WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: The missed ransom 16 - The assault on the large estate (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

In the incandescent climate following the Allied landing, the agrarians
faced the impetuosity of the peasant movements by siding with safe
parties, first the MIS, then the monarchists and then the DC. The same
is done by the mafia which, cleared by the Americans, acts in support of
the economic power and on its own, strengthening the barrier against the
demands of the people and becoming the center of the geostrategic
balance, increasing its economic power thanks to the crimes carried out
with the war and with the subsequent building expansion. With the black
market, the boycott of the masses and the granaries of the people,
agrarians and mafiosi accumulate huge capital and starve, with the
complicity of law enforcement and institutions, the Sicilian people.

At the Palermo shipyards and in the sulfur mines, work continues to be
wrapped in a paternalistic noose and to endure backward conditions,
accentuated by fascism. Accidents, dismissals, recommendations, mafia
threats are the order of the day. Deaths in mines are lower only than
those on construction sites. In this way, Sicily is preparing to enter
the world market, led by the hand of the Americans whose interests are
gradually emerging. With its organic underdevelopment to the development
of the north, it is preparing to enter the international capitalist
market in an even more structurally subordinate manner. The mafia is
also integrating into a context that is economic, but also military and
cultural, and the hegemonic classes will be once the obstacle of popular
resistance has been overcome; at that point a history of restructuring
of the primary sector will be envisaged for Sicily, the creation of
colonialist industrial centers, the creation of an army of manpower
available to the industrial areas of the north and abroad.

Under US hegemony, an independent or Italian Sicily would not have been
able to escape the plan that was being created for it. Except for the
intervention of factors that called into question the hegemonic plan:
the resumption of peasant struggles to break up the large estates and
redesign the agricultural world, and the action of left-wing parties
(with communist traction) in an anti-capitalist and anti-American
perspective.

In the autumn of 1944 the government approved the Gullo decrees (named
after the communist minister of agriculture) which ordered the
assignment of uncultivated or poorly cultivated land to cooperatives and
modified the sharecropping, settlement and partnership contracts in
favor of the farmers. The new division of products is 60% to the farmers
and 40% to the owners. The result is an overwhelming drive to conquer
land; fights explode, particularly acute in the latifundium areas
(provinces of Enna, Caltanissetta, Agrigento, Palermo, Trapani); the
marches on horseback, on foot, on carts, with families, demanding the
delivery of the lands to the cooperatives that are being set up in all
the agricultural centers. They are led by trade unionists and local
leaders of the PCI and PSI who have co-opted anarchist militants with a
strong popular influence (Accurso Miraglia in Sciacca, Antonino Guarisco
in Burgio, etc.). The PCI, led by Umberto Fiore and Girolamo Li Causi,
grows rapidly and acquires authority. The slogan "Land for farmers"
illuminates a popular and utopian imagination that seems to find its
concrete outcome after a long series of failures. This time the law is
on the side of the farmers, who ask for its application, finding bitter
opposition from the owners defended by the tax collectors and the
carabinieri. It would seem that suddenly the State, eternal enemy, has
become an ally and protector. And this is what the social-communist and
trade unionist line pushes, which achieves some significant results if
it is true that the area managed by the cooperatives in one year goes
from 2,221 hectares to 10,182 until reaching 65,030 hectares in 1949
(1). In 1946 the progression brought it to 13,436 hectares, although
this represented only 24.9% of the land requested by the cooperatives
which amounted to 62,291 hectares: just 84 out of 425 requests. (2)

In June 1945, High Commissioner Aldisio managed to get an agreement
signed between the regional farmers' union (the agrarians) and
Federterra (the farmers' union) which reset the distribution of products
in favor of the former, overriding the Gullo decrees. The left falls
into the trap but popular anger explodes again: spontaneous strikes
flare up (Delia, Canicattì, Mazzarino), clashes with the police, new
occupations against the agreement. In Gela, the city of Aldisio, the
headquarters of the Christian Democracy is destroyed. The movement puts
the social-communist parties in difficulty. It is a summer of new
struggles, police charges, arrests and mafia violence. The assault on
the large estate accelerates the recomposition of the dominant bloc,
with a DC at the center that distances itself from the unitary
anti-fascist path. In view of the local elections in March 1946, the
mafiosi were in the front line in attacking, threatening and killing the
most prominent league leaders and militants in the electoral campaign
under the banner of massacre. The DC, even in the institutional
referendum in June, sides with the monarchy and the feudal order.

The taxable labor base starts from the Ragusa area, the tool for
fighting unemployment and implementing the transformation of the
countryside; this struggle also ends up turning into a series of
occupations of uncultivated or poorly cultivated lands, to make them
productive and assign them to poor farmers. This new cycle of struggles
is stained by the blood of dozens of farmers and people's leaders, among
them Accurso Miraglia, killed by the mafia on 4 January 1947. The clash
with the mafia, guardian of the land and owner itself, is without
respite: in many places thousands of farmers challenge it by asking for
the lands of the mafiosi, as in Piana degli Albanesi, one of the most
advanced points of the conflict.

Meanwhile, Italy's subordination to the USA is defined, which sends
ships loaded with wheat and grants a loan of 100 million dollars; the
counterpart lies in the "Truman doctrine": Italy must represent,
together with Greece and Turkey, a barrier to Soviet expansionism.

