Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [174]
Via degli Ibernesi, a tiny, steep street interrupted by stone steps, affords a fine view across to the Capitol and over Piazza Venezia. This invests it today with huge real-estate potential and correspondingly high sale prices; in earlier times, however, it meant only that its youth could effectively decide who could escape from Monti through the windows in the lower facades of their palazzi and who would be condemned to turn and try to fight off their tormentors from some other rival street. A place of relatively poor artisans and skilled workers, it marked a social boundary separating the red-light area from the city center, much as the ancient Subura had been walled off by Augustus to prevent contamination of the better parts of Rome by the denizens of this ill-reputed, dark, sunken zone.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, then, that the evicted residents of Via degli Ibernesi saw themselves as a "reservation" of "Indians" or "natives" ~indigeni or nativi) on "the last frontier" ~l'ultima frontiera).s That such comparisons might be made of the northerners claiming a unique kind of indigeneity is certainly not surprising at all, given the popularity of such exoticizing metaphors in Italy more generally-but it is surely astonishing to meet it in the heart of a capital city.9 In this sense Monti, and Via degli Ibernesi more than most of the area, exemplify the paradoxical mixture of marginality and grandeur that is the enduring condition of Rome.
Although none of the families remaining in the building were living in the direst poverty, it is also true that none owned any part of it. It belonged, in the jubilee year, to the Bank of Rome-a powerful institution that had invested heavily in major municipal projects, including the most recent restoration of the Colosseum, and was also responsible for the management of the municipal coffers. Because of the bank's deep involvement in the city's financial affairs, the city authorities were reluctant to fight it directly, especially as the bank had solid legal grounds for its action under the new legal dispensation. This miniature community, with an identity forged in battle, thus acquired a significance out of all proportion to its minute size. Left-wing friends often seemed perplexed that I would be concerned with such a tiny unit within a larger crisis that, by 2004, had attracted the attention of the United Nations and led to the signing of a joint memorandum of understanding between a UN delegation of housing rights experts and the city hall.10 They were particularly perplexed because the leaders of the group, Paolo and Loredana, had been more successful at getting the attention of what Paolo called la Destra cittadina the citizens' Right) than of the leftist politicians who had traditionally been more concerned with such issues.
This dynamic explains much of what happened to the Via degli Ibernesi group, including its ultimate failure. The Left, once it gained power, lost a great deal of its erstwhile interest in such matters; the head of the tenants' association was an active member of the Democratic Left, the majority in the ruling parliamentary coalition, and it became clear around the time that I came on the scene that he would not back the residents' desire to remain in situ if the authorities managed to persuade the bank to offer the tenants adequate alternative housing. Although he continued to lend the tenants support, his position became increasingly untenable, as he had to represent a weak and complaisant governing party even as he was supposed to be representing the concerns of the residents to those in power.
Because Paolo was