La modernizzazione del Sud Italia rurale. Il ruolo della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (1950-1962)

The first twelve years of intervention by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, in which the phase of direct action was developed, was mainly dedicated to the fi- nancing of works concerning the territorial and productive restructuring of the rural areas of the South of the country. At the end of this phase, the agricultural productivity rate of the South had increased by 2.8% compared to the previous period, thanks to the reclamation of large areas of the macro-region and the in- crease in civil and road infrastructures, with the construction of aqueducts, sew- ers and vehicular networks, which experienced a significant development, with thousands of km paved with new bitumen. This period of extraordinary inter- vention, defined as pre-industrialization, was fundamental to create the precon- ditions for the catching up of the South; however, some underlying problems re- mained unsolved. The exemplary case concerns the «economic distance», within the same southern territory, between inland areas and coastal and urban areas, which can be defined as the «first double gap» in the context of the relationship between the southern question and the agrarian question. Despite the expansion phase of the Golden Age and the huge financial and human resources put in place for the entire season of the extraordinary intervention, in fact, the problem of the «first double gap» has shown a very strong degree of resistance, even with respect to the new paradigms of the age of globalization.