Jun 08, 2016
426
By Frank Cipparone
Christ stopped at Eboli, a lament of isolation and poverty that marked the lives of people in the hinterlands of Lucania. For them, the town of Eboli was the last outpost of the Church and civilization, neither of which had any impact on them. The Greeks and Romans hadn't crossed the Apennines, nor had Christ.
Their fatalistic summation of life in a remote part of the Mezzogiorno became the title of a poignant book by Carlo Levi, an anti-fascist exiled to the region in the 1930s. He described a land "without comfort or solace," where a peasant population had been marginalized by the government's indifference. Technology and industry have brought improvements to Basilicata, but at its core it is still a "terre di lavoro," an environment of work based on an agricultural economy.