A prosepoem by Maria de Stefano
Monteleone is a small agricultural hilltop town in the region of Puglia in southern Italy. During WW2 most of its men had been posted to the North African front, leaving the women to work the land and basically keep the town going as well as providing for their own families.
On top of the pre-existing poverty, the Fascist government imposed severe food rationing that caused widespread hunger and desperation.
On 23rd August 1942 a group of women arrived at the local mill with terracotta vessels of corn to be ground into flour as was normal practice in those days when bread and pasta were made in the home.
However they were met by local Fascist officials who told them that the mill was closed and could only be used if they had government-issue vouchers. This measure was introduced to stop flour ending up on the black market.
The women protested that they were not black marketeers but mothers trying to feed their children. But the officials would not be swayed and then tried to sequester the vessels of corn. The women in turn resisted.
A physical and verbal altercation ensued. One of the Fascist officials goaded the women by kicking over the vessels and trampling the corn into the ground telling the women to “eat stones.”
This action sparked an escalation in the women’s anger. More and more people, mainly women, joined in the protest till it turned into a full blown riot with official buildings and documents being set fire to. Telephone wires were cut which meant that the Fascist authorities were unable to call for help.
Eventually when help did arrive later in the day, the riot was quelled.
There were 96 arrests of mostly women, mothers and grandmothers. Many were imprisoned in other towns and not released until the Fascist regime was brought down in 1943.
Many historians consider this event to be the catalyst for further similar events all over Italy that eventually brought down the Fascist regime.
(Reference “Donne Contro La Guerra, La Rivolta di Monteleone di Puglia (23 Agosto 1942) by Vito Antonio Leuzzi)
LE LEONESSE DI MONTELEONE
Have you ever been to that place where the Renaissance ends, where no paintbrush dares to paint a likeness, where popes give way to bandits and people live in caves. Where effigies of Jesus and Mary gaze silently sworn to secrecy, where old men sway past on donkeys, their leathered skin scored with ancient runes that speak of their battles to tame this land that refuses to bow to the plough.
Have you ever been to Monteleon, dead in the mid-day sun like a village abandoned without welcome, where rocky crags spy with invisible eyes and whisper amongst each other as you pass by, like the coven of old black widows who gather outside dark doorways and knit and crochet ancient spells into thread and yarn, hunched over their now defunct wombs.
But don’t assume or presume these old women into their graves. These old women have turned history into her-story. They have overthrown tyranny, defied dictators who thought they would just roll over and die.
Did no one tell the dictator that these old women are the Lionesses of Monteleon? Did no one tell the dictator that you should never mess with a lioness, no matter how docile her eye, how weakened by hunger she may appear, her memory traces your every step, every crack of your whip, every kick of your boot she will remember it here, in her starving gut.
Never starve the lioness who has spent all day toiling in the sun with her nose to the soil and a baby strapped to her back and one in her belly, dripping sweat and blood down her legs, picking up the slack of absent men sent to die in your wars of delusion.
Do not ignore the hungry lioness when she asks for more, do not slam the door, do not trample the flour she worked her fingers to the bone for and then laugh in her face as the wind blows the flour away.
Do not starve a lioness, do not prod or poke a stick in her ribs, do not provoke or she’ll go for your throat with claws and fangs and hunger turned to ire, she will breath fire and burn down your edifices of injustice, tear down your statues of hollow vision and turn them into ashes.
And you may hunt her down with a gun, take her away from her young, you may imprison her, you may think yourself the master, that you have the whip hand, that you have tamed her, but you’re wrong.
Her spirit will not be bound by your oppression, it will live on, long after your, minions have run, long after your ignoble leader has been hung, her spirit will live on in the souls of the old black widows of Monteleon’ ,in their peep-hole eyes that spit black fire, in their withering, fleshless bodies shrinking into the ground.
But don’t be deceived. Place your ear to their bellies like a sea sell and you’ll hear not the swell of the sea but the ROOOAAR! Of a lioness in her prime.
Viva Le Leonesse di Monteleon!
