A short biography of Italian anarchist Argante Salucci.
On May 27, 1868, Argante Salucci was born in Florence (Tuscany, Italy) into a working class family. In the mid-nineties he moved with his family to the town of Santa Croce sull'Arno in Tuscany. He was put on to police files as a "dangerous anarchist". At the end of 1895 he was among the anarchists rounded up and put on the Tremiti isles at San Nicola, in the Adriatic. The islands remained in use as a place to imprison political dissidents under the Mussolini regime.
His fame in Italian anarchist circles came from his heroic resistance to bullying guards during a confrontation between them and prisoners ordered to undergo forced labour. As a result Argante was gunned down by the guards, on March 1st 1896. Several other anarchists were injured during the incident, among them Pasquale Binazzi, Salvatore Corsaletti, Alfredo Del Lungo, Ettore Grassi, Emilio Leombroni, Carlo Lodi, Federico Manfredi, Davide Musetti, Romualdo Pappini, and Alfredo Tranini.
At the following trial , thirty anarchists, including Binazzi, Aristide Ceccarelli and Roberto D'Angiò were arraigned. The anarchist movement launched a campaign against the forced residence policies promulgated by the Crispi government and the martyred Salucci became a symbol of this struggle.
Many anarchist and socialist newspapers, above all L'Avvenire Sociale of Messina in Sicily publicised the brutality of the repression and the murder of the “martyr of the Tremiti”, and the harsh living conditions and forced labour of the prisoners.
The prominent anarchist Pietro Gori wrote the poem Elegia del Sangue to commemorate Salucci in February 1897. Later, Pasquale Binazzi recalled his friend and comrade in his newspaper Il Libertario, on March 3rd 1904 in an emotional article entitled The Tremiti Massacre. March 1st, 1896! In Memory of Argante Salucci.
In Santa Croce sull'Arno, Salucci's adopted city, an anarchist group named after Salucci was active throughout the entire period of the Giolitti government.
Nick Heath
Sources:
https://www.bfscollezionidigitali.org/entita/14547-salucci-argante
https://www.bfscollezionidigitali.org/entita/14547-salucci-argante
https://www.estelnegre.org/documents/salucci/salucci.html
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