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Once upon a time Baby Jesus was found in the feeding trough of a barn. But times have changed and these days, on Christmas Day, they put the children in the graders in order to protect the families’ land and accompaniment for their bread.
500 residents of Sant’Andrea del Pizzone are today awaiting a joint charge by the police and the army. They want to “move” these people in order to make room for the umpteenth waste disposal dump needed to cope with the umpteenth emergency. The residents have not been consulted, the rubbish is not theirs and the local mayors have been the beneficiaries of particularly close scrutiny.
Those responsible for the waste disposal emergency in the Campania region, instead, are still there. They are untouchable, just like the rotten institutions that they represent. These people are the real rubbish of what was once “Campania Felix”.
This blog is spending Christmas with the residents of Sant’Andrea.


“Hi Beppe,
I wanted to tell you about the absurd situation that has arisen in our area in the past few days. I live in S.Andrea del Pizzone, a hamlet of the Municipality of Francolise (Caserta). The current extraordinary commissioner for the waste disposal emergency, Pansa, has designated the “Carabottoli” site, which falls within the municipal boundary of the Carinola district but is, in fact, not very far from our area, as the preferred storage site for the so-called ecocrap. At present, we are in the dark as to what selection criteria were adopted by the prefect, but this decision has unleashed a demonstration involving not only the residents of our municipality, but also residents of adjacent districts. Our protest is not simply born of a refusal to accept other people’s rubbish, but also from the fact that over 90% of the local economy is based on agriculture. Ours is the place of origin of Buffalo Mozzarella, which is famous worldwide and enjoys the D.O.P. and D.O.C. quality certifications, as do numerous other local products. I sincerely doubt whether Commissioner Pansa has ever tasted a good mozzarella, which makes his assessment criteria even more questionable. In actual fact, the area chosen lies at the very epicentre of the production zone. The residents’ occupation of the site in order to deny access to the graders has already resulted in an initial confrontation with the forces of law and order. It is important to note with what haste (unlike in other cases..) the police and the army intervened in an attempt to disperse these people, resorting to the use graders.
Their attempts were blocked when a number of mothers placed their children in the path of the graders. Also involved in this confrontation were the municipal mayors, who were not exactly treated with due respect, given the positions they hold. The site is currently being watched over, night and day, by a group of more than 500 people who, whilst awaiting the outcome of a meeting between the committees and the commissioner, are expecting another charge to take place, who knows when, perhaps on Christmas day?.” Salvatore P.