Aiuti e miracoli ai margini del terremoto de L’Aquila

Aid and miracles around L’Aquila’s earthquake
On April 6, 2009 L’Aquila and its surroundings were hit by a disastrous earthquake. An ethnographic observation of a traditional feast day in a rural village – and of the exceptional elements conveyed by the disaster – has highlighted how humanitarian aid may contain codes of political propaganda that leverage the thaumaturgical rhetoric of miraculous healing.