VANESSA BILANCETTIPain, anger, and shame in Italy’s Pontine plainSikh farm labourer left to die by his boss after having arm severed and legs crushed by machine

Vanessa Bilancetti (text & photo), dinamopress.it, 24/6/2024 Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Vanessa Bilancetti, staff writer at Dinamo Press, writes about social movements, feminism and European issues. She received her doctorate in political studies from Sapienza University in Rome with a thesis on critical analysis of the Fiscal Compact. In Rome she teaches Sociology of Political Phenomena at the online university Uninettuno. She has long traversed the assemblies of self-managed Esc Atelier Autogestito she is a thai boxing and poetry enthusiast. Vane Bix

Satnam Singh was killed in the countryside of the Pontine plain by a boss who did not even have the courage to take him to the hospital. But he left him agonizing in front of the gate of his home, with his wife Sony in tears. Report from Saturday’s demonstration in Latina, in the lands of corporals, masters and resistance

 To get from Rome to Latina, the “capital” of Agro Pontino, you drive all the way along the Pontina, one of the most dangerous state roads in Italy. Potholes, piles of garbage on the sides of the roads and then warehouses, warehouses, retailers. From Pomezia, the first cultivated fields begin, and one can see labourers walk along the crop side roads. There are people from Central African countries, the Maghreb, and Indians, like Satnam Singh.

Singh comes from Sanskrit sinha and means lion and is an essential element of a Sikh’s male name. For women it is Kaur, princess. The Sikh religion, born in the 15th century in the Punjab region (now divided between Pakistan and India), used these names to eliminate the use of Indian caste-identifying surnames.

According to estimates, in the Agro Pontino, the Indian men and women from Punjab number around 30,000; less than half have regular residence permits.

The Agrilovato cooperative of farmer Renzo Lovato is located near Sabaudia, Satnam Singh, 31, and his wife Sony lived not too far away in Borgo Bainsizza. “Hosted” by a local family, as the newspapers write, but “widespread hospitality” is a common practice in the area: in shacks, tool repositories, unfinished houses, without a contract and with payment in black, sometimes in agreement with “the master.” It was precisely “the master’s son” Antonello Lovato who dumped Satnam in the back of the white van, with a severed arm, his legs crushed and bleeding, while his wife screamed in despair and other workers whose phones had been taken away so as not to call for help. 34 kilometres separate the farm from the Borgo [Borough], at least half an hour of road, of screaming, of blood, minutes that if spent going to the hospital could have saved Satmam’s life.

Thirty-four kilometres of straight roads, all built as a result of the Fascist land reclamation, which brought these lands out of the swamps, eliminated malaria and gave birth to the Pontine agricultural sector, one of the most important in Italy. Pumpkins, leeks, beans in winter, zucchini and tomatoes in summer. Greenhouses as far as the eye can see and breeding of buffaloes and cows.

To work in the fields of ghosts-as Flai CGIL Secretary of Frosinone and Latina Laura Hardeep Kaur called them from the stage at last Saturday’s demonstration- blackmailed because they are undocumented, even though almost all of them enter through the lottery of the flow decree, the new legal method for exploiting irregular labour.

Thirty-four kilometres to get to Bainsizza -the name of a plateau, now Slovenian, where the Battle of the Isonzo took place, as many other villages on the plain bear the names of the battles of World War I, as Mussolini wanted- and dump Satnam and his arm in a fruit box in front of one of the gates and leave. When asked by one of the neighbours who rushed over hearing the screams to call 118, he quickly explains, “he’s not regular, he cut himself.” His father would sentence better on Tg1 TV news: “I told him not to go near that machine. He made a mistake, a carelessness that cost everyone dearly.”

How much are the lives of the Singhs and Kaurs worth on this fertile, lush plain? Between 2.50 and 5.00 euros an hour, monthly wages as low as 200 euros, crumbling housing, dangerous transportation. Some die and the bodies are hidden and abandoned, many and many get hurt after 10 hours of work under the sun, others faint and are often forced to take drugs to withstand the exhausting work and are threatened by the bosses with firearms. 

SATURDAY’S DEMONSTRATION

Piazza della Libertà in Latina opens between the Government Palace and the Bank of Italy, a fascist stele with a guarding eagle stands in the distance, and late Saturday afternoon it was packed with labourers, trade unionists, workers but few, very few Latina citizens. Littoria was inaugurated in 1932; around the stadium you can still see stickers that hymn the old name of the city. Here the reclamation was carried out by people from Friuli, Emilia and Veneto -the surname Lovato resonates in this history of immigration- and was carried out under the command of the Opera Nazionale Combattenti (National Veterans’ Charity). The number of dead no one knows; probably tens of thousands never saw the land assigned to them in the Boroughs. Each land was handed over with a stable and cattle, the obligation was to carry on agricultural work and repay the debt incurred with the Fascist state.

In the province of Latina in the last European elections Fratelli d’ Italia took almost 35% and the League just over 9% so 44% of the population voted for the most extreme right and another 10% Forza Italia; Meloni received 28,000 preferential votes in Latina alone. This is the beating heart of Fratelli d’Italia.

Current Mayor Matilde Celentano, also from FdI, took the stage to say that Latina should not be identified as the city of caporalato [a gangmaster system of middlemen (caporali) illegally hiring labourers forced to work for very low salaries] and that the fight against this phenomenon has no political color. Yet in the square there are colors, apart from the red flags of Flai CGIL [Italian Federation of Agroindustrial Workers /Italian General Confederation of Labour], the square is lit up by Sikh turbans, yellow, red, orange, purple, blue. And they know the color of the masters well: it is white. The mayor’s speech ended amid booing from the square.

This is not the first time a demonstration has been called here, in 2016 there was the first strike, and then the struggles for work safety during Covid, journalistic inquiries, complaints and investigations, but living and working conditions have not improved. “Our task is to not give up this battle” shouts Marco Omizzolo from the stage, a sociologist who has been denouncing the situation for years, “to continue, to accelerate, to demand the cancellation of Bossi-Fini law, of the logics that inspired the Security Decrees, the Cutro Decree, the Flow Decrees, we need to change the citizenship law”.

Sony, Satnam’s wife, was granted a residence permit in two days after his death, an emblematic example that when there is political will, documents are obtained. But “we want documents when we are alive, not dead,” cries Flai CGIL card-carrying Sapnam Singh from the stage.

And also the full implementation of Law 199/2016 on labor exploitation in agriculture, protection and granting of residence permit for whistleblowers, and continuous controls on farms. 

"Enough is enough: no more deaths at work!"

Satnam is not an isolated case, the Lovato family’s cooperative, which has already been investigated for labour exploitation and caporalato, is not a bad apple, as Minister Lollobrigida tried to argue, and the problem is not illegal immigration. From the fields of Agro Pontino we can see how the Made in Italy brand is stained with blood, here a well-established system of regular entries, which never turn into residence permits once people arrive in Italy, is in force, and makes them live under the blackmail of corporals, bosses, bad laws and mafia infiltration. A system that enriches a very few while impoverishing most people, killing some, injuring others and polluting the environment.

Our countryside, restaurant kitchens, and construction sites are full of ghosts, who surface only with their violent deaths, when they cannot be hidden, and every day they live in the shadow of our productive system, in order to get fresh fruits and vegetables, well-served dinners, and renovated homes. All at the lowest possible price. And our legislative system builds the scaffolding for this exploitation.

Continues Omizzolo: “We have to rebel together. There is a community of women and men here, of people who are organizing, a new resistance. With them we must change this country, there are people who have become civil parties in the trials, there is a daily denunciation activity, because what happened to Satnam, to his wife, to his family, must not happen again, here and everywhere, being indignant is not enough, we have to rebel!”