Sicilia frente al estereotipo

Abstract

The terms "Sicilianity" or "Sicilitude", very recurring in every discussion about Sicily, have always caused me a certain discomfort. These nouns, intended to define a specific and immutable environmental, human and cultural climate and to define a circumscribed moral, physical and intellectual character and character - and, although defined over time, domination after domination, de facto perceived as ahistorical -, encourage necessarily to the simplification and uncritical reduction of the cultural and anthropological complexity of a historically articulated and changing reality since its inception. Already in protohistoric Sicily, in fact, at least three culturally different ethnic groups coexisted, met and clashed: Siculi, Sicani, Elimi, peoples with whom, already during the first millennium BC. C., the Phoenician-Punics came into contact and shortly afterwards the Greeks who established several colonies on the island. Sicily, the Sicilians, their history are not immobile, static, inert entities, passively and fatalistically subject to the ebbs and flows of history.