A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: 1968 redemption of blood, anger and struggle (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

1968 opens and ends in Sicily: the Belice earthquake and the Avola 
massacre are its beginning and epilogue. ---- The island had begun to 
taste the fruits of modernization (refrigerators, televisions, cars, 
meat consumption), but in twenty years its population had shrunk by 
11.1%, and the gap with Northern regions had grown. ---- In Belice a 
laboratory of initiatives, struggles, socio-cultural and educational 
experiences had been active since 1952, driven by the stimuli of Danilo 
Dolci and the volunteers involved in this path of rebirth and its 
methods of struggle (fasting, nonviolent marches) linked to the 
traditional reverse strikes; the battles for the Bruca and Jato dams, 
for housing, against emigration (with reforestation and cooperatives) 
had awakened the communities. A movement of popular committees and study 
centers had placed the Jato, Belice and Carboj valleys at the center of 
national attention for its tough battles, arrests and trials. A small 
corner of Sicily was planning its own redemption and setting itself as 
an example for the whole island and beyond.

But on 14 and 15 January a series of violent tremors completely 
destroyed the inhabited centers of Gibellina, Montevago, Salaparuta, 
Poggioreale, and damaged dozens more, causing 296 deaths, a thousand 
injuries and 100,000 homeless people; in the following period hundreds 
of survivors will fall ill due to the lack of assistance, medicines, 
nearby hospitals, doctors, so much so that the real figure of victims 
will reach a thousand; we will talk about a "state earthquake", due to 
the vulnerability of homes and the conditions of the survivors of the 
catastrophe, the causes of which are called underdevelopment, 
abandonment, exclusion, political-economic-mafia power. Against all 
this, protests and spontaneous forms of organization began immediately, 
canceled out by the regime's information. First Aldo Moro descends from 
Rome, with his baggage of promises in a land in which his party had 
always disgoverned, and then the President of the Republic Giuseppe 
Saragat, welcomed with a slap as soon as he gets off the helicopter by 
the commoner of Montevago Tina Longhand.

The earthquake victims, mostly farmers, know that they have to fight to 
get help. They try to go to Rome on March 1st, but in Palermo the train 
is canceled because "on the Strait priority must be given to freight 
trains loaded with oranges". The network of committees is rebuilt, 
manages aid, sets up mobilisations, and the valleys once again become 
sites of grassroots organization without parties and against the absent 
State. Piero Riggio writes in "L'Agitazione del Sud" (1) after praising 
the committees of Dolci, Barbera and the population: "The earthquake put 
so much fear in us, but it made us touch the coldness of this monster 
with our hands which is the State, has confirmed us in our ideas and we 
hope that the earthquakes will contribute to intimately shaking our 
farmers, our populations and awakening them from the deep lethargy into 
which they have fallen".

From Belice 10,000 people will emigrate to the North; 16,000 will 
remain in tent cities. A singular episode occurs on January 29th: the 
emigrant trains are blocked at the Swiss border which doesn't want them 
at that moment.

The students of Partanna are fighting for the reconstruction of the 
schools destroyed by the earthquake, while in Sicilian schools and 
universities they organize themselves as throughout Italy and Europe; on 
8 March in Catania violent clashes between the student movement and the 
police forces; in Palermo the protest spreads like wildfire and sexual 
repression and social violence are discussed in schools; the protest 
spreads to the workplace: thousands of workers at El.Si (Elettronica 
Siciliana), a US-owned factory, occupy the plant for a month against the 
attempted closure and layoffs. It is a struggle surrounded by the 
solidarity of workers and students, which will force the mayor to 
requisition the factory and keep it in business. In the Syracuse area, 
the workers of the industrial area have been fighting for the contract 
since March: it will last 4 months and will end with the signature by 
the owners of Rasiom-Esso, Italcementi, Sincat-Edison; in Messina three 
high schools are occupied (La Farina for 10 days) and then the 
University; here right-wing students mix with the occupations and the 
beating of left-wing militants is the order of the day, covered by 
openly fascist members of the Police Headquarters and by the newspaper 
"Gazzetta del Sud".

In May the flowers of '68 bloom everywhere; in Partanna 5000 
proletarians from Belice demonstrate as part of the "day of local 
pressure" against the governments of Rome and Palermo. On the 12th the 
first official outing of the Catania anarchists with a conference by 
Placido La Torre on power and the national and international situation; 
their monthly magazine "L'Agitazione del Sud" gives ample space to the 
Parisian revolt and the Sicilian situation. On 3 June in Palermo, 
violent police aggression against workers demonstrating for wages and 
the defense of local industries: 15,000 are on strike, of which 3,500 at 
the Cantiere Navale, 1,800 at Espi industries, 1,040 at El.Si, 2,000 
garbage collectors and 7,000 municipal. On 14 July an agreement was 
imposed on Piaggio which broke the salary cages.

Demonstrations by farmers affected by the earthquake take place in 
Salemi and Mazara del Vallo to protest against the precariousness of the 
agricultural sector. The anarchist from Salemi Melchiorre Palermo 
comments on the stalemate of the situation in the earthquake-stricken 
areas on "L'Agitazione del Sud" (2): "What was the purpose of the 'human 
blockades' in the streets, the 'general strikes', mostly exploited by 
the false shepherds of our local trade unionism, the exhausting trips of 
the mayors to Rome and Palermo, sometimes greeted by truncheons and tear 
gas bombs? We can't continue like this. It is good to convince ourselves 
that something can only be achieved with direct action, violent if 
necessary, without allowing ourselves to be put to sleep by the 
procrastination of parties and unions. This is why while we remember the 
dead, we spur the living to act."

