 |
| If looks could kill, these two would have been spoken for years ago..... |
La mafia non esiste! The writing was scrawled on a wall. The mafia does not exist! It was in Trapani , Sicily Palermo many of the
mourners expressed their disdain for the Italian President and other senior
statesmen present, by booing and jeering.
It was a turning point.
 |
| Secrecy, and lies |
According to Norman Lewis, in The
Honoured Society, the word mafia probably derives from the identical word in Arabic and means place of refuge. In the 21st century, however, it is the word
that covers four main criminal organisations defined by their control of
territory and their links with uomini
dello Stato (politicians). The four
are the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the
Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, the Pugliese Sacra Corona Unita and the Campanian (ie
Neapolitan) Camorra. The name Cosa Nostra did not come to light
until in the early 1980s the first of the pentiti
mafiosi (supergrasses) Tommaso Buscetta, whose sons had been murdered by
rival mafiosi, began to explain the
structure and working methods of the organisation. Having been suppressed by Mussolini, who
imprisoned anyone with links, the mafia was given a new lease of life by
Eisenhower and the US Administration in the second world war. Legendary gangster 'Lucky' Luciano negotiated
with the freshly released Sicilian bosses and huge amounts of money were
imported to secure support for the invaders.
Post war alliances were maintained by the ruling Christian Democrat
party, again with US support, partly to avoid any success by the
communists. The late Giulio Andreotti
was closely involved in this, and, subsequently, Silvio Berlusconi sought
support for his Forza Italia party
from the Corleonesi in the 1990s.
 |
| Every dog will have its day |
In the past, the Sicilian mafia
may have had a social purpose, organising and perhaps protecting, the poorest
labourers and their families. However
any nobility of purpose died out long ago, as hinted at in Sicily's greatest
novel, Il Gattopardo (The
Leopard), where Don Calogero Sedàra represents the rising order of mafiosi, distinctly classless but greedy
for power, ignorant but astute at the same time. As Tancredi says: If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.....
and again how neat is that ambiguity? How prescient was Giuseppe di Lampedusa,
who wrote his novel in the very restaurant where years later Giulio Andreotti
would have dinner with banker Michele Sindona and American mafia boss John
Gambino.....?
Anyway, since the film of The
Godfather brought the name Corleone
to the attention of the worldwide public, intrepid tourists have been making
their way there to see for themselves the real Sicily , even though not one scene was filmed
anywhere near, as the modern town is not at all photogenic. I wanted to see it, too, and so, intrigued by
its Anti-Mafia Museum and by the Corleone on Tour Association, we set
off, navigating through the vile outskirts of Palermo, and heading south on the
Agrigento road.
 |
| The beautiful snaking ribbon of an empty motorway |
I thought we had plenty of time,
so we stopped for a coffee at the railway station at Ficuzza, a grand building, surrounded by scrub woodlands and backed
by a block of craggy mountains to the south.
This was a station on the Palermo
to Corleone line, a station used by the Royal family, who stayed at their palace
in the nearby village, in order to shoot anything that moved in the countryside
nearby. Nowadays there is not a rail in
sight, nor the toot of a passing train.
The station has become a bar and restaurant, a venue for weddings and
celebrations. Perhaps surprised to have
customers on this quiet spring week day, perhaps out of genuine good nature,
the barrista would not accept payment
for our drinks, and, marvelling at how that would never happen at home, we
pressed on for our appointment with the Associazione Corleone on Tour.
