Marginal Centers - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 209

decided to demolish the remaining illegal and informal settlements inside the
city, scores of residents in Valle aurelia, mandrione, prenestino, and Casilino
experienced similar traumas as they were relocated from their homes to low-
income dormitory neighborhoods such as spinaceto, laurentino 38, or Corviale,
together with other families with whom they shared nothing but their sad pre-
dicament. even when the relocation was within reasonable distance, the violence
and the pain of the event remained and was often not psychologically processed
at the individual and collective level for years. indeed, as antonello d'elia has
shown in his movie Il silenzio di Corviale (“The silence of Corviale”), it can stay
for generations (D'elia 2008).
The practice of forced removal follows an established script, irrespective of
whether it is carried out by left- or right-wing city governments. it starts with
sending municipal officers, who are generally not from the area, to survey the
settlement and collect information on homes and residents. Residents, worried
about the official presence of the city in their neighborhood (police usually visit
informal communities only to conduct arrests or harass residents), ask officers
the reason for their presence. The latter keep their answers vague, or in the case of
idroscalo, they bluntly reply that they are there because the community will soon
be evacuated. in either case, rumors spread like wildfire and groups of concerned
citizens drive to city hall asking for clarification. if they are received, they are told
not to worry because the process will take time and, in any case, the authorities
will give them a rent-controlled apartment. This does not occur, though, and
one morning, usually before dawn, police in riot gear and bulldozers occupy the
settlement. from then on, depending on local circumstances, it is just a matter
of time (hours, days, weeks, or months) before it is razed to the ground. in the
case of idroscalo, such a nightmare materialized on the morning of 8 march 2011
when about two hundred riot police and four huge bulldozers appeared in the
main piazza, reminding the residents of their subordinate and illegal status as
citizens. in a few hours, over a hundred homes along the sea shore were demol-
ished and the residents were distributed in different short-stay “residences” in the
city at a cost of about 2,000 euros per month. since then, and notwithstanding
a temporary halt to the demolition following rising protests from the residents,
the fate of idroscalo and its remaining inhabitants has been sealed; this last bas-
tion of urban contradictions is to be removed and its residents scattered to new,
distant peripheries.
The official discourse used by the authorities to justify the forced removal
of residents from informal settlements usually focuses on concerns about public
health, public security, and human decency. in the case of idroscalo, there is also
a moral imperative: to protect the lives of the residents from possible flooding.
underlying these discourses, though, is the much more pressing motive of politi-
cal opportunity. here the utility of the policy of benign neglect becomes clear.