Defiance

by Behan, Tom

  The back streets of town, off the Corso, are claustrophobic. Not only are they very narrow, but they are arranged in a block pattern, so each corner is totally blind and you never know who is about to come round the next one. Apart from the council building and a couple of nondescript churches the town can justifiably be called ugly. In a desperate attempt at giving itself some airs and graces, halfway along the Corso there is a crossroads locally called I quattro canti – the four corners. This is named after a huge baroque road junction in the centre of Palermo, full of ornate statues; in Cinisi it is just another anonymous and ugly street corner like another, blink and you’d miss it.

  This feeling of being hemmed in comes above all from natural rather than human geography. At the lower end of the town there are fields leading down to the sea, thus cutting the town off definitively. But at the upper end Cinisi comes to an abrupt end with Mount Pecoraro, which rises almost vertically to 3,000 feet. Throughout the day the bare rock changes colour, from light blue to gold, turning pink at sunset. When it is cloudy, if there are fluffy white clouds the mountains can seem like some inviting ‘never never land’. Dark clouds, and a dark sea, make things much more threatening. Yet it is always there, brooding, emphasising the lack of an exit route. A further human barrier was erected when the motorway was built at the bottom of the mountain’s slopes, yet another obstacle to moving out of town easily. The only clear open access is to the south, away from Palermo.

  Although there are indications that its history goes much further back, Cinisi was really put on the map in 1617, when Benedictine monks decided to build a monastery in this largely deserted area. Cinisi was unusual in that it developed far later than similar towns nearby: in 1853 it still had only 5,269 inhabitants.

  The early development of industry in nearby Palermo in the first half of the nineteenth century saw virtually no inhabitants from Cinisi taking part. When feudalism was abolished in 1812 the local order of Benedictine monks sold large areas of land immediately, because they were afraid it would be seized by the new government. The buyers were mostly notaries, although there were also a few doctors and lawyers – but with these kinds of people buying it was clear there was still no local industrial or business development. The land had not been cared for by the monks and had become impoverished with serious long-term consequences; they had frequently cut down and not replaced trees, which they sold as firewood.

  The new council administration functioned well enough, but the Sicilian press did not deem political life in Cinisi worthy of any comment. In some ways sitting on the council was like belonging to a gentlemen’s club: only those with high personal incomes were allowed to hold office. So, not surprisingly, it seems that virtually nobody from the town joined Garibaldi’s revolutionary conquest of Sicily, leading to the creation of the Italian nation in 1860. The town elders, meanwhile, did wake up and fight to get a railway station built in Cinisi rather than in nearby Terrasini. But its opening in 1880 did not really change very much, although limited mains water supplies were developed just before the end of the century, and some electric street lighting was installed during the First World War.

  There was another system of power in the area that was far more dynamic – violent criminals. This kind of lawlessness existed before the Mafia, but the same conditions applied: given that these were small towns in isolated areas that didn’t produce very much wealth, the new government really wasn’t that interested what happened there. So ‘law and order’ was pretty much a ‘hit or miss’ affair.

  A local priest, Vito Mangiapani, wrote a book about the town in 1910 and reported: ‘The most common crimes are thefts in the fields and illegal grazing, which could be stopped by creating a better system of field guards. Cattle rustling is common, as is damage to private property caused by personal hatred and vendettas.’ What he may or may not have known is that these armed field guards were the people who were evolving into Mafiosi. These individuals, who earned money through instilling fear in people on behalf of local landowners, very quickly saw the sense of doing the same on their own behalf.

  The rich people of Cinisi, the town councillors, tried to protect themselves from this lawlessness by setting up their own system of armed guards, paying their wages out of council funds – or in other words from people’s taxes. The consequences were very serious: most of those hired already had criminal records, so in the long term the creation of a Mafia-type environment was only encouraged by local politicians. Furthermore, only the very rich were protected, while smaller businessmen and shopowners found criminals swarming around them to an even greater extent, and at the bottom of the pile ordinary working people were disgusted at the reality of the new ‘democratic’ Italian state.

  The vast majority of local people were poor peasants who worked up to 16 hours a day, lived in crowded rented houses and ate meat just a handful of times a year. They don’t feature in the history books for this period, although the authorities were quick to remember them during the First World War, when hundreds left town to go and fight high up in the Alps on the Austrian border. About a hundred died in such an alien environment, and roughly the same number were seriously wounded. All told, it is not surprising that when they came back, once it was clear most of them would not find work, they either emigrated or were tempted by a life of crime.

  Economically speaking, the existence of Mafia gangs discourages development, as they are essentially parasitic upon others’ work. They rake in money for doing and creating nothing, while at the same time demanding money from people trying to generate greater economic growth and employment. A member of a well-off and industrious family remembers problems back in the 1950s: ‘We had 15 or 16 workers, back then this was a big workplace. And we were very rich. But what do you do when they kidnap your cart and driver? You might get the cart back empty, but what about the driver? They fired machine guns at our premises, they tried to kidnap my brother when he was seven.’ All of this explains why you only find Mafia in poor areas, and why a hundred years ago a priest could write: ‘where bad faith and fraud continue, they block the union of capital’. Not surprisingly, there were no private companies in town.

