A-Infos (en) Italy, FAS Sicilia Libertaria: Criscione review - The fascist massacre of 29 May 1921 in Modica (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Giovanni Criscione's study on the "Modica massacre" of 29 May 1921 has 
just been published by Sicilia Punto L, a work that tries to shed light 
on the fascist ambush in the Passogatta area against a socialist 
procession. ---- That day the demonstrators came from the countryside, a 
safe place where they had been able to meet and listen to the speeches 
of various speakers, from the mayor Vayola, to the former councilor 
Agosta to the anarchist farmer Carmelo Pollara, leader of the league. 
One of those assemblies in which entire families met, united by a common 
feeling in an atmosphere that was half celebration and half struggle.

The gathering in the fields, in the valley from which the roads to Noto 
and Giarratana branch off, about 3 km from the town centre, was also due 
to the need to move away from a city prey to the violence established by 
the fascists who now dominated Modica and throughout the surrounding area.

The mayors and socialist administrations of almost all the 
municipalities of the future province of Ragusa had been forced to 
resign at gunpoint; the socialist and peasant league headquarters had 
been attacked and destroyed everywhere. Deaths and injuries had already 
occurred in Vittoria, Comiso, Ragusa, Scicli, Pozzallo without those 
responsible for the violence having been prosecuted, enjoying the 
protection of the police, carabinieri and judiciary, who had regularly 
reported and arrested socialist exponents.

In South Eastern Sicily, the strength of the socialist and trade union 
movement had achieved numerous conquests, alarming the dominant classes: 
first of all the landowners and their banks, the upper bourgeoisie who 
were entrepreneurs or dedicated to the liberal professions, privileged 
castes and rich heirs who they could feel the breath of their 
subordinates marching towards a long-awaited recovery. Hence the 
financing of fascist squads made up of violent and unscrupulous men. In 
a land where there were no gabellotti or campieri to do the dirty work 
against the peasants, as happened in other provinces of the island where 
the mafia defended the rich from the peasant and worker masses, it was 
necessary to invent the armed militias, rounding up and arming the worst 
scum, willing to carry out the most heinous violence, up to political 
murder. In this, Iblean fascism had nothing to envy that of Romagna.

On May 29th, the Carabinieri were blocking the path of the socialist 
column, made up of around 3000 people, including women and children, but 
behind them, in the adjacent alleys, on the balconies and on the roofs 
of the first houses in Modica Alta they were stationed the squadristi, 
who did not hesitate to shoot into the crowd, causing the death of 9 
people and the wounding of several dozen. A massacre announced by the 
signals that emerged in the previous days, by the continuous 
provocations, by the spies who followed the parade. A group of 
demonstrators wanted to avoid that procession, but the mass isolated 
them, not wanting to give in to the threats.

The subtitle of Giovanni Criscione's book is "An unsolved case from a 
hundred years ago". In fact, if the general dynamics of the events are 
clear, the reconstructions given by the press and the police reports are 
extremely confusing, and which had an influence on the trials that 
followed the massacre. Criscione's work can therefore be considered a 
retrospective investigation into the archives and among the trial 
papers, newspaper articles, testimonies collected at the time but also 
up to the 1990s; and it is through this material that we can deduce the 
complicity of the police and the judiciary with the attackers, the 
clouding or disappearance of the evidence, which contributed to that 
massacre going down in history as the result of a violent clash provoked 
by the socialists against defenseless "citizens". In fact, eight 
socialist exponents and three fascists ended up in prison and on trial. 
After a long judicial process, on 20 December 1922, all but two were 
acquitted, but the question of who was responsible for the murder of the 
9 workers was not resolved.

The one in Modica was neither the only nor the last of the massacres, in 
Sicily as elsewhere, which ended without culprits, thanks to which the 
path to the fascist regime was paved.

Criscione's book is precious not only for the meticulous examination of 
the events of May 29, but for the accurate study of the general and 
local historical context; for the description of places and characters 
involved in the massacre; for the focus on the misdirections and 
manipulations that allowed for 100 years such a tragic episode, 
certainly the most serious among the many mournful events that affected 
the province of Syracuse, to remain shrouded in mystery.

Because the same number of the dead, their names, their biographies, 
were shrouded in doubt and oblivion and laboriously stitched together 
and returned to historical memory by Criscione, creator of a posthumous 
act of truth and justice, in a historical period like the current one in 
which many parties, including ministerial seats, are trying to restore 
luster to the twenty years and its turbulent debut, they are trying to 
revise history and repackage fascism for the use and consumption of 
today's reactionary interests. A wide-ranging operation that goes from 
schools to the armed forces, from toponymy to publishing, from prisons 
to courts, from anti-migrant racism to street parades.

Books like this represent the bricks of the wall that anti-fascism today 
must raise against the growing dogma that is a harbinger of other and 
always possible authoritarian adventures.

Pippo Gurrieri

Giovanni Criscione, The Modica massacre (29 May 1921). An unsolved case 
from a hundred years ago, Sicilia Punto L, History/interventions series 
n.42, pages. 200, euro 14.00. For information: info@sicilialibertaria.it

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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