As we have seen, the Sicilian proletariat is far from defeated,
especially when its living conditions are directly affected by the
clutches of power. The limit of this persistent rebelliousness? Don't be
immune to the vice of delegation and mediation; don't go beyond venting;
not having a general vision capable of connecting the various segments
of the political-mafia system, whether it is a lack of water or work or
a building crisis. On the other hand, there are almost no extreme
left-wing and libertarian groups that could have given an
anti-capitalist and anti-state character to that willingness to revolt.
The PCI can fully carry out its role as guarantor of order.
How, given these premises, can a popular anti-militarist response
develop when the decision to install a base for 112 American
nuclear-tipped missiles in Comiso brings to light the reality of an
island long sold to war? With effort, passion and willpower, this step
was attempted at the end of '81.
On 6 December 1979 the government decides to install a NATO military
base with 112 Cruise missiles in Comiso, the small "Vincenzo Magliocco"
airport built by the Germans in the 1930s and active during the Second
World War for raids on Malta and the Mediterranean , which had been in
disuse for years. The news remained secret until March 20, 1981 when the
weekly magazine "Il Mondo" published the article "A missile will fall in
Ragusa".
The anarchists of Ragusa and Lotta Continua per il Comunismo of Comiso
create the promoting group against the construction of the missile base
in order to launch popular mobilization to block the opening of the
construction sites. Sectors of the Italian Communist Party, particularly
strong in Comiso and neighboring cities, constitute the Unitary
Disarmament and Peace Committee (CUDIP). On 8 August the government
announced the allocation of 200 billion by NATO to build the base (which
rose to 400 in a few months). The next day the poster of the Promoting
Group "For a handful of dollars... atomized" appears throughout the
province.
Opposition to NATO is alive on a national and international level and
pacifists, nonviolent, antimilitarists and feminists flock to Comiso to
fight against the nuclear base being built. The Socialist Party is
brazenly with NATO while the PCI, where pro-Soviet positions still
survive, espouses the pacifist cause thanks to the Sicilian leader Pio
La Torre and promotes the first march for peace on 4 October, while the
Group promoting the 11 October calls a national assembly at the
municipal theatre. To boycott the assembly, PCI and CUDIP move the march
to 11: 30,000 people march, while 2,000 militants are in the assembly: a
political opposition whose stake is the hegemony of the PCI over the
movement.
Peace Committees develop; on 24 October 300,000 people marched in Rome:
very high numbers but generic contents and prevailing confidence in
parliamentary action; one million signatures are collected in Sicily
alone for the suspension of the works; there are dozens of protest fasts.
The far left is not immune to sectarian logics that claim to channel the
movement into the survival strategies of groups now short of breath.
Differences in views emerge between local components, anchored to the
territory, and those coming from outside; the promoting group emerges
paralyzed; but the area of nonviolent and international groups (a varied
component that pushes for nonviolent direct action) gives rise to
actions of disturbance of the vehicles heading to the base construction
sites, opened in April 1982 and purchases land around the airport to be
used as fighting centers, in particular the International Peace Camp
(but located in nearby Vittoria), the Verde Vigna and the Ragnatela
degli feministi.
On 29 April in Palermo the mafia killed Pio La Torre and his driver
Rosario Di Salvo, decapitating the PCI of its pacifist head.
The pro-NATO front with large deployment of resources supports Italy's
military defense from Soviet missiles, and promises thousands of jobs on
construction sites with positive repercussions on the local economy of a
structure with 3000 soldiers and accompanying families. The
dollarisation of the territory is starting to make inroads into the
population, it is the strong point of all the government parties, it is
welcomed favorably by the trade unions, including the CGIL, which
supports the control of the regularity of work activity, compliance with
contracts, etc. The Comisan PCI splits, the historic and pacifist
nucleus of the CUDIP leaves in conflict with the secretariat which is
willing to move towards a compromise with the "Yankees".
