WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Sicilia Libertaria, Oct-23: RANSOM 14 - And the people shouted: "We are not leaving!" (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 When, on 10 October 1944, the Sabaudia division fired on the crowd in

Palermo, causing yet another massacre among the common people who were
asking for pasta and bread, still lacking 15 months after the Allied
landing because they were ambushed by the landowners and the object of
trafficking of the black market, the reputation and credibility of the
Italian armed forces reached an all-time low. Just as very low was that
of the House of Savoy, which was blamed, together with fascism, for all
the misfortunes of the first 80 years of the United Kingdom, and in
particular the last war and the about-face of July 1943.
Under the pressure of the PCI and the DC, the government of Ivanoe
Bonomi, which had replaced the military one led by General Badoglio
since 18 June, decided on 23 September to call up the army for the
classes of 1914-1924. Starting from that unfortunate date, and in
particular during the month of December, thousands of families received
pink postcards ordering: "In the name of H.R.H. Umberto of Savoy,
Lieutenant of the Kingdom... within ten days you will present yourself
at the Military District. Bring your mess tin, spoon and blanket with
you" (1). The recipients of the recall to Sicily were 74,000, but things
did not go as the architects of the reconstruction of a large Italian
army expected (2). Spontaneously or in a somewhat organized manner, the
discontent spread from the large cities to the smallest towns, resulting
in the massive desertion of approximately 60,000 draftees. Among them
many had already been enlisted in the ongoing war, and had escaped death
or imprisonment by returning home at the cost of enormous sacrifices;
others were young people who had suffered the consequences of the war,
and who had no intention of enlisting. The cry "Don't leave" spread from
one end of the island to the other, while the most conscious fringes of
the protest, those with a left-wing and anti-fascist vision, in strong
break with the Communist Party, were supporting, as an alternative to
enlistment in an army led by the usual fascist generals and officers and
under the monarchist insignia, the establishment of groups of volunteers
who, following the example of the partisans, went to the North to join
the fight to oust the German occupier.

The clash in the communist sections was harsh and lacerating; the party
sent Girolamo Li Causi to Sicily to try to resolve a tangled situation;
he had to realize how difficult it was to convince his base. In a
crowded meeting at the Chamber of Labor in Ragusa he was overwhelmed by
the members: "If Li Causi says he has to leave we'll slaughter him in
there... we'll throw a hand grenade at him" (3); on the opposite side of
the island entire communist sections distanced themselves from the party
leadership "for anti-militarist reasons" and threw themselves headlong
into the revolt. As in Piana degli Albanesi, a place where the rebellion
led to the establishment of a popular socialist republic which
attempted, in its two months of existence, to implement some reforms in
favor of the peasants and the weakest (4). Only the few sections loyal
to the line collaborated with the police in dealing with the riots.

Meanwhile, the protests were turning into real acts of insubordination,
and, according to a consolidated tradition, they were directed against
the schemers, the politicians, the landowners and the police, all
symbols of those institutions and that State which still Sometimes he
attacked poor people. The attacks on town halls, barracks and prisons,
the looting of grain, pasta, flour and oil warehouses were not counted
among the hundreds of acts that took place in all the provinces from the
end of December 1944, especially when the army began the roundups (5).
In the Ragusa area, an armed revolt developed with greater intensity
with autonomous outbreaks in all the municipalities and which also
attempted to establish a form of coordination. An ephemeral Republic
lasting three days was established in Comiso. In the capital it was the
epilogue of a gestation phase: "The most conscious nuclei had long ago
infiltrated spies among the fascists and knew their weapons depots, the
arsenals at the homes of certain landowners, and had assembled every
kind of paraphernalia among those left around by the retreating Germans
and Italians in '43" (6). Here the firefights with the police and the
military caused a few dozen deaths.

The "Non si parte" immediately proved to be yet another movement towards
redemption for the Sicilian people; it contained, within the refusal of
compulsory conscription, the unease due to the suffering due to the war,
the age-old deprivations of the lower classes, the anger contained
during the twenty years of fascism now finally in a position to vent,
the distrust in the State and its administrative branches and military.
As Carlo Levi would write, the events "recovered the traditional and
anarchic characteristics of the revolts against authority and power,
eternal enemies, and rediscovered the forms, and I would say the
symbolism even in the details (burning the pink postcards of the calls
to arms) of those revolts" (7).

It was probably one of the last choral gasps of the people of Sicily, a
mass insurrection partly spontaneous, partly organized by conscious
fringes, and minimally fomented by groups of fascists who tried to
insert themselves into it by introducing, with little success, words of
order favorable to the Republic of Salò.

We wrote in the last issue about the role that the occupiers, especially
the Americans, had entrusted to the fascist groups; these were
practically left free to reorganize themselves according to an
anti-communist redefinition of Italy's geopolitical role, which was
already at an advanced stage. But their real influence on events,
emphasized by certain biased reconstructions (8), was, in fact, minimal
if not irrelevant.

Just as secondary was the role of the separatist movement. Communist
propaganda contributed above all to the legend of a protest fomented by
separatists and fascists, which from the beginning tried to distance
itself from the general refusal of enlistment. Popular and in some ways
revolutionary uprisings could only be branded by the party organ as
"reactionary and fascist resurgences" (9), a brand that will become the
official vernacular with which the facts will be read and handed down,
in particular by the influential historiography linked to the PCI.

While this was also convenient for fascists and separatists, it does not
correspond to reality. The MIS, which raised its voice in the initial
phase (like some fascist fringes), gradually disappeared as the riots
unfolded and, except for a few exceptions, had no influence whatsoever.
On the other hand, especially in situations where the conflict was more
radical, it had no local presence.

The failure of Togliatti's daring undertaking to rebuild the army of
liberated Italy (also disliked by the partisans) was due to the hundreds
of thousands of desertions and reluctances that occurred throughout the
territory of liberated Italy (10).

The "Non si parte" took a political system with little branching and
weakness by surprise, and developed without mediations, or by bypassing
them and investing them. Not being an organized movement, it could not
go beyond the fury of the protest and the confusion. This was his
strength but also his obvious weakness. However, some fixed points
emerged from this popular anti-state reaction: female protagonism as an
essential push from below; antimilitarism, as aversion to war,
overcoming the patriotic or instrumental anti-fascist trap; the
availability and insurrectional capacity of the masses.

Pippo Gurrieri

14 - continues

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