Dear Neighbours, Near and Far

Fontecchio, Julian Civiero

Every time I look at the earthquake ruins and remains in my little town here in Abruzzo, I reflect on all the chaos that is currently unfolding. Seeing the cracked walls, the empty homes, and the cranes so many years after the earthquake reminds me how much it takes to rebuild and restart. Especially when something is taken away from you with brutal violence, natural or manmade. All of this speaks directly to the cycles of displacement and belonging at the heart of the world’s great tragedies. Wars and genocides force millions to flee, turning civilians into refugees, uprooted from the land that once held their memories. In that crucible, the same question arises: who belongs, and who is “outside”?

For now, I won’t delve into the nuances between “expat,” “immigrant,” and “refugee.” However, both, after enough seasons, discover that the earth does not ask whether they arrived by choice or necessity: it only remembers who walks its paths, who shapes its fields, who tends its wounds. My identity is somehow entangled with these terms. I arrived with the curious detachment of a self‑styled world traveller and stayed with the hopeful conviction of someone seeking a permanent address. That duality—this simultaneous longing to return and urge to belong—has quietly shaped everything I’ve experienced on these ancient shepherd trails winding through pastoral meadows. It’s from that in‑between space, neither fully “outsider” nor unquestioned “local,” that I’ve come to reflect on what it truly means to call a place home. There’s a privilege in waking to birdsong instead of alarms, in knowing that our greatest rush is the climb to a hilltop at sunset. Yet even in this calm, the world’s sorrow seeps in: images of far‑off conflicts remind us that peace can be fragile. Perhaps it is precisely because we live in such gentle stillness that our gaze should stretch beyond these valleys, offering whatever hands and voices we have to those whose mornings start with fear rather than hope.

In many parts of the world, they say, ‘The third strike brings luck.’ Today I heard something I’ve heard before, but always in a negative context: ‘not for us, but for those from outside.’ This time it referred to people who come from beyond the small town I live in – someone like me. I know well that this feeling isn’t unique to this town; it echoes in many places around the globe. But for now, I want to stay local and speak of this issue within our communities. So, inspired by that ‘third strike,’ I write in the hope it brings some fortune.

Last month I marked four years here, first as a student, then as an artist in residence for the project Riabitare con l’Arte. During that residency, I collaborated with the people of Fontecchio on a site‑specific performance in which we hoisted a replica of the moon. Perched aloft on the same crane that for two years had carried rubble and delivered building materials into the historic centre, this theatrical “deus ex machina” offered a playful cure for an otherwise insoluble homesickness.

Since then, I have gradually fallen in love with a place that has claimed ever more space in my heart and in my body. I have breathed this air, eaten food grown in this soil, and wandered countless trails ending in breathtaking views. I have watched local wildlife—from the tiniest insects to, yes, a bear that once ambled to my doorstep—with awe and respect. I have gazed at stars framed by these mountains, joined in local rites and ceremonies, and marched beside residents through both grief and celebration. I have heard newborns speak their first full sentences. At times drawn back to memories of my former metropolitan life – with its endless services and compulsory entertainments—I have known communal joy and bureaucratic sorrow, solidarity and solitude, biting cold and blistering heat, teeming with sleepless mosquitoes. Yet after all these experiences, I remain here, grateful for every moment.

That said, I know my experiences are but a fraction of what locals have lived through and endured. I like to believe that this is what people mean when they say ‘those from outside.’ Until now, I hadn’t mentioned the context in which that phrase was used, but I often find myself thinking of the land before its people; yet, so many times, the people become the land. And that is what I want to talk about. People are the land because they have suffered and thrived alongside it, because their memories lie folded into it like seeds waiting to sprout. The land carries their absences as much as their presence. Every abandoned house, every path overgrown with brambles, tells not only of economic shifts or seismic fractures, but of lives diverted, children who never returned, festivals no longer held. To say that people are the land is also to say that history lives not only in archives or memorial plaques but in weathered faces, in the tilt of a storyteller’s head, in the sure-footed steps of someone who at ninety still finds the right stone to climb to the upper piazza. But it also means acknowledging that the land changes when people change. And if we accept that, then we must also accept that this land belongs not only to those born here, but to those who choose to stay, to walk its paths again and again until the soil begins to remember their weight. To live in a place long enough is to begin to belong—not by erasing the past, but by composting it so that new roots can grow.