I thought we had plenty of
time. In my imagination (not entirely dispelled
by research) I saw Corleone as a sleepy, unattractive and empty village, where
parking would be easy, and reaching our appointment would be no problem.
 |
| Old Corleone |
I was right that the town is not exactly
beautiful, but quite wrong in
thinking it might be empty, or small, so finding a parking place, let alone our
appointment, was a mission. I had to
drive round the town twice and then give up and park on the periphery, which
meant a long hot dry and dusty walk to meet our guides for the TOUR MAFIA
ANTIMAFIA. We were late, but they had
waited, slightly anxiously, with another couple itching to get going.
 |
| Our Guides |
Thanks to The Godfather, everyone
knows of Corleone. However, what is not
so well known is that Corleone really has a sinister and violent history of
involvement with the mafia, and it was the home town of a number of convicted
members of mafia families in recent times, including Salvatore Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, who
were the most powerful men in Cosa Nostra at the end of the twentieth
century. Riina was caught, where he
lived untouched (for twenty years) in the centre of Palermo, in 1993, after a
career of drug trafficking, crooked building contracts, and murder; Provenzano,
nicknamed 'The Tractor' because of
his imperturbable methods of killing, was eventually caught in 2006, in a house
just outside Corleone, despite his lawyer's claim that he had died years
previously.
 |
| The house where Bernardo Provenzano was found |
Both these men are now serving multiple life sentences. Riina, who famously arranged mangiate (celebratory meals) for his victims - usually other mafiosi he had taken a dislike to - before strangling them, was the boss who ordered the deaths of the investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Provenzano, who took over from Riina, posed more as a sympathetic, business-orientated and religiously minded leader, but he was not soft-hearted, allegedly having murdered the doctor who treated him for prostate cancer, to avoid adverse publicity.
Our tour of the town includes
paying respect to Bernardino Verro, leader of the socialist peasant cooperative
in the early years of the 20th century.
In 1915 he was shot dead with five bullets to the body and five to the
head, and his corpse was left in the street as a warning to others.
We also pause by a bust of Placido Rizzotto, a veteran of wartime resistance and a trade union activist; he was taken out of the town and shot in the head by Luciano Leggio (also known as Liggio) on March 10th 1948. His body was disposed of in a deep ravine in the mountains between Corleone and Ficuzza, and lay there, mutilated and chained, for two years before being discovered. It was not until May 24th, 2012, however, that he was given a proper burial with state honours. In the meantime Leggio had taken under his wing the young Totò Riina, and Bernardo Provenzano.
We also pause by a bust of Placido Rizzotto, a veteran of wartime resistance and a trade union activist; he was taken out of the town and shot in the head by Luciano Leggio (also known as Liggio) on March 10th 1948. His body was disposed of in a deep ravine in the mountains between Corleone and Ficuzza, and lay there, mutilated and chained, for two years before being discovered. It was not until May 24th, 2012, however, that he was given a proper burial with state honours. In the meantime Leggio had taken under his wing the young Totò Riina, and Bernardo Provenzano.
 |
| Placido Rizzotto |
Further up the hill, in the old
town, we are shown the Laboratorio della
Legalita, which includes a shop selling produce from lands reclaimed from Cosa
Nostra (Riina's estate was said to be worth £125 million). The building belonged to Provenzano, as one
of many that he owned in the area, and also on display are paintings depicting
various infamous mafia crimes, including the kidnapping of J Paul Getty Junior,
and the assassinations of dalla Chiesa, Falcone, and Borsellino, to whom the
collection is dedicated.
 |
| Mafia - your silence kills as well |
What came next was not what I
expected. We walked out of the village,
and entered a small park - Il Parco Fluviale delle due Rocche (The River Park of the two Rocks [castles] -
as the notice says, surprisingly, in English) and we are taken to admire a fine
waterfall surrounded by wild Sicilian limestone country. The notice board tells us to expect a run among the wonder of mother nature and the
manufactured articles of the civilisations of the past..... and my admiration of the Corleonesi
begins to grow. Not only are we being
shown the horrors of the town's indelible association with the past, but they
are also proudly showing us the positive side of life. In respect for the illustrious corpses of
dead heroes, the Corleonesi are living up to Giovanni Falcone's sentence: He
who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so. He who speaks aloud
and walks with his head held high dies only once. Corleone may be a typical southern town, a
little scruffy perhaps, but it is not going to lie down and be killed by Cosa
Nostra, and it is going to show itself off in as much glory as it can muster.
