Emma Neri

Emma Neri (d. 1978), Italian primary teacher, anarchist and anti-fascist, born. She and her partner Nello Garavini escaped from fascist Italy and settled in Brazil.

On September 5, 1897, the anarchist teacher was born in Cesena (Emilia-Romagna, Italy) Emma Neri. His parents were called Eligio Neri, an accountant affiliated with the socialist Partito dei Lavoratori Italiani (PLI, Italian Workers' Party), and Elvira Della Bella, primary school teacher. The family situation allowed him to study Magisterium and graduated as an elementary school teacher. Then it goes take a course at the University of Bologna and obtained the title of director didactics, but he preferred to teach as a teacher to be direct contact with the students. As a young girl, she adhered to the revolutionary socialist ideals Andrea Costa inherited from her father. After teaching at various schools of the area of Cesena and Forlì, in 1921 he obtained a teaching position at the school elementary Castel Bolognese, important feu of the acrat movement Emilia-Romagna. In this town he met the anarchist Nello Garavini, who He became his companion and introduced her into libertarian thinking. The Free Union It was formalized on June 4, 1923 with a civil marriage.

In 1924, following the assassination of socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti at the hands of a platoon Fascist, the pair moved to Milan, where he surrendered to the fight against the Muslin regime. On October 19, 1924, Giordana Libera, the only daughter, was born of the couple, who also opted for libertarian thinking. During the two years that lived and militared in Milan they related to the circles city libertarians (Angelo Damonti, Mario Mantovani, Fioravante Meniconi, Leda Rafanelli, Ettore Molinari, Nella Giacomelli, Carlo Monanni, Umberto Mincigrucci, etc.) and made special friends with Carlo Molaschi and his companion Maria Rossi. In 1926, fleeing the fascist persecution, Neri and Garavini They emigrated to Brazil and settled in Rio de Janeiro.

In the early years of this exile, which will last twenty years, passed them very lean and had to do all caste of work to survive, until they got a certain economic stability. Despite the Brazilian dictatorial regimes, they could develop their revolutionary and anti-fascist work, relating to the Brazilian, Italian and world anarchist movements. They actively participated in the Anti-Clerical League, founded and promoted by the anarchist José Oiticica. They maintained a close friendship with the Fabbri family, first with Luigi until his death in 1935 and then with his daughter Luce. They were also very friends of Libero Battistelli, Bolognese Republican lawyer and member of the movement anti-fascist "Giustizia e Libertà", and his companion Enrichetta, both also exiles in Brazil – Battistelli died on June 22, 1937 fighting against Franco's troops on the Huesca front (Aragón, Spain) during the civil war. In 1930, on the occasion of the Transatlantic Aeronautical Expedition of Italo Balbo, Fascist Minister of Aviation, spread anti-fascist pamphlets to the main streets in Rio de Janeiro, where Balbo and his squadron were accused of the murder the anti-fascist priest Don Giovanni Minzoni in 1923 in Argenta. Shortly after of this action, Neri was fired from her position as a teacher at the Italian School of the "Dante Alighieri Society", then already under control of the Fascist authorities. Between 1933 and 1942 Garavini brought the bookstore «Minha Livraria», meeting and discussion of the entire left of Rio de Rio Janeiro, which was police searched on numerous occasions. During a time in the bookstore was a remarkable publishing activity, with publication of works of political-social culture and literature.

In 1947 the couple returned definitively to Italy and settled in Castel Bolognese, resuming the old friendships and reorganizing the libertarian movement of the locality. He joined the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI), he participated in numerous congresses and meetings of this organization and the summer of 1968 attended the International Anarchist Congress of Carrara, constituting the International of Anarchist Federations (IFA). Emma Neri died on 2 of February 1978 in a hospital in Imola (Emilia-Romagna, Italy) where he made some months he had entered. Your personal archive, and that of your partner, is located deposited in the Libertarian Library "Armando Borghi" by Castel Bolognese.