WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Sicilia Libertaria 4/2023: The missing ransom. Journey to Southern Italy and Sicily (9) (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

 THE SUNDAY BURNT BY WARS ---- The first decade of the 20th century sees an

organizational political ferment in the cities and in the countryside thanks to
the leaders and activists hit hard by the repression, who, having returned to
their places, are rebuilding Chambers of Labor and agricultural cooperatives; in
response, a chain of massacres falls on peasants, workers, commoners by soldiers
and mafiosi. ---- The special laws and government provisions "for the South"
(Sicilian Sulphiferous Consortium, Citrus Chamber for Sicily and Calabria), do
not affect the increasingly accentuated imbalance; the GDP of the South between
1891 and 1911 increased by 18.8%, while that of the Centre-North by 28.4%. (1)
The mafia of the central western rural areas, on their own account or on behalf
of the landowners, attacks the peasants, kills their leaders (Nicoletti,
Panepinto, Barbato and Pecoraro, Verro), trying to curb their claims for land as
an alternative to poverty and emigration. What is happening in Sicily is a tough
and classy clash.

In the congress of 29 September-1 October 1906 the social reformists set up the
General Confederation of Labour, on the model of the French CGT. The
revolutionary syndicalists, including many anarchists, represent a spur to the
reformist directions, controlling entire categories and Chambers of Labour; in
1907 they set up the National Committee of Resistance in Parma; two years later,
increasingly at odds with a socialist leadership accused of betraying workers'
struggles, they set up the National Direct Action Committee. Torn between
remaining within the CGL in order not to weaken the unity of the workers, or
splitting up to have greater freedom of action, they broke the delay at the
Modena conference in November 1912, setting up the Italian Union of Trade Unions
(USI), established strongly in the central-northern regions, with peaks among the
Apulian peasants, and scattered presences, including in Sicily. The unions of
railway workers and sea workers reaffirm their independence from any central
union, even though they are very close to USI in terms of methods and ideas.

In Sicily, one of the protagonists of this process is the railwayman Vito
Mercadante (2); in disagreement with the Chamber of Labor he had founded a Labor
Exchange in 1906 in Palermo; promoter of several publications, he is among the
organizers of the regional Congress of the Sicilian Committee of the Resistance
(Caltanissetta June 1911) in which the local Chamber of Labor participates which
organizes 7000 miners, the CdL of Messina and about twenty leagues and
agricultural cooperatives, on conflicting positions , abstentionists in the
electoral field and for the construction of cooperatives to take over production.
He is the author of the essay Le Ferrovie ai Ferrovieri, published in Milan in
1911, endorsed by the Sindacato Ferrovieri and its national leader Augusto Castrucci.

The ascendancy of the anarchists, among which Paolo Schicchi stands out, among
the working and peasant masses is remarkable, and, especially in the
anti-militarist campaign against the Libyan war, it is essential in the
orientation of the Sicilian proletariat, even in the face of the interventionist
crushes of the social reformists . The Libyan enterprise is motivated by the need
to divert emigration to America, France and Switzerland "towards new territories
to be populated, cultivated, civilized and annexed to the kingdom of Italy.
Secular and Catholic intellectuals, linked both to the nationalist right and to
the left (above all to moderate socialism, even some exponents of the extreme"
(3) contributed to the affirmation of this idea of colonialism or "social"
imperialism. L. Capuana, M. Serao, A. Negri, G. Pascoli, we find characters like
De Felice. "The paradigm of this propaganda, apparently in favor of Italian
migrants, was in fact that of transforming them from oppressed proletarians into
proletarian oppressors of peoples considered uncivilized, legitimizing the
looting of resources as a civilizing work" (4). The attack that Paolo Schicchi
launches against the interventionist circle and his constant invectives against
the Arab "inferior race" is merciless: "I am well aware, unfortunately, that at
present any truth to say to oneself is the same as preaching to the wind, indeed
worse. One runs the risk of being treated, as usual, as enemies of the country,
as traitors, as hired agents of the enemy, even when such filth is right on the
side of the patriotic scoundrels. And meanwhile the neurotic rogue continues to
run freely and dizzyingly along her slope, dragging behind him into the
inevitable ruin that reckless donkey that calls itself the people" (5).

On 30 October 2011, the anarchist soldier Augusto Masetti, while greeting the
companies leaving for Libya, shot and wounded Colonel Stoppa in Bologna.
Following his arrest, a campaign developed throughout Italy to wrest him from the
death sentence and against the intervention. With the outbreak of the attempted
insurrection of the "red week" (June 7-14, 1914), by anarchists, republicans and
maximalist socialists, which spread from the Marches into the neighboring
regions, into the large industrial centers of the north and patchily throughout
Italy, anti-militarist action raises the bar: revolution is the immediate
objective. In Sicily protests and strikes take place in the major centers by
socialists, revolutionary syndicalists, anarchists, even if with less impact than
what happens elsewhere. The reaction was not long in coming, with the mafia
supporting the bourgeoisie and the government.

The anti-war campaign continues to prevent Italy from entering the conflict
between the European powers; neutralism, however, gives way to participation
alongside the countries of the entente against the central powers; personalities
such as De Felice, Napoleone Colajanni, Lo Sardo, Sturzo, to stay in Sicily,
pushed for the intervention. With the war, the island's economy sinks, the cost
of living rises and the mafia does great business while Florio and the "Sicilian"
bosses, fearing for their contracts with Germany and Austria, raise the flag of
Sicily oppressed by industry and unions of the North.

 From the first months of 1915, uprisings and protests against the high cost of
living developed in cities and in rural towns, strongly hostile to a war that
snatched the peasants from the land, leaving their families in poverty. 440,000
are called to arms on the island; there will be almost 53,000 fallen. But tens of
thousands are renegades and deserters, who in the internal areas, numbering
around 30,000, give life to clandestine armed gangs. The exhausted population and
the women also violently rioted in the cities of Ragusa, Modica (6), Piana dei
Greci, etc.

Someone argued that the war contributed to the unification of Italy, thus making
"the Italians", thanks to the patriotic afflatus, literacy, mixing in the
trenches. Surely those 650,000 dead soldiers failed to become Italian. There will
be 870,000 soldiers denounced for defeatism and indiscipline; 470,000 dodgers
(many fled abroad or did not return to Italy). Despite the promise to distribute
the lands to the peasants, made to acquire consent to a conflict that they did
not feel, southern society comes out battered by the war, the countryside in
severe crisis, abandoned, the population impoverished, struck by mourning, and
later from the Spanish, which will give her a mortal blow.

"Wars have therefore been the main cause of the "southern question", to the
extent that military expenditure, the huge resources destined for industrial
mobilization and the overall guidelines of public intervention have radically
altered the relationship between agriculture and industry, between cities and
countryside, between North and South. Parallel to the enormous push towards the
concentration of enterprises and the growth of financial capital, the Great War
accelerates the interpenetration between the State and big industry and a general
transfer from the primary to the secondary tertiary sector, with a sharp decline
in agriculture. For the South it was a very hard blow to its productive
vocations, from wheat to export crops!" (7).

Pippo Gurrieri

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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