Defiance

by Behan, Tom

  These stories surrounding Sicily’s most popular and powerful politicians were far more important than my story of a house in Cinisi that used to belong to the Badalamentis. Yet, wherever you go in Sicily it is hard not to be reminded of the Mafia’s power. Near the motorway turnoff for the airport you come round a bend and notice two brown obelisks in front of you, on both sides of the road, about 40 feet high and about 100 yards apart – this is the same size as the crater created in the motorway, caused by the bomb that killed Judge Giovanni Falcone. And as the plane pulled off the runway I looked out of the window and noticed the railway line where Peppino’s body had been blown to bits. * * *

  A few days later I finally managed to speak with the mayor. He sounded a bit nervous but agreed to send me all the documents the council had about the house. He said it had originally been built illegally, and handed over to the council about four years ago. Given that he had been elected 18 months ago, and that before that the council was run by government-appointed commissioners for a couple of years, he probably felt he was in the clear. The commissioners – appointed because the government had disbanded the council on suspicion of Mafia infiltration – only came to Cinisi once a fortnight.

  In the end I received just one document from the council, and it told a slightly different story. The Badalamentis had originally got planning permission for a bungalow, but had made it 200 per cent bigger by building a first floor and attic level illegally. The house had first been impounded in 1985 by a Palermo courthouse, and was definitively confiscated in 1987 by a Supreme Court verdict. I had been wrong to doubt my interviewee: the house had belonged to the authorities – and therefore to the Italian people – for over 15 years.

  Following the Supreme Court decision, the property was managed by a kind of government land registry office. They did nothing with it for 10 years – a whole decade. Then in 1997 it was offered to the police, who turned it down because they said they didn’t have the money to renovate it.

  Another half a decade passed, and then in 2002 things suddenly started speeding up. But I couldn’t help thinking: at that point Gaetano Badalamenti and his henchmen had just been convicted, the Anti-Mafia Commission had recently condemned the police’s mismanagement of the investigations and The Hundred Steps had been a huge success, surely all of this was no coincidence.

  Following a request from the council commissioners the house was now finally handed over to Cinisi council. So the current mayor, elected at the end of the commissioners’ mandate, was essentially correct – it had ‘only’ been council property for four years. The original plan was that it would be used as a headquarters for the municipal police, although there would also be an ‘office for legality’, in other words a structure that promoted a culture of generalised legality. The current plan has slightly changed, and the intention now is to make it both an ‘office for legality’ and a youth training centre.

  At that point I decided to contact the land registry office to ask for an explanation for such a long delay, and any more information that was available. It has a wonderfully slick website, and has the most impressive ‘Code of Ethics’ imaginable, brimming with phrases about ‘transparency’ and ‘serving the public’. When I rang them up they promised to send me a report, but when they got round to writing they said their Code of Ethics prevented them from releasing any information. I quoted their Code of Ethics back at them, pointing out these were public documents available to the public, but they ignored me for weeks. When I threatened to appeal to their ‘Monitoring Committee’ they wrote back, saying that if I ‘made unjustified negative statements about the conduct of this office, the same body reserves the right to take legal action’.

  Questions and Answers

  Despite all that I had managed to find out, nobody I knew in Cinisi had given me sufficient answers to my two questions, so here are my own. My explanation is recounted on three levels: Cinisi, Sicily and national.

  The old actor Gaspare Cucinella once said to me: ‘Peppino isn’t dead’ and instinctively I knew what he meant. Nearly thirty years after his death Peppino still casts a long shadow, primarily because it took twenty-five years to establish the truth and obtain justice. His brother Giovanni has got drawn into recounting all of this history, including his brother’s activities during the 1970s. As a result of the success of The Hundred Steps, if he accepted every invitation he received to go and speak he would spend three days out of four outside Cinisi.

  For many years several of Peppino’s fellow comrades spent a lot of time campaigning to clear his name, and perhaps felt a bit guilty when they looked back and wondered whether they could have done more to save him. Maybe they were also embarrassed by the fact that soon after Peppino died, large-scale political campaigning in Cinisi perished too. The annual 9 May commemoration is now a national event. The end result has been very positive and significant, as Felicetta says: ‘when we started Cinisi was known as the town of Gaetano Badalamenti, now people know it as the town of Peppino Impastato’.

