She was succeeded by Beppe Manfredi (who died of mesothelioma the following year), with Giovanni Cappa as vice-president. He too suffered from the same disease, and died in 2020. Since 2016, Giuliana Busto, sister of Piercarlo Busto, aka il Pica, a well-known Casale athlete who was struck down by the same disease at the age of 33, has been president of Afeva. Romana Blasotti Pavesi was made of Commendatore della Repubblica (Order to the Merit of the Republic) for her great commitment in seeking justice and truth as president of the Associazione di familiari e vittime amianto (Afeva - Association of asbestos relatives and victims). The rosary will be this evening, Thursday 12 September, at 7pm, in Casale Monferrato, in the Parish of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In the same church, the funeral will take place tomorrow, Friday 13 September, at 2.45pm. The councillors of the ‘Casale davvero’ coalition have petitioned the mayor Emanuele Capra to proclaim a day of city mourning on the occasion of the funeral: ‘We are talking about - they write in the request, also subscribed by the city's PD (Democratic Party) - a person who was a symbol, in Italy and around the world, of the struggle against asbestos and who was able to communicate to the younger generations his intimate suffering with a spirit of resilience and a very strong charge of positivity inspired by a sublime humanity’. Mayor Capra and City Council President Giovanni Battista Filiberti welcomed the proposal: ‘A dutiful initiative that unites all political forces, associations and city associations’. Tomorrow, a minute's silence will be observed at the inauguration of the Wine Festival.
'Shame on you! We are more than you are!’ She shouted this to the whole of Italy, in those difficult and painful days when the people of Casale were faced with a terrible choice, which, at the time, I called ‘the devil's offer’ in ‘La Stampa’ . Reminiscent of childhood catechism: ‘The devil,’ the parish priest had warned us, ‘presents himself in disguise, he attracts you by showing only the beautiful and shiny side, but, beware, he will deceive you’. That offer of money, made by the main defendant in the Eternit maxi-trial to silence the voice of the municipality of Casale Monferrato, would have meant abandoning any civil action in exchange that is, forcing Municipality would no longer, or ever again, represent the community tormented by asbestos: that is why I called it the devil’s offer. Many people were upset, Romana was upset. She was not at peace. In fact, she was very angry. ‘The Swiss, as he was known, did a shameful thing: he behaved in the same devious way just like asbestos did killing people, by killing at random,’ she had told ‘La Stampa’ on the eve of the verdict of the court of first instance.
In the meantime, the municipality had re-evaluated the initial temptations and rejected the offer. ‘I thank Health Minister Balduzzi and that large part of the city that showed a deep civic sense,’ Romana Blasotti Pavesi said. ‘Had it been accepted, I would have personally felt ashamed to present myself to the magistrates who have worked so many years to reach this moment. Today, instead, I feel proud.
The national media, newspapers and TV stations were interested in the case. It was the late autumn of 2011. On December the 20th, journalist and anchorman Gad Lerner, had dedicated an episode to the storm unleashed by the ‘devil's offer’, with studio guests and an external link to a large group of people of Casale. Romana was in the front row. They put a microphone in front of her. Her voice thundered: ‘Shame on you!’, an attack against those who were against accepting the ‘offer/pact’. She shouted for everyone: for those who had died and for those who, while still alive, mourned their dead, and for those who, while still alive, were already suffering from mesothelioma. ‘there are more of us than of you,’ she shouted to make the air vibrate!’
Dr Daniela Degiovanni, who had shared decades of life, struggle and confidences with Romana, squeezed her arm. She confided later: ‘I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack’.
Romana’s powerful voice was one of her distinguishing features, along with her sky blue eyes, which could be as bright as aquamarine or as icy as a glacier, set in a face that all that of suffering had turned into carved stone.
Her heart was made of a special material, I cannot say how, nor why but it could not otherwise have withstood the blows fiercely inflicted by fate. One day she said: ‘I had even thought that my family had fallen the victim of an evil spell’. Romana buried her husband Mario, a former Eternit worker, in 1983, her sister Libera, in 1989, her nephew Enrico Malavasi (50, Libera's son), in 2003, her cousin Anna, and her daughter Maria Rosa, in 2004. For all of them, only one culprit: mesothelioma caused by asbestos. At the beginning of this year, yet another loss when her son Ottavio also predeceased her.
She had become president of Afeva, the Casale association of the families and victims of asbestos, in 1988. Mario had died and she couldn't come to terms with it: not with the mourning, a burden she carried intimately without exposing it out of modesty and reserve; what she couldn't come to terms with was that people died because of their work. Like Mario, other husbands, and wives, and children, and siblings. An unbearable injustice. They offered her the role to represent them. She thought about it for a moment, then said: ‘I don't know if I am able, but if you help me, I am ready to fight’. She did so, and remained the president for almost thirty years, with integrity and without relenting, flanked and supported by what she called her guardian angels: Bruno Pesce and Nicola Pondrano. She listened, she documented, she read a lot, she asked to know what was happening. She went where needed: to speak, to testify, to spur people on. She was especially keen to speak to youngsters: ‘We,’ he would say, ‘have come this far, and, mind you, we have done a lot. But it's not over. Now it is your turn to continue. She gave a stern warning: ‘You must fight, until we have justice!’
She wore the slogan ‘Eternit Justice’ proudly: printed on the three coloured (Italian) flag that flew on her terrace, in via Cavalcavia, and on the yellow badge pinned to her shirt.
