Unsung Local Heroes III

Otello Miliani: a Testament to Hard Times

Otello Miliani

This post is compiled thanks to a volume published in 2017 by the CGIL, or Confederazione Italiana del Lavoro under the aegis of the Greve in Chianti city council. The interviews included in the volume were almost all carried out by Maria Giovanna Bencistà. I here translate and summarize an account from 2015-16 when Otello Miliani was almost 80, which runs over 37 tightly-spaced pages, interspersing it with salient details from the other interviews.
 

the territory around Badia Passignano; today practically a grapevine monoculture, in Miliani's childhood this land was dedicated to mixed farming

Otello Miliani was born in 1936 at Poggio al Vento, near Badia Passignano in the Val di Pesa, into a family of sharecropper farmers (who worked under the mezzadria system). His story, growing up, is typical of his time, yet simultaneously striking in its exceptionality. When he was born there were 13 family members in the house with the grandfather as head of affairs (capoccia) and the grandmother as head of the household (massaia) according to an age-old tradition.

 

typical head of the family and head of the household

Otello was a very young child during the war; he met his father for the first time at the age of three, when the latter was discharged on medical grounds. Informed by his military experience, Otello's father organized two shelters in the family cellars. Ironically, when the retreating German troops eventually arrived at Poggio al Vento, they confiscated these shelters and stationed their Command there. 

from a Nazi photographic archive of the retreating army's raids on farms in Tuscany; note the burning haystacks and the Chianina cow

There are many harrowing stories of that ugly time, and Otello recounts a particularly tragic episode which took place not far from Poggio al Vento, but the Miliani family was fortunate to escape the conflict unscathed. All the same, when another group of Germans reached the farm, they were suspicious about Otello's father's presence. He might have been killed but for the protection afforded by the Austrian commander of the troops already stationed there; meanwhile his brothers, Otello's uncles, were holed up in the woods. They too survived.

Otello started primary school after the war. His older brother and sister attended school until grade three, which means they left around age 9, because that was what their grandfather, the capoccia, decided. Instead Otello was determined to continue his education. At age 9 he walked to the district capital, Tavarnelle, to speak with the mayor. The latter, notably impressed by the boy's initiative, wrote to the grandfather suggesting that Otello might continue his schooling; in his turn the grandfather was so impressed by the mayor's intervention, he allowed it. 

map of Miliani's stamping ground as a child: he walked to and from Tavarnelle for his petition to the mayor at age 9; at the time he lived at Case al Vento southeast of Badia Passignano; Tavarnelle is 7km to the west

And so Otello stayed until the fifth grade (the end of primary school). Each day after school he was expected to watch over the family's flock of sheep; his mother would hand him some bread and tell him to do his homework in the evening. Since there was neither electricity nor running water in the house, he was obliged to do his homework by the light of an oil lamp, with his family grumbling at the waste.

shepherd on transhumance; no doubt Otello's flock would have been considerably smaller and kept in a circumscribed area

Otello describes the family's poverty: what little money they scraped together was set aside for medical or other emergencies. Sharecropper families such as theirs were perennially in debt to the padrone (landowner) or his representative, the fattore (farm manager) who, (apart from demanding supplies such as chickens, eggs by the dozen and seasonal produce as it was harvested), charged them for the items they needed to 'make it through the winter', as Otello puts it. As an adult he realized that the accounts were heavily weighted in the manager/owner's favour; the only person who might have checked this imbalance was the local priest, but as Otello says, the priest 'was on the side of the landowner'.

Tuscan bread in an antique oven

The family never starved since there was always bread, but their diet was basic: bread in water and onions for breakfast; vegetable soup with bread for lunch (with beans if beans were available); bread and water for supper. If the family had cows, goats or sheep, cheese would be on the table, but meat was rarely eaten; even the hens, their eggs and the rabbits were mostly kept to sell. Coffee was too expensive so they prepared a brew from toasted acorns and barley. On market day the massaia and the capoccia would buy household necessities as well as herrings, anchovies or saltcod. A quote by one of the interviewees is telling: "Buy three or four herrings, there are fifteen at table. Someone got the tail, someone got the head, there was little for anyone."
 

Tuscan clog-maker; the platform was wood, the uppers leather

A family was lucky if one or some of the women could spin and weave cloth to provide some of their clothing. It is touching to read how the women wove a blend of cotton and wool fibres to send to the carder who transformed it into a type of felt: "...ci potevi fare un vestito per andare alla messa, si presentava bene, non pareva di telaio." - "You could make a suit out of it to go to church in, it looked well, not like woven stuff." Shoes were worn only on special occasions; wooden clogs were the norm and children often went barefoot.  Permission was required to make a new pair of shoes (think of the film The Tree of Wooden Clogs).

