A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Libertaria: The missed ransom. Journey into the issues of the South and Sicily. (21) - Pippo Gurrieri (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

LATEST FIRES OF REBELLION ---- The mass of southern proletarians who 
poured into the North in the 60s and 70s caused an earthquake in the 
industrial-union discipline of the factories. Bearer of interests that 
go beyond purely trade union and salary ones, she suffers from the 
hardship of living conditions in metropolises; considers existential 
issues inseparable from workers' rights; manifests intolerance of 
discipline, both in the factory and in the unions; it transfers southern 
rebelliousness to the industrial world, undermines traditional methods 
of struggle and undermines bureaucracies. It imposes the recomposition 
between life and work that will condition the decade of maximum conflict 
in the industrial North. Southern emigrants instinctively reject the 
possibilities of integration offered by the system, which hide their 
cultural and social disintegration; it is no coincidence that in those 
contexts where the possibilities of a return are more effective, the 
conflict of the southerners becomes exasperated and uncontrollable (1).

If emigration is partly about escape, it is also a transitory choice to 
escape the blackmail of the parasitic and mafia classes, the clientelism 
and welfare that backwardness and underdevelopment have strengthened. 
The "deportation" to the North allows a progressive loosening of the 
blackmail dynamics, an economic improvement and, with the remittances of 
the emigrants, a stability of the Southern system in terms of 
consumption and imports, with the acquisition of small portions of 
well-being. Many emigrants develop a new political consciousness in the 
struggles, which can be the basis for change once they return "down". 
But things changed with the defeat of the struggles in the North 
starting from 1980, as well as with the toxicity inherent in the 
acquisition of relative well-being.

In Sicily, as we have seen, the industrialization effect manages to 
partially extinguish rebelism and independence claims or channels them 
into the compatibilities of capitalist and colonialist social peace. 
Thus we return to demolishing and canceling the Southern Question, while 
with the progressive advent of neoliberalism, new anti-Southern 
prejudices emerge; the Northern League, the Northern Question and 
"Northern separatism" begin to assert themselves. The preparations for 
European unity accentuate the peripherality of areas of the continent 
(still limited to the western part) already marginalized by internal 
colonialism: "The absurdity for us Sicilians lies in the fact that the 
imperialist economic/political power persists in projecting our 
destiny/future in a northerly direction, one way, when our scope is the 
Mediterranean, including North Africa and Asia Minor, where the island 
could find a role and an outlet" (2).

An underdeveloped land of conquest and robbery, in Sicily, with the 
local bourgeoisie and the big names in industry and finance, a mafia 
bourgeoisie operates dedicated to the accumulation of capital thanks to 
its proximity to political power and its involvement in the institutions 
, to its ability to ensure social peace, thanks to a consensus fueled 
both by the levels of welfare deriving from the control of important 
slices of the economy, thanks mainly to the proceeds of drugs, and by 
having capitalized on the aversion of the popular masses towards the 
State. The mafia in this historical moment certainly represents not the 
anti-State, as some claim, but the State itself in its central, regional 
and territorial articulations. The mafia welfare system in some 
provinces is more efficient and widespread than the state one, and the 
only bloody actions are those of the ferocious war between the various 
factions to ensure control of the top of Cosa Nostra and its trafficking 
and business. When a politician is hit it is because he has not fully 
done his duty as "pupo" of the mafiosi, or to send a signal to the 
parties. The "pax mafia" allows Cosa Nostra to govern almost all the 
economic processes of the island, to control the territory, to dictate 
laws to governments.

It is difficult to oppose the suffocating cloak of terror and silence, 
of consensus and complicity. Peppino Impastato tried, with his Radio Aut 
group, in Cinisi, and we know how it went: killed and then blown up in 
1978. Before him Giovanni Spampinato, journalist of "L'Ora", in Ragusa 
in October 1972 he was killed because he put his finger on the affairs 
between neo-fascists and smugglers. Two years earlier, Mario De Mauro, 
also a journalist for "L'Ora" was made disappear in Palermo; a year 
after Impastato it was the turn of Mario Francese of the "Giornale di 
Sicilia", also in Palermo. The fight against the mafia seems to be a 
matter for a few "heroes". The trail of blood will continue with Pippo 
Fava (of "I Siciliani", Catania 1984), Mauro Rostagno (of the 
broadcaster RTC, Valderice 1988), Beppe Alfano (of "La Sicilia", 
Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto 1993). Meanwhile, the anti-mafia of the 
institutions was born based on the misunderstanding of the healthy 
forces of the State as a bulwark against the mafia octopus. Over time it 
will channel youth energies and masses into the misunderstanding of 
bourgeois legality. In the meantime, the mafia changes its skin and 
continues to be an (honorable) society within society.

But the precarious balance that welfare, the mafia, mass media 
terrorism, the church and the party system pursue is put to the test by 
a series of facts that characterize the first 4 years of the 1980s: the 
popular masses enter the scene , and, without asking permission, they 
pose their priority problems in an insurrectional manner, with 
spontaneous, local, time-limited riots. But so strong and sensational 
that they were almost erased from the news.

