WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA news journal UPDATE - (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: THE MISSED REDEMPTION - 18 - THOSE "FABULOUS" SIXTY YEARS! (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

We have seen how post-war Sicily finds itself channeled into a
neocolonial process in which a toxic and extractivist development
characterizes state and private intervention (funded by the former), the
greatest expression of which are the chemical industrial centers of
Milazzo, Gela, Augusta -Priolo-Melilli. Not only is oil extracted from
the island (discovered in the 1950s by Gulf and then sold to Agip) but
imported crude oil is refined, transforming the territories involved
into veritable sewers for multinationals. There will be work in these
areas and in related industries, but it is not a question of an increase
in employment: it is a question of moving places of residence, of
abandoning more tiring and less profitable activities (especially crafts
and agriculture) for the fixed salary of a blue collar. The poles dig a
great void in the territories (they suck water, burn the air and land,
poison the people), and accentuate the phenomena of depopulation,
impoverishment and slow death of small towns.

Just read some demographic data to understand what we are saying. The
municipality of Milazzo went from 22,013 inhabitants in 1951 to 31,541
in 1991; that of Gela from 43,000 in '51 to 72,500 in '91; that of
Augusta from 23,500 in '51 to 34,189 in '91; the municipality of Priolo
from 6,545 in '51 to 11,785 in '91; the municipality of Melilli which in
'51 had 5,969 inhabitants, in '91 had 11,656.

The other side of colonial extractivism is emigration, a necessary
resource to keep the industries of Northern Italy and Central Europe
running. The remittances of emigrants represent an important source for
the survival of millions of Sicilians, allowing them to emerge from the
age of the caves in which many lived until the 1950s and to begin to
savor the fruits of the economic boom. But it is not Sicilian society
that is the architect of its own improvement: it is the conditions of
colonial exploitation that provoke its entry into the consumer society
as an area for the sale of goods produced in the North. The island is
just a large market of consumers whose economic resources quickly return
to the Northern regions.

The countryside abandoned by emigrants, conquered by extractive
industries, cemented by building speculation, is going through a severe
crisis in which only the strongest manage to survive. They are the usual
potentates, the old noble class, the mafia. The sack of Palermo and the
most important cities transforms construction into a sector with
accelerated development but with extremely backward working conditions,
as well as criminogenic.

An exception makes its way in the coastal strip of Ragusa, where,
starting from the second half of the 1950s, the epic of the greenhouses
began: cultivation of early crops under plastic tents, initially for a
limited period, slowly throughout the year. The rapid and forceful
development of this production method generates the strengthening of
small peasant ownership, fuels an allied industry (chemical products,
seeds, plastic, wood, nails, tractors, transport, fruit and vegetable
markets, brokerage companies, bank branches, etc.) larger, it generates
an enrichment of the territory, slows down emigration and, indeed,
attracts, exactly like the industrial centres, a workforce from within
and in subsequent years, also from Tunisia. However, the boom brings
with it very serious problems, such as the depletion of aquifers, the
desertification of countryside subjected to over-exploitation; the onset
of serious damage to the health of farmers and labourers; overproduction
with the consequent drop in prices (and earnings) and the necessary
reconversion; the arrival of investments from gangs; the criminal
management of transport, markets, packaging and distribution processes;
and the presence, up to the present day, of a foreign workforce
increasingly forced into semi-slavery conditions. (1)

In the 1960s, when these processes were just beginning, the island
experienced a complex situation of precarious working conditions,
unemployment, exploitation of workers, with a "worker aristocracy"
(mainly in the petrochemical industry), still training and unaware of
the price she will pay (in terms of health and blackmail). From the deep
province come the denunciations of Danilo Dolci and intellectuals such
as Carlo Levi ("Words are stones"), or of Pasolini, Trombadori, Guttuso
who visit the caves of Scicli and the poor areas denouncing the painful
conditions, the lives of hardship, the hovels in which many live, the
degradation of entire towns and communities.

