And some of the towns around L'Aquila - Paganica, Camarda, Fossa, Onna - had fared worse.

It was a gut punch. But our loss had been relative. All our friends and family had survived, though some had lost their homes. In the days that followed, standing in Le Virtù, our paean to Abruzzo decorated in photos, ceramics, and artifacts collected during our travels in the region, suddenly felt absurd and robbed of meaning. The restaurant was dedicated to the entirety of the region, but it simply would never have existed if not for our time spent living in L'Aquila. In a way that we acknowledge to be unearned and shallow, we considered L'Aquila our second home.

It was surreal also to see and hear L'Aquila and Abruzzo, overlooked places well off Italy's touristed path, be for a time a topic for the local, national, and international press. A place that we'd tried to promote - at Le Virtù, with culinary tours, by producing TV shows for Comcast and PBS, by bringing musicians to the U.S.- was suddenly, albeit briefly, in the public eye. But for all the wrong reasons. Journalists flocked to the city and its environs without knowing anything of what these places had been like before the event, what had been lost, or what was at risk. And for as long as there was spectacle to report - bodies and survivors pulled from the debris, images of pain and devastation, the occasional uplifting story about the courage of first responders and defiant civilians who'd thrown in immediately following the event - L'Aquila was news. And then, as invariably happens, the world moved on.

But the losses continue and the risk - to a centuries-old culture, ancient ways of life, unheralded architectural and artistic treasures, intrinsic things without calculable price - remain. Things that are soul-nurturing, essential, that have sustained a people and could offer much to the 21st century but have gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, struggle to survive and, in places, diminish. The area around L'Aquila, like much of Abruzzo, contains precious but undiscovered things: stunning parkland where sheep and goat herding continue, cattle forages free-range, and wolves and bear roam wooded solitudes; small farms producing heirloom vegetables and fruits, ancient grains, the finest saffron in Europe; artisanal cheese and salumi makers; tiny medieval villages with singular culinary customs and vernacular architecture; ancient religious rites that predate the Romans; jewelry making, stone- and wood-carving, and other craft traditions; and obscure artistic masterworks. The culture of shepherds and farmers persists and informs daily life. Most of the world is blithely unaware of what's at stake.

Le Virtù exists solely because the Abruzzo in its entirety had so inspired and moved us. When we opened, we were true neophytes with no real restaurant experience, ignorant in ways that now seem ridiculous and frightening. But we believed that the region had something important to offer, not only to Philadelphia's culinary discussion, but also - if we honored Abruzzese values of generosity, quality, and humility, and fostered a convivial environment - to the local community. If we've succeeded, it's owed to our commitment to Abruzzo's culture, not to our unique creativity and invention. It's painful to see our roots in L'Aquila in peril.

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The earthquake that struck Amatrice and surrounding towns (in Lazio, Umbria, Marchè, and Abruzzo) had eerie similarities to the L'Aquila event. It occurred at 3:36 am (L'Aquila shook at 3:32 am), and we again learned of it towards the end of dinner service at Le Virtù. Amatrice was part of Abruzzo until 1927, when Mussolini redefined the region's boundaries with Lazio. It's a mountain village with a pastoral tradition and culture that would be very familiar to anyone who has traveled Abruzzo. It’s best known, however, as the birthplace of spaghetti all'amatriciana, its namesake pasta dish of tomatoes and guanciale (cured pig's cheek). Most people experience that dish in Rome, however, and all'amatriciana is usually lumped in with the capital city's cuisine. It shares this misidentification with pasta alla griscia (from the village of Grisciano, also near Amatrice) and carbonara (most likely from eastern Lazio and western Abruzzo, or possibly Napoli). Amatriciana was also popular in nearby L'Aquila.

Reports on the earthquake often made reference to the pasta dish or discussed the town as a summertime getaway for Romans. Most of the reporters going to Amatrice and the other affected towns were seeing them for the first time, and had no idea of what they'd been like before the quake. It was understandably hard for them to provide context or even understand the profundity of the event. Amatrice had only just been added to the Borghi Piu Belli d'Italia, a loose association of "the most beautiful villages in Italy." And now much of it was rubble.

Recent history tells us that the world will probably move on pretty quickly from this disaster, if it hasn't done so already. And, if history stereotypically repeats itself, it will do so without assuring that Amatrice or the other towns are restored to their former state and that their ways of life and culture can survive. In fact, it will probably do the bottom-line calculus and decide that rebuilding isn't a worthwhile use of resources, that there'll be too little return. It did this in the Irpinia region of Campania in 1980 (after a quake which also impacted Molise). And it seems to be doing this in L'Aquila. I fear that they'll be a new "Amatrice," a conglomeration of modern housing with designated shopping malls that doesn't foster community or acknowledge the ancient culture: an Amatrice amputated from its soul.

But there are some who refuse to accept this.

When Germana awoke the morning after the Amatrice quake, she drove from her Paganica home (a converted garage) to Amatrice to help with the relief efforts. She came home, slept for four hours, had a shower and drove back. She repeated this for several days. Her ancestral home is still behind chain-link fence. She fights a daily battle against bureaucracy, apathy, resignation, and indifference. And she continues to remind us of what's at stake, what truly matters.

In the days after the quake, she made many posts from and about Amatrice. The most moving for me was a film of street musicians made before the quake. Young and old musicians play a salterello, an Abruzzese form of dance music similar to a tarantella. The music is played on bagpipes and tambourine. A crowd has gathered around the musicians. One player passes the tambourine to an older man in the crowd who without pause perfectly continues the traditional rhythm.

It seems unreasonable to me that we would ever allow this music to be silenced.

#Amatrice L'Aquila Paganica centralitalyearthquake Abruzzo Abruzzese terremoto

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