Andria also celebrated the international day of peasant struggle – AndriaLive.it

Andria also celebrated the “international day of peasant struggle”, established in memory of the Eldorado Dos Carajas massacre, which occurred on the same day in 1996, in which 19 farmers demonstrating peacefully were killed by the Brazilian police. Last Friday, in the conference room of the G. Ceci Library, in Piazza Sant’Agostino, the volunteers of Casa Acc. SM Goretti were promoters of the event which focused on the thesis work in “contemporary history” entitled “Fifty years of peasant struggles in Terra Di Bari: the case of Andria” realized by Daniela Fortunato, social worker and volunteer of Casa Acc. SMGoretti, who passed away prematurely. After the institutional greetings of the association. to Beauty Daniela Di Bari and the director of Casa Acc. Don Geremia Acri, Giuseppe (husband of Daniela Fortunato) traced a specific memory of his beloved wife. In her thesis, Daniela explored one of the bloodiest pages of our city: the massacre of the Porro sisters. Slaughtered because they were landowners, by a peasant crowd who gathered in the square to demonstrate for wages that were too low.

It is said that after hearing a shot, the demonstrators were convinced that the shot came from the home of the Porro sisters, who shot to protect the grain kept in their cellars, so they broke in and beat them to death and then abandoned them on the street .

This event makes us understand how poverty or desperation can make human beings inhuman. Certainly violence must never be justified, it must always be condemned, contained and this is the task of those who choose to put themselves at the service of the common good and of everyone.
What happened many decades ago does not differ so much from what happens today for seasonal laborers, who during harvest periods, in various areas of Italy, are forced to live in abandoned farmhouses, in the cold without light and without water, in total indifference of agricultural and non-agricultural entrepreneurs and above all of the institutions whose task is to guarantee the right to a dignified life. It is no coincidence that among the promoters of the event there is Casa Acc. SM Goretti, a place of welcome especially for those seasonal workers who are clearly affected by the shortcomings of the institutions and sometimes of the agricultural entrepreneurs who do not take full responsibility of their real rights as workers.

The interventions by Luigi Antonucci and the reports by Giuseppe de Leonardis, former secretary of FLAI CGIL Puglia and the historian from Andria Vito di Bari were precise and timely. Prof. was connected remotely. Mario Spagnoletti. The event supports the projects of the association. Together for Africa committed to building schools mainly in Africa, aware that “culture will save our humanity. Culture makes one free, true and intellectually honest. Without culture you die as a slave to someone or something.”