by Behan, Tom
8
Bulldozers, Builders and Brothers
After the closure of the Socialist Idea, the next activity that was to worry the legal and illegal establishment of Cinisi was the setting up of the ‘Che Club’, named
after Che Guevara, the Argentinian revolutionary murdered by the CIA in the Bolivian jungle in 1967. Once again, it was Peppino Impastato who played a central role.
A young girl at the time, Felicetta Vitale remembers the first time she saw Peppino: My parents ran the Bar Roma on the Corso – nowadays my brother runs it. In fact I first met Peppino in that bar, when I was a little girl. Peppino’s group used our bar regularly, it was the ‘students’ bar’. He used to come in with his friends and they’d be discussing things – but he was unreachable. I really admired him because I could see he was a real leader. He was small in height, shorter than Giovanni.
As is often the case, in order to become a leader, individuals often develop an intense, moody, almost withdrawn personality, and to a large extent this was what Peppino was like.
In any event, once the decision was made to set up the Che Club, Peppino found a room owned by his family that could be used as a meeting place. Apart from the inevitable Che Guevara, one activist recalls that: ‘On the walls of our office there were posters of Marx, Engels, Stalin, Lenin and Mao, and our future was mapped out by Lin Piao – go further to the left.’ It may seem strange today, but back then the myth of Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders was very strong; during the 1968 election it was discovered that in Cinisi 13 ballot papers had been spoiled by people sticking on a photo of the Chinese leader. Three hundred copies of Mao’s Little Red Book were distributed in Cinisi alone, and were often waved about during demonstrations. Giuseppe Nobile remembers what getting involved in a Maoist group meant in Partinico, the first town you encounter moving inland from Cinisi:
I remember seeing them in the square of Partinico in the summer of 1969 – including some friends from high school – with their flags and red handkerchiefs, trying to make some headway with local people. They used the language of the Cultural Revolution in China, and their models were the Red Guards. They tried to recruit local people on the spot – today the equivalent would be Jehovah’s Witnesses – most of the membership were young fanatical people. They were very naïve: they would talk to these old peasants about revolution being the birth of a new humanity. Their analysis was that Italy was ripe for revolution, so you needed a programme for a revolutionary government.
Our political activity wasn’t so much against the Christian Democrats, but against the whole system. This was our great weakness: we were long-sighted, we never brought into focus what was close to us. For us politics was an ideological choice you made, a view of the world – we weren’t interested in who individually ran the system or who got the biggest vote at elections. For us it was
logical to go beyond all this: we never knew exactly when or how, but at some point in the future people would agree with us and we would find ourselves in power. We were strongly influenced by Third World struggles – where the countryside surrounded the cities.
Although much of Maoist thought and practice was childishly and irrelevantly radical, it was beyond doubt that there were many struggles breaking out at this time that inspired people, and which were not associated with dictators, such as the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement in the US. Young Italians in particular were made aware there was an alternative to the lukewarm opposition that the Communist Party had led against the Christian Democrat government.
Some activists drew direct parallels between national liberation struggles in other countries and government repression in the south of Italy. In April 1969 the police opened fire on striking agricultural workers in the town of Battipaglia, south of Naples, killing two and wounding 50. There were chilling similarities with the ‘Killing Fields’ in Sicily twenty years earlier. So in a way it wasn’t surprising that one response of the Che Club was to write wall slogans that told a basic truth: ‘The police have killed again at Battipaglia’; but they also wrote: ‘Arm the workers’.
Of course in one sense this was empty rhetoric – who was actually going to arm them? But in another way it was an illustration of the radical changes the Che Club wanted. Another time, the group spent a month painting a huge and detailed wall mural, showing Israeli warplanes bombing Palestinians.
All of this activity started to give people confidence. Pino Manzella, a giant of a man but nevertheless very softly spoken, recalls an encounter with one of the top Mafiosi of Cinisi:
It was the 1960s, my friend and I were 16 or 17 – long hair, the works – and one day the two of us went into a bar and saw Procopio Di Maggio in front of us. He looked
us up and down and said to my friend: ‘Why don’t you cut your hair?’ He replied: ‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’ This was in a bar full of people. Di Maggio slapped him, my friend then went for him, but other people quickly separated them. Di Maggio didn’t come out of this encounter very well but that wasn’t really because he was attacked – it was because he wasn’t respected. What happened then though was that the boy’s father went to Di Maggio’s house to apologise because he had this uncontrollable son who wouldn’t respect people who should be respected.
My friend was part of the Che Guevara Club, so perhaps this was what led him to be perfectly at ease with what he had done, he wasn’t afraid at all, he wasn’t going to accept behaviour like that. Having said that, his father’s actions probably covered his back.