The murder of Pio La Torre accelerates this process and offers the
Americans an institutional support in the city.
1982 was a year of great political and social ferment: initiatives,
actions, arrests and complaints, trials and dismissals for hundreds of
activists. The promoting group is incapable of capitalizing on the
experience accumulated over years of political intervention in the
territory, torn by disagreements on the objectives of the struggle. The
anarchists alone continue the counter-information activity with dozens
and dozens of rallies in the neighborhoods and squares of all the
centers of the province and nearby ones, of assemblies, meetings,
conferences, debates; they establish contacts to build a mass occupation
of the base being built; the watchword is: "The construction of the
missile base can be prevented."
On 31 July 1982, the international anarchist conference took place in
the sports field of Comiso, during which the strategies to achieve the
occupation of the base were defined. At the end, in the square, the
anarchist Pippo Scarso tears up the military service postcard and
declares himself a total objector; a procession reaches the base. The
conference launches the project of establishing self-managed leagues
against the construction of the missile base: mass organizations
independent of the parties with the aim of organizing opposition to NATO
and the occupation of the base in the territories. A proposal welcomed
but generating some misunderstandings, mainly due to the partly untrue
information on a rapid development of leagues in numerous countries,
propagated by the Coordination of the same. A "political" way of
managing this phase not shared by everyone within the coordination; but
its supporters go further, deciding in May 1983 (in a rash and
questionable manner) also the date of the occupation of the missile
base: 22, 23 and 24 July. This fuels internal conflicts, and also the
false perception that in Comiso and Sicily dozens of leagues are ready
to attack the construction sites.
Meanwhile, the Nebrodi front opens up, where the expropriation of 22,000
hectares of land to build a military range is announced. In Vittoria
complaints for students and militants of the coordination of
self-managed leagues for a strike in schools. The large contracting
companies (including Pizzarotti) begin work on the military
accommodation. Comiso is full of activity; Turi Vaccaro and another
pacifist are arrested for nonviolent direct action; CUDIP launches
collective hunger strike; a pacifist march Milan-Comiso is called by
some intellectuals including Strehler, Treccani, Volponi; another,
international antimilitarist, takes place on New Year's Eve and
symbolically occupies the Magliocco construction site. The roadblocks
are followed by the arrests of activists; the anarchist Franco Leggio,
an element of balance among the anarchists and among all the opposition
at the base, is also arrested; on the Nebrodi there is a strike against
expropriations; sit-ins, road blocks and protests by international
women, with police charges and expulsions from Italy, destruction of
pacifist camps. The unions are now calling for the priority hiring of
Comisan workers on construction sites!
In this climate, July 22nd arrives. About 500 anarchists: militants from
the Italian Anarchist Federation, punks from the Milan Virus, groups
from all over Italy, numerous from abroad, arrive. But they don't find
the insurrectionary wind, the farmers ready to attack the construction
site; there is none of this, and what little there could have been was
cleverly sabotaged by the devious action and psychological terrorism of
the PCI leaders, worried about the potential bond between parts of their
base and anarchist antimilitarists. Nothing happens on the 22nd, but the
debate is heated. On the afternoon of the 23rd a procession leaves from
the center of Comiso for the base. Upon arrival, the strong presence of
police officers gives a measure of the balance of power. Surprisingly,
the feminists of "La Ragnatela" briefly manage to enter the construction
site. But at sunset the trumpet sounds and the massacre begins. A
beastly charge strikes in the dim light anyone who is within range of
truncheons, rifle butts and tear gas. It is the first violent mass
police attack, the injured are numerous; the controversies and exchanges
of accusations about the lack of employment will be poisonous for years.
In fact this was the only concrete project to break the mold of symbolic
protest with incisive and mass action. But the errors of its supporters,
the choice of "everything right away otherwise we'll leave" of the
most... insurrectionary area, and the fear that the proposal had caused,
primarily in the PCI, are at the origin of the failure.
