In Florence, Racial Strife Over African Immigrants Tarnishes an Artistic Jewel : Italy: A police crackdown in a city known for its refinement sparks protest and fuels national debate.

Modern racial strife, as plain as black and white, has taken disruptive root here in the proud cradle of the Renaissance.

Many of Florence’s 10,000 Third World immigrants and their Italian supporters demonstrated this week to protest a controversial police crackdown that has rousted African street vendors from the city center.

For nearly two weeks, reinforced police patrols have mingled on elegant downtown streets with the first trickle of millions of tourists expected to be drawn to an international artistic jewel that will host the United States’ World Cup soccer team this summer.

At issue is the presence among the 430,000 Florentines of Arab-speaking North Africans and French-speaking West Africans, most of them Senegalese, drawn here in increasing numbers over the past few years. About 6,000 of them are illegal immigrants, according to police figures. And some, according to angry Florentines citing police figures showing a disproportionate number of immigrant arrests, are responsible for a surge in drug trafficking.

The racial strains have polarized--and mortified--a city proud of its artistic and intellectual refinement. In a microcosm of the nascent racial conflict that troubles most major Italian cities, Florentines argue whether 240 police, imported from other parts of Italy for the crackdown, had justly come to restore order to lawless, heroin-rich city streets, or to repress the immigrants because they were black, poor--and bad for business.

Furor over Florence’s anti-immigrant drive already has triggered a national debate and the abrupt resignation of law-and-order Socialist Mayor Giorgio Morales, who quit when his coalition partners at City Hall rebelled at what they called his “militarization” of downtown Florence, beloved by tourists.

This week’s protest march demanding a better deal for the immigrants follows a five-day hunger strike by African newcomers to Florence and their young Italian supporters, who camped before the Duomo, the city’s 13th-Century cathedral.

Both sides on the issue say they are alarmed at harassment and violence against the immigrants, particularly a savage Feb. 27 rampage by about 80 Florentine youths wielding baseball bats who beat up three North Africans.

About 20 Italian youths have been arrested in the assault, while many times that number of African street vendors already have been driven away.

Morales left office saying that he was satisfied with the crackdown and promising to seek a new mandate in May elections.

“Finally, the city is under control,” he said in an interview. “It is not a question of black and white. We are against racism--but we are also against crime.”

Morales had asked the Italian government in Rome for more police after a march by 4,000 Florentines demanding better protection. They came with a show of force that shook a city more accustomed to remedying damage to its Renaissance patrimony than race relations.

“Florence Besieged,” shouted one newspaper headline as the crackdown began. It wasn’t that, but neither was it a display of dignity for a mercantile city nurtured for centuries on traditions of civility.

“It Is Not Criminal to Be Black,” read a hunger striker’s placard. “Florence is Pretoria,” snarled another poster supporting the immigrants. It wasn’t that either, but Florentine tempers, like Florence’s civic pride, will be a long time healing.

On the other side of the issue, Marco Cellai, a right-wing member of the City Council, argued that “the heroin trade has grown enormously” since the immigrants came. Cellai joined with Communists, Christian Democrats and Greens party members in demanding Morales’ ouster.

Police said 12 North Africans, four of them accused of drug trafficking, will be deported. Other illegal immigrants caught in the police dragnet will be given time to seek residence in Italy under a new amnesty law that represents the Italian government’s most serious attempt to control an immigrant population of about 1.3 million.

Florence’s crackdown drove most immigrants underground and brought out their supporters in full cry. Young Italian leftists occupied the chambers of the City Council in the Palazzo Vecchio next to the Uffizi Gallery. When they went home, Morales’ political opponents on the council moved in to occupy the chamber and demand his resignation.

Most immigrants are vendors of items ranging from fake designer handbags to knockoff sunglasses and ersatz African handicrafts. They seek a piece of the tourist bonanza that Florence reaps as its economic mainstay. Immigrant wares arrayed on blankets and rugs along tourist routes like the historic Ponte Vecchio and downtown pedestrian malls irk high-tone Florentine merchants.

“It’s not a question of racism or even competition. The vendors are illegal, and they are unsightly,” said Roberto Leoni, a jeweler who heads the merchants’ association on fashionable Via Calzaiouli. Local businessmen, he said, had long called for an end to the “excessive permissiveness” that tolerated the unregulated vendors.

“They damage the image of Florence. If people want to see a city of street sellers, they can go to Casablanca,” Leoni said.

His wife, Patrizia, echoed: “These vendors are like the half-naked American guitar players, the drunken German and British tourists, the street performers, not to mention the pickpockets, drug peddlers and gypsies--they degrade the city.”

By contrast, Vincenzo Simoni, a teacher and Greens member of the City Council, challenges what he calls Morales’ “absurd, punitive campaign.”

“Everybody here says ‘I’m not a racist, but. . . .’ But we are. This is a closed, mean, selfish city. We don’t care about others. For Florence, foreigners are tourists, to be exploited and tossed away. Florence’s goal is to sell the most and give the least,” Simoni said.