Overall though, Peppino and others were beginning to provide a more tangible focus than just a newspaper. It was his friend and fellow activist Salvo Vitale who remembers that ‘Peppino managed to give our group strength and coherence, forcing us outwards and into contact with real problems.’ Although influenced by the extreme language of Maoism, the difference in Cinisi was that individuals such as Peppino wanted to get involved in campaigns that meant something to local people in the here and now. This is something also recognised by one of his arch enemies, fascist councillor Salvatore Maltese:
What was Peppino’s great strength? It was to gather around him some of the weakest people in society, people who had no role or purpose in many ways, lonely people, people who individually counted for nothing. The main way he did this was in the language he used in rallies, or demonstrations. If people showed any interest in what he was doing in public he would invite them to their meetings.
One of the first examples of concrete activity was a campaign for decent water supplies in nearby Terrasini. Even today, particularly in the summer, in Sicily it is fairly common for taps to run dry. So they related to this intense frustration and managed to get a hundred women to demonstrate in front of the council – a very significant event in a town like Terrasini – carrying placards that read: ‘the only decent water is in the mayor’s villa’.
The core of the Che Club numbered about 25, but there were not just young people involved; the seed first planted with the Socialist Idea was starting to bear fruit. Not only was it a reference point for activists in other nearby towns, but many local peasants, trade unionists and building workers looked at what they said with considerable sympathy.
All the radical talk and intentions were put to the test when the issue of the airport resurfaced again.
The New Runway
When the authorities decided to build the airport back in the 1950s, one problem they had was getting their hands on the land that was needed, as it was owned by poor peasants. The system they used exposed the common interests of the powerful, be they Mafiosi or those acting in the name of democracy. A few Mafia landowners were given a high price for their land, so many illiterate peasants started queuing up to get the same deal. But once they had signed on the dotted line they discovered the amount they were due to be given – far less than the Mafiosi – would not even cover their solicitors’ fees. The peasants who refused to sell, instinctively mistrusting the authorities, were then forced ou
t under compulsory purchase orders, and eight to ten years later received financial compensation that again barely covered their legal costs. One of the people forced to sell some land was Felicia Impastato.
Apart from being notorious for corruption, Christian Democrat governments were also astoundingly inefficient. To start with, the new airport did not have either a waiting room or a control tower. Even more serious was the fact mentioned earlier: that the two east–west runways that opened in 1960 could not be used if there were strong sirocco winds blowing from the south. So a few years later the authorities started thinking about building a third runway.
Given the scandal associated with the original project, early preparations were shrouded in secrecy. The law said that any plan for compulsory purchases had to be publicised, so that people could appeal, even though they only had two weeks to do so. Nobody ever saw an announcement so nobody appealed. Therefore the first thing people knew about plans to build a new runway was when surveyors appeared one day and started taking measurements on peasants’ lands.
So that history wouldn’t repeat itself, the Communist and Socialist parties set up an ‘Evictees’ Committee’. Whereas the land used to build the first two runways ten years before had been largely uninhabited, about two hundred families lived in the area now designated for development, cultivating citrus groves and fruit orchards. In terms of employment and the provision of cheap agricultural produce, it was a vital economic resource for the town. Indeed, the building of the first two runways had already caused serious damage to Cinisi’s economic infrastructure, destroying almost a third of all fertile and grazing land.
Peppino’s group was also involved in this struggle; both these young radicals and the Evictees’ Committee used to meet in a house due for demolition, owned by the family of Salvo Vitale. Like many Italians born during the Second World War, Vitale is somewhat short, probably as a result of lack of food as a baby. He speaks very slowly and deliberately, in a deep voice, and it was during this struggle that he became particularly close to Peppino – an intense but intermittent friendship that would last for many years. Given that he was in his final year at university, and was the local correspondent for L’Ora, a Palermo newspaper, the mainly illiterate peasants were always asking him to write articles, something he was happy to do.
Vitale explains one of the main reasons why the campaign had broad local support: ‘The area of coastline due to be taken away was where everybody from Cinisi used to come in the summer. It was easy to learn how to swim there, because there were three rocks: the first was very near the shore, the second was at about head height, and when you reached the third this meant you had learnt how to swim.’
Even more important was the view of many local peasants that the whole idea of a third runway was a very risky proposition in any event. The new east–west runway would apparently be protected from the sirocco by mountains, but the wind still found its way down through gullies and small valleys, creating dangerous gusts and turbulence.
Protesters, meanwhile, faced a choice. They could receive some kind of compensation by applying through the Evictees’ Committee, but most peasants had been bitten once before, so they were shy of going down that road again. This was why the majority supported Peppino and others, who argued for a militant campaign aimed at stopping the building of a third runway. As part of the campaign two demonstrations were held, and Peppino and four others were charged with organising one of them illegally, although charges were later dropped. But it was very symbolic that some of the poorest peasants of Cinisi marched up the Corso from their land near the sea, only to find the doors to the council chamber hurriedly shut in front of them. Peppino, still only 20, gave an impromptu speech in the courtyard.
Peasants had set up a system of alarms to warn each other when the bulldozers were coming. On 18 September 1968 the alarm went off and demonstrators hurried down to see three hundred police advancing over the existing runways, escorting bulldozers and other heavy equipment. When protesters came face to face with the police commander, he said to the men: ‘The same old faces,’ while he told the women, ‘Housewives should be at home.’ The peasants, vividly aware of what had happened ten years earlier, shouted ‘Give us the money first,’ and ‘Where are we going to live if you knock our houses down?’ The bulldozers rumbled forward and everyone lay down in front of them. They kept coming, but juddered to a halt at the feet of the protesters.