In August, more massacres in front of the gates of Magliocco, more
blood, arrests, injuries, dismissal. The summer of '83 demonstrates that
no component is capable of preventing the construction of the base; the
disruptive actions, the rallies, the cutting of networks, the marches,
the strikes continue but take on a function of testimony. The PCI now
covers the US-NATO choices and the work is proceeding quickly.
With the NATO base in operation, the Cruises installed on the TELs
(large means of transport constantly moving along the Sicilian roads so
that they are not easily intercepted by the Soviet SS-20s), the
consolidation of military structures and installations in support of
Comiso (such as the large NRTF base no. 8 in Niscemi), there is no
longer a fight, but individual symbolic actions and small demonstrations
no longer capable of influencing events (1). Until 8 December 1987 when
the INF treaty (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) was signed in
Washington by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, following the
Reykjavík summit (11-12 October 1986) held between the two Heads of
State. On 29 May 1988 the treaty was ratified in Moscow, and from that
moment all medium-range missile bases present in European territory
would be dismantled. The Comiso base also progressively empties, until
it remains a NATO military garrison awaiting its conversion into a
civilian structure.
The great political, human and emotional involvement that the fight
against missiles in Comiso has brought about, and to which this very
partial reconstruction certainly does not do justice, represents for
Sicilian history the first opportunity to question the island's
condemnation to role as a super-armed base in the heart of the
Mediterranean. A missed opportunity despite the consensus built among
the populations. But also an example that will be vigorously taken up
again in the following decades, in particular with the NO MUOS struggle
of the late 1910s of the 21st century.
Pippo Gurrieri
Note
1) There are numerous publications that describe the fighting season in
Comiso. In these two volumes a detailed chronology of events is
reported: Anarchist Group of Ragusa, Mirikani Jativinni, We do not want
to die atomized, Sicilia Punto L, Ragusa 1983 and Maria Teresa Romiti,
Before the day after (with Pippo Gurrieri, "23 July 1983: all in
Comiso"), Ipatia, Ragusa 1985.
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
especially when its living conditions are directly affected by the
clutches of power. The limit of this persistent rebelliousness? Don't be
immune to the vice of delegation and mediation; don't go beyond venting;
not having a general vision capable of connecting the various segments
of the political-mafia system, whether it is a lack of water or work or
a building crisis. On the other hand, there are almost no extreme
left-wing and libertarian groups that could have given an
anti-capitalist and anti-state character to that willingness to revolt.
The PCI can fully carry out its role as guarantor of order.
How, given these premises, can a popular anti-militarist response
develop when the decision to install a base for 112 American
nuclear-tipped missiles in Comiso brings to light the reality of an
island long sold to war? With effort, passion and willpower, this step
was attempted at the end of '81.
On 6 December 1979 the government decides to install a NATO military
base with 112 Cruise missiles in Comiso, the small "Vincenzo Magliocco"
airport built by the Germans in the 1930s and active during the Second
World War for raids on Malta and the Mediterranean , which had been in
disuse for years. The news remained secret until March 20, 1981 when the
weekly magazine "Il Mondo" published the article "A missile will fall in
Ragusa".
The anarchists of Ragusa and Lotta Continua per il Comunismo of Comiso
create the promoting group against the construction of the missile base
in order to launch popular mobilization to block the opening of the
construction sites. Sectors of the Italian Communist Party, particularly
strong in Comiso and neighboring cities, constitute the Unitary
Disarmament and Peace Committee (CUDIP). On 8 August the government
announced the allocation of 200 billion by NATO to build the base (which
rose to 400 in a few months). The next day the poster of the Promoting
Group "For a handful of dollars... atomized" appears throughout the
province.