  But the prominence of this campaigning over a past miscarriage of justice has meant that people’s attention has been distracted from the here and now. What is lacking in Cinisi is a noisy, irreverent and daring opposition against local, national and international politics. Gaspare Cucinella draws a deep sigh before telling me: ‘The fight against the Mafia can’t just take place once a year. Demonstrations, meetings, films are all fine – but you just can’t talk about Peppino – you’ve got to have “after Peppino” discussions as well. And where is it, this “after Peppino”? It doesn’t exist. It’s as if Peppino isn’t really dead.’

  This vacuum is also influenced by Sicilian and national politics. The Mafia is everywhere but cannot be seen. It is murderous but it doesn’t kill. The crude domination of a Badalamenti has largely disappeared, as has Riina’s strategy of a head-on collision with government. Today, one of the biggest growth areas for the Mafia is privatised health care.

  But what has remained constant over the years is the overwhelming evidence of collusion between both Sicilian and national politicians and the Mafia. Politicians are regularly arrested and convicted for links with the Mafia, but at the end of the day the system grinds on. The existing structures of parliament, the police and the judiciary are unchanged. The Mafia finds it relatively easy to do deals with corrupt officials, and so it goes on.

  People often find it uncomfortable to look the truth in the face, especially when it is right in front of them. Influential politicians and top business players want to defend their power, wealth and privileges. If that means entering into some kind of alliance with organised crime, then so be it.

  While the anti-Mafia industry holds conferences in luxury hotels, passes laws, comments on individual cases of corruption, virtually nobody states the obvious: it is the system that needs changing, not some individuals within it. Dozens of anti-Mafia laws and thousands of arrests since Peppino’s time have not solved the problem. As long as we live in a society dominated by the rich and the powerful, these kinds of issues – essentially their strategic decisions concerning with whom they will make alliances – are decisions whose effects on ordinary people will continue to weigh heavily.

  Peppino’s relevance today is undimmed. Not only did he battle the Mafia but he denounced the dominance of the Church and a rigid family structure, as well as calling for a new classless society. And at the risk of turning a true iconoclast into a saint, I’ll end this book with the slogan written on the opening banner carried at his funeral, reproduced in this book: ‘With Peppino’s courage and ideas we shall continue’.

  Bibliography

  Although much of the book has been built around interviews, the following books have all been essential: the three volumes edited and published by Umberto

  Santino’s ‘Peppino Impastato Research Centre’ – L’assassinio e il depistaggio (Palermo, 1998), Cara Felicia (Palermo, 2005) and Lunga è la notte (2nd edition, Palermo, 2003); the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission
report released in 2000, published commercially as Peppino Impastato: anatomia di un depistaggio (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2001) and finally Salvo Vitale’s biography, Nel cuore dei coralli (2nd edition, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2002).

  More general books in English that have been a big help are: John Dickie, Cosa Nostra (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2004); John Follain, A Dishonoured Society (Warner Books, London, 1996) and Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers (Vintage, London, 1995). Three books in Italian that were used frequently are: Alfio Caruso, Da Cosa Nasce Cosa (Longanesi, Milan, 2000); Umberto Santino, Storia del movimento antimafia (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2000) and the 1,300-page report of the Anti-Mafia commission published in February 1976, Relazione sul traffico mafioso di tabacchi e stupefacenti nonché sui rapporti fra mafia e gangsterismo italo americano (Tipografia del Senato, Rome, 1976).

  Other than these, the following sources were used for individual chapters – in some cases they were used in several chapters, but to keep the list short only the first use is cited.