The night before the hearing in which the court presided over by Giuseppe Casalbore would read the first-degree verdict of the Eternit maxi-trial, in Turin, Romana was restless. ‘I'm an optimist, but I can’t hide my level of anxiety,’ she confided, ‘I've taken a few drops of sleeping pill’. But she reacted: ‘I don't want to let fear get the better of me, I want to think that our wait for justice will be rewarded. Who knows, maybe I will finally be able to cry again'.
She had stopped crying long before the trial, because she said her supply of tears had been completely exhausted when her daughter Maria Rosa had told her mother that she too was ‘sick like dad’. Mesothelioma. That ‘she was so beautiful Maria Rosa, and had beautiful hair. And she was so young'. When she died, she was 50 years old. Maria Rosa left behind a son Michele, who in turn had a daughter, Francesca, now 12 years old: she adored her great grandmother Romana who looked after her when she was a little child.
At the trial, Romana Blasotti Pavesi told her story which travelled the world: all over Europe, in Brazil, in the United States, in Canada, in Japan and even in the villages of the Amazon: ‘Romana you are great, Romana you are strong’ they wrote there. The world knew that emblematic story that was a copy of the pain of hundreds, thousands of other lives similarly killed by the dust, pouvri as it was known in the local dialect. The days before speaking as a witness, she could not enter the courtroom, as is the rule. So she was forced to wait outside, she could only know what was going on inside through the stories of others. A soul in pain, pacing up and down the corridors, at times sitting on the benches to give her aching legs a rest.
Then, on the day of that first verdict, 13 February 2012, she stood up and held Degio’s hand as the oncologist Daniela Degiovanni who has ‘seen’ and treated so many patients was known locally. She closed his eyes, perhaps wondering if all that could be done had been done, or perhaps recalling all the names and faces she had promised she would fight for justice.
In the years that followed there was an Appeal Trial and then the Court of Cassation in Rome. That morning she was more than anxious: Romana was restless. In the afternoon, when all that had to be said had been said, she fell silent in the long wait.
We were sitting on an uncomfortable bench, a little out of the way, side by side, in semi-darkness, speechless, our eyes pointed at the floor, stubbornly not letting ourselves be carried away by any temptation to make predictions. At a certain point of the evening, the signal came: we were called into the large and sumptuous courtroom and the Court of Cassation ruled on the statute of limitations. Everything was quashed, cancelled. An uproar followed, indignant voices. I looked for her in the confusion and found her, standing in that hidden corner we had occupied while waiting. Her gaze was bewildered and dry. ‘We fought so hard to get to this result?’ she whispered. Her son Octavius dragged her away because she was too tired. The next day, with lucidity she commented: ‘The Cassation decided this way because they don't know the history of Casale’. She meant that those judges, so far from here, do not know the constant fear of falling ill, the anguish of those who fall ill, the suffering of those who remain. And yet, she did not feel defeated: ‘We’, she said resolutely, ‘we have convinced the world that we are right’. Bruised, but not bent. One day she said to Mayor Titti Palazzetti: ‘When are we going to inaugurate the park where the factory once stood? It took so long to reclaim it, decontaminate and tear it down, now it's time to transform it'. We had been there, together, visiting the abandoned plant still standing, many years before, in an autumn dusk that made the place look even more gloomy. There was a small group of us trade unionists, former workers and family members of workers, together with Dr Luigi Mara who had asked and obtained permission to make an inspection. We wore masks and puffy white overalls; we looked like ghosts immersed in a greenish semi-darkness. Someone had a torch and shone it on the walls or against broken glass. Romana wanted to know where Mario had worked, ‘this was his shopfloor ‘explained one. She insisted on seeing the ‘Kremlin’, a bad place in the basement, where the dust felt like you were eating it, not just breathing it. ‘That's where it was,‘ said those who had worked there, “they used to send those who were considered the ”hotheads’ who had perhaps complained about the working conditions.’ And Romana looked out at a gaping hole in the floor that was lost in a black, bleak, breathless background.
Mayor Palazzetti had promised Romana that the Eternot Park would be finished. And so it was, in September 2016, in the presence and with the blessing of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. The park has an athletics track, lawns and plants, benches and games for children. There is also a living monument, created by the artist Gea Casolaro, the Davidia involucrata nursery: the so-called ‘handkerchief plants’, constantly cared for by a group of volunteers, the prize called the Eternot Nursery Prize awarded every year.
Another monument, by artist Italietta Carbone, was also inaugurated: it
depicts a little girl running while flying a kite, the symbol of a free
soul. Everyone calls it ‘Romana's kite’: Romana, the girl from
Slovenia who arrived in Casale at the age of seventeen and who,
maintaining her free and indomitable spirit, shaped so much of this
town’s history.
Respectful and polite at all times (she greeted and shook hands with the defenders of the Swiss defendant with sincere politeness, because ‘we are adversaries, not enemies’), she never lowered her gaze, convinced and proud of advancing a just cause. She would have liked to come face to face with the Swiss entrepreneur. ‘I would like to look him in the eye and ask him why...’. but Stephan Schmidheiny (in picture), the Yale University awarded asbestos billionaire decided not to ever come forward. If he had done so, if he had found the courage to peer into Romana's sky blue eyes, he would have understood what his only path to salvation was and is: financing a treatment, the cure. He could still do it, somewhere Romana would hear about it and she could finally weep with relief, freely.
by Silvana MOSSANO
Translation by Vicky Franzinetti
Also read:The asbestos victims of Eternit – in pictures
Alumni ask Yale to revoke honorary degree
Lessons for India from Swiss asbestos tycoon found guilty for causing death of 392 people
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