The writer was born and raised in Palermo, a city that's not easy to navigate, even for Palermitans themselves. In recent years, there has been a steady escalation of urban violence, which has consistently affected youth, from the Arab Zone to the latest shootings in the heart of the city's nightlife, with a trail of deaths that has reached the city of Monreale.
It's not my interest to cite specific figures, but rather to consider the urban context. From the postwar period until the early 1990s, Palermo was a true capital of Western Europe, with a mafia bourgeoisie, with its political, economic, and military branches, which powerfully influenced Sicily and Italy, with strong international influences.The Banco di Sicilia and the Cassa Centrale di Risparmio, supported by a myriad of local banks, guaranteed a constant flow of credit for the development of mafia power. At that time, Palermo was an extremely wealthy city, and Palermitans ruled the world.
The Sicilian Mafia was embedded in the North Atlantic command system; it's no coincidence that the most important US-NATO military bases were built in territories governed by Cosa Nostra. We know how the Mafia war continues, the high-profile corpses, the white luparas, with those who attempted to rebel being killed, see Peppino Impastato, with young women who were killed like Rita Atria.
In our country, the deaths and massacres; in the North, Tangentopoli and the Salvo brothers' death squads. A change of pace in political direction that required a lot of blood.
Blood that in the post-war period had soaked Portella della Ginestra and Avola, causing Milan and all of Italy to explode in Piazza Fontana. The City of Happiness in the Roaring Twenties was an open-air slaughterhouse; people died in the streets, disappeared, and were dissolved in acid.
Meanwhile, in a well-known beach club, Don Vito Ciancimino, a prominent senator, and a magistrate could be seen dancing cheek to cheek with attractive ladies. This was, and still is, the Ferocious City where Generalissimo dalla Chiesa was sent to his death and Pio la Torre tried to fight the Mafia within his own home, only to be mercilessly murdered. Salvo Lima was killed, making Giulio Andreotti realize he was no longer immortal.
A world is ending: Palermo had fallen from the sky, the two banks were no longer there, the other mafiosi, the Corleones, had won, the mafia bourgeoisie had redefined itself while remaining in power. For those who believed in it, the anti-mafia movement was a missed opportunity; for others, it was a way to forge a new identity; for the state, it was a way of saying there was an anti-state that needed to be fought. We have the triumph of the culture of legality, which brings cops and magistrates into schools and today brings the military into classrooms, propagating obedience and war. There is no social justice; legality has no sense of freedom, but only replaces those in command.
The ruins need experienced men capable of anything, and so Orlando arrives, a man of culture, a politician of Catholic education, who leads the city out of the mafia war.
From a violent city, it becomes a normal city; the left disappears, dying as a Christian Democrat, and the right reorganizes. Meanwhile, Palermo, after an apparent cultural awakening, begins an anonymous transformation. Young people are the first to be affected, the historic center goes from rubble to renovations, ending up in the most unbridled touristification. The real city is no longer the old Palermo but the residential areas and the suburbs that are in flames, while the Quattro Canti and Via Macheda become a mafia factory.
Young people pour into the center, bringing their anger, weapons are exchanged, fights and shootings break out, drugs are consumed, the Pagliarelli prison fills up with young people from the suburbs, the red zones are useless and the cameras only monitor the citizens. There are shootings in Monreale, in Olivella, those who die are young and those who kill are too. The mafia is not dead, and in the youth of the suburbs it finds a new beginning. Are these supposed to be the proletariat storming heaven? They are certainly cannon fodder. You can hear the Kalashnikovs blasting the garages of entrepreneur Dragotto, a man who knows his way around the world, and who certainly can't be compared to Libero Grassi, killed by the Mafia amid the indifference of local businessmen at the time. In this situation, the Zen 2 neighborhood, a veritable banlieue, abandoned to its fate, is making headlines. It's a neighborhood with a strong human identity, home to the young people who, according to the cops, are demanding protection money from various businesses in the northern part of Palermo these days. These businesses are owned by owners who certainly don't adhere to the culture of legality.
The Mafia bourgeoisie, on the one hand, demands order, and on the other, does everything it can to nurture these young people as criminals. I don't have an ending to offer you-we're in a South American context-but you have to get your hands dirty in shit, blood, and piss to understand and act. One thing is certain: Palermo is shooting.
Northern Expansion Zone
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/giugno2026_compressed-1.pdf
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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