‘Palikari,’ a Greek migrant’s story destined to echo in eternity

The documentary was filmed in a number of locations, including Oakland, California, Santa Fe, New Mexico and Chicago, Illinois. The filmmakers also visited a number of sites in Colorado, where the Ludlow Massacre took place. These included Denver, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.

By Nick Malkoutzis

It could have been a scene from Orthodox Easter anywhere in Greece: Relatives, friends and co-workers gathering around the fire to roast lamb, share a drink and have a dance. This particular festive scene, though, is taken from a Colorado coal miners’ colony on April 20, 1914, at the height of the longest workers’ strike the USA had ever seen.

Within hours of the festivities, around 20 people lay dead after an onslaught by the Colorado National Guard. They included union leader Louis Tikas, a Greek immigrant, who was beaten and then shot in the back.

For decades Tikas’s exceptional story of fortitude only existed within the contours of broader accounts about the Ludlow Massacre. A century later, a documentary called “Palikari” made by two Greeks, director Nickos Ventouras and researcher Lambrini Thoma, seeks to build on the single account of Tikas’s journey from Cretan migrant to working man’s legend and create a comprehensive account of this gripping tale.

The idea for the project came in 2007 when Ventouras and Thoma were preparing to trace Jack Kerouac’s journey across the USA, as told in his classic book “On The Road,” for a magazine article. During the research, Thoma came across an article about Louis Tikas and the pair decided to stop off in Colorado to find out more.

“At the time, to get to see Tikas’s grave, we had to climb over a fence,” Thoma tells Kathimerini English Edition...