Mafia waning in Sicily

Italy is gradually succeeding in grinding down the world's most famous crime syndicate on its home ground. 

Corleone, the town in Sicily that gave Mario Puzo’s fictional Godfather his name, has become a new battleground in the ongoing culture war between the Mafia and the law.

On August 16 Italian government authorities inaugurated an official outpost for Law and Order called “The Legality Shop” (“Bottega della Legalità”), on the premises of one of the many properties seized from the world of organized crime in recent years.

The Legality Shop is a two-story building that belonged to the family of Bernardo Provenzano, considered to have been "the boss of bosses" and a modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel, for having eluded arrest for some 20 years. Now the building will house various activities, all symbolic of this historic challenge to the very core of Mafia-land: from the sale of produce from confiscated farmlands, to exhibitions of paintings, posters and newspaper headlines that tell the story of Italy’s struggle with the Mafia.

Another event epitomizing the triumph of the law over the Mafia lords took place last February, when Mafia boss Totò Riina’s hideout, a princely property with a swimming pool in the middle of Palermo, was handed over to the Journalists’ Guild, to house their offices along with a documental memorial to the victims of the Mafia among journalists and other truth-seekers.

These are but the latest examples of an ongoing Sicilian Renaissance, a widespread cultural rebellion against the yoke of Mafia rule, carried on by ordinary citizens, judges, policemen, journalists, teachers and particularly by the aggregates that have gone to work on the vast extensions of land confiscated from organized crime in recent years, braving the implicit and explicit death threats which defying Mafia rule entails.

The watershed between the dominant culture of omertà, the unspoken rule according to which no “man of honour” would ever bear witness to a crime, and the advancing culture of outspoken fearlessness, came with the murder of magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992. This was the last straw and it coalesced the people of Sicily in an open rebellion against organized crime.

However, not until recent years had the determination of the central government produced the unremitting manhunt which has led to the arrest of some 6,500 suspects and the confiscation of Mafia property for almost 15 billion euros in value, in the last two years alone.

Of course, everyone knows that Italy’s struggle against organized crime, which dates back to the 19th century, will not be really over until even people in places like Corleone are no longer afraid of retaliation against themselves or their loved ones. Hence the widespread educational outreach in Sicily and the need for police and government authorities to show up as often as possible, openly and officially assigning confiscated property to the citizenry.

“We are not afraid!” proclaimed the defiant banner that was unfurled against the façade of the confiscated Provenzano property last Monday, belying the thick police protection of the official inauguration (including snipers on the lookout from the building’s roof) attended by Deputy Prime-Minister Gianni Letta, Secretary of State Roberto Maroni, and Minister of Justice Angelino Alfano.

It would be rather nice if these events would lead the outside world to now realize that Italy has never been simply the land of the Mafia, as outworn clichés would have it, but rather a land that has spent decades upon decades lavishing large sums and sacrificing many lives in the attempt to overcome Mafia rule.

Alessandra Nucci is an Italian writer and freelance journalist. In 2007 she won the Golden Florin in the essay sector of  the Premio Firenze [Florence Award] for her book on gender feminism as an instrument of class warfare, La donna a una dimensione [One-Dimensional Woman], published by Marietti 1820.

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