Word: mezzogiorno
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...ability to go into debt has launched many new nations, and preserved or vastly changed old ones. A postwar proliferation of international credit agencies-notably the World Bank - has provided 51% credit that has strung railroads through jungles in Colombia, built highways in Ethiopia, and industrialized Italy's Mezzogiorno. Some countries have borrowed too enthusiastically. Overwhelming debts have brought inflation and economic chaos to Indonesia, Argentina, Ghana and other extravagant governments, which perhaps will never be able...
...result has been that foreign workers, whose families are often back home in the Mezzogiorno or Andalusia, are jammed into old army barracks or cheap rooms, sometimes even sleep in unfinished apartments on their construction jobs. Unable to integrate with Swiss life, they have their own ghettos, complete with trattorie and Italian movie houses. Swiss industry shudders at what would happen if their countries were to recall the workers abruptly. "Our economic life is at the mercy of Rome and Madrid," moans one official...
That backward and poverty-stricken bottom half of the Italian boot, Il Mezzogiorno, was long considered a good place to be from and a hard place to get to. Economically and physically isolated, a separate and underdeveloped land within a developed nation, the south stood in harsh contrast to Italy's industrialized north. Now all the old ideas about the south may have to be revised. Last week, with flying banners and ecclesiastical pomp, the Italians opened the last stretch of the 468-mile Milan-to-Salerno Autostrada del Sole, the first modern highway link between north and south...
...expressway that avoids all cities and villages on its course, will move steadily southward and eventually connect with Sicily at the Strait of Messina, serving as a vital economic life line for the entire region. It is only the latest of Italy's ambitious efforts to help Il Mezzogiorno (which means midday) move, in one great leap, from a medieval society directly into the age of automation...
...private enterprise have combined to bring about this transformation. The Italian government has poured in about $9 billion for roads, power, schools and housing since 1950, has also persuaded the U.S., the World Bank and other international agencies to help out with massive loans. With its Cassa per il Mezzogiorno-Fund for the South-the government has lured industry through tax incentives, custom-free importation of plant equipment, easy credit, cash grants, free building sites and worker training programs. Such state-owned enterprises as the holding company I.R.I. and the petroleum company E.N.I. are required to channel their major investments...