A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #471 - HISTORY. Giovanni Millimaggi, anti-fascist and libertarian communist from Sicily (2) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In 1935, he returned to Ponza and was reunited with his family. In 1936, 
while in Messina, where he was accompanied to visit his eldest daughter, 
who was seriously ill, he received notification that he had completed 
his confinement imposed on him in 1933. However, he was placed on the 
list of people to be arrested under certain circumstances. In the city 
on the Strait of Messina, Millimaggi resumed his legal practice and 
contacted his anti-fascist friends. He participated in their clandestine 
meetings. During the visit of the Duce to the city, Millimaggi was taken 
to prison as a precaution, as required by the precautionary legislation 
that governed him.

In 1937, he was accused of defeatist activities and of celebrating May 
Day. After being transferred to the city prison, he was sentenced to 
another four years of confinement in Ponza, where he arrived on August 
4th. In 1938, he was again accused of celebrating May Day and sentenced 
to two months in prison in the island's district prison. In 1938, 
Millimaggi was transferred from Ponza to Amantea, Calabria. In 1939, for 
his anti-war propaganda, he was transferred again to Spezzano della 
Sila. In 1940, for further acts of disobedience and clashes with border 
authorities, he was transferred again to Carolei, in Calabria. His 
ordeal did not end there. It is worth noting his subsequent transfers to 
Venosa, Basilicata, in 1941, coinciding with the end of his confinement, 
as an "internee," and in 1942, to Lagonegro (p. 123), also in Lucania, 
as a "dangerous subversive." At the end of the same year, he was 
authorized to return to Messina with the rest of his family. Meanwhile, 
his wife Maria Cristina's health had deteriorated, leading to her death.

The planned transfer to Ventotene on January 22, 1943, was revoked due 
to his advanced age, and Millimaggi was released, although he still had 
a warning against him. He served a total of approximately eight years in 
confinement and prison. As a communist, he embraced independence ideas, 
adopting his own original federalist stance. In 1944, he founded the 
Sicilian Communist Party, which published a single issue, 
"L'Indipendenza Siciliana," on January 1 of the same year, which 
enunciated its program: "that of the Sicilian people who wish to decide 
their own destiny" (p. 130). Further programmatic declarations read: 
"Sicilian communists work for the establishment of an independent and 
democratic Sicilian Republic, which would allow the formation, with the 
island's industrial development, of a proletariat aligned with the 
international proletariat for common struggles, common conquests" (p. 131).

In 1946, the Sicilian Communist Party dissolved, and Millimaggi was 
elected to the Messina city council in the local elections of the same 
year on the Italian Communist Party's ticket. However, conflicts with 
the federation's leadership soon emerged, leading to his expulsion, 
along with another city councilor, in May 1947, on charges of 
"factionalism." Once again, the libertarian component of Giovanni 
Millimaggi's communist thought emerged, a concept that could not be 
harnessed by "democratic centralism," which became "bureaucratic 
centralism," that is, the subjugation of the party to the will of a 
group of bureaucrats who, as the ruling elite, replaced the overall body 
represented by members and supporters, who ultimately were stripped of 
all decision-making power. Thus, he completed his council term outside 
the party. He died one morning in August 1953. A large and emotional 
crowd attended his funeral, paying homage to the courageous fighter who 
was always consistent with his ideas of libertarian communism.

In our opinion, we cannot share the dismissive and reductive judgement 
given by Giuseppe Carlo Marino in his Storia del separatismo siciliano 
(Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1979) regarding Giovanni Millimaggi's Sicilian 
Communist Party, which is defined as «a scattered formation, and of 
little importance as regards the degree of its possibilities of 
development», an expression of the «semi-clandestine work» (p. 108) of 
Antonio Canepa, which cannot even be considered «a fraction, 
secessionist and "rebel"» (p. 109) which feels betrayed by the 
Togliattian turn in Salerno, but rather a confused mixture of Sicilian 
«fanaticism», which seeks to exploit, thanks to the action of «mediocre 
agitators», the «social and cultural drama of the backwardness» (ibidem) 
of the urban sub-proletarian classes, and of «worker internationalism» 
(ibidem), an unseasoned soup which combines, as «ingredients», in the 
same cauldron, Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile, Lenin and Stalin (ibidem).

This judgment is unfair and superficial. The devastating results of the 
"regionalism" that underlies the Italian Constitutional Charter and 
which finds its consecration in the Sicilian Special Statute, must push 
us, instead, to begin a reflection on the theoretical positions of 
Giovanni Millimaggi and, on a broader level, of Finocchiaro Aprile, 
Canepa and the other independence leaders, as well as of the anarchist 
and libertarian movements that have operated over the decades on the 
island, not to accept and re-propose them slavishly, or to operate a 
summation between them, but rather to delve into, in all its complexity 
and articulation, the question of the institutional structure to be 
given to the entire country and, in particular, to Sicily, and of the 
possible "federalist" solution, without schematisms and without 
pretending to reduce the entire dynamic of "independence" and 
"Sicilianism" to the Mafia contaminations that certainly occurred during 
the historical experience that matured in the immediate post-war period 
in the land of Trinacria, but to which we cannot to assign an 
all-encompassing role.

Antonio Catalfamo

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/luglioAgosto2026_compressed.pdf
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en