News – The publication of the volume is promoted by the Boni Theater Association
| Torindo Zannoni |
Acquapendente – We receive and publish – The Teatro Boni association of Acquapendente promotes initiatives on local history and the next one is a book on the history of Torindo Zannoni.
Just over a year ago, on April 29, 2023, an event was held in the Aquesian theater, in collaboration with the municipality and various associations, to commemorate the killing of Torindo Zannoni, which occurred at the hands of the fascists on May 1, 1922. Thank you with the contribution of local history enthusiasts and Silvio Antonini, an important story of which there was a risk of losing memory was told to an attentive audience of students, teachers and citizens.
Torindo Zannoni was a 36-year-old Aquesian farmer who had recently returned from emigration to New York that year. According to news reports, testimonies and documents of the time, on May 1st the workers, while celebrating the anniversary in the open air outside Porta Romana, were subjected to a violent raid by fascists. That same evening, the body of a man with a gunshot wound to the chest was found in the fields: it was Zannoni. Today a street in Acquapendente bears his name and last year, on the occasion of the commemorative event, a memorial stone was placed on the site in memory of the tragic episode that occurred 102 years ago.
“This year we decided to publish the story of Torindo Zannoni in a book – explains Tolmino Piazzai, president of the Boni Theater Association – enriching it with precious contributions, and to donate it as a memory to the community and to future generations so that they understand that the story that you study in books is not that far from what concerns our local realities”.
To better contextualize the historical period in question, three new elements have been added to the interventions carried out last year. The first is the inauguration speech of the first socialist mayor of Acquapendente, Marino Regoli, delivered on 5 November 1920 in which the hope of a “new society” in which workers became the architects of the destiny of their community was outlined; the second is another piece of local history, edited by the historian Franco Dominici, on the advent of fascism in Sorano, a Tuscan municipality bordering Acquapendente (one of the fascist squads that took part in the assassination of Torindo Zannoni); the third is the space dedicated to documents, photos and family tree of Torindo and his family, kindly made available by his niece Kathleen, whom the association sincerely thanks.
In the pages of the book it is also entrusted to the memory of Torindo’s relatives: Marisa Zannoni, in a short passage, talks about the 1924 elections and the fascist threats to Giocondo Zannoni, Torindo’s nephew, testifying that the violence that brought fascism to power they continued and expanded.
“In a few days – adds Piazzai – it will be 100 years since the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, the socialist deputy who was the victim of fascist violence and who in his last speech to the Chamber of Deputies denounced the violence perpetrated in that year’s elections. Hatred, violence and oppression were the weapons of fascism, fueled by the indifference of a large part of the Italian people and by the support of landowners, entrepreneurs and business committees. Remembering is our duty, it is memory of the past for the future. They say that small stories make a big story and we have tried to tell it to you. Torindo Zannoni was a man from the Acquapendente community, an emigrant, and we wanted to remember his human story because his story represents the vocation to free thought and a warning to defend freedom and democracy, always and in any case”.
The book is available in Acquapendente at Pietro Pedez’s Il Girasole bookshop and the municipal library.
Boni Acquapendente Theatre
May 27, 2024
