The dark side of Michelangelo’s white marble

 

Credit: Andrea Ribolini

--> I had never seen anything like this: from the air, the marble mountains in the three valleys of Torano, Miseglia and Colonnata around Carrara in Tuscany look as though they are covered in snow. From close up, the high vertical faces and giant benches of the open cast excavations look like gigantic white cathedrals in a moonscape. This is the world’s largest marble field, formed in the Apuan Alps over 200 million years.  It is breath-taking. 

The marble mountains have been mined continuously since the Roman times: they provide the whitest and most sought-after marble in the world.  Michelangelo selected stones for his iconic David and Pietà statues there, and countless of other artists across centuries and continents have been bewitched by this stone. The cathedrals of Florence and Siena, St Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, the Marble Arch in London and Washington’s Kennedy Centre are all made from this celebrated marble.

For centuries, the marble has been the backbone of the region’s economy and its pride.  But now, globalisation, market forces and new excavation techniques have turned into a curse. An irreplaceable stone is being undersold, most of the small workshops where marble was carved have disappeared, a rare craft is dying and the environment is wrecked. 

Credit: Andrea Ribolini

 

Credit: Veronique Mistiaen

This is a business with a yearly turnover of between €700 and €800 millions, but the only beneficiaries are a few powerful families and businesses, while the town is blighted by the side effects of excavation – especially the dust and flooding. Despite its extraordinary natural resources, Carrara, a town of 66,000 inhabitants, is one of the poorest in Tuscany and one of the most heavily indebted in the country.

You can see the story I wrote with Chiara Briganti, an academic, painter and native of Carrara, for Newsweek here.

It was a slippery and complex story, which took us several years to research. It was nearly impossible to find official figures on basic facts such as the number of people working in the quarries and marble industry, the volume of excavation, the value of the stone and so on. The more we learned, the murkier the story seemed to become. It felt like all information around the marble industry was kept as nebulous as possible, so people wouldn’t look too closely. And as locals say, “when someone doesn’t want you to look too closely, it’s usually because the mafia is involved.”

Credit: Andrea Ribolini

During the few years we reported on the story, we could clearly see the terrible toll mining was exacting on the mountains: peaks were chopped off (although quarrying is prohibited above 1,200m), the shape of the mountains irreversibly altered, the water sources contaminated, the river white and swollen with marble debris.

As an outsider, it was hard to understand why the city allowed this level of reckless excavation to happen and why citizens didn’t  boot them out of office. Everyone I asked, always replied: “This is Italy” – meaning that a combination of corruption, inertia, respect for traditions and fear of the marble barons and the mafia maintained the status quo.

Lately, though, a growing number of locals, environmental groups, academics and artists have united under the banner of “Salviamo le Apuane”  (Save the Apuan Alps), organizing rallies, petitions and demonstrations – and they are gaining momentum.  But whenever they seem to be achieving some success, it is taken away…

Mediterranean Migrant Crisis: Don't Let Them Drown

Amnesty International picture

 This month, more than 1,000 women, men and children drowned in one week as several overcrowded boats sank in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.
It is the equivalent of five passenger planes full of people.  If they had been holiday makers, instead of migrants, imagine the response. 

And that might be just a start. In previous years, the warmer weather has marked the start of ‘boat season’ – when thousands of desperate people embark on the treacherous journey to Europe. Even before the tragic events this month, 50 times as many people died since the beginning of 2015, compared to the same period last year. And even more people are expected to attempt this dangerous trip this summer, particularly as the violence persists in Libya, to where many Syrians escaping the conflict have fled.
 
Women, men and children leave their homes, risking death, exploitation and starvation along the way, to board over-crowded, unseaworthy and often crewless boats, having paid all they have or can borrow to people smugglers.
Many die. Many lose their loved ones or become separated from them.

 

Here is Kate Allen, 
Amnesty International UK director's account of her visit to Lampedusa: 

"I’ve just returned from meeting with shipwreck survivors, coastguards and officials in Lampedusa – the Italian island on the frontline of the crisis in the Mediterranean Sea.

It was incredibly harrowing but, as always, I was truly touched by the bravery of those I met.

People like the 19-year-old woman who told me that her mother was killed while they were trying to escape Boko Haram.

She then met a man who took her to Libya and prostituted her. She told me how she had to run for her life to get away from him, and about the discrimination and violence directed at black Africans in Libya.

I spent one morning with the head of the local hospital, who told me that he and his small team examine all arrivals, dead and alive. He talked about his experiences, from joyful reunions between mothers and their children, to examining a young girl in a body bag to find she was actually still alive and managing to resuscitate her. She now lives in Sweden.

He had many, many heart-wrenching stories and I struggled not to cry.

On the ground, amongst the people who are actually helping, I didn’t hear a bad word directed at the migrants and refugees. Their resentment is against the international community.

Speaking to the mayor of Lampedusa, she told me: ‘We can’t condemn people to die because they are black. We don’t let people drown.’

The number of people making this journey really isn’t huge – as long as the rest of Europe would only play its part."

At the recent emergency summit in Brussels, EU leaders pledged to triple funding for rescue operations in the Mediterranean. The EU will also look at ways to capture and destroy smugglers' boats and deploy immigration officers to non-EU countries, officials said. But Amnesty International says  they have not gone far enough and urge the UK government and its European Union partners to strengthen search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas through a joint effort involving all EU countries here. You can sign their petition here. 

But even if naval operations manage to rescue the vast majority, there are bitter disputes about how to deal with the tens of thousands who make it to safety. Britain, for example, has said it will provide significant naval support, but it won't accept more asylum seekers. 

Some people in southern Europe say that's not enough. The burden has to be more equitably shared. There should be a common asylum and immigration policy within the EU. But as different countries have very different priorities, it  will take years to get the balance right and achieve a common policy.