Italy - Lucca - Eritrea: a dialogue to be resumed. Great success had the meeting on the experience of Lucca in Asmara and Massaua held on 1 March us. The initiative organized by the Banca del Monte di Lucca Foundation and the Lucca Sviluppo Foundation, in collaboration with the territorial scholastic office and with the associations "Lucca Massawa a long bridge", received the high patronage of the Embassy of the State of Eritrea, del Miur and the city of Lucca. In an auditorium, that of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, crowded with the public of great occasions, many came to listen to the experiences of exchange, including cultural, between Lucca, Asmara and Massawa.
At the table of speakers were alternated (in the order of presentation): Oriano Landucci, president of the Banca del Monte di Lucca Foundation; Alberto Del Carlo, president of the Lucca Sviluppo Foundation; the mayor of Lucca (who confided the asmarine origin of his parents); Alessandro Tambellini and the administrator Donatella Buonriposi; Pietros Fessahazion, Ambassador of Eritrea in Rome; Giuseppe Mistretta, Central Director of Sub-Saharan Africa of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the undersigned (Alessandro Pellegatta); Vilma Candolini, principal Iiso Asmara as well as professors Marchi e Grossi and Francesco Paolo Bello, honorary consul of Eritrea of Bari.
At the conference there was the best of Italy and Eritrea, a country to which I feel deeply connected, intellectually and emotionally. Everyone chooses his country of election. I chose Eritrea and its people for its extraordinary elegance and resilience. Two great figures from our African colonial history were originally from Lucca: Carlo Piaggia and Alberto Pollera. Carlo Piaggia was the son of millers and died of exhaustion in Karkogi after having explored the Blue Nile and Lake Tana. Alberto Pollera dedicated to the indigenous peoples of Eritrea a beautiful volume, which I jealously preserve in my bookstore. He was a great colonial official and at his funeral in Asmara, thousands of Eritrean natives took part who arrived on foot and on the back of a mule, covering hundreds of kilometers. The local chiefs played the chitet drums saying aloud: "Listen! Our great friend died! ". He was among the few to oppose the racial laws of fascism and against métissage.
I started working on the Horn of Africa in 2014. My first book was on historical Ethiopia (La terra di Punt). It came out in June 2015 and in October 2015 it was presented by the late Alfredo Castiglioni, who left us suddenly after a few months. The twin brother Angelo and his team of archaeologists and architects remain to rediscover the secrets of Adulis, "the gate of Aksum". After 8 years the works continue, and they see Italians and Eritreans collaborating for the realization of a great project: the creation of an important archaeological park.
In July 2017 I published a new book on Eritrea (Eritrea, End and Rebirth of an African Dream), where I described this country as the "rebirth of an African dream". In those days a hood of negativity still suffocated this wonderful country, which the most continued to define offensively as "North Korea of Africa". Eritrea was still besieged, hit by the unjust sanctions of the UN (for absurd and unproven reasons), and the strong powers of the West did everything for years to make it fall, feeding the migration of young Eritreans. In May 2018 I was invited by the Consul Avv. Bello in Bari at the Laterza bookshop, and I had the honor to see the Eritrean Ambassador in Italy at the presentation of my book. What was still a dream could finally be achieved.
History has proved us right. Asmara entered the heritage of UNESCO in July 2017. In the summer of 2018 a historic turning point took place. After decades of conflict, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a new peace treaty, and then the unjust UN sanctions also fell. Today everyone wants to return to the Horn of Africa to invest. The courageous young Ethiopian premier has asked Italy to intervene to create a new railway line that connects Addis Ababa to Massawa, which thus becomes "the gateway to Ethiopia". The "marketing of peace" has started and we are entering a very important and delicate moment. The dreams and hopes must now take over concrete facts and things.
However, my approach remains the same. Without understanding history and memory, one never goes anywhere. And we Italians have lost this memory. So I decided to write a new book (which came out a few days ago) on the history of Italian exploration in Africa and on Manfredo Camperio, our great Risorgimento patriot who, together with the Italian Geographical Society, introduced us to Africa (when Africa we had it at home, with a very poor Mezzogiorno). A year of hard work has involved me in the discovery of unpublished sources, and in particular the journals of Camperio (still unknown). Walter Benjamin said that even the dead, if we know how to listen, continue to talk to us, and always insist on their dialogue with the living in which history never ends. It is always now.