At the end of the post-1968 decade, all attention was focused on 
terrorism; it seems that beyond armed groups there is no longer any 
space for popular struggles. Instead, the sharpest denials come from 
Sicily. Here, apart from the anti-anarchist raids in the spring of 1980 
in Catania, Syracuse and Palermo, there was no sound of terrorism. But 
the homeless people of Catania are brutally charged and arrested in the 
same weeks. The water crisis causes the explosion of the revolts in 
Palagonia, Castel di Judica and Ramacca in April. In Palagonia the crowd 
lashed out at the town hall, burning part of it, setting fire to the 
party headquarters, the clubs and the municipal tax office; water is 
important when it is missing for too long, but it is also the pretext to 
rebel against a situation of abandonment, exploitation, degradation and 
political-mafia corruption rooted over time. It is no coincidence that 
the mayor and socialist boss Fagone was at that time a fugitive. In the 
events of Palagonia, the role of mediator of the PCI stands out, which, 
with one foot between the rioters and the other outside, manages, better 
than the police and the carabinieri, to slowly strangle the rebellion. 
Note the absence of fascist exploitation. The protagonism of farmers, 
women and young people is significant. (3)

In '81 it was again the issue of water that caused popular barricades 
and clashes in Leonforte, Balestrate, San Giuseppe Jato, Riesi (the town 
hall was occupied), Sommatino, and the refusal, even violent, to pay the 
bills in Aidone, Pietraperzia, Butera , Trappeto, Riesi, Vallelunga. One 
of the objectives is to eliminate the corrupt and inefficient Sicilian 
Aqueduct Authority in favor of the municipal management of the water 
service.

In 1983 another major riot exploded in Grammichele, against the sealing 
of illegal (workers') housing sites and the building crisis in a country 
dominated by bosses of the caliber of Attaguile (DC) and Morello (PRI). 
On March 17, the council chamber was destroyed, the ballot box was 
thrown at Mayor Scacciante's head, some offices were devastated, and 
numerous fists were thrown at the mayor and the commander of the 
Carabinieri. (4)

In November it's Gela's turn, the city of ENI-ANIC. 5000 proletarians 
attack and devastate the town hall, set fire to offices, throw furniture 
and documents from the windows and then set it on fire. The industrial 
peace jumps in the face of the degradation and poverty of the working 
classes, the constant threats of closure of the factory and the building 
crisis, linked here too to the seizure of illegal constructions largely 
by workers and emigrants. Some construction entrepreneurs are also 
fanning the flames, the fact is that the angry masses are demanding the 
revocation of the seizures of the construction sites and the release of 
those arrested. (5) One year later the investigations will lead to 51 
arrest warrants with 33 arrests (6).

In December in nearby Licata the crowd occupied the town hall and the 
station and set up barricades along the state road 115, again due to the 
construction crisis and the blockade of construction sites.

Not isolated episodes, therefore, but a widespread popular anger that 
finds anti-institutional outlets according to a tradition of revolts 
against the symbols of local power but also of the enemy state. Revolts 
that undermine categorical cages, unify class interests in the clash 
without mediators. The themes: water, home, work, are atavistic ones of 
the subaltern condition, and it is evident that behind them lies the 
need to give vent to humiliations and exploitation without interruption 
for generations. "The revolts - I wrote 40 years ago (7) - need these 
pretexts almost as a self-justification, a self-legitimation, to express 
violence more decisively against a system of life, of exploitation, of 
dependence on the "Piedmontese" (" we call all our enemies Piedmontese", 
from the Iron Prefect), who by dint of surges and grips can only provoke 
the "legitimate" reaction". And again: "The town hall becomes a symbol 
of state domination and therefore becomes the No. 1 objective of the 
revolt; it, far from demarcating the local limit, underlines the breadth 
of views, the political capacity of the class (one hundred years after 
Proudhon), the eternal libertarian aversion to power, its being "Against 
the State and Against Politics".

The fact that this atavistic aversion ended up under the crawlers of new 
mediations and delegations, of repression and toleration of the 
subaltern condition, is not new. Otherwise we would be writing another 
story today.

Pippo Gurrieri

continues

notes Pippo Gurrieri, Emigration and social liberation. Integration, 
dis-integration, action. Followed by The struggles of immigrant railway 
workers for transfers, Sicilia Punto L, Ragusa, 1986.

Europa, editorial of n.8 of Sicilia libertarian, March 1979.

The flames of Palagonia against one hundred years of colonialism, with 
comments and a long interview with a protagonist, Libertarian Sicily n. 
14, August 1980.

Grammichele's revolt, libertarian Sicily n. 23, June 1983.

Pippo Gurrieri, The popular anger of Gela, Libertarian Sicily n. 25, 
January 1984.

Today, libertarian Sicily n. 28, July-August 1984.

Pippo Gurrieri, Against the State and Politics. The popular revolt in 
the 80s, libertarian Sicily n. 26, March 1984.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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