The police commander then sent his men in, who
The police commander then sent his men in, who year-old peasant suffered injuries to his head and ribs and was immediately taken to hospital. Franco Maniaci, who would later become deputy mayor of Cinisi, was arrested for shouting ‘bastard’ at a policeman. But there were too many demonstrators, so the bulldozers and the police gave up.
On a political level, though, things began to shift. It was around this time, Salvo Vitale recalls, that his editor at L’Ora in Palermo told him, ‘there’s no point in sending us any more articles because we’re not going to publish them. The runway has got to be built.’
That same evening a 10-strong delegation went to meet regional government, and officials offered immediate payment of 10 per cent of the land’s value. Given the elephantine slowness of Italian bureaucracy, this meant long-term starvation until the rest of the compensation arrived. The Evictees’ Committee – or in other words the Communist and Socialist parties – accepted the agreement, whereas the majority of peasants did not. The militancy that had characterised these political parties just after the Second World War had ebbed over the years. Many Socialists and Communists had emigrated because there was no work, or had left anyway because the local establishment had told them there would be no work for people with their ideas.
Given that the ‘official’ opposition had thrown in the towel, the next morning the surveyors expected they could get on with their work undisturbed. But they found a hundred demonstrators opposing them, and once again the bulldozers were turned round. That evening protesters were warned: ‘it would be better for you not to turn up tomorrow’. Yet a few did. Hundreds of police, plainclothes officers with cameras, police dogs – even a helicopter – confronted them.
There was a bitter smell as the bulldozers uprooted lemon trees. Peasant families cried as their houses were destroyed with all their furniture still inside. Now they had no land, no house and no money; they only started to receive compensation four years later. Many of the old people died of a broken heart soon after the destruction, a lot of young people either emigrated or were unemployed for many years.
Once the dust had settled, two things became clear: the town’s economic lungs had been ripped out and the Mafia had consolidated its position. Overall, by now the airport had obliterated much of Cinisi’s coastline and 40 per cent of productive land. People were therefore desperate for jobs and it was the Mafia that controlled the new ones created at the airport.
In the end, the peasants were proved right when they said the third runway would be dangerous. When the sirocco blows, aircraft are often rerouted to Catania airport. And on 5 May 1972 a DC9 crashed on the far side of Mount Pecoraro, killing 155 passengers. Two days before Christmas 1978 another DC9 crashed on approach out to sea, and 108 passengers drowned; on both occasions bad infrastructure as opposed to bad weather was blamed.
The Builders’ Dispute
The campaign against the third runway was mainly aimed at the authorities. The next major public campaign – in support of local building workers – found local activists coming into direct conflict with the Mafia.
Unemployment has always been high in western Sicily, so there has invariably been a hungry local labour force that could potentially be exploited by unscrupulous employers. Like workers anywhere, what these people wanted was a decent wage and safe working conditions. The reality was that deaths at work were far higher than the number of Mafia murders: during the period 1971–75 an incredible 1,278 building workers died on the job, mainly through electrocution,
collapsing scaffolding, or a whole range of accidents caused by tiredness. A working day of 10 to 12 hours was normal in the summer, with employers trying to keep the same level of exploitation going in the darker months through the use of floodlights. Workers were paid illegally, often at half the minimum wage rates.
This general situation was probably even more extreme in Cinisi. As we have seen, hundreds of families’ homes had been destroyed just a few years earlier to build the third runway for Palermo airport. But those from a farming background were probably less familiar with Mafia domination of the town; it was something that they probably hadn’t encountered regularly. Furthermore, the vast majority of the 400 or so building workers were under 25, and many must have been influenced by the climate of youth rebellion.
That was the situation for the workers. For the employers there were a variety of reasons that had caused this building boom – a bonanza that needed large numbers of new workers. One cause was migrants abroad sending money home, and their families deciding they wanted to live in better houses. Another was rich people in Palermo who wanted a second home by the sea. And the third cause was Mafiosi who had been enriched by the drugs trade and wanted a piece of the action – whether it be buildings for their personal use or simply making money on building work in general.
Leaving aside their own luxury accommodation, for the Mafia the system worked like this. First, Mafiosi had contacts and influence within the council’s building and planning committees – they could apply pressure and decide which areas would be set aside for building work, and snap that land up cheaply before the decision became publicly known. The price of the land would then rise enormously and they could sell it off at a huge profit. Alternatively, they could contract a company to erect a building at a cost of say 12 million lire, but then sell the completed property at 25 million to the many hopeful buyers looking to invest. Linked to all of this was the local council, which was often prepared to turn a blind eye if regulations were flouted, in return for a backhander or for a nice bundle of votes at election time. Besides this rather haphazard market there was another huge area of building work: the construction of the Palermo–Trapani motorway, which passed through Cinisi.
