Italy: No Saints in Paradise

By zantine Italian political system.

EXCEPT for the unmistakably modern odor of tear gas and burning rubber, the southern Italian city of Reggio di Calabria could have passed for one of the fortified city-states that made up Italy before the nation was unified 100 years ago. For most of the week, towering barricades of tree trunks, paving stones and junk sealed the city off from the outside world while nearly 5,000 armed police and carabinieri laid siege to it. At one point, two columns of cops in full riot regalia, spearheaded by bulldozers and a construction crane, charged into a district that had styled itself an independent "republic"; they were hurled back by a hail of bricks, bottles and Molotov cocktails.

As Reggie's rebellion spread and cut off virtually the entire southern fifth of the country, Premier Emilio Colombo ordered troops to cope with a civil disturbance for the first time since 1946. A force of 5,000 uniformed soldiers was moved into the area. For the second time in a tumultuous week, a Western government was compelled to call out its armed forces to face a gathering rebellion.

Citizens' Revolt. The revolt of Reggio began last July, after Rome passed out the political fruits of the new decentralization program. Under the plan, 15 governmental regions were created and given their own administrative councils and a measure of local autonomy. As the biggest city (pop. 160,000) in sere Calabria, Reggio seemed the obvious choice for the seat of the new regional government. The Reggini looked forward to the magic that a fat government payroll--and payola--could work on Reggio's threadbare economy.

When the nod went instead to Catanzaro, a much smaller city (pop. 82,000) 75 miles away, Reggio exploded. There were five days of street violence in July in which one civilian was killed and several policemen were injured. A bitter mood of rebellion grew against "the Bourbons" in Rome. Shopkeepers shuttered their stores and bankers locked their vaults. Schools were closed.

Though the government ordered state-owned TV to carry no news of the insurrection, the revolt steadily picked up steam and sympathy. Two weeks ago, Italy's conservative C.I.S.L. labor union called a general strike in the Reggio area. Port workers, post office clerks and telephone and telegraph employees left their jobs. When railway workers followed last week, the 10 million people in Sicily and the toe of the Italian boot were virtually cut off from the rest of the ''country. Barricades and wrecked tracks forced trains from the north to halt two hours short of Reggio. The Highway of the Sun, Italy's main north-south autostrada, was sealed off. With the port blocked, hundreds of trucks and freight cars stood idle on the other side of the Straits of Messina.

Because Reggio is politically conservative, much of the Italian press reflexively labeled the demonstrators fascists and hooligans. Few fit the description; the revolt has cut across class barriers. As Reggie's aptly named Mayor Piero Battaglia declared, "This is a citizens' revolt."

Street Skirmishes. It has also been a remarkably civil insurrection so far. Fewer than 20 shots have been fired by the rebels, even though there are 30,000 weapons registered in the city. Only a few buildings, among them the town hall and the post office, show the marks of Molotov cocktails. Violence has been mostly limited to sporadic street skirmishes. Though the scuffles have led to hundreds of arrests and minor injuries, only three people have died, including one policeman who collapsed from a heart attack.

After three cops were wounded by sniper fire last week, however, Premier Colombo finally decided that he had to do something to assuage the Reggini. Word came from Rome that the June decision on the location of Calabria's government had been only "provisional" and that the matter would be turned over to the Italian parliament for final resolution. When the rebels failed to remove their barricades, Colombo ordered out the troops, as much for economic as political reasons. The prolonged road and rail blockages were beginning to damage the whole country. At week's end bulldozers were clearing the barricades, and troops in armored personnel carriers were opening up road and rail routes to the city.

The wrath of Reggio has been accumulating for decades. The city was once the hub of Calabria, but in 1908 a violent earthquake turned much of it to rubble and killed 35,000. The quake also prompted an exodus of provincial offices to lesser cities, weakening Reggio's clout with the pezzi grossi--the "big shots"--in Rome.

More recently, in addition to the decision on the regional capital, Reggio has suffered a numbing succession of disappointments. Cosenza, 100 miles from Reggio, got the new University of Calabria. Reggio has not even been able to get lights for its rudimentary airport, but a site near Catanzaro was chosen for a new international airport, and there are persistent rumors that Catanzaro will eventually wind up with a $240 million state-owned steel mill that was originally promised tp Reggio. The Reggini bitterly credit their rivals' success to "the Red Barons" in Rome, a group of influential left-of-center Calabrian politicians from Cosenza and Catanzaro, including Deputy Prime Minister Giacomo Mancini. Complains Reggio Shipowner Amedeo Matacena: "We have no saints in paradise to speak for us, so we starve."

Though the Reggio revolt has largely been supported by the church and conservative labor unions, it has borrowed heavily from the techniques employed by the left in the autunno caldo ("hot autumn") of 1969, when students and workers took to the barricades and braved bloody clashes with police to demand higher wages and social reforms. Now the country may well be in for what is known as la contestazione generate--an era of hot seasons in which other Italians, following Reggio's riotous example, increasingly resort to confrontation as a way of achieving goals that are otherwise unattainable in the Byzantine Italian political system.

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