  1 Two Deaths

  The opening description comes from the April 2002 Palermo Court of Appeal sentence against Gaetano Badalamenti. 2 The Killing Fields

  Giuseppe Casarrubea, Portella della Ginestra. Microstoria di una strage di Stato (3rd edition, Franco Angeli, Milan, 2002); Giuseppe Casarrubea, Storia segreta della Sicilia (Bompiani, Milan, 2005); Giovanni Di Capua, Il biennio cruciale. L’Italia di Charles Poletti (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2005); Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1990); Franco Grasso (ed.), Girolamo Li Causi e la sua azione politica per la Sicilia (Edizioni Libri Siciliani, Palermo, 1966); Pietro Manali (ed.), Portella della Ginestra 50 anni dopo (2 volumes, Salvatore Sciascia, Caltanisetta-Rome, 1997); Maria Occhipinti, Una donna di Ragusa (Sellerio, Palermo, 1993); Alfredo Pecoraro, Dai campi e dalle officine. Storie di operai e contadini nella Sicilia dal 1947 al 1970 (Doramarkus, Palermo, 2003); Francesco Petrotta (ed.), Mafia e banditismo nella Sicilia del dopoguerra (La Zisa, Palermo, 2002); Giuliana Saladino, Terra di rapina (Sellerio, Palermo, 2001); Umberto Santino, Sicilia 102. Caduti nella lotta contro la mafia e per la democrazia dal 1893 al 1994 (Centro Siciliano di documentazione Giuseppe Impastato, Palermo, 1995) plus several editions of the journal La Voce della Sicilia.

  3 Hotel Delle Palme

  Shana Alexander, The Pizza Connection (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York, 1988); Danilo Dolci, The Man Who Plays Alone (MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1968); Michele Pantaleone, The Mafia and Politics (Chatto & Windus, London, 1966); Umberto Santino and Giovanni La Fiura, L’impresa mafiosa (Franco Angeli, Milan, 1991); Claire Sterling, The Mafia. The Long Reach of the International Sicilian Mafia (Grafton, London, 1991); Nicola Tranfaglia, Mafia, politica e affari 1943–2000 (Laterza, Bari-Rome, 2001); Leone Zingales, La Mafia negli anni ’60 in Sicilia (Terzo Millennio, Caltanissetta, 2003) and I boss della Mafia (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1971).

  4 The Man Who Made Leaves Move

  Gabriella Badalamenti, Come l’oleandro (Sellerio, Palermo,

  2002); Mario Francese, Una vita in cronaca (Gelka, Palermo,

  2000) and Salvo Vitale, ‘Gli assassini’, Antimafia, March

  2002.

  5 It’s in the Air that You Breathe

  Vito Mangiapani, Cinisi. Memorie e documenti (Grifo, Palermo, 2001 [first published 1910]) and Leonardo Pandolfo, Cinisi. L’erba della memoria (Ila Palma, Palermo, 1997).

  6 The Impastatos

  Felicia Bartolotta Impastato, La mafia in casa mia (2nd edition, La Luna, Palermo, 1987); Gabriella Ebano, Felicia e le sue sorelle (Ediesse, Rome, 2005); Valeria Pizzini Gambetta, ‘Becoming Visible: Did the Emancipation of Women Reach the Sicilian Mafia?’, in A. Cento Bull and A. Giorgio (eds), Speaking Out and Silencing. Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s (Legenda/MHRA, London, 2006); Frederic Sondern Jr, Brotherhood of Evil: The Mafia (Victor Gollancz, London, 1959) and several issues of L’Idea Socialista.

  7 Welcome to Mafiopoli

  Pino Arlacchi, Gli uomini del disonore. La mafia siciliana nella vita del grande pentito Antonino Calderone (Mondadori, Milan, 1992); Raimondo Catanzaro, Men of Respect. A Social History of the Sicilian Mafia (The Free Press/Macmillan, New York, 1992); Alessandra Dino, ‘Ritorno a Mafiopoli’, Meridiana, no. 40, 2001; Saverio Lodato, Potenti. Sicilia, anni Novanta (Garzanti, Milan, 1992); Nicola Tranfaglia (ed.), Cirillo, Ligato e Lima (Laterza, Bari-Rome, 1994) plus the March 2001 Palermo Court of Appeal sentence against Vito Palazzolo.

  8 Bulldozers, Builders and Brothers

  Robert Alajmo, Notizia del disastro, (Garzanti, Milan, 2000).

  10 Crazy Waves

  Pino Manzella and Salvo Vitale, as interviewed in the video produced by Antonio Bellia, Peppino Impastato: Storia di un siciliano libero (Il Manifesto, Rome, 1998); Anna Puglisi, Donne, Mafia e Antimafia (DG Editore, Trapani, 2005) and Radio Aut, ‘Radiografia di Mafiopoli’, in Accumulazione e cultura mafiose (Cento Fiori, Palermo, 1979).

