I dannati del Sud : braccianti siciliani ed andalusi dal 1946 ad oggi

Abstract

My Ph.D. dissertation shows the centrality of landless labourers in the shaping of Italian and Spanish history of the 1950s and 1960s. In both Italy and Spain before the beginning of the reform period of the 1950s, high rates of unemployment and low incomes for the majority of small peasants and rural labourers coexisted alongside large areas of uncultivated land in the hands of a few owners. I argue that aiming to solve these problems both governments implemented a southern model of rural change. This model entailed diminishing the workforce of the countryside together with the industrialization of the rural system, to create a model of efficient and productive agriculture. In this context, the rural labourers become protagonists of change. They claimed the right to work, demanding the full use of the uncultivated land in order to increase occupation, and labour rights in line with those of industrial workers. For them it was not a question of land ownership but of labour rights. While the labourers pushed for a regulation of their working conditions, plans implemented by both governments led to a general decrease of the rural population but, at the same time, a steady percentage increase of rural labourers in the southern regions. Indeed, rural labourers replaced peasants, and a new model of rural economy was set up, that of farming business based on labourers.