  Local people with time and money to spare would pass the time of day in their own clubs, often watching other people pass by. As the parish priest wrote, for them: ‘life goes on just as it did a century ago’. The most prestigious meeting place was the Circolo dei Galantuomini (Gentlemen’s Club), frequented by the rich and professional people. For the middle class – small landowners and shopkeepers – there was the Circolo dei Cacciatori (Hunters’ Club). The basis of membership – enough money to buy rifles and ammunition, and the free time to enjoy them – excluded poorer people. Below this was the Circolo dei Vaccari (Herdsmens’ Club), for the surprisingly large number of people who grazed cattle. The meeting place of the poor was the street corner.

  One inhabitant of Cinisi recalls the Gentlemen’s Club thus: ‘There was a big entrance room with lots of armchairs, from which you could look outside. Once in a while they went in the countryside, but they never worked.’ Undoubtedly this was true, but this club was also a kind of seat of power: ‘The mayors who were elected all came from these clubs, it was always the same people.’

  World Wars and Mafia Wars

  In Cinisi there is one word you hear a lot – ammazzarono. Literally it means ‘they murdered’ but it’s used on its own, ungrammatically. It is a stark statement, describing an all too familiar event.

  The cosy life for the town’s elite was shattered after the end of the First World War. For a start, there was a huge Mafia turf war in the Cinisi area – ammazzarono – which seemed to be driven more by a series of personal vendettas than a steady build-up in wealth and power which is the normal circumstance in which middle-ranking Mafiosi are tempted to launch a bid to become top dog. However the number of murders, about thirty, showed that local gangs had become sizeable. This wave of violence quickly receded due to two factors. Firstly, mass migration t
o the United States drained the lifeblood out of some gangs, as well as reducing the root causes of family vendettas. Secondly, the advent of a fascist dictatorship in 1922 meant that for the first time the government took public order seriously; the totalitarian ideology of fascism could not tolerate any kind of alternative power structure.

  On his first visit to Sicily in 1924 Mussolini was enraged when on a trip to Piana degli Albanesi the local Mafia boss insisted he get rid of his bodyguards as he was now a guest under the Mafia’s protection. Soon after that Mussolini appointed Cesare Mori, a tough no-nonsense career politician who had been fighting the Mafia since 1903, and entrusted him with full powers.

  Mori quickly began a policy of mass round-ups in many Sicilian towns, a kind of collective punishment that effectively put the entire population under siege. Felicia Bartolotta, a teenager at the time, remembers what Mori – nicknamed the ‘Iron Prefect’ – did when he wanted to capture Mafiosi: ‘Everybody had animals, so he cut off the water and the animals died – people had to give themselves up! Or they’d arrest women, and when the men-folk came out they were taken away.’ The outcome was that many low-level members were convicted and received prison sentences, whereas more important Mafiosi either left the country, joined the Fascist Party or simply went dormant.

  According to the new mayor, by 1927 the town’s problems had been solved because everybody had become fascist: ‘No longer is Cinisi a poor town, the current government’s reforming breeze has step by step penetrated the consciousness of local people, who today are fascist from the first to the last.’ The reality was that at least half of the town was illiterate, very few had baths or toilets where they lived, and 60 per cent virtually never ate any meat. The only cases of violence and lawlessness that would now be allowed were those committed by the government. So a new system of police field guards was set up, illegal connections to water supply were stopped and those in debt were cut off.

  But to some extent Mafia activity continued. One of the victims was Gaspare Cucinella, an old man who ran a corner shop on the Corso, selling flour and beans. ‘Binardinu’ Palazzolo and his brothers had been demanding protection money but Cucinella had refused to pay. Then one day in 1937 when Cucinella was out in the countryside he saw the Palazzolos coming and knew what they meant to do, but they got the first shot in and – ammazzarono. They then tied Cucinella’s dead body to his cart, and his donkey made its way home, delivering a dead husband to his distraught wife.

  The longer the Second World War continued, the more the fascist regime began to unravel, and the Mafia to resurface. Just a few weeks after Mussolini’s declaration of war in June 1940, French bombers attacked Palermo twice, an event that caused a mass exodus from the Sicilian capital. Several thousands ended up in Cinisi and the surrounding countryside, either staying with relatives, or in empty houses, barns, stables or even caves. They were not entirely safe here either, as later in the war Allied planes would regularly strafe the station and any trains running along the lines. The fascist council obviously had a responsibility to make sure any refugees were fed, but the inefficiency of both local and national administration meant that an expensive black market flourished quickly, and Mafiosi supported the new mayor who was trying to deal with an emergency situation.

  One young thug who would lead a long and charmed life was Procopio ‘Shorty’ Di Maggio. He first came to people’s attention when he pulled out a knife and killed someone during an argument. A few years later the town rumour mill held him responsible for the killing of a policeman – naturally he wasn’t convicted of either murder. As Gaspare Cucinella recalls, he brought the same attitude to bear in his private life: ‘When Procopio Di Maggio met his future wife her father said he was against the marriage. So Don Procopio took out his gun and kneecapped him, and then told him: “Next time I’ll kill you.” That’s how things were back then.’