And yet I understand the locals’ resistance. I have seen it, heard it, felt it like a sudden shift in the wind. Saying “those from outside” often has little to do with geography. It betrays a deeper anxiety: Will we vanish if we change too much? Will the fragile thread that binds us to our past be severed if new colors, new customs, and new intentions arrive? It is a legitimate fear, but it is also based on a misunderstanding of what land and people are capable of. The land does not forget. It absorbs. It adapts. It layers.

So I do not wish to replace anything. I do not come to rewrite stories. I come because I, too, seek something that endures, something worth tending. And perhaps the real question is not ‘Who belongs?’ but ‘Who cares?’ Who is willing to rise before dawn to shovel snow from ancient steps? Who crosses the woods not to take but to listen? Who wants the village to still be here in thirty years, not as a postcard, but as a living place, where children speak both the dialect and the languages of elsewhere?

If we are honest, we will see that some of those people come from outside. But here is the truth: they don’t remain ‘outside’ for long. The land teaches us that. It does not ask where the seed came from, but whether it takes root, whether it weathers the wind, whether it gives back. And so perhaps when someone says ‘those from outside,’ they are already, unwittingly, pointing toward a border that is dissolving. Because people are the land. And the land, if it is to survive—not as a monument but as a movement—needs not purity but permeability. It needs care. It needs contradiction. It needs the old and the new to be in conversation, not in competition. This is what I believe. This is what I have seen. And this is what I want to keep learning: how to walk not as a visitor but as a participant in the slow, stubborn work of belonging.

When someone says ‘not for us, but for those from outside,’ it is as if they want to draw a boundary, an invisible fence around our little world. But in these four years, I have learned that the very air we breathe here carries whispers of journeys begun centuries ago, of families who once left these hills chasing fortune, only to send back fragments of that fortune like seeds, so that my town could bloom again and again. I think of my own ancestors, even though they are not Abruzzese, but come from lands that once raised their voices in waves of departure: Italy in the age of steamships, when a train whistle must have sounded like a summons to another life. They left stone houses and olive groves, fearing nothing but the weight of poverty. In return, they sacrificed certainty for possibility. Without their willingness to step beyond their “home,” there would be no tales of new worlds circling back to enrich the old. So I wonder: if the inhabitants of my town had declared, ‘This village is ours alone,’ would they have stayed, or would it have withered like a flower deprived of rain?

In the end, the phrase ‘not for us but for those from outside’ cannot remain a casual remark: it must be understood as a symptom of a collective paradox. For centuries, Abruzzese communities have based a part of their vitality on exodus and return: those ancestors who worked in Colorado’s mines or South America’s plantations returned (when they returned) with the air of ‘civil warriors’ and carried back a trove of ideas, innovations, languages and practices that enriched the community. In the same way, today’s newcomers -from seasonal field workers to resident students – can represent a precious resource, if the local community succeeds in including them in shared responsibility.

Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Where would I be if I had not been welcomed from the very first day?’ I remember the many simple gestures and moments of warm welcome from locals that spoke volumes. If those gestures had not occurred, I might now live in some anonymous town without these crumbling walls or hidden staircases leading to light and stories. Instead, I stayed, not out of convenience but out of love. And here is the paradox: to love a place means as much to honour its roots as to welcome its branches, even when they sprout from foreign soil. If we have learned anything from our migration history, it is that departure teaches us what we carry in our hearts – our language, our customs, our care for one another. And if we refuse to open the door when someone knocks- no matter how softly – how will we recognise ourselves when we finally return, if ever we do?

Although I have benefited from metropolitan experiences, it makes no sense for me to live in a metropolis anymore. The idea of “closure” arises when democracy becomes a showcase – a counter where one asks for funds – rather than a space of genuine sharing. In a society obsessed with productivity, the room for true encounter shrinks. Here in my small town, if every action is measured by ‘What do I gain?’ or ‘Who benefits directly?’, we forget that the richest exchanges are those that feed the soul, not the pocket. To move beyond this, we must ask ourselves: ‘How can what we give today become what we receive tomorrow?’
Many times, I have heard locals complain about their administration. ‘This administration doesn’t work for us, but for those from outside,’ they say. Have you ever tried to learn municipal governance from scratch? Have you tried planting seeds of reciprocity even when the ground is hard? If you have, your advice would always be welcome, and solutions even more. I’ve come to believe they lie less in decrees and more in invitations—a simple but powerful word. Invite a stranger to the table, and suddenly you share bread, stories, and the rhythm of life. Have you ever invited someone home to think together about solutions? Through these invitations, we create a common heartbeat: people learn they have agency, that complaining is not enough—they must also act, even in small ways.

