LATEST FIRES OF REBELLION ---- The mass of southern proletarians who
poured into the North in the 60s and 70s caused an earthquake in the
industrial-union discipline of the factories. Bearer of interests that
go beyond purely trade union and salary ones, she suffers from the
hardship of living conditions in metropolises; considers existential
issues inseparable from workers' rights; manifests intolerance of
discipline, both in the factory and in the unions; it transfers southern
rebelliousness to the industrial world, undermines traditional methods
of struggle and undermines bureaucracies. It imposes the recomposition
between life and work that will condition the decade of maximum conflict
in the industrial North. Southern emigrants instinctively reject the
possibilities of integration offered by the system, which hide their
cultural and social disintegration; it is no coincidence that in those
contexts where the possibilities of a return are more effective, the
conflict of the southerners becomes exasperated and uncontrollable (1).
If emigration is partly about escape, it is also a transitory choice to
escape the blackmail of the parasitic and mafia classes, the clientelism
and welfare that backwardness and underdevelopment have strengthened.
The "deportation" to the North allows a progressive loosening of the
blackmail dynamics, an economic improvement and, with the remittances of
the emigrants, a stability of the Southern system in terms of
consumption and imports, with the acquisition of small portions of
well-being. Many emigrants develop a new political consciousness in the
struggles, which can be the basis for change once they return "down".
But things changed with the defeat of the struggles in the North
starting from 1980, as well as with the toxicity inherent in the
acquisition of relative well-being.
In Sicily, as we have seen, the industrialization effect manages to
partially extinguish rebelism and independence claims or channels them
into the compatibilities of capitalist and colonialist social peace.
Thus we return to demolishing and canceling the Southern Question, while
with the progressive advent of neoliberalism, new anti-Southern
prejudices emerge; the Northern League, the Northern Question and
"Northern separatism" begin to assert themselves. The preparations for
European unity accentuate the peripherality of areas of the continent
(still limited to the western part) already marginalized by internal
colonialism: "The absurdity for us Sicilians lies in the fact that the
imperialist economic/political power persists in projecting our
destiny/future in a northerly direction, one way, when our scope is the
Mediterranean, including North Africa and Asia Minor, where the island
could find a role and an outlet" (2).
An underdeveloped land of conquest and robbery, in Sicily, with the
local bourgeoisie and the big names in industry and finance, a mafia
bourgeoisie operates dedicated to the accumulation of capital thanks to
its proximity to political power and its involvement in the institutions
, to its ability to ensure social peace, thanks to a consensus fueled
both by the levels of welfare deriving from the control of important
slices of the economy, thanks mainly to the proceeds of drugs, and by
having capitalized on the aversion of the popular masses towards the
State. The mafia in this historical moment certainly represents not the
anti-State, as some claim, but the State itself in its central, regional
and territorial articulations. The mafia welfare system in some
provinces is more efficient and widespread than the state one, and the
only bloody actions are those of the ferocious war between the various
factions to ensure control of the top of Cosa Nostra and its trafficking
and business. When a politician is hit it is because he has not fully
done his duty as "pupo" of the mafiosi, or to send a signal to the
parties. The "pax mafia" allows Cosa Nostra to govern almost all the
economic processes of the island, to control the territory, to dictate
laws to governments.
It is difficult to oppose the suffocating cloak of terror and silence,
of consensus and complicity. Peppino Impastato tried, with his Radio Aut
group, in Cinisi, and we know how it went: killed and then blown up in
1978. Before him Giovanni Spampinato, journalist of "L'Ora", in Ragusa
in October 1972 he was killed because he put his finger on the affairs
between neo-fascists and smugglers. Two years earlier, Mario De Mauro,
also a journalist for "L'Ora" was made disappear in Palermo; a year
after Impastato it was the turn of Mario Francese of the "Giornale di
Sicilia", also in Palermo. The fight against the mafia seems to be a
matter for a few "heroes". The trail of blood will continue with Pippo
Fava (of "I Siciliani", Catania 1984), Mauro Rostagno (of the
broadcaster RTC, Valderice 1988), Beppe Alfano (of "La Sicilia",
Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto 1993). Meanwhile, the anti-mafia of the
institutions was born based on the misunderstanding of the healthy
forces of the State as a bulwark against the mafia octopus. Over time it
will channel youth energies and masses into the misunderstanding of
bourgeois legality. In the meantime, the mafia changes its skin and
continues to be an (honorable) society within society.
But the precarious balance that welfare, the mafia, mass media
terrorism, the church and the party system pursue is put to the test by
a series of facts that characterize the first 4 years of the 1980s: the
popular masses enter the scene , and, without asking permission, they
pose their priority problems in an insurrectional manner, with
spontaneous, local, time-limited riots. But so strong and sensational
that they were almost erased from the news.
