What is it about Lago Maggiore—this lake, these mountains, this air, this space between the Germanic and Latin worlds—that attracts rebels?
In 1868, Carlo Cafiero, Italian leader of the International Workingmen’s Association and comrade of Friedrich Engels, first met and became a follower of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Cafiero, who came from wealth, found his new mentor a house on Lago Maggiore where Bakunin refined his critique of Marxism while translating Das Kapital into Russian.
Bakunin grew up in the village of Pryamukhino, northwest of Moscow. Lago Maggiore on the Swiss-Italian border, where pillowiy mountains meet green lakes, where figs, cherries, oranges, grapes, and sweet chestnuts grow in abundance, where sheep roam, and terraced fields get bountiful sun and rain—was a good place to imagine a paradise on earth, where all humanity would get what they need, without nations, bureaucracies, or cumbersome revolutionary stages. He advocated the overthrow of the state and the religions that uphold it, to be replaced by workers’ collectives and utopia on earth. He believed his vision of collective anarchism could be brought about immediately.
Cafiero and Bakunin were two of the many political and cultural rebels who found fertile inspiration on a mountain overlooking Ascona, Switzerland. Anarchists, socialists, nudists, vegetarians, psychotherapists, back-to-the-landers. artists. writers, spiritualists, and the originators of Modern Dance made their way here, to this village where I have had the privilege of a three-month house-sitting adventure. They did not come at once or together, and we only know of them as a collective phenomenon because one obsessive archivist recorded and filed every ideology, artist, musician, and bare-butted immigrant. Because of his massive files- clippings, tapes, art, photographs, maps, meeting notes- there is a museum at Mont Verite that tells their collective story.
Ironically, the Canton of Ticino is also the most socially conservative and Catholic region of Switzerland. The Canton did not hold its first Gay Pride March until 2017, 39 years after Zurich began its Pride tradition, and even then the local Catholic community objected. In addition to the resident population and the roving radicals, the region also attracted the uber-wealthy tourist. The area is too beautiful to keep them away. The city’s citizens and well-off vacationers often ridiculed, regulated, and gaped at the rebels in the hills. But there was also overlap: Some wealthy people, like Carlo Cafiero, sponsored ventures in free living. Some rebels came with money and left without it, pouring their fortunes into their social experiments.
The cop, the priest, and the rich hotels oppress the worker. Cover woodcut for socialist, agricultural commune paper.
Psycho-therapist Carl Jung, writer and spiritualist Herman Hesse, anti-war and internationalist writer Erich Maria Remarque all spent months or decades in Ticino. The Mothers of Modern Dance found the space here to hone their revolutionary art. While some rebels took advantage of the lovely climate to live bare in caves, there were also chalets built to house visitors. For several decades, there was an annual conference held here, focused on breaking all academic and cultural barriers—a place where psychotherapy, anthropology, Marxism, and Spiritualism might meet in one workshop.
As an archivist with utopian ideals and a political and professional interest in social movements that crossed borders, there was plenty here to excite me. I pored over the newsletters of the socialist agricultural commune with its bas-relief carvings of utopian bucolic scenes. I wondered about the connection between these European anarchists and the Mexican Magon brothers, whose anarcho-syndicalism influenced me when I studied the Mexican Revolution. I studied Modern Dance in another lifetime. I was thrilled to see the photos of my mentors. In my teens, the intensity of Graham technique matched my enthusiasm. In my 20s, I discovered her radical and intellectual side and fell newly in love. Her biography noted that Graham read as many hours as she danced. Now I wondered how the radicals in Ascona influenced her choreography. And here she was, Mary Wigman, the woman who taught Nancy Hauser in Minneapolis, who taught me. And…OMG —it’s Isadora Duncan!
I found other personal connections: I spent two decades of my life creating weekly workshops and conferences meant to break borders, teach solidarity and inspire action. So I was quite taken by the display of the Eranos conference booklets.
My own experience with vegetarianism was part of a second wave of vegetarians—part of the dietary movement in the 1970s- who read Diet for a Small Planet and were inspired by the idea that all the world could eat well if we all ate lower on the food chain.
Today, wealthy tourists have overwhelmed the balance that existed between them and the rebels in this region. The real estate is just too lucrative. The chalet still holds conferences, but most color within the lines of academic discipline and business acumen. There was a three-day music workshop that seemed, from the description, to break borders. The price kept us from participating. We walked in and out of the restaurant after seeing the $$$$ on the menu. The hotel is now elite. But the mountains are still accessible and — I can attest — the vistas still inspire the mind and heart to imagine an equitable world where revolutions dance.
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