#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #SICILIA #LIBRARY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy #Sicilia Libertaria November 22: redemption - The Municipality of Palermo, 16-22 September 1866 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The picture of the first 6 years of Sicily's annexation to the Piedmontese state

is that of a no-holds-barred civil war; thousands of Sicilians are in hiding or
in jail for the massive refusal of military service; the political opposition,
especially the most radical, is opposed by all means by the Piedmontese
government, which fears the outbreak of new insurrections and, for preventive
purposes, raises and represses, of which General Medici and Prefect Gualterio are
responsible; in one of these in mid-1865, Giuseppe Badia, Giovanni Corrao's heir,
was arrested. ---- As Natale Musarra writes, "The disaffection of the Sicilians
no longer resided as in the past in the intolerance of the noble and bourgeois
classes, who even unconsciously blew the fire, but in the lack of correspondence
to the growing needs of a population that, having participated in the first
person to a decisive revolution and having become aware of it, he was now openly
claiming his part and his rights. The class struggle progressed. The reforms
promised by Garibaldi had vanished, certainly not because of his demerit; the
provisions that alleviated misery and poverty in the Bourbon era - from civic
customs to the assistance of religious corporations - had been cornered by the
central state; unpopular measures such as the draft or the imposition of new
taxes had increased social inequalities. All this, combined with the
disillusionment caused by the course of the war against Austria, had brought to
maturity an insurrectionary project cultivated since the Aspromonte expedition by
Giovanni Corrao, and then, after the assassination of these probably by the
government, by his most faithful Giuseppe Badia. " (1)

A general state of misery, unemployment, oppression prevailed; the law on the
so-called manomorte would have allowed the Piedmontese state to grab
ecclesiastical assets. The war on Austria had unleashed a harsh campaign against
the "defeatists" with massive and arbitrary arrests; the indiscriminate use of
the admonition, the high cost of living, the dismissals, the betrayal of the
promises of economic and infrastructural development, were the ingredients of an
explosive situation on which the Bourbon and clerical elements also blew. But
there is no doubt that the idea of ​​an anti-monarchist and anti-Savoyard
revolution for the establishment of a social republic had a strong popular
connotation (2). In Palermo and in the neighboring countries, groups composed
mainly of old foremen forged in the anti-Bourbon and Garibaldi uprisings, but
also by subjects with a "lively and passionate temperament", planned in detail
the subversive act, which should have taken off in Palermo and then spread in the
whole island. The hills around the city from the end of August 1866 at night
shone with fires to signal that the hour was near. Already in the summer months
both in the capital and in the surrounding villages, various "tasting" actions
had taken place. On the other hand, the mafia bourgeoisie and some Mazzinian
exponents gathered around the army. (3)

At dawn on September 16, a first group of rebels showed up in Via Maqueda waving
the red flag, defeated the troops of the various checkpoints and headed for the
centers of political and military power. In short, other groups arrived from the
popular neighborhoods and from outside the city, bringing the number of
insurgents to about 20,000. It was the "crowd of beggars", "almost all men of low
social origin, mostly belonging to the classes of the proletariat-crafts of the
city or to the peasantry" (4). Once the headquarters of the insurrection has been
established, the mouse (the cop) is hunted throughout the city, while the assault
on the Ucciardone prison is tried several times, but in vain, to free the over
2,500 prisoners, already in turmoil for days and in particular Giovanni Badia;
failure to achieve this goal will be fatal to the outcome of the riot. On the
third day, the rebels have the city in their hands, except for the fort of
Castellammare, the Royal Palace, the Palace of Finance and the prison. The
government appoints General Raffaele Cadorna "Royal Commissioner with
extraordinary powers for the City and the Province of Palermo", a position that
he will assume by abundantly abusing his mandate; several military ships arrive
that bomb the places of the revolt and land entire battalions that gradually
occupy the city intertwining furious battles with those who were described as
"brigands" and pro-Bourbons, and who, after seven and a half days, will be
defeated. Cadorna and the government with the "brilliant victory" over the
Municipality of Palermo, took their revenge after the defeats of Custoza and
Lissa in the war with the Habsburg Empire (5).
Most of the insurgent teams will resume the mountain path unscathed and ready for
new attempts.

For Musarra "Compared to the previous uprisings, the" revolution of seven and a
half "presents three main novelties: the first is that it remained confined to
Palermo alone (although prepared in various other places, it aborted there); the
second is that it is an insurrection against the Savoy (but not against the unity
of Italy) rather than against the Bourbons; the third is its socialist character,
given by the political project and the ideas professed by the organizers. It was
this last aspect that attracted and involved in the struggle also regionists
(federalists), clericals, ancient Bourbons and generally disappointed by the
politics of the new kingdom "(6).

Of the same opinion is Alatri (7), who writes: "Almost all of these leaders,
passed off as Bourbon and clerical, had a revolutionary, unitary and patriotic
past, and this remained their orientation and in this sense they also carried out
political action after the motion of '66 ".

It was debated whether the movement had a headless characteristic, that is, it
lacked heads; Alatri (8) favors this position, despite listing the names of those
who, among nobles, bourgeois, clericals, made up (some, it seems, forcibly) the
Revolutionary Committee, chaired by the Prince of Linguaglossa, while its
secretary was Francesco Bonafede, that the papers of General Medici will define
"one of the most influential leaders of the anarchist uprisings of 1866", who,
managed to escape the raid and, having gone to Trieste, had continued to conspire
on the basis of clear republican ideas, and for this he will be arrested and
sentenced to five months in harsh prison. On the contrary, according to Giuseppe
Oddo "20,000 men could never have arrived in Palermo without an ordering mind"
(9); Sandro Attanasio is of the same opinion: "It was not a headless revolt, as
was later said, but a Revolution that sought and wanted its own 'order'" (9). The
order, on the other hand, was re-established by the army, with a new state of
siege (the third in six years) of three months, followed by a long period of
exceptional measures, arrests, executions, harassment, deportations to the
prisons-fortresses of the North. . At the Ucciardone two months after the events
the inmates had risen to 3,539.

In Sicily there was "a widespread state of protest and revolt against six years
of bad governance, which had not only worsened the conditions of the working
class and the white-collar petty bourgeoisie, but also alienated large sections
of the upper classes of Sicilian society: from unity they they had not yet been
able to draw any of the advantages that could be hoped for from the enlargement
of the national market and from ecclesiastical policy, implemented in a purely
fiscal manner and therefore for the pure benefit of the treasury, that is, of the
stronger, more developed and fierce northern Italy "(11 ).

Lending a hand to the occupying state will be the cholera epidemic that will
break out on the island in the final days of the insurrection and for about a
year it will hit the population, claiming thousands of victims. And speaking of
victims, those of the "seven and a half" have never been counted, it has even
come to raving about 40,000 deaths; in fact, several hundred represent a
realistic estimate, however imprecise, and an equal number can settle on the
opposite side.

Pippo Gurrieri

Natale Musarra, "Seven days of anarchy in Palermo", Libertarian Sicily, September
2016.

Giuseppe Oddo, "The mirage of the earth in post-Risorgimento Sicily (1861-1894),
Istituto Gramsci Siciliano, Palermo 2013, page 102.

Oddo, cit., P.103

Paolo Alatri, "Political struggles in Sicily under the rule of the right
(1866-74)", Einaudi, Turin 1954, p.129.

Sandro Attanasio, "Cavour's glasses", Le Stelle, Milan 1980, p. 221.

Musarra, cit

Alatri, cit. p.132.

Alatri, cit. p.127

Oddo, cit, page 117.

Attanasio, cit. p.205

Alatri, cit. p.150

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