The electoral results of 20 April 1947, with the victory of the People's
Bloc, accelerated the role of the DC as a party of order guaranteeing
the interests of the agrarian bourgeoisie. A few days later, on May 1st,
the Portella delle Ginestre massacre (near Piana), officially carried
out by the Giuliano gang, with all its political-military implications
that have recently come to light, establishes the incompatibility
between the two worlds, of the farmers and the relevant parties and
unions, and of the bosses, with the mafia, institutions and connected
parties. In the summer and autumn in the latifundio area the clash will
be very harsh, and the price paid will be very high.

But critical positions emerge on the left with respect to a struggle
centered entirely on the application of the Gullo decrees; as expressed
by socialist exponents, according to whom "the government should have
urgently ordered the dissolution of the rental contracts with the tax
collectors, in order to hand over the lands to the cooperatives; the
distribution quotas foreseen by the decree on the distribution of
agricultural products did not respond to the needs of the farmers and
were below the indications of the CGIL; that provision did not bring any
real benefit to the small tenants, who paid the rent in kind; indeed it
ended up offering the opportunity to landowners to transform
sharecropping relationships into 'landing' contracts, rent with a fixed
rent in grain, the price of which was regulated by the market, without
any other protection for the concessionaire" (3).

The polarization of the conflict and the difficulties encountered in the
application of the Gullo decrees radicalized the communist positions,
while the Catholic cooperatives retreated. The farmers ask for the
product to be divided even in the absence of the owners; the application
of the decrees becomes non-negotiable; but the boycott of the
arbitration commissions and the judiciary continues and in many places
the landowners take to harsh measures; peasant headquarters are
considered dens to be destroyed. The response of the PCI and the unions
becomes agrarian reform, an objective for which 1948 would have been
achieved. And in the first months of '48 the struggle restarts stronger
than before, again with rides, processions, marches to occupy the
fiefdoms, and an even harsher reaction on the part of the landowners: a
chain of murders beheads the leaders of the peasant leagues (the one by
Placido Rizzotto is dated 10 March 1948); the Scelba police attack the
Chambers of Labor, arrests occur everywhere. In this climate the left
suffered the heavy electoral defeat of 18 April. The agrarian reform
law, which establishes a maximum limit to private ownership of 50
hectares and the remainder assigned to farmers, who would also have had
to go on emphyteusis of regional state lands, will have a very difficult
life.

To enforce it, the peasant movement will spend its best energies,
leaving 45 dead workers, union leaders and trade unionists on the ground
in 6 years. Launched on November 21, 1950, it will prove to be yet
another scam in which the peasant defeat will be reflected for entire
generations. Giuliana Saladino (4) summarizes the situation well: "The
left is fighting for large properties to have a general and permanent
surface limit, but it doesn't succeed. He fights for the greatest number
of poor farmers to have in perpetual emphyteusis the greatest quantity
of land exceeding the limit, he fails. He fights so that 340,000
sharecroppers, tenants and co-shareholders are not evicted from the
land, he doesn't succeed. He manages to block amendments such as the one
that tends to exclude farmers from the assignment of land with even
minor convictions for trade union issues, he manages to have votes
canceled and foil coups. He ended up voting against it, and the
communist and socialist parliamentary group of the People's Bloc drew up
a statement in which they raised the white flag: we didn't make it, this
is not agrarian reform. In October November December of that 1950 the
windows of the notaries remained lit until late, and while the Milazzo
project passed through the regional assembly, the registry office passed
hundreds, thousands of deeds and sales contracts signed at midnight, at
the moment of entry into force of the law. The most significant land
shuffle ever known in Sicily since time immemorial is underway: fiefdoms
change hands, measured, divided, fragmented, high volume of real sales,
very high volume of fictitious sales. The large families learn for the
first time how extensive their lands are and, well advised by the
princes of the forum, they take action: the Pignatelli Aragona Cortes in
Caronia, province of Messina, have a fiefdom of 8,700 hectares
registered, before 1950, to the prince Diego. We proceed with the
division among the direct heirs, resulting in four cadastral lots, the
first of 2117 hectares, the second of 950, the third of 2378, and the
fourth of 3249. For each match, family members, gabellotes, fieldsmen
and faithful figureheads are called together to proceed with a second
subdivision, with the aim of keeping the heritage united and the
administration single. That is, it is possible to reduce separation
operations to a minimum. A month after the agrarian reform, there are
fiefdoms in which there is absolutely nothing to separate, there are
fiefdoms that are downsized, there are others that are pulverized within
twenty days, and pass at a dizzying pace to the owner, who keeps for
himself the best land, to the gabelloto, who in turn keeps the best land
for himself, on the mediocre land he has received, and passes the rest
to the farmers, who get very high prices for stones, clays and slopes of
30 percent of washed-out land" .

And the farmers buy, tired of six years of battles, only to find
themselves in debt, unable to cultivate those lands, with the only
escape route being emigration. Their faces, their words, the description
of their hunger for land and the disillusionment after the defeat, can
be found in a 2012 documentary which remains one of the few filmed
testimonies of this epic of the land in Sicily. (5)

Pippo Gurrieri

1) Giuseppe Oddo, The mirage of the earth in Sicily. From the Allied
landing to the disappearance of the fireflies (1943-1969). European
Polygraphic Institute, Palermo 2021, p.178.

2) Giuseppe Restifo, Underdevelopment and popular struggles in Sicily
1943-1974, Pellegrini, Cosenza 1976, pag. 165.

3) G. Oddo, cit., p. 176.

4) Giuliana Saladino, Land of robbery. How a Sicilian farmer can become
a bandit, Einaudi, Turin 1977, pages. 43-44.

5) We believed in it, by Angelo Barberi and Sebastiano Pennisi,
September 2012.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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