Not far from the waterfall we
enter the church of the Monastero del
The town below is a patchwork of
red roofs and concrete; the river is channelled between steep walls, and the
streets are filled with cars, but our guides chatter on about holidays and
festivals, and their infectious smiles aren't false. Unemployment is high, as it is everywhere in
the south, and for some there may still be an attraction to criminal activity,
but the will to overcome tendencies to tacitly support the mafia is very clear. At number 7, Via Orfanotrofio, is the home of
C.I.D.M.A.
(Centro Internazionale di Documentazione
sulle Mafie e del Movimento Antimafia)
which holds the archives of the maxi-trial of mafiosi that took place in Palermo between February
10th, 1986 and December 16th, 1987. With
the help of revelations by Tommaso Buscetta, Magistrates Falcone and Borsellino
brought charges against 475 presumed mafiosi.
At the end of the trial 114 cases were dismissed, but a total of 19 life
sentences, 2665 years of prison and 11 and a half thousand million lire of
fines were imposed on the rest, some of them, including Riina and Provenzano, in absentia. The centre also has a permanent exhibition of
photographs of mafia-related deaths by Letizia Battaglia (who this year had a
show at Liverpool 's Open Eye Gallery) and a
room dedicated to Generale Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa. The centre's objectives are to promote
Culture, Progress and Legality, and to show visitors that Corleone is no longer
a town of Coppole
 |
| Corleone today |
Since the eventual arrests of
Riina and Provenzano Cosa Nostra has been relatively quiet, though the
traditional activities of extortion (the pizzo)
and drug trafficking continue without much change. But despite the graffiti the mafia does still exist. The 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra make more
headlines than Cosa Nostra, but Sicily
has not been purged and the anti-mafia movement needs support and publicity. Only last August, Totò Riina's daughter,
Lucia, defended her father and praised him as a devout catholic. Then, last December, Riina himself was
recorded in Milan 's Opera prison vowing mafia
vengeance against Palermo
prosecutor Nino Di Matteo and his colleagues; issuing a death threat, as a good
catholic would.
 |
| Just outside Corleone |
Before disappearing into a
witness protection scheme, and then dying in America , Tommaso Buscetta
reportedly accused Totò Riina of ruining Cosa Nostra. It is no longer Our Thing, he said; it is
now Their Thing (Cosa Loro). And other voices
repeat this; northern Italians say it is a thing
of the south, not our business. While
the opinion is understandable, it is much mistaken. Organised crime, especially that which
infiltrates politics, is an offence to democracy. Even today the details of the who arranged
the assassination of Falcone, his wife and escort are still unclear and the
probability that the state was involved cannot be ruled out. Even though Andreotti is dead, and Berlusconi
(perhaps) finished, the doubt about state complicity casts a shadow over all of
us, and not just in Italy . How close were the ties between Blair, Bush
and Berlusconi? As Paolo Borsellino said
at the funeral of his friend Giovanni Falcone, just two months before his own
death, La lotta alla mafia.... non
doveva essere soltanto una distaccata opera di repressione, ma un movimento
culturale e morale che coinvolgesse tutti e specialmente le giovani
generazioni..... [The struggle with the mafia.... should not be just a
cold repressive act, but a cultural and moral movement which involves everyone,
most especially the young.....]
 |
| The Politics of Waste. Paradise Lost |
Corleone may not be the most
attractive spot in Sicily ,
and perhaps making the trip might call for specialist interest, but it is a
place that stands for resistance to stereotype, and integrity of purpose, and
for that alone, it is worth the visit. It
is to be hoped that one day the graffiti La mafia non esiste! will be scrawled across walls without any ambiguity.....
 |
| I have a confession to make..... |
 |
| Totò Riina |
No comments:
Post a Comment