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By Root 545 0

were the most numerous and have the longest history. In the twentieth century, and especially since World War II, there have been sporting clubs (notably for fans of the Roma soccer team), artisans' associations and street associations, and one social club on the main square where (mostly) men gathered to play cards, argue about sports and politics, and organize festive events such as the annual October feast (ottobrata mon- ticiana, an evening of music, dancing, and feasting in the square). This association, which claimed to be so apolitical as to have refused offers of contributions in the form of fruit and other goods for the annual feast from ambitious politicians, was nevertheless rumored to be a nest of Fascists; its members were, to be sure, many (but not all) of rightist political persuasion and especially anti-immigrant sentiment, and it seems to have been they who most actively tried to end the gatherings of Ukrainians and other immigrants who gathered twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, before the Ukrainian church on the opposite side of the square.

If the Association did have rightist support, it was of little practical value; soon after a rightist alliance took control of the regional administration of Lazio (which includes Rome) in 2000, it sanctioned the eviction of the club from its centrally located premises. The struggle dragged on for a considerable time; the lawyer for the private citizen who had now bought the building (and perhaps expected to sell at a huge profit) said that he thought the club was a place for "four little old ladies who just play cards" (quattro vecchiette the giocano a carte solamente).27 The lawyer for the club explained that, to the contrary, the club had been a major source of social activity for the district for two decades, organizing sporting events and an annual October festival. His plea was nevertheless ignored; and, eventually fearing that his father, the president of the club, would not only offend powerful operators in the city and regional governments, but would also have had to pay the expenses of a trial if they lost, he retreated and the club leaders found alternative and less visible premises. The club was not in a strong position to argue; the city authorities had not asked it for rent for many years, and, although one suggestion was that it should now pay the arrears in order to gain the right to stay in place, that was clearly beyond its means.

The soccer clubs represent something of the factional dualism that, in Monti as virtually everywhere in Italy, has inflected social relations and political rhetoric ever since the end of World War II. The Lazio team was traditionally more right-wing, perhaps because its base was in the rural hinterland; but in recent years the fan groups of both clubs have been taken over by extremists with anti-Semitic slogans, Fascist salutes, and a taste for violence. Monti fans of both teams regard such developments with great distaste. An optician who became a Lazio supporter, he said, out of pure happenstance-as a boy he had gone with an itinerant peddler on his rounds and had simply acquired his soccer allegiance by osmosis from this manadmitted that it was not a matter of passion the was much more devoted to opera); but he also said that fandom, once set, could not be changed-he joked that it would be easier to change one's wife! He expressed great distress about the emergence of the ultra-Right in the club, saying that it was "as if something ugly had happened in the family." Until the very early i96os, after a match between the two teams, the local supporters of the victorious team would parade down Via Baccina bearing a coffin marked as containing the corpse of the other side. The Roma club has the more visible presence, perhaps because of the more left-wing traditions of the district, and its premises on Via Baccina remain a place for men to go and play cards and organize fan support for the team when it travels abroad. When the Roma team won the Italian national championship, the entire city erupted in wild demonstrations