Milan, from April 27 to June, 3, 1967.
- The tent city of the Mondo Beat Movement, Barbonia City, rises and sparks a sexual revolution.
- The media of the Establishment and those of the Mondo Beat Movement attack each other with no holds barred.
(AGI - Il Giorno)
Onlookers flocked to watch Barbonia City from the early hours of the campsite opening.
In this photo you can see how people gathered behind the barbed wire which bordered the campsite, to watch. These people came from afar, since where Barbonia City was located, there was no dense population, only a few houses and a few factories.
The reason for this curiosity depended on the fact that, although not all families had a son or a daughter who had run away from home to join the Beats, nevertheless there were of these cases among their relatives or friends, so people knew that young people were fleeing their homes to participate in an existential revolution promoted by Mondo Beat.
The reactions of ordinary people to the phenomenon of youth contestation were interesting, since everyone would have shown an original reaction, ranging from absolute refusal to complacent indulgence, but no one would have shown indifference.
Cristina's arrival at Barbonia City campsite. She was a passionate girl from the Base of Mondo Beat.
Some impostors, at the service of the Vatican, describe Barbonia City as a place where the Beats camped freely, which in other words can be said as a place where the Beats camped illegally, but it wasn't like this at all. The field had been duly rented and fenced, thanks the money provided by Mondo Beat magazine, which had a surplus even though its distribution was obstructed and despite the fact that it did not receive any kind of money support and did not publish any type of advertising. These impostors distort the truth in an attempt to justify the behavior of the Italian judiciary, which would have ordered that a private property, that is the Mondo Beat's campsite, should be invaded and destroyed by the military, while the campers were in detention in the premises of the Milan Police Headquarters although they were not indicted of any crime. This shameful behavior was dictated to the judiciary by the Moro government, which was a political creature of the Vatican and obeyed its orders. The old fags in the Vatican would have gone mad, because of the sexual revolution which was going on in Barbonia City, and would have ordered its destruction.
Saint Paul VI and his lover, actor Paolo Carlini.
Pope Giovanni Battista Montini (Saint Paul VI) reigned in the difficult times of the Contestation and some of his acts were harshly contestated, but then the journalists at his service, to justify the conduct of the Pope, wrote in the newspapers "The Pope, due to the innocence of his virginity, could not be aware of the fact that... ". And this affirmation of the innocence of the Pope due to his virginity was made several times in the media, because the Pope wanted it to be known that he had a virgin penis, and this because in the Scriptures it is prophesied that in paradise 144,000 virgins and martyrs will be dressed in a mantle of light. Giovanni Battista wanted to be in the quota.
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Speaking now about the rules in Barbonia City, only uniformed police officers were denied access to the campsite, unless they were authorized by a judicial warrant, while all other people were accepted into the campsite, if they declared that they would respect the obligations of: no drugs, no violence, no theft. Access was free and people could pitch their tents for free or sleep on a blanket or in a sleeping bag. We didn't ask people to identify themselves. Upon arrival, all young people were informed that their parents would also be welcome at the campsite.
Since reactionary newspapers and magazines would have described distraught parents searching for their runaway children, who were prevented from entering the campsite, below are excerpts from 2 articles demonstrating how the parents entered the camp and, if they had found their children, they could have tried to convince them to return home.
(Novella 2000 magazine)
A mom finds her runaway son among the longhairs and the son returns home.
(Gente magazine)
The caption reads that in early June 1967 up to 40 parents a day were coming to New Barbonia in search of their runaway children.
Indeed, the parents of young fugitives were received not only well, but also as if they were fugitives themselves. This intelligent policy made that there were not suspicions between the parents of young fugitives and the staff of Barbonia City, but sympathetic situations. And since Melchiorre Gerbino openly and often encouraged young people to travel across Europe to emancipate themselves, parents would have understood that we did not need young fugitives in Barbonia City.
And since those responsible for Barbonia City, namely Melchiorre Gerbino, Gunilla Unger, Umberto Tiboni, Antonio Di Spagna, would never have had sexual relations with the young people camping, their parents, leaving Barbonia City, with or without their children, would have showed the utmost respect for the campsite staff.
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As for the media, thanks to the creation of Barbonia City, journalists would finally have understood the anarchic nature of the Mondo Beat Movement. Until then almost all journalists had tried to find some relationship between Mondo Beat and the Beat Generation. Now they would have understood that Mondo Beat was destined to promote a sexual revolution among young people and this, as Melchiorre Gerbino would have frankly explained, because once they had experienced a satisfying sexual life, young people would have faced anything, even the risk of death, but not they would have renounced to assert their civil rights. Of course, the journalists would not have written frankly like that, but at least they would not have written any more nonsense, like "The Beats are unstable young people who move from one place to another without orientation, because they believe that they have to move anyway, according to the teachings by Jack Kerouac". And, as for Jack Kerouac, it must be said, and without complacency, since ignorance is not a medal to wear on the chest, that until the time of Mondo Beat Melchiorre Gerbino had not yet read anything by Jack Kerouac. This does not mean that he was not interested in literature, but as for Jack Kerouac, he would have had the opportunity to read him after the time of Mondo Beat.
The reconstruction of the history of Barbonia City. Milan, May 1 – June 12, 1967
From the magazine Mondo Beat, N.4, page 9, detail: Bring us 50 kg of spaghetti every day to the Mondo Beat campsite, Via Ripamonti. Help us contestate you!
(The newspaper Il Giorno was receptive and kindly sent 50 kg of spaghetti every day.)
Returning to the reconstruction of the history of Mondo Beat, at the end of April the situation in the Cave was chaotic, due to too many people crowding there. On the evening of April 30, Umberto Tiboni and Melchiorre Gerbino asked those who were in the Cave to leave and closed the Cave and fixed a sign on a shutter with instructions on how to reach the Mondo Beat campsite.
On May 1st some of us entered the camp to set up the first tents. That day there were celebration for Labor Day in the center of Milan, but we remained in our lawn, lying on the grass admiring the Alps which stood out on the horizon.
On May 2, Melchiorre Gerbino went to the owner of the factory whose wall bordered one side of the tent city and asked him for access to his water supply. The owner promptly said yes. He was about the same age as Gerbino and since he had read about Gerbino and seen his photos in the newspapers, he liked talking to him. He had on the table a large photo of Umberto II, the last king of Italy, who lived in exile, and at a one point he asked Gerbino what he thought of the House of Savoy. Gerbino said that the House of Savoy had the merit of having dedicated itself to the cause of the unification of Italy and having achieved it. The owner, in addition to giving water for free, also kindly provided a long rubber hose to bring water to the campsite.
The shower in Barbonia City. The shower in Barbonia City was so simple, but the water never ran out.
On the morning of May 3rd, Eros Alesi Pasticca arrived at the campsite with a tent. Those who were there ran to greet him. Eros Alesi was the natural detector of moods and trends of the youths of the Base of Mondo Beat and since he liked camping, we had to expect that many others would have done the same. And in fact on the same day other young people arrived to set up tents and among them there were Frenchmen, Germans, Australians. Some high school students who frequented the Cave also came to visit. And from that day on, more and more young people would come to pitch tents in Barbonia City.
On May 8, Gunilla Unger and Nino Gerbino arrived from Sicily. They were in good shape. Melchiorre Gerbino hadn't seen his son Nino, who was now 2 years and 4 months old, for over a year, as he had lived with the grandparents. Nino liked being at the campsite, where he was pedaling around with a tricycle Adolfo had given him. Gunilla was the image of health and serenity.
But serenity was not compatible with Mondo Beat and in fact Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte would have attacked the Mondo Beat's camp with their articles.