At the end of the post-1968 decade, all attention was focused on
terrorism; it seems that beyond armed groups there is no longer any
space for popular struggles. Instead, the sharpest denials come from
Sicily. Here, apart from the anti-anarchist raids in the spring of 1980
in Catania, Syracuse and Palermo, there was no sound of terrorism. But
the homeless people of Catania are brutally charged and arrested in the
same weeks. The water crisis causes the explosion of the revolts in
Palagonia, Castel di Judica and Ramacca in April. In Palagonia the crowd
lashed out at the town hall, burning part of it, setting fire to the
party headquarters, the clubs and the municipal tax office; water is
important when it is missing for too long, but it is also the pretext to
rebel against a situation of abandonment, exploitation, degradation and
political-mafia corruption rooted over time. It is no coincidence that
the mayor and socialist boss Fagone was at that time a fugitive. In the
events of Palagonia, the role of mediator of the PCI stands out, which,
with one foot between the rioters and the other outside, manages, better
than the police and the carabinieri, to slowly strangle the rebellion.
Note the absence of fascist exploitation. The protagonism of farmers,
women and young people is significant. (3)
In '81 it was again the issue of water that caused popular barricades
and clashes in Leonforte, Balestrate, San Giuseppe Jato, Riesi (the town
hall was occupied), Sommatino, and the refusal, even violent, to pay the
bills in Aidone, Pietraperzia, Butera , Trappeto, Riesi, Vallelunga. One
of the objectives is to eliminate the corrupt and inefficient Sicilian
Aqueduct Authority in favor of the municipal management of the water
service.
In 1983 another major riot exploded in Grammichele, against the sealing
of illegal (workers') housing sites and the building crisis in a country
dominated by bosses of the caliber of Attaguile (DC) and Morello (PRI).
On March 17, the council chamber was destroyed, the ballot box was
thrown at Mayor Scacciante's head, some offices were devastated, and
numerous fists were thrown at the mayor and the commander of the
Carabinieri. (4)
In November it's Gela's turn, the city of ENI-ANIC. 5000 proletarians
attack and devastate the town hall, set fire to offices, throw furniture
and documents from the windows and then set it on fire. The industrial
peace jumps in the face of the degradation and poverty of the working
classes, the constant threats of closure of the factory and the building
crisis, linked here too to the seizure of illegal constructions largely
by workers and emigrants. Some construction entrepreneurs are also
fanning the flames, the fact is that the angry masses are demanding the
revocation of the seizures of the construction sites and the release of
those arrested. (5) One year later the investigations will lead to 51
arrest warrants with 33 arrests (6).
In December in nearby Licata the crowd occupied the town hall and the
station and set up barricades along the state road 115, again due to the
construction crisis and the blockade of construction sites.
Not isolated episodes, therefore, but a widespread popular anger that
finds anti-institutional outlets according to a tradition of revolts
against the symbols of local power but also of the enemy state. Revolts
that undermine categorical cages, unify class interests in the clash
without mediators. The themes: water, home, work, are atavistic ones of
the subaltern condition, and it is evident that behind them lies the
need to give vent to humiliations and exploitation without interruption
for generations. "The revolts - I wrote 40 years ago (7) - need these
pretexts almost as a self-justification, a self-legitimation, to express
violence more decisively against a system of life, of exploitation, of
dependence on the "Piedmontese" (" we call all our enemies Piedmontese",
from the Iron Prefect), who by dint of surges and grips can only provoke
the "legitimate" reaction". And again: "The town hall becomes a symbol
of state domination and therefore becomes the No. 1 objective of the
revolt; it, far from demarcating the local limit, underlines the breadth
of views, the political capacity of the class (one hundred years after
Proudhon), the eternal libertarian aversion to power, its being "Against
the State and Against Politics".
The fact that this atavistic aversion ended up under the crawlers of new
mediations and delegations, of repression and toleration of the
subaltern condition, is not new. Otherwise we would be writing another
story today.
Pippo Gurrieri
continues
notes Pippo Gurrieri, Emigration and social liberation. Integration,
dis-integration, action. Followed by The struggles of immigrant railway
workers for transfers, Sicilia Punto L, Ragusa, 1986.
Europa, editorial of n.8 of Sicilia libertarian, March 1979.
The flames of Palagonia against one hundred years of colonialism, with
comments and a long interview with a protagonist, Libertarian Sicily n.
14, August 1980.
Grammichele's revolt, libertarian Sicily n. 23, June 1983.
Pippo Gurrieri, The popular anger of Gela, Libertarian Sicily n. 25,
January 1984.
Today, libertarian Sicily n. 28, July-August 1984.
Pippo Gurrieri, Against the State and Politics. The popular revolt in
the 80s, libertarian Sicily n. 26, March 1984.
