Once upon a time, around 2012, I attended a workshop on migration policy organized by the European Green Party. In those good old times, Brexit was but a wet dream of few fringe rightwing politicians, so we had Jean Lambert, a british Euro Parliamentarian, as a closing speaker. She told us that when all is said and done, politicians are storytellers. She used the Bible to make her point. Green parties are a fairly diverse ideological patchwork, but definitively on the left, so members tend to be agnostics. It attest to the considerable powers of Jean as a storyteller that she kept us in her trail when telling that all in all, migration is the story of the prodigal son. She suggested that when facing the public, debating an opponent, or just writing our next policy analysis, we should think on that biblical tale. Those that have gone away are the ones that are most celebrated when coming back. That should be the our way to frame migration, she said.
I confess that I never quite got what she meant. Until I went to Naples, that is.
It is no secret that my spoken english has a strong South American accent. So people does tend to ask me about my country of origin. In Naples they asked straight away “Argentinian?” and then a friendly conversation ensued. I didn’t made much of it, accostumed as I am to the exchange. In The Netherlands people remember the seventies, when Argentina was a capable, and fierce, football opponent. Others ask about the dictators. Nature lovers ask about Patagonia. In the eye of most europeans I know, Argentina is some sort of exotic far away place, where exotic things, and exotic people, happens. Yet C. was the one to notice the difference in Naples: “when you say that you are argentinian here, people have a different energy here”, she said.
When you are argentinian, you are doomed to orbitate the football mythology, and let it be said that Maradona is a local Neapolitan god. So many years after his play brought the SSC Napoli to fame and Neapolitans to dream, he is still remembered. It was logic then that the Maradona connection would grant me some magic (as the Che connection granted me many smiles in Cuba). And yet, it wasn’t about Maradona. It wasn’t at all about Maradona, I would say. But lets use football for a moment more. Take a look at the names of any argentinian football team, or any argentinean celebrity. Notice then that most, if not all, are Italian names. Argentina is a country utterly defined by the italian immigration, in many more ways than I can write in this page. And Naples remembers. Neapolitans smiled when they heard that I am argentinean. They were happy to hear that one of them was back.
And so I was, at last, at home.