These 3 dailies, of which Corriere della Sera and Corriere d'formazione were owned by the Crespi Group, while La Notte was owned by the Catholic industrialist Carlo Pesenti, were all based in Milan. They would have adopted a coordinated strategy to convince their readers that in the Mondo Beat tent city there were drug addicts and common criminals who forced underage girls into prostitution. To start such a press campaign they would have invented the "Bertolini affair".
(Corriere della Sera - Corriere d'informazione - La Notte - May 13, 1967)
The "Bertolini affair" concocted by Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte, to discredit the tent city of Mondo Beat.
On May 13, the 3 articles reproduced above were published in these 3 newspapers. It was said that two fifteen-year-old girls from Sesto San Giovanni, a city which forms a whole with Milan as an urbanization. had traveled to Rome together with Fabio Bertolini, a young man who, once in Rome, had forced them to prostitute themselves with several men. Fabio Bertolini was described as a Beat, then captured by the carabinieri in a Beat campsite in the Vigentino district. In these three articles it was not specified that the campsite belonged to the Mondo Beat Movement, but none of the readers would have doubted it, given that no other Beat campsite existed anywhere else in the world.
We did not know the two girls from Sesto San Giovanni, nor Fabio Bertolini, and we learned that he had been arrested by the carabinieri in a bar in the park of the Castello Sforzesco.
A few days later, that is, on May 17, another article appeared in the Corriere della Sera, where it was told how a Beat tent city had arisen on the banks of the Vettabbia stream. This tent city, which Corriere della Sera nicknamed "Nuova Barbonia" (New City of Vagabonds), was described as a place where drugs spread and underage girls were forced into prostitution and, as proof of this, the case of the two girls of Sesto San Giovanni was mentioned. But this alone would not have alarmed us, as we were used to receiving insults from the Corriere della Sera, what was alarming instead was that in this article Adriano Carminati was described as a former communist activist who had joined the Beats and was now the cook of Nuova Barbonia, the which was false, since Adriano Carminati was not a communist but a well-known fascist militant and not the cook of Nuova Barbonia, where the cook was Roccia
Roccia, the cook of' Barbonia City.
Before this article, we had no suspicions about Adriano Carminati, since former fascists (and former communists) were joining the Movement and camping in New Barbonia, but after this article we had to wonder why Adriano Carminati arrived at the campsite with a large gas cylinder. He wouldn't have needed it if he had to fry two eggs. Had he brought this gas cylinder to carry out a terrorist attack, of which the Corriere della Sera was already informed?
Below, the article in the Corriere della Sera
A village of longhairs on a bank of the Vettabbia brook. "New Barbonia" has arisen, a "beatnik" village.
In this article there is an interesting subtitle, where it is said that, over a period of ten months, the police arrested 1392 zazzeruti ("zazzeruto" in Italian is a derogatory term to define some one with long hair).
1392 zazzeruti (longhairs) arrested by the police in ten months.
If you consider that these 1392 youths, among them a great many girls, were arrested only in Milan, then you will realize how a real youth revolution was taking place in Italy.
Since this article appeared on May 17 and the National Conference of Young Anarchists was to be held in the city of Carrara on May 21, in which Mondo Beat had to participated, we decided to counterattack Corriere della Sera once we returned from Carrara to Milan.
Demonstration held on the occasion of the National Conference of Young Anarchists in Carrara. May 21, 1967
Adriano Carminati with the sign "MENO SANTI - PIÙ PRESERVATIVI" (Less saints - More condoms)
Adriano Carminati, the fascist activist who had arrived in Barbonia City with a large gas cylinder, joined the youth of Mondo Beat to participate in the anarchist event. He liked one of Melchiorre Gerbino's slogans and wrote it on a sign and carried it during the demonstration.
Now it is worth to say a few words about the relations between Italian fascists, communists and anarchists at the time of Mondo Beat.
The anarchists kept communists and fascists at the same distance and showed an ironic attitude towards them, as if to say "Try to take a smart step and become anarchists too".
The communists, which hated the fascists to death, showed some sympathy for the anarchists, as they had fought together during the Spanish Civil War.
The fascists, who harbored a deadly hatred for the communists, showed also some sympathy for the anarchists, since Mussolini's father had been a militant anarchist (he named his son Benito after Mexico's president Benito Juárez, who had ordered the execution of Emperor Maximilian Habsburg by firing squad).
All this is explained to say that Melchiorre Gerbino, yes, was worried about the arrival of the fascist Adriano Carminati in New Barbonia with a large gas cylinder, but nevertheless he believed that Carminati would have avoided hurting the youths of Mondo Beat once he had ascertained they were anarchists and not communists. However, Antonio Di Spagna would have kept an eye on Adriano Carminati.
On their return from Carrara to Milan, Melchiorre Gerbino and Giò Tavaglione worked together to prepare the windows of the Cave to counterattack the Corriere della Sera.
Melchiorre Gerbino officially on the counterattack against the Corriere della Sera.
With the large poster displayed in the window, we denied that Fabio Bertolini, the guy who had forced the two girls into prostitution with several men in Rome, had been arrested at the Barbonia City campsite. The poster reads "Fabio Bertolini, the profiteer of the 2 girls from Sesto, was not arrested here nor in a campsite in Vigentino district, but in the facilities of the Corriere della Sera, among the slaves of the Crespi Group".
The other window of the Cave was also prepared in collaboration by Melchiorre Gerbino and Giò Tavaglione
Corriere della Sera, the daily parturition of misinformation.
On the jute canvas we read "The new tramps and the old cheaters" (I NUOVI BARBONI E I VECCHI IMBROGLIONI) and the headings of Mondo Beat and Corriere della Sera are shown respectively. To the right of the window, there is a birth bow and around it is the writing "The daily parturition of misinformation" (IL QUOTIDIANO PARTO DI DISINFORMAZIONE). The flower inside the birth bow was made of toilet paper and stained with chocolate like excrement.
Furthermore, a large tarp was displayed in Barbonia City
Good people, Corriere della Sera tells you bullshit (BUONA GENTE, IL CORRIERE DELLA SERA VI RACCONTA LE BALLE)
Good people, Corriere della Sera tells you bullshit.
Keep in mind that we were in the year 1967, a time when ordinary people blindly believed in what was written in the newspapers and the Corriere della Sera, being the main Italian newspaper, was considered a sacred institution. Then, consider the shocking effect this tarp had on ordinary people.
But, having Mondo Beat raised the bar against Corriere della Sera, the Establishment allegedly supported Corriere della Sera by putting a police commissioner, namely Giuseppe Montesano, at its service.
It has already been described how the young lawyers chosen by the Vatican in southern Italy were transferred to the north and assigned as police commissioners. Giuseppe Montesano, originally from Puglia, was one of them. He had been assigned the capital of Brianza, Monza, a city that forms a whole with Milan in terms of urbanization.
Giuseppe Montesano had shown the type of police commissioner he was when he had ordered his agents to confiscate copies of the third issue of Mondo Beat magazine, that issue whose cover was made up by a collage of mandatory expulsion orders, and his agents had seized the copies from the youths who sold on the streets of Monza. In fact, at the time of the hunger strike in the Cave, we had publicly denounced this situation
Copies of our magazine seized in Monza.
Now, since the confrontation between Mondo Beat and the Establishment media had become tense, Montesano was asked to help Corriere della Sera, and its satellites newspapers Corriere d'informazione and La Notte, in a campaign against the Beats of his jurisdiction, a campaign aimed at throw bad light on the Beats in general, that is to say, on the Mondo Beat Movement.
Giuseppe Montesano found the pretext to start with this dirty job when 5 Beats have accompanied a 16 year girl, Mariangela Sala, to the hospital in Monza. The girl had been shot in a leg with a carbine, by Salvatore Santacroce, an 18-year-old Sicilian, common criminal, wanted for aggravated robbery, unauthorized possession of firearms and escape from a juvenile prison in Palermo. After his escape from the juvenile prison in Palermo, Salvatore Santacroce had hidden for a year in Brianza, where he had formed a gang with other common criminals. The girl, who had fled from home, had flirted with him over the course of a week, after which she wanted to end the relationship, but at that Santacroce had shot her in a leg. This had happened late at night on the open. The 5 Beats, having met the injured girl by chance, accompanied her to the hospital. But police commissioner Giuseppe Montesano, instead of praising them, indicted the 5 Beats as accomplices of Salvatore Santacroce, who in the meantime had escaped capture. Furthermore, Giuseppe Montesano would have classified as Beats all young offenders recently arrested in his jurisdiction and would have described Salvatore Santacroce as the head of the Beats of Brianza.
Below is a reproduction of the articles that Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte published on the occasion of this campaign against the Beats. Clearly the 3 newspapers had concocted these articles with Giuseppe Montesano and in each of them he was cited as the brave police commissioner who had faced the Beats, even when they had shot to kill him, and it was described how Giuseppe Montesano had investigated many girls, who were been tortured and raped by the Beats, and among these girls a disabled girl, who had been raped by 18 (eighteen) Beats and had gone completely mad.
(Corriere della Sera, May 24, 1967).
A girl injured by a carbine shot in an orgy of drugged longhairs.
(Corriere d'informazione, May 24, 1967)
50 longhairs arrested. Orgies and drugs before shooting the girl.
(Corriere d'informazione, May 25, 1967)
The underage girl drugged and raped by the longhairs ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
(La Notte, May 25, 1967)
Eighteen longhairs drug and torture a handicapped girl.
(La Notte, May 26, 1967)
Other underage girls are sought, who were the victims of drugged longhairs
(Corriere d'informazione, May 26, 1967.)
The investigation on the longhairs is over.
(La Notte, May 27, 1967)
Ten girls involved in parties with the drugged longhairs have been tracked down and questioned.
At the end of this grotesque farce, which lasted 5 days, the fifty Beats or so, indicted by Giuseppe Montesano, were promptly released by the judiciary, as they were unrelated to any criminal act, but Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte didn't provide any news about this, as they were busy looking for other crimes perpetrated by the Beats elsewhere.
Commissioner Giuseppe Montesano, after this delicate service rendered in Brianza, was promoted from Monza to Turin. The Vatican would have gratified Giuseppe Montesano, because the girls from Brianza, who had no longer gone to confession with the priests, had been obliged to go to confession with him... "Have you fornicated with the Beats?"... "How many times?"... And then, thanks to other delicate operations which he would have performed in favor of the Vatican, books would be written about him and films would be made and finally he would be promoted, when he was 48, to the highest rank to which a police functionary can be promoted in Italy, that is the rank of "questore" (official in charge of the police in a provincial capital). And he would have been the youngest questore ever! And for some murders which took place in Palermo, while Montesano was the questore, and for how a suspect in custody, Salvatore Marino, would have died mysteriously in the premises of the Flying Squad (Squadra Mobile) of that city, the suspicion would have remained that Giuseppe Montesano had been involved in those murders.
Giuseppe Montesano.
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Back to the chronological reconstruction of the history of Mondo Beat, the campaign waged against the Beats would continue, since a day after it had ended in Brianza, Corriere della Sera would attack the Beats with an article in which was described how the police intervened in a construction site in Milan, where several Beats played dice to sort out whose of them would have sex with underage girls they had captured. And those Beats, while copulating, ridiculed workers who labored.
The Beats, while copulating with underage girls they had captured, ridiculed the workers who were laboring in the meantime.
As continuation of the press campaign against the Beats, 5 articles by La Notte would have appeared in five consecutive days. They covered an entire page each and were intended to give a mortal blow to the image of the Mondo Beat Movement. But the forcing with which La Notte distorted the true story of the Movement was evident and it was understandable how these articles were not written by a journalist hidden in Barbonia City, as La Notte pretended, but were written under the supervision of a priest, because they reeked of false morality and parish terminology.
(La Notte, May 30, 1967)
I lived in a tent in Barbonia City with Beats and young girls.
( La Notte, May 31, 1967)
Inside the tents there is a round dance of tender and shameless girls.
(La Notte, June 1,1967)
There comes the anguished father, but the underage girl Adriana does not want to leave the longhairs.
(La Notte, June 2, 1967)
They preach no to violence and then they commit infamous violence.
(La Notte, June 3, 1967)
In Barbonia City there is the freedom to learn all the worst vices.
Below, a collage of the titles of the articles from Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte, when they waged a campaign against the Beats which lasted uninterruptedly for 11 days.
The historic days when Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte lost control and credibility.
The consequences.
Since the Beats were known throughout Italy and especially in Milan, the bombardment of defamatory news against them by Corriere della Sera, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte would have far exceeded the measure of credibility. Thus many readers of these dailies would no longer believe everything that these newspapers, which were among the most important in Italy, wrote. In other words, this media campaign against the Beats would have raised awareness among people, first in Milan, then throughout Italy, on how the newspaper reports did not correspond to the truth, but were adjusted or fabricated to suit the interests those newspapers served. And indeed, before this campaign against the Beats, to silence someone, you just had to say: "Shut up, because this was written in the newspaper!". After this campaign, you would have been asked: "Who owns this newspaper?". This awareness of the nature of information, acquired by ordinary people, would have had historic consequences, since it would have caused an earthquake which would have devastated the regime's press.
In fact, of the three newspapers which waged a hateful campaign against a youth movement who renewed Italian society, two, Corriere d'informazione and La Notte, would have lost so many readers that they eventually had to cease publishing. As for Corriere della Sera, the disaffection of many of its readers would have created the conditions for the birth of two new dailies, Il Giornale and La Repubblica, and the readers of La Repubblica would have outnumbered those of the Corriere della Sera. From being a newspaper of international reference, Corriere della Sera was reduced to a second-rate newspaper, while the Crespi Group, the most important editorial group in Italy, owner of dozens of publications, including Corriere della Sera and Corriere d'informazione, after several ownership changes and bankruptcies, disappeared not only from the scene but also from memory, because the regime, mortified by the defeat suffered by the Contestation, would have canceled any reference to the Crespi Group.
But the earthquake caused by the Contestation would have changed not only the media landscape but also the political one. From the time of Mondo Beat, young Italians would abandon political parties en masse, as they had realized how dated were their programs, and the youths who remained in the parties would have contestated them from within. As a result, some political parties would have disappeared, others had to be reorganized, new parties would be created. All political parties would have put forward in their programs the issues promoted by the Contestation, in other words, it would no longer had been a question of whether or not to overthrow the system of Western democracies and replace it with communist or fascist dictatorships, but it would have been a question of how to realistically improve the conditions of our own society, above all by asserting civil rights and safeguarding the environment.
Since the Contestation would have spread from Italy to France and in both countries would have sensitized the masses, this would have caused in both countries the decline of the relative communist parties, which were the two most powerful communist parties of the Western world.
Let us recall that the communists had lined up against the Contestation when in Italy they were pleased with the military destruction of Mondo Beat structures. In France, during the May '68, the communists had hindered the anarchists from marching towards the Élysée Palace to get rid of the nuclear polluter, General Charles de Gaulle (and the communists did so because Charles de Gaulle had promised Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of Soviet Union, that if the communists had protected him from the anarchists, he would have withdrawn France from NATO, which he later did.). After these events, youths in Italy and France would have distanced themselves so much from the communists that the expression "left intellectual", which had meant the maximum with which an intellectual could be gratified, would have become a derisory expression.
The decline of the Italian and French communist parties due to the Contestation, the activity of the Polish trade union Solidarność, and finally the attack on the Chernobyl nuclear plant (yes, it was an attack, you don’t dismember an empire because of an accident) would have caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the real socialism era.