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
poured into the North in the 60s and 70s caused an earthquake in the
industrial-union discipline of the factories. Bearer of interests that
go beyond purely trade union and salary ones, she suffers from the
hardship of living conditions in metropolises; considers existential
issues inseparable from workers' rights; manifests intolerance of
discipline, both in the factory and in the unions; it transfers southern
rebelliousness to the industrial world, undermines traditional methods
of struggle and undermines bureaucracies. It imposes the recomposition
between life and work that will condition the decade of maximum conflict
in the industrial North. Southern emigrants instinctively reject the
possibilities of integration offered by the system, which hide their
cultural and social disintegration; it is no coincidence that in those
contexts where the possibilities of a return are more effective, the
conflict of the southerners becomes exasperated and uncontrollable (1).
If emigration is partly about escape, it is also a transitory choice to
escape the blackmail of the parasitic and mafia classes, the clientelism
and welfare that backwardness and underdevelopment have strengthened.
The "deportation" to the North allows a progressive loosening of the
blackmail dynamics, an economic improvement and, with the remittances of
the emigrants, a stability of the Southern system in terms of
consumption and imports, with the acquisition of small portions of
well-being. Many emigrants develop a new political consciousness in the
struggles, which can be the basis for change once they return "down".
But things changed with the defeat of the struggles in the North
starting from 1980, as well as with the toxicity inherent in the
acquisition of relative well-being.
In Sicily, as we have seen, the industrialization effect manages to
partially extinguish rebelism and independence claims or channels them
into the compatibilities of capitalist and colonialist social peace.
Thus we return to demolishing and canceling the Southern Question, while
with the progressive advent of neoliberalism, new anti-Southern
prejudices emerge; the Northern League, the Northern Question and
"Northern separatism" begin to assert themselves. The preparations for
European unity accentuate the peripherality of areas of the continent
(still limited to the western part) already marginalized by internal
colonialism: "The absurdity for us Sicilians lies in the fact that the
imperialist economic/political power persists in projecting our
destiny/future in a northerly direction, one way, when our scope is the
Mediterranean, including North Africa and Asia Minor, where the island
could find a role and an outlet" (2).
An underdeveloped land of conquest and robbery, in Sicily, with the
local bourgeoisie and the big names in industry and finance, a mafia
bourgeoisie operates dedicated to the accumulation of capital thanks to
its proximity to political power and its involvement in the institutions
, to its ability to ensure social peace, thanks to a consensus fueled
both by the levels of welfare deriving from the control of important
slices of the economy, thanks mainly to the proceeds of drugs, and by
having capitalized on the aversion of the popular masses towards the
State. The mafia in this historical moment certainly represents not the
anti-State, as some claim, but the State itself in its central, regional
and territorial articulations. The mafia welfare system in some
provinces is more efficient and widespread than the state one, and the
only bloody actions are those of the ferocious war between the various
factions to ensure control of the top of Cosa Nostra and its trafficking
and business. When a politician is hit it is because he has not fully
done his duty as "pupo" of the mafiosi, or to send a signal to the
parties. The "pax mafia" allows Cosa Nostra to govern almost all the
economic processes of the island, to control the territory, to dictate
laws to governments.
It is difficult to oppose the suffocating cloak of terror and silence,
of consensus and complicity. Peppino Impastato tried, with his Radio Aut
group, in Cinisi, and we know how it went: killed and then blown up in
1978. Before him Giovanni Spampinato, journalist of "L'Ora", in Ragusa
in October 1972 he was killed because he put his finger on the affairs
between neo-fascists and smugglers. Two years earlier, Mario De Mauro,
also a journalist for "L'Ora" was made disappear in Palermo; a year
after Impastato it was the turn of Mario Francese of the "Giornale di
Sicilia", also in Palermo. The fight against the mafia seems to be a
matter for a few "heroes". The trail of blood will continue with Pippo
Fava (of "I Siciliani", Catania 1984), Mauro Rostagno (of the
broadcaster RTC, Valderice 1988), Beppe Alfano (of "La Sicilia",
Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto 1993). Meanwhile, the anti-mafia of the
institutions was born based on the misunderstanding of the healthy
forces of the State as a bulwark against the mafia octopus. Over time it
will channel youth energies and masses into the misunderstanding of
bourgeois legality. In the meantime, the mafia changes its skin and
continues to be an (honorable) society within society.
But the precarious balance that welfare, the mafia, mass media
terrorism, the church and the party system pursue is put to the test by
a series of facts that characterize the first 4 years of the 1980s: the
popular masses enter the scene , and, without asking permission, they
pose their priority problems in an insurrectional manner, with
spontaneous, local, time-limited riots. But so strong and sensational
that they were almost erased from the news.
