Latin America, “The moon in the barracks”: the story of Alberto Manzi, the master of “It’s never too late”

ROMA – First published in 1974 and never reprinted again, “The moon in the barracks” it is the first novel of a South American cycle in which Alberto Manzi narratively reworked situations and characters encountered in his experience – lasting many years – as a volunteer among the campesinos and Indians of South America. Here Pedro, an Indian and a bastard, is the strongest and most tireless farmer in the village. He knows how to read and write, but according to some he thinks and talks too much. His words make us see new, courageous things, and he claims for his companions just enough literacy to be able to join the union and be able to defend their rights.

A symbol of resistance to inhumane conditions. Pedro thus becomes the symbol of the resistance of a people who live in inhumane conditions, deprived of fundamental rights, exploited by landowners who systematically resort to violence against men and boys. A people in which children are born already marked, where women and mothers are even more helpless because they are forced to the fire, the well, the kitchen, the infirmary, the superstitious rites. Where there is no hope of rebelling against the master.

He had gone to study ants and discovered the poor without rights. Alberto Manzi (1924-1997), teacher and pedagogist, author of Orzoway and countless publications for adults and children, he became famous in the 1960s with the television program It’s never too late, created by Rai to combat illiteracy which was still widespread in Italy at the time. In the mid-1950s he went to Latin America for the first time to study the ants of the Amazon rainforest. There he had discovered the condition of the illiterate, exploited, poor and disenfranchised farmers. And for many summers, over the course of twenty years, he had gone to those places to teach.

The presentation of the book. On Sunday 5 May at 5.30 pm, in the Castle of Bisceglie, as part of the Eirene Fest and for the meeting entitled “Don Tonino, Alberto Mazi and the South of the world”, the book of “Maestro It’s Never Too Late”. Elvira Zaccagnino and Daniele Giancane will talk about it, together with Patrizia Bruno from the Da Vinci high school and with Massimo Manzi connected remotely. The book will be on sale at the presentation.