And in the history I have dedicated a new book on the Red Sea and Massaua, which have always belonged to a variable geographic area. The Eritrean space has in fact since ancient times been very complex and articulated, with economic and social projections not only towards Ethiopia but also towards Arabia, Sudan, India and the Mediterranean. Few people know this but Eritrea has for centuries had its own important geo - strategic space that goes well beyond its current borders, as it has combined different territorial dimensions within a macro - region (the Corno d ' Africa) already complex in itself.
Today Massaua needs urgent interventions of protection, cultural valorization and economic-social re-launch. Obviously, it is not a matter of "expropriating" the project on Massaua to the Eritrean Authorities, but (as was done very well with Asmara), to raise awareness and help them in this fundamental moment of economic, social and cultural life of Eritrea, which sees the need to combine economic development and protection of natural, historical and archaeological beauties. The protection and enhancement of Asmara and Adulis testify to the excellence of Italian work already carried out in Eritrea, but the path is still long. The archaeological area of Adulis to explore is still immense, as all the towns of the plateau (and Metera in particular) are still to be explored. The Dahlak archipelago needs to be protected. It is not unrealistic, however, to hypothesize the establishment of archaeological and naturalistic parks in a short time, which could constitute a significant source of resources for Eritrean populations.
If the creation of large ports is one of the necessary conditions for economic growth through the transport infrastructure channel, the key word to ensure that the presence of such infrastructures is also a sufficient condition for growth is intermodality. In order to maximize the potential of port infrastructures, it is necessary to connect them to the surrounding territory through appropriate land connections, which tend to be of a railway nature (to be able to move containers by land). All this for the Eritrean territory will inevitably turn into a great economic, planning and cultural challenge, given that its current railway and road infrastructures go back to Italian colonialism.
Without the memory the Horn of Africa, and with it the Red Sea and Massaua, will remain at the mercy of the macro-dynamics of the moment. Only by penetrating the historical perspectives and the knowledge of the cultural and human wealth of this region and of Eritrea we can in the future protect ourselves from the often unpredictable outcomes of the contingencies. Today, as then, the Horn of Africa, as well as the sub-regions of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandel and the Somali coast, are very different from each other but some quid and above all from maritime flows.
Now that Eritrea has finally returned to its future after years of resilience, all that remains is to hope that the sustainable development of its ports (including that of Massawa) and its territory will become a growth engine for this tormented country, which has returned to being a crossroads of global interests and continues to strategically position itself with its shores on the Red Sea.
However things go, we Italians will always be in Eritrea anyway. We will never leave this difficult, wonderful and complex land. It binds us to it a profound, inexplicable and indissoluble bond. More solid than economic conveniences, difficulties, prejudices and selfishness. Even when the modern roads and railways arrive, we will still travel on the imaginary and impossible paths of our first explorers who traveled these territories, towards the dreamed horizons and the mirages that have always belonged to us. And like the "sanded" described by Tommaso Besozzi we will always be looking for our seventh trip. And we will not repeat the mistakes of the past any more. A new page of Italian-Eritrean cooperation opens up based on mutual respect and trust in tomorrow.
The tiring (but joyous) historical and literary pilgrimage that led me to Eritrea and then to Massawa and the Red Sea in reality was nothing more than a simple return to the land of my dreams, and that basically dreams (like the clouds) ) they are much more real than the plans of our intellect. And in my dreams I see the Palace of the Governor of Massawa, today still horribly mutilated by the bombs of Ethiopian aviation, reborn and shine in its ancient charm, with its beautiful vault, its staircase and its inlaid door in the first lights of the dawn, with the moon setting. In the halls of this splendid building, the citizens of Massawa and the whole world learn the extraordinary history of the Red Sea and of this city, of the Eritrean coast and of ancient Adulis. And I thank you for having lived the joys and sorrows of this city,