At the end of the post-1968 decade, all attention was focused on
terrorism; it seems that beyond armed groups there is no longer any
space for popular struggles. Instead, the sharpest denials come from
Sicily. Here, apart from the anti-anarchist raids in the spring of 1980
in Catania, Syracuse and Palermo, there was no sound of terrorism. But
the homeless people of Catania are brutally charged and arrested in the
same weeks. The water crisis causes the explosion of the revolts in
Palagonia, Castel di Judica and Ramacca in April. In Palagonia the crowd
lashed out at the town hall, burning part of it, setting fire to the
party headquarters, the clubs and the municipal tax office; water is
important when it is missing for too long, but it is also the pretext to
rebel against a situation of abandonment, exploitation, degradation and
political-mafia corruption rooted over time. It is no coincidence that
the mayor and socialist boss Fagone was at that time a fugitive. In the
events of Palagonia, the role of mediator of the PCI stands out, which,
with one foot between the rioters and the other outside, manages, better
than the police and the carabinieri, to slowly strangle the rebellion.
Note the absence of fascist exploitation. The protagonism of farmers,
women and young people is significant. (3)
In '81 it was again the issue of water that caused popular barricades
and clashes in Leonforte, Balestrate, San Giuseppe Jato, Riesi (the town
hall was occupied), Sommatino, and the refusal, even violent, to pay the
bills in Aidone, Pietraperzia, Butera , Trappeto, Riesi, Vallelunga. One
of the objectives is to eliminate the corrupt and inefficient Sicilian
Aqueduct Authority in favor of the municipal management of the water
service.
In 1983 another major riot exploded in Grammichele, against the sealing
of illegal (workers') housing sites and the building crisis in a country
dominated by bosses of the caliber of Attaguile (DC) and Morello (PRI).
On March 17, the council chamber was destroyed, the ballot box was
thrown at Mayor Scacciante's head, some offices were devastated, and
numerous fists were thrown at the mayor and the commander of the
Carabinieri. (4)
In November it's Gela's turn, the city of ENI-ANIC. 5000 proletarians
attack and devastate the town hall, set fire to offices, throw furniture
and documents from the windows and then set it on fire. The industrial
peace jumps in the face of the degradation and poverty of the working
classes, the constant threats of closure of the factory and the building
crisis, linked here too to the seizure of illegal constructions largely
by workers and emigrants. Some construction entrepreneurs are also
fanning the flames, the fact is that the angry masses are demanding the
revocation of the seizures of the construction sites and the release of
those arrested. (5) One year later the investigations will lead to 51
arrest warrants with 33 arrests (6).
In December in nearby Licata the crowd occupied the town hall and the
station and set up barricades along the state road 115, again due to the
construction crisis and the blockade of construction sites.
Not isolated episodes, therefore, but a widespread popular anger that
finds anti-institutional outlets according to a tradition of revolts
against the symbols of local power but also of the enemy state. Revolts
that undermine categorical cages, unify class interests in the clash
without mediators. The themes: water, home, work, are atavistic ones of
the subaltern condition, and it is evident that behind them lies the
need to give vent to humiliations and exploitation without interruption
for generations. "The revolts - I wrote 40 years ago (7) - need these
pretexts almost as a self-justification, a self-legitimation, to express
violence more decisively against a system of life, of exploitation, of
dependence on the "Piedmontese" (" we call all our enemies Piedmontese",
from the Iron Prefect), who by dint of surges and grips can only provoke
the "legitimate" reaction". And again: "The town hall becomes a symbol
of state domination and therefore becomes the No. 1 objective of the
revolt; it, far from demarcating the local limit, underlines the breadth
of views, the political capacity of the class (one hundred years after
Proudhon), the eternal libertarian aversion to power, its being "Against
the State and Against Politics".
The fact that this atavistic aversion ended up under the crawlers of new
mediations and delegations, of repression and toleration of the
subaltern condition, is not new. Otherwise we would be writing another
story today.
Pippo Gurrieri
continues
notes Pippo Gurrieri, Emigration and social liberation. Integration,
dis-integration, action. Followed by The struggles of immigrant railway
workers for transfers, Sicilia Punto L, Ragusa, 1986.
Europa, editorial of n.8 of Sicilia libertarian, March 1979.
The flames of Palagonia against one hundred years of colonialism, with
comments and a long interview with a protagonist, Libertarian Sicily n.
14, August 1980.
Grammichele's revolt, libertarian Sicily n. 23, June 1983.
Pippo Gurrieri, The popular anger of Gela, Libertarian Sicily n. 25,
January 1984.
Today, libertarian Sicily n. 28, July-August 1984.
Pippo Gurrieri, Against the State and Politics. The popular revolt in
the 80s, libertarian Sicily n. 26, March 1984.
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
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