La figura di Giuseppe Soncini tra azioni anticoloniali e aiuti sanitari : tracce attuali della ‘stagione della solidarietà’ per una rielaborazione memoriale

The Soncini-Ganapini archive’s analysis, gives the opportunity to understand the link between the city of Reggio Emilia and the African national liberation movements, in particular Mozambicans. The analysis proposed focuses on the figure of Giuseppe Soncini, who was able to create a network of contacts and friendships, which led to the birth of health, social and political projects. The archival study is centered on the numerous letters and personal communications between Giuseppe Soncini and the representatives of FRELIMO, in particular Marcelino dos Santos, Samora Machel and Oscar Monteiro, to try to understand how the city of Reggio Emilia becomes a point of reference and support for FRELIMO. The period taken into consideration goes from the beginning of the first exchanges of letters in the 1960s, to the period just after the National Solidarity Conference (held in Reggio Emilia in 1973), in particular until the independence of Mozambique. Furthermore, it was decided to question the presence of traces of that story dating back to almost fifty years ago, therefore set in our contemporaneity, in order to try and understand what remains today of that historical period called “the great season of international solidarity”.