Opposition to NATO is alive on a national and international level and
pacifists, nonviolent, antimilitarists and feminists flock to Comiso to
fight against the nuclear base being built. The Socialist Party is
brazenly with NATO while the PCI, where pro-Soviet positions still
survive, espouses the pacifist cause thanks to the Sicilian leader Pio
La Torre and promotes the first march for peace on 4 October, while the
Group promoting the 11 October calls a national assembly at the
municipal theatre. To boycott the assembly, PCI and CUDIP move the march
to 11: 30,000 people march, while 2,000 militants are in the assembly: a
political opposition whose stake is the hegemony of the PCI over the
movement.
Peace Committees develop; on 24 October 300,000 people marched in Rome:
very high numbers but generic contents and prevailing confidence in
parliamentary action; one million signatures are collected in Sicily
alone for the suspension of the works; there are dozens of protest fasts.
The far left is not immune to sectarian logics that claim to channel the
movement into the survival strategies of groups now short of breath.
Differences in views emerge between local components, anchored to the
territory, and those coming from outside; the promoting group emerges
paralyzed; but the area of nonviolent and international groups (a varied
component that pushes for nonviolent direct action) gives rise to
actions of disturbance of the vehicles heading to the base construction
sites, opened in April 1982 and purchases land around the airport to be
used as fighting centers, in particular the International Peace Camp
(but located in nearby Vittoria), the Verde Vigna and the Ragnatela
degli feministi.
On 29 April in Palermo the mafia killed Pio La Torre and his driver
Rosario Di Salvo, decapitating the PCI of its pacifist head.
The pro-NATO front with large deployment of resources supports Italy's
military defense from Soviet missiles, and promises thousands of jobs on
construction sites with positive repercussions on the local economy of a
structure with 3000 soldiers and accompanying families. The
dollarisation of the territory is starting to make inroads into the
population, it is the strong point of all the government parties, it is
welcomed favorably by the trade unions, including the CGIL, which
supports the control of the regularity of work activity, compliance with
contracts, etc. The Comisan PCI splits, the historic and pacifist
nucleus of the CUDIP leaves in conflict with the secretariat which is
willing to move towards a compromise with the "Yankees".
The murder of Pio La Torre accelerates this process and offers the
Americans an institutional support in the city.
1982 was a year of great political and social ferment: initiatives,
actions, arrests and complaints, trials and dismissals for hundreds of
activists. The promoting group is incapable of capitalizing on the
experience accumulated over years of political intervention in the
territory, torn by disagreements on the objectives of the struggle. The
anarchists alone continue the counter-information activity with dozens
and dozens of rallies in the neighborhoods and squares of all the
centers of the province and nearby ones, of assemblies, meetings,
conferences, debates; they establish contacts to build a mass occupation
of the base being built; the watchword is: "The construction of the
missile base can be prevented."
On 31 July 1982, the international anarchist conference took place in
the sports field of Comiso, during which the strategies to achieve the
occupation of the base were defined. At the end, in the square, the
anarchist Pippo Scarso tears up the military service postcard and
declares himself a total objector; a procession reaches the base. The
conference launches the project of establishing self-managed leagues
against the construction of the missile base: mass organizations
independent of the parties with the aim of organizing opposition to NATO
and the occupation of the base in the territories. A proposal welcomed
but generating some misunderstandings, mainly due to the partly untrue
information on a rapid development of leagues in numerous countries,
propagated by the Coordination of the same. A "political" way of
managing this phase not shared by everyone within the coordination; but
its supporters go further, deciding in May 1983 (in a rash and
questionable manner) also the date of the occupation of the missile
base: 22, 23 and 24 July. This fuels internal conflicts, and also the
false perception that in Comiso and Sicily dozens of leagues are ready
to attack the construction sites.
