Rome Travel Guide

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Thursday, August 25, 2016

The Walls of Rome: 4 Hours in the Life of a Poster

Not all posters dealing with immigration are negative.  This one, found
in the immigrant-heavy (mostly Bangladeshi) suburb of Torpignattara, is critical of the
local government for its failure to make documents available to immigrants.
It's no secret that many Italians are concerned about immigration; under EU rules, the country where an immigrant first makes land must make provision for that immigrant.  There is no plan for dividing up immigrants equally.  This is a particular problem for Italy, which has a long and vulnerable coastline and is a short (but often deadly) boat ride from troubled Tunisia. As elsewhere in Europe, there are those in Italy who identify immigration with terrorism--and, those who don't.

These issues were brought home forcefully on the day we "landed" in Monteverde Vecchio, an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the hill above what is commonly thought of as Trastevere.  Here's the poster we found:

Stop Terrorism, Stop Immigration..  Not sure what "Fdl" is.
 There is an anti-immigration Facebook group known as Patria e Liberta
Four hours later, when we passed that way again, the poster looked like this:


  In the weeks that followed, we found other posters dealing with immigration:

This political poster was part of the 2016 mayoral election.  "Let's Stop
the Alien Invasion
CasaPound's poster, in Casal Bertone: Defend Rome/Enough Immigration, Enough "Welcoming"












1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi, I see you have photographed poster walls. I'm going to Rome tomorrow to photograph posters as I'm a collage artist and use old posters in my art. Du you know where in Rome they put up posters, poster walls etc.?
Elin Mack, Oslo, Norway
elinmack@gmail.com