Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [225]
CHAPTER NINE
I. The 1998 legislation did also benefit private owners, who were now able to evict tenants-with reasonable notice-if they could demonstrate a family need for the property.
2. On disclaimers in the expression of Roman racism, see Herzfeld 2007b. These disclaimers often adopt rhetorical forms that have been globalized in recent years, yet their expression in a local context both expresses and conveys tensions that might be differently articulated elsewhere.
3. It is interesting that the notion of romanitd is associated with the speaker's emergent racism, since the concept reached an apogee of sorts when Mussolini adopted it as a counterweight-scarcely less racial in its implications-to Hitler's embrace of Aryanist theories of race. See Gillette 2002, 5 3-5 6.
4. See above, p. 141.
5. He bolstered his criticism with a reminder that the Vatican had been involved in shady deals with mafiosi and crooked bankers, especially those that culminated in the spectacular crash of the Banco Ambrosiano. On these events, see Cornwell 1984.
6. The total city (comune) population rose by 65 percent, from 1, 695,477 to 2, 799,836, while that of Monti dropped by 51.3 percent, from 46,630 to 22,690. The overall population of the historic center dropped by 5 3 percent during that period (Italia Nostra 1976, 19-20).
7. "Emergenza sfratti, appello di Veltroni: 'Intervenga it governo,"' City [Rome], 15 April 2005, P. 22.
8. A fellow resident, underscoring his indignation that they all faced eviction, described three women as native doc (genuine natives); doc is an abbreviation for a wine appellation (d'origine controllata) and is often used as a semi-humorous metaphor for authenticity or guaranteed quality (see also Galt 1991, 31).
9. Marcel Detienne (2007, 84) draws an immediate and ironic comparison of these newly autochthonous "Padanians" (inhabitants of the area for which the Northern League was claiming autonomy) with the Sioux.
io. An Italian-language report was compiled, completed, and signed in 2005; the signatories included representatives of the United Nations-Habitat-AGFE and of the comune (city administration) of Rome. See AGFE 2005.
11. Scandurra (2003, 118) also points out that such folkloric sensationalism characterizes the superficial uses that officialdom makes of older ways of life in the city. It is relatively easy to weep for the predicament of a single elderly evictee while also dismissing such cases as the inevitable result of "progress"; it is not only in the third world that the poor and the marginal find themselves excluded by governmental practices grounded in a colonial, essentially survivalist-evolutionist perspective (on which see especially Ferguson 1990).
12. She died about two years later. The copies of these articles, by Maria Lombardi perhaps in II Messaggero) and Riccardo Morante din Gente), were unfortunately not marked with precise citation data.
13. This was a key theme in activists' rhetoric during the year; for example, flyers for a demonstration on i s January 2000 under the banner headline "SOS Jubilee," announced, "While the pope blesses the pilgrims, the government saves merchants and evicts tenants."
14. The letter, sent by auxiliary bishop Luigi Moretti to Loredana Acca on 20 March 2000, acknowledged that the case has been "dragging on for a while" but asserted that neither the Vicariate of Rome-technically the pope's parish-nor the Vatican's Secretariat of State could become involved in a legal dispute. "Nevertheless," the letter continues, "please accept sentiments of solidarity for you and for the families that are being forced to uproot themselves from their district, and I assure you of the special proximity and prayer of the Holy Father."
15. The actual text is mostly in capital letters; I have repunctuated it here for easier readability. The formula pregherd per not (will pray for us) has potentially penitential overtones (see p. ss).
16. It is the growing ubiquity of this hypocritical disjuncture between political identity and active policy in respect