Poggio al Vento, Otello Miliani's first home, today a comfortable agriturismo complete with swimming pool

If a new wooden plough were needed, a felled oak root was unearthed and fashioned; the beam had to be harvested in the woods with a nod from the farm manager; houses not only lacked electricity, running water and heating, their windows were without panes; the houses were draughty and generally poorly maintained by the landowners. Yet if a sharecropper wanted to make improvements it had to be at his own expense provided the manager (landowner) gave his consent to the project.

Tuscan wooden plough

Entertainment was inevitably limited: neighbouring families might spend an evening together in company, gossiping, exchanging news, playing a little music or singing, occasionally arranging a dance unbeknown to the farm manager. Politics during the years of Fascism was never discussed in the house, but in the woods, in secret. A majority of sharecroppers were Communists or Socialists who risked imprisonment and worse if discovered. Their leanings were inevitably conditioned by the fact that the landlords who oppressed them were sympathetic to the Fascist regime. Tuscany until today remains a stalwart pro-left region of Italy. Whatever their politics, all interviewees testify to the spirit of cooperation which helped families survive difficult times.
 

post-war demonstration in Pisa for agrarian reform, promoted by parties of the left

Two anecdotes from Otello's youth are connected to the aftermath of the war. A family friend who had returned from military service gave him a crystal radio set. When the boy set the device up in the house with a metal wire for the antenna stretching onto the roof, his grandfather cried "Whatever's that contraption?" The boy handed his grandfather the headphone, but the old man reacted with indignation. He was convinced this was the work of the devil and called on the priest to bless the house. Luckily the priest was a young one who understood about modern technology: he explained things to the grandfather who grudgingly accepted the devilish device.

crystal radio from World War II

When Otello was 14 his uncle  bought a reconditioned German army motorcycle, but none of the adults managed to ride it, so they hid it in a storage room. The grandfather eventually discovered the motorcycle but his son pretended it belonged to the farm manager's deputy. Grandfather promptly locked the door to the storage place. Otello, who was certainly enterprising, told this story to the deputy, who obligingly drove up to the farm on his brand-new Guzzi motorbike and 'gifted' the reconditioned machine to Otello's uncle, an offer the grandfather could not refuse. Otello was delighted: as it turned out he was the only one who managed to ride the motorcycle. The catch was the fuel, but he discovered the motorbike could run on the same fuel the family used to light their stables. The helpful deputy manager, understanding the teenager's ploy, let him buy a double quantity of fuel "because the Miliani cattle need to see what they're eating". The motorcycle afforded Otello a level of freedom.

By 1953, when Otello was 17, his family had lost patience with the landowner's continual, ever unfulfilled promises to bring running water, electricity and other conveniences to the family home. They began to search for another place to live and work, which meant signing up to a new landlord under new conditions. During the search they were offered a home which a year or two before had been the scene of a dramatic eviction. Strikingly, almost all the interviewees who lived through this period mention the episode when the Fantechi family was sent away from Fattoria La Calcinaia. 
 

Fattoria La Calcinaia: the home from which the Fantechi family was evicted

The Fantechi family was punished for standing up to the strictures of the farm manager and landlord, essentially for demanding their rights. The last straw was when the landlord insisted on 58% of the takings from selling the livestock. The day of the eviction hundreds (perhaps even 2,000) arrived at La Calcinaia, near Greve. The carabinieri (military police) had to push through the crowd; apparently machine guns had been positioned on a nearby rise and tensions were high. A senator and a trade unionist tried to calm things down; people agreed to abandon the protest and started walking back to Greve. But suddenly the tension flared: there was a scuffle between the protesters and the carabinieri; some people were injured. Meanwhile the Fantechi family watched, helpless, as their furniture and belongings were loaded onto a truck, an inventory being made of everything. Then they too were taken on the truck to an abandoned house in Panzano where they had no means of support, but for the help offered by the farmers' union. Eventually the family managed to make ends meet, but their sharecropping days were over.  

celebrating the Agrarian Reform of the 1950s (first enacted in 1950)

Questo Fantechi aveva una forza e una libertà di mente eccezionali...quando uno si sente forte e in salute, non accetta di essere dominato da un altro uomo. Era sempre all'avanguardia, quando andava al mercato c'era la gente ad ascoltarlo...
"This Fantechi had exceptional strength and mental freedom...when someone is strong and healthy, he cannot stand to be dominated by another. He was always ahead of his time, when he went to market, people listened to him..." (Piero Marilli, interviewee)

Meeting of the CGIL Federmezzadri (Sharecroppers Federation), Florence 1953

The Agrarian Reform of 1950 came too late for many sharecropper families. As more and more people left the land for safer and easier lives in the cities, the mezzadria system imploded, because as farmers became more aware of their rights, the system itself became unsustainable.

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Needless to say, the heroes here are numerous: Otello Miliani, who abandoned farming and went on to work for the famous Manetti potteries, was clearly an intelligent man who was politically active and enterprising; but all those men and women who endured the mezzadria system for centuries and those women and men who fought to overturn it in the mid-20th century, are undeniably also true local heroes. 

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Click here to read Unsung Local Heroes I and Unsung Local Heroes II