In the summer months, an alternative reconstruction model for the 
earthquake-stricken areas, the "Democratic Development Plan", was 
developed by Danilo Dolci's group; 10,000 march in Palermo on 10 July in 
the "march of the forgotten": women, old people and children are 
violently attacked for over half an hour with truncheons and tear gas, 
the marchers react by throwing bottles, stones and unexploded tear gas 
canisters at the police. The next day, the reporter from "L'Unità" 
wrote: "A woman whose husband is in Germany, with a two-month-old baby 
in her arms, falls. A policeman squeezes her neck until he suffocates 
her; I'm a few steps away and I grab the screaming little girl while her 
companion Ludovico Corrao barely frees the woman from her senseless 
fury. A Carabinieri non-commissioned officer aims at a boy with stones 
as big as a glass... The victims are chased and beaten bloody all the 
way down to the Quattro Canti, half a kilometer towards the sea... A 
policeman repeatedly and violently bangs his head against a boy from 
Gibellina the ramparts".

The "50 days of pressure" begins on September 15th in the Belice, Carboj 
and Jato valleys for the implementation of "urgent" relief efforts and 
for the control of expenses incurred. Until November 4th there will be a 
succession of meetings, demonstrations, press conferences, 3 fasts, a 
delegation in Rome and 3 in Palermo, discussions on the development 
plan, a procession for the new dam. To those who for years have 
supported the toxic narrative of passive Sicilian earthquake victims, 
waiting for state handouts, in the face of the more alert populations of 
other earthquakes (Friuli 1976, Emilia Romagna 2012), these chronicles 
and the following ones demonstrate a reactivity, a planning and 
commendable levels of organisation.

In the autumn the first extra-parliamentary groups entered the scene 
(Falcemartello in Catania, Siracusa and Lentini) and the anarchists 
(with the Center for Studies on Nonviolence in Catania). The fight at 
the "Parlatore" technical institute explodes in Palermo; the police raid 
the school; the same happened in Messina in the occupied university 
faculties, with dozens of arrests: in protest the rector and the deans 
of all the faculties (except the Magisterium) resigned.

In Roccamena, in Belice, the "popular trial" of the government and 
parliament is being held by the local Study Center; for three days the 
peasant population expresses itself in a mature manner against the 
enemies of the people; the situation is ready for a qualitative leap in 
the clash, but this causes a rift between Dolci and Barbera, with the 
former against raising it and the latter determined to do so; a unique 
opportunity to put the State under pressure is lost. (3)

The student autumn is hot: in Palermo on November 1st in Engineering a 
general strike is proclaimed against repression, for the unity of the 
movement, for the requisition of premises, school buildings, the right 
to assembly; on the 5th 10,000 march, the next day 15,000. In the same 
days the movement of the Syracusan laborers against the arrogance of the 
landowners gained strength; calls for wage increases, the elimination of 
the differences between the area of citrus groves and that of 
traditional crops, the equalization of working hours, the application of 
the agreements of 1966, when the workers of Lentini were savagely beaten 
by the police, as already in '63 it happened to those of Avola. Since 
November 24, 32,000 workers have been crossing their arms in the 
provincial general strike; the agrarians, with their reactionary 
Farmers' Union, refuse to negotiate; on the 28th the state road 115 is 
partially blocked, an action that becomes more frequent given the wall 
of landowners; on December 1st the protest spreads and on the 2nd in 
Avola there is a city strike in which the entire population 
participates: the laborers occupy the state road, joined by students and 
at lunchtime, by their families. The police force arriving from Catania 
receives the order to load: 25 minutes of carousels with the trucks, 
shots fired at eye level leave Angelo Sigona and Giuseppe Scibilia on 
the ground, 48 are injured; 2 kg of shell casings will be collected. At 
midnight the Minister of the Interior orders the resumption of 
negotiations and on the 3rd the landowners reluctantly sign the contract.

The events in Avola were followed by an immediate reaction throughout 
the country, and a general strike on the island; very violent clashes 
with the police take place in the mining area of Villarosa; there is a 
procession in Avola; thousands of students protest in Rome, in Trento 
the university is occupied, in Genoa a bomb explodes near the municipal 
offices, and on the 4th the demonstrators attempt to occupy the 
Prefecture; demonstrations take place everywhere, and even RAI workers 
contest the biased way in which the news presented the facts. On 8 
December in front of the Scala in Milan a thick throw of eggs and 
persimmons hits the bourgeois in furs, a sign reads "The laborers of 
Avola wish you good fun"; on the 11th more clashes in Lecce, La Spezia 
and Syracuse; on December 31st there is a protest in front of the 
Viareggio Bussola called by anarchists and Potere Operaio; amidst 
spitting and insults to the bourgeois, we shout: "The laborers of Avola 
wish you a happy new year". Soriano Ceccanti, hit by police fire, will 
remain paralyzed for life. (4)

68 speaks tragically Sicilian in a climate of revolt and desire for 
redemption; but the third way is also looming, emigration: in the year 
242,881 Sicilians leave the island, 143,000 move to Northern Italy and 
99,000 abroad. (5).

Pippo Gurrieri

Piero Riggio, Bitterness and disappointments - Sicily after the 
earthquake, "The Agitation of the South", Palermo, February 1968.

Melchiorre Palermo, Time stopped in Salemi, "The Agitation of the 
South", Palermo, July-August 1968.

Fiorella Cagnoni, Valle del Belice, state earthquake, Moizzi, Milan 
1976, p. 184-185.

Giuseppe Oddo, The mirage of the earth in Sicily. From the Allied 
landing to the disappearance of the fireflies (1943-1969), Istituto 
Poligrafico Europeo, Palermo 2021, p. 567-570.

For the drafting of this article I used largely my Il 68 in Sicilia 
published in the special "The window" of Sicilia libertaria n. 58, 
September 1988.

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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