I often imagine the land itself remembers every exchange: every handshake between neighbours, every welcoming embrace, even the bitterness of exclusion. Sure, we all make mistakes. Sometimes at dusk, I stand where the fields meet the stone walls and whisper to the wind, ‘We will learn.’ And I believe we will, because I have seen the first crocus bloom when no one expected it, and the stars flicker through clouds threatening to swallow them. Hope, like those stars, persists.

So, to the people of my town and to all those other small towns where someone says ‘not for us but for those from outside,’ I offer this: remember the currents that carried your grandparents across oceans; remember the refugees your ancestors once were. Remember that every breath you take here is entwined with breaths taken by people who came before and by people who still arrive. If you fear losing your identity, know that identity is not a fortress but a tapestry—strongest when threads from many looms are woven together. In this way, I imagine a town where the next mountain sunrise is welcomed as a shared gift, where the mention of ‘those from outside’ evokes a smile instead of a sigh, because now every ‘outside’ has become part of ‘us.’

I understand where this comes from. Change is never easy, especially when it feels like something hard-won might be lost. And yet I believe memory must guide us, not imprison us. When communities define themselves primarily by exclusion—drawing lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’—they risk becoming like immune systems that overreact, mistaking difference for danger. They forget that communitas, community in its truest sense, is something shared, not defended. It is created not through homogeneity, but through care and reciprocity.

Decades ago, countless Italians left these very mountains and valleys—especially in Marsica and the Peligna Valley—seeking futures they could not find here. Their departure was often seen as an act of necessity, even heroism. They went to North and South America, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland. They did jobs nobody else wanted. They lived in basements, in crowded dormitories, in fear and hope. Yet they were proud. They sent remittances home. They built houses here. They returned, if not always in person, at least in memory, in myth, in postcards pinned to kitchen walls.

Today, it is others who come to Abruzzo – people from Morocco, Romania, Albania, Pakistan. Many of them do the same work Italian emigrants once did: seasonal, laborious, often underpaid. They pick fruit in Sulmona’s greenhouses. They tend animals. They prune vines. They do the work that keeps a landscape alive that, without them, would quietly recede into scrub and dust. Some even live in earthquake‑damaged buildings, in caravans, in places no one else wants. This dynamic is all over the world.

And while locals may complain that ‘the town is changing’ or ‘it’s no longer ours,’ it is worth remembering: this is not new. The land has always changed with its people – and its people have always moved. Without the waves of Italian emigration, our towns might not exist today as a living village. It might have emptied completely, eroded not only by time but by solitude.

What we now call ‘heritage’ or ‘tradition’ was once innovation. Someone brought back a technique from Argentina. Another sent money from Chicago to install the first plumbing. The idea that all meaningful things are born here and must remain unchanged is not only false—it is a dangerous illusion. And so, when I hear the phrase ‘not for us but for those from outside,’ I want to ask: who is ‘us’? Who is ‘outside’? And if the question isn’t who the village serves, but who is willing to care for it, day by day? These are sincere, not rhetorical, questions. And I believe that so many other small Italian towns will survive not by sealing themselves off, but by opening just enough to let fresh air in. Not so much that the house collapses, but just enough to breathe. Because the land remembers those who have tended it. And it always welcomes those who return, not only by blood, but by intention. That is what I believe. And perhaps that is why I am still here.

Finally, and I believe this is more important now than ever: even in the silence around us – in the things we do not say or perhaps do not yet know how to say—there remains a responsibility. We live in a time when horrific violence unfolds in places like Gaza, where entire communities are being erased, lives shattered in the name of control, expansion, and ideology. Many of us feel helpless, distant, or uncertain about what words to use. But even when we do not speak directly of what is happening, the way we gather, the way we care for each other, the way we defend spaces of shared life—these things matter. They are not nothing.

To sit together at a long table, to restore an old fountain, to plant a garden that feeds more than one family—these small acts do not undo the horror, but they resist its logic. They contradict the machinery of displacement and domination. They remind us that another kind of world is possible, here and now. At a time when settler colonialism still violently reshapes the land and denies people their homes, choosing to live communally, to welcome others, to build something founded not on fear but on interdependence, is quietly radical. It is a form of remembrance. It is a form of refusal.

So perhaps even if we lack the right words or feel too distant from the heart of that destruction, we can still behave in ways that lean toward repair. We can create here a rhythm, however small, that does not imitate that violence but interrupts it. That says: we remember what it means to be uprooted. We remember what it means to be human. And we still want to belong to one another.

Written by Life In Abruzzo Community member, Sebastian Alvarez, artist and resident of Fontecchio (AQ)

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