1960 saw this malaise explode in the protests against the Tambroni
government, a single-party DC supported by the CIA and the Vatican, with
the external support of the MSI (2). As is known, Genoa gives the lead,
with the anti-fascist protest that exploded on June 30, the violent
police charges and the strong popular reaction. The pretext is the MSI's
attempt to hold its national congress in the gold medal city of the
resistance. The events in Genoa trigger protests throughout the country,
and everywhere the police attack the demonstrators with violence. On 5
July in Licata (AG) a procession for work (agricultural crisis linked to
bad weather, closure of the Montecatini, port and railways in decline)
was blocked by the soldiers of the XII mobile brigade of the
Carabinieri, who shot at the crowd occupying the station and against the
barricades on the highway; 25-year-old farmer Vincenzo Napoli dies
instantly, hit by a burst of machine gun fire; 24 injured. The popular
anger that follows is destructive. "In Licata - writes "L'Agitazione del
Sud", a Sicilian anarchist monthly (3) - it was the
economic-social-environmental conditions typical of depressed areas that
pushed the population to protest in the square with such resolution and
vigor to move the national and international public opinion and interest
it in this angle of "waste" and death. And this diversity of goals and
purposes - we repeat - confirms the spontaneous character of the "July
riots", which Tambroni deliberately pretends to ignore and denies to
justify the nature and conduct of his government and the actions of his
police. These movements also reveal a foundation, a common ideal
substance of which the aversion to fascism is but one part, one aspect,
perhaps the most striking, and of which Licata's economic-social protest
represents another part, another an aspect that integrates and is
summarized with that aversion. It is a passionate defense of the
"Italian freedoms" which Genoa and the whole of Italy see increasingly
tempted, compromised and oppressed by clerical-fascism due to its
intrinsic nature, and to which freedoms Licata and the whole South see
the problem linked of their rebirth and the end of their miserable
living conditions."

On the 6th Rome was the scene of violent clashes culminating in 600
arrests. On the 7th there is the massacre in Reggio Emilia, with 5 dead
murdered by the police. On 8 July all of Italy takes to the streets
against the massacre in the Emilian city; in Sicily the response is
massive in all the capitals; in Palermo on 27 June a general strike had
already been proclaimed for the abolition of wage cages, the relaunch of
the metalworking industry and the shipyards, the municipalisation of
public services, the rehabilitation of the old neighborhoods where over
100 thousand people lived among the rubble of the bombings; the largest
demonstration since the post-war period had been attacked by the police;
now those taking to the streets are once again garbage collectors,
builders, shipyard workers, the unemployed and many young people; the
rapid charge at Pio La Torre's rally, a day of memorable guerrilla
warfare erupts; in the evening there were 4 deaths at the hands of the
police: Giuseppe Malleo aged 16, Andrea Gangitano aged 14, Francesco
Vella aged 42 and Rosa La Barbera aged 53.

On the same day Salvatore Novembre, an unemployed construction worker,
left his home in Agira (EN) and headed to Catania in search of work;
here he encounters the general strike and is involved in the clashes in
Piazza Stesicoro; the jeeps launch themselves on the demonstrators and
their barricades, the agents fire with machine guns, rifles and pistols,
six young people are injured, one of them is Novembre, forced to the
ground by truncheon blows, finished off by a policeman who shoots at him
repeatedly and then dragged as a trophy and warning.

There will be no culprits in the trials, except workers and the unemployed.

July 1960 is remembered for the deaths of Reggio Emilia, but the blood
contribution of the Sicilian people was equally serious, if not greater.

The Sicilian environment is not immune to the wind of change that is
blowing throughout the world: long hair and miniskirts, new musical
tastes, Vietnam, accompany the first cries of youth protest. Danilo
Dolci's incisive action transforms depressed areas into lands of
redemption, study centers and cooperatives arise, the fights for dams
begin; a new protagonism involves the inhabitants, with women in the
front row, in the clash with the political-mafia class. Starting from
1960, on the initiative of Dolci, Lorenzo Barbera, Paola Buzzola and
Carlo Doglio, 19 committees were established in the 25 municipalities of
the Jato, Belice and Carboj valleys, giving life to an exemplary
experience of self-management and redemption from below. A great march
for Sicily and for peace took place from 5 to 11 March 1967: it was the
revolution of the Belice valley. Around Dolci a large array of
intellectuals and volunteers, with anarchists demonstrating an active
and supportive presence outside and inside Sicily. (4)

In Catania the non-institutional left-wing environment, mainly
university, is very lively; spontaneous struggles develop, while the
magazine "Giovane Critica" anticipates all the themes of the global
protest that would explode shortly thereafter. The anarchist area was
also in turmoil, with its press and the formation of the first
university nuclei. In large and small towns the signs of change are
evident. Despite '68 being seen as a phenomenon of the large cities of
the Center and North, Sicily is an important laboratory with a view to
renewing the revolutionary dream.

However, the year will open and close with the names of two symbolic
places: Belice and Avola.

Pippo Gurrieri

Continues

Note

In 1960, out of 64 prefects, 62 had been officials of the Ministry of
the Interior under the fascist regime, like all 214 vice prefects; 7
general inspectors of Public Security came from the fascist police, as
did 120 out of 135 police commissioners.

AA.VV., The "transformed band" of the Ragusa area. Workers' rights,
migrants, agromafias and public health, Sicilia Punto L, Ragusa, 2021.

Gidie (Gianni Diecidue), The movement of 1860 - The "July Movements" of
1960, "The Agitation of the South", August 1960.

Natale Musarra, Danilo Dolci and the anarchists, Libertarian Sicily n.
172, January 1999 and The lesson of Belice, Sicilia libertarian n.269,
January 2008.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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