  Problems quickly mushroomed as the war came to a close. Authorities imposed taxes and duties on agricultural produce, part of which was allocated for public rations. Yet local landowners and wholesalers could see that if they managed to bypass the authorities they could make large profits selling food to a starving population, not just in Cinisi, but in nearby Palermo as well. The huge amount of money to be made meant it was relatively easy to bribe local officials and to be let through road blocks, otherwise these newly created criminal gangs quickly became powerful enough to shoot it out with the police if the police decided to resist them. Quick to seize on an opportunity, Mafiosi took over local mills that ground wheat into flour, thus effectively gaining control over bread and other food supplies at source.

  Whether these gangs were run by true Mafiosi is unclear; in many ways it doesn’t matter because even if they weren’t, they acted just like them, and in any event by the 1950s a stable and widely recognised Mafia structure had emerged in the town. A clear sign of increased criminal confidence was revealed after a mayor appointed by the Allies resigned in February 1946. Soon after the new mayor took office, a grenade exploded one night outside his house, apparently a warning that the authorities shouldn’t check up on the food rationing system.

  A New Opposition

  Just as the Mafia resurfaced in Cinisi after the end of fascism, so too did the fight against organised crime. Here and elsewhere in Sicily, for well over a century, mass opposition to the Mafia has not concentrated on polite parliamentary politics but on local resistance, which has often been led by Communists and Socialists.

  The Communist Party opened a branch in Sicily just after the Second World War, and it was originally run by just two men, Stefano Venuti and Filippo Maniaci. Venuti came from a liberal middle-class family, whereas Maniaci was far more working class. The key moment occurred when Venuti came back to Cinisi after the war and received two offers, the first of which he refused. The first was from Don Masi Impastato, who offered to find him a good job, and the other was from Maniaci, who suggested they opened a party branch together.

  One Communist activist from nearby Terrasini remembers what happened when the new branch opened: I remember the inauguration of the Communist Party branch in Cinisi. It was in the town square, on the left hand side coming up the Corso. We left Terrasini with our huge party banner, which used to be the pole of the Fascist Party banner, but I had sewn on our own flag because I was a tailor. We had a marvellous comrade there called Filippo Maniaci who gave the first speech. He began by saying: ‘comrades, we have to fight the Mafia.’ There was a group off to the left who started to make a noise – sadly at that time it was normal that meetings were disrupted – so Maniaci shouted at them ‘You’re bastards, and so is the man standing behind you.’ The man stood behind was no less than Cesare Manzella.

  Although Communists and Socialists sometimes just reacted instinctively, as in this case, their strategy was to give people hope, to show them they could keep their self-respect and resist the Mafia and its ways. The main platform in this strategy was demanding rights: to decent housing, employment and – in broader terms – a society where everybody obeyed the law.

  In the first national election in 1946 the party received just three votes, and the following year its branch suffered a bomb attack. Venuti showed what he was made of by bravely accusing Manzella and Masi Impastato of the crime. However, they were soon released without charge. Only a huge amount of political commitment could explain why Venuti and Maniaci didn’t give in and choose an easy life. So they stuck at it: in 1948 the party’s vote rose to 130, and throughout the 1950s it scored an average of around 700 votes in the town.

  In 1948 a dispute erupted over the building of a road from Cinisi to Furi, which was an illustration of what was to become a vital area of Mafia money making in the 1960s: contracts awarded by public authorities. Once the contract to build the road was awarded the local Mafia demanded a rake-off for ‘protection’. The company refused, and for their pains their equipment was blown up twice – after which they started paying. But it was the workers who had to pay for t
heir employers’ decision to agree to bribes: the company told them they would work an hour for free in order to finance the Mafia. The 54 workers, most of them union members, held a union meeting that was also attended by Venuti, and agreed to strike. Half an hour after Venuti left, Procopio Di Maggio arrived and told them: ‘Do be careful. You can see that we can put your heads where you’ve got your feet. So let’s try and do the right thing and just get food on the table – without contacting the union.’

  The strike was called off, the Mafia had won again. To survive, people like Venuti were not only forced to be very courageous, but at times they felt obliged to act like Mafiosi. When Venuti heard that local Mafia leaders had decided to kill him he coolly walked into their favourite bar, and calmly said out loud:

  The fact that Venuti came from a very comfortable middleclass background, that he was a sensitive and imaginative person, an amateur poet and painter, and yet he was behaving like this, shows how living in a Mafia environment distorts normal human behaviour. In any event, every evening Venuti would walk down the same country lane to see his girlfriend, and nothing ever happened to him. The bluff worked.

  Here I am. These people have to know two things: firstly, if something were to happen to me or my comrades, even their pets will be shot down like dogs – and we will respect nobody, neither women nor children. Secondly, their names are already known, and when the time is right they will be passed on to those who need to know.