Memorie contese di guerra e proposte di valorizzazione from below. Il caso del territorio del Frusinate attraversato dalla Linea Gustav

Abstract

War counter-memories and heritagization “from below”. The case of the Frusinate territory crossed by the Gustav Line

The paper intends to reflect on a contested historical memory related to "marocchinate", a term used to indicate the mass rapes that occurred during World War II in the Frusinate territory by the French colonial contingent engaged in the breach of the Gustav line – one of the fortification lines built by the German troops to slow down the Allied advance.

For too long this tragedy has been hidden, partly because of the extreme difficulty of reworking it within a patriarchal and colonial society.

In this framework, the objectives are twofold: on the one hand to turn the spotlight back on these episodes and contribute to the critical debate on the processes of heritagization from below, on the other to verifying if and how memory can act as a tool for territorial action.