  12 And the Windows Stayed Shut

  Luca Tescaroli, Le faide mafiose nei misteri della Sicilia (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2003).

  14 The Bells of St Fara

  Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite. La vera storia (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2002); Francesco Forgione, Amici come prima (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2004); Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio (eds), L’amico degli amici (BUR, Milan, 2005); Saverio Lodato and Marco Travaglio, Intoccabili (BUR, Milan, 2005); Stefano Maria Bianchi and Alberto Nerazzini, La mafia è bianca (BUR, Milan, 2005) and Livio Pepino, Andreotti, la mafia, i processi (EGA Editore, Turin, 2005).

  For further information, the main websites are: centroimpastato.it and peppinoimpastato.com. The basic starting point, however, is to get hold of the second biggest grossing Italian film of the last decade: I cento passi/The Hundred Steps (2000, Italy, dir. Marco Tullio Giordana); it can be found at sites such as at: internetbookshop.it.

  This is neither an academic book that pretends it can detach itself from the world that surrounds it, nor a crime thriller obsessed with describing bloodshed and psychopaths. It is a book committed to ridding the world of the Mafia. This is why a large amount of the profits created will go to the ‘Peppino Impastato Research Centre’, an organisation independent of the institutions, which for nearly 30 years has survived thanks to both personal commitment and public donations.

  Acknowledgements

  As the Italians say, this book is corale – there is a virtual chorus of voices within it, primarily of people who have conducted a long battle against the Mafia

  and the institutional collusion it benefits from.

  So thanks to all those who agreed to be interviewed:

  Gabriella Ruffino Badalamenti, Gaspare Cucinella, Pino

  Di Stefano, Margherita Galati, Graziella Iacopelli, Felicetta

  Vitale Impastato, Felicia Bartolotta Impastato, Giovanni

  Impastato, Luisa Impastato, Piero Impastato, Nino La Fata,

  Salvatore Maltese, Nino Mannino, Pino Manzella, Giuseppe

  Nobile, Ludovico Pizzo, Giovanni Riccobono, Umberto

  Santino, Gino Scasso, Pino Vitale, Salvo Vitale and somebody

  who wanted to remain anonymous.

  Equally, I have had valuable help, advice and hospitality

  – often in ways that were not imagined or planned – from:

  Giuseppe Di Lello, Mariantonietta Mangiapane, the current

  mayor of Cinisi Salvatore Palazzolo, Giancarla Pantaleo,

  Caterina Pellingra, Salvo Ruvolo, Antonella Venezia,

  Mariangela Venuti and Felicetta Vitale’s family.

  Two people whose advice and generosity have been

  invaluable are Giovanni Impastato and Giuseppe Nobile. Of

  equal if not greater importance has been Barbara Rampoldi’s

  help on earlier drafts.

  210  Acknowledgements Thanks also to Paolo Chirco for allowing reproduction of hi
s photo of Peppino. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for the images, and the author will be happy to acknowledge them in any future editions.

  Index

  A

  Alcamo 17, 30, 131, 142 Andreotti, Giulio 73, 107, 187–9

  Anti-Mafia Commission 26,

  32, 71, 78, 141, 176,

  179–80, 194, 199

  B Badalamenti, Emanuele 30–1

  Badalamenti, family 27–30, 163–4, 195, 198–9

  Badalamenti, Gaetano, aka ‘Don Tano’ 21, 23–34, 54–5, 62, 67–8, 72–8, 91, 99–109, 113, 122–6, 129, 137, 144, 153, 158–65, 169, 172–9, 181, 184, 188, 194, 196, 199, 201

  Bartolotta, Fara 52, 64, 138–9, 151–2, 155–7

  Bartolotta, Felicia (see

  Impastato)

  Bartolotta, Matteo 52–4, 57, 61–2, 64, 95

  Berlusconi, Silvio 175, 183, 185–8

  Bonanno, Giuseppe, aka ‘Joe Bananas’ 18–21,

  Buscetta, Tommaso 21, 26, 77, 103

  C Calderone, Antonino 73–4, 102

  Carini 13, 23, 67, 74, 164, 177

  Castellammare del Golfo 18, 30, 120, 178