Meanwhile, the Nebrodi front opens up, where the expropriation of 22,000
hectares of land to build a military range is announced. In Vittoria
complaints for students and militants of the coordination of
self-managed leagues for a strike in schools. The large contracting
companies (including Pizzarotti) begin work on the military
accommodation. Comiso is full of activity; Turi Vaccaro and another
pacifist are arrested for nonviolent direct action; CUDIP launches
collective hunger strike; a pacifist march Milan-Comiso is called by
some intellectuals including Strehler, Treccani, Volponi; another,
international antimilitarist, takes place on New Year's Eve and
symbolically occupies the Magliocco construction site. The roadblocks
are followed by the arrests of activists; the anarchist Franco Leggio,
an element of balance among the anarchists and among all the opposition
at the base, is also arrested; on the Nebrodi there is a strike against
expropriations; sit-ins, road blocks and protests by international
women, with police charges and expulsions from Italy, destruction of
pacifist camps. The unions are now calling for the priority hiring of
Comisan workers on construction sites!
In this climate, July 22nd arrives. About 500 anarchists: militants from
the Italian Anarchist Federation, punks from the Milan Virus, groups
from all over Italy, numerous from abroad, arrive. But they don't find
the insurrectionary wind, the farmers ready to attack the construction
site; there is none of this, and what little there could have been was
cleverly sabotaged by the devious action and psychological terrorism of
the PCI leaders, worried about the potential bond between parts of their
base and anarchist antimilitarists. Nothing happens on the 22nd, but the
debate is heated. On the afternoon of the 23rd a procession leaves from
the center of Comiso for the base. Upon arrival, the strong presence of
police officers gives a measure of the balance of power. Surprisingly,
the feminists of "La Ragnatela" briefly manage to enter the construction
site. But at sunset the trumpet sounds and the massacre begins. A
beastly charge strikes in the dim light anyone who is within range of
truncheons, rifle butts and tear gas. It is the first violent mass
police attack, the injured are numerous; the controversies and exchanges
of accusations about the lack of employment will be poisonous for years.
In fact this was the only concrete project to break the mold of symbolic
protest with incisive and mass action. But the errors of its supporters,
the choice of "everything right away otherwise we'll leave" of the
most... insurrectionary area, and the fear that the proposal had caused,
primarily in the PCI, are at the origin of the failure.
In August, more massacres in front of the gates of Magliocco, more
blood, arrests, injuries, dismissal. The summer of '83 demonstrates that
no component is capable of preventing the construction of the base; the
disruptive actions, the rallies, the cutting of networks, the marches,
the strikes continue but take on a function of testimony. The PCI now
covers the US-NATO choices and the work is proceeding quickly.
With the NATO base in operation, the Cruises installed on the TELs
(large means of transport constantly moving along the Sicilian roads so
that they are not easily intercepted by the Soviet SS-20s), the
consolidation of military structures and installations in support of
Comiso (such as the large NRTF base no. 8 in Niscemi), there is no
longer a fight, but individual symbolic actions and small demonstrations
no longer capable of influencing events (1). Until 8 December 1987 when
the INF treaty (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) was signed in
Washington by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, following the
Reykjavík summit (11-12 October 1986) held between the two Heads of
State. On 29 May 1988 the treaty was ratified in Moscow, and from that
moment all medium-range missile bases present in European territory
would be dismantled. The Comiso base also progressively empties, until
it remains a NATO military garrison awaiting its conversion into a
civilian structure.
The great political, human and emotional involvement that the fight
against missiles in Comiso has brought about, and to which this very
partial reconstruction certainly does not do justice, represents for
Sicilian history the first opportunity to question the island's
condemnation to role as a super-armed base in the heart of the
Mediterranean. A missed opportunity despite the consensus built among
the populations. But also an example that will be vigorously taken up
again in the following decades, in particular with the NO MUOS struggle
of the late 1910s of the 21st century.
Pippo Gurrieri
Note
1) There are numerous publications that describe the fighting season in
Comiso. In these two volumes a detailed chronology of events is
reported: Anarchist Group of Ragusa, Mirikani Jativinni, We do not want
to die atomized, Sicilia Punto L, Ragusa 1983 and Maria Teresa Romiti,
Before the day after (with Pippo Gurrieri, "23 July 1983: all in
Comiso"), Ipatia, Ragusa 1985.
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
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten