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.
