Italian Politics and the Sicilian Mafia: An Account from 1983 to Present

Many know the Island of Sicily as a warm, sun-filled exotic paradise that became home to travelers from distant lands. This paese di sole or land of sun, not only assisted in growing abundant amounts of lemons, cactus fruit and almonds, but rather something mysterious, secret and somewhat intoxicating. A force so strong that even academics today are baffled by a society that has planted its roots deeper than the palm trees of Palermo, which has survived the greatest of wars and the upmost of inadequacies in both the public and political spheres. With its thirst for power and honor, which fights unforgivably for what is theirs,  “Our Thing” or as we better know it, “ la Cosa Nostra”.

In Sicily, the Cosa Nostra once were words unheard, but today these two words represent the ugliness and backwardness of Sicilian society. Younger generations no longer want to hear of “Our Thing”, but instead continuously talk about how it is actually “Cosa Loro” meaning “their thing.”

With rough times finally passing after the Anni di Piombo [Years of Lead], a period of extreme right and left wing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s and hard economic recession, the late 1980s gave hope to not only many Italians but first and foremost to Sicilians. Willing to move on from dark decades, Sicilians truly wanted to better themselves but could not because of mafia wars. Blood was being shed unmercifully across the volcanic island as bosses from Palermo were vying for power.

The Sicilian Issue

The early 1980s in Sicily were met with the Second Mafia War as the Corleonese boss Salvatore Riina decimated other Mafia families. This war resulted in hundreds of murders including high profile ones such as the murder of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the head of the counter-terrorism team that arrested Red Brigades founders in 1974. In Palermo on July 29, 1983, Rocco Chinnici, judge and Antimafia Pool leader, was blown up with his two bodyguards on his street. Assassin Pino Greco was the one that pulled the trigger on the bomb that was ordered by his uncle, the well-known Mafioso Michele “il Papa” Greco.  After their deaths, the Italian state quickly tried to contain the Mafia and tried to figure out its codes.

Sicilians prayed that the worst was finally over, but on February 10, 1986 the Maxi Trials took place. These criminal trials managed to convict 474 Mafiosi while another 119 remand on the run, including Salvatore Riina. Antimafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino indicted 459 of the alleged Mafia members, but quickly their victories against the Mafia would unknowingly then cost them their lives. In 1992, La Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, declared war against the state of Italy with a series of high-profile murders and bomb attacks on the Italian mainland.1

On May 23, 1992, the Italian magistrate Falcone was killed with his wife and three bodyguards on the motorway from the Palermo Airport at Punta Raisi to Palermo near the town of Capaci. This gruesome murder was organized by Salvatore “Totò” Riina in revenge for Falcone’s conviction of mobsters. His death caused simultaneously nationwide outrage and panic as people of all nationalities heard about the loss of a “man of honor.” The Italian state remained shocked as state television reported the heartbreaking event. Falcone’s partner and newly appointed lead magistrate of the team against the Mafia, Paolo Borsellino stated during his speech at Falcone’s funeral on May 25, 1992:

The fight against mafia, which is the first problem to solve in our unfortunate and beautiful land, must be not only a cold repressive action, but a moral and cultural movement, involving everyone, especially younger generations, the most fit to feel the beauty of the fresh taste of freedom that sweeps away the foulness of moral compromise, of indifference, of contiguity and, hence, of complicity.2

Paolo Borsellino knew he was next to go after the lost of his dear friend. He publicly made a speech saying: “They will kill me, but it will not be a mafia’s revenge, mafia do not use revenge. Maybe mafia will materially kill me, but who actually will order my murder will be ‘others’.”3 Less than two months after the death of Falcone, on July 19, 1992, Borsellino was killed by a car bomb on Via D’Amelio in Palermo’s city center while visiting his mother, after have eaten lunch with his wife and children in Villagrazia.4

With the lost of Italy’s top two magistrates that legally waged war against the Sicilian Mafia, many Sicilians started to take matters into their own hands, especially women. “The Bed Sheet Commission of Palermo”(Il Comitato dei Lenzuoli di Palermo), were a group of women in the city of Palermo, who printed the faces of Falcone and Borsellino on their bed sheets along with the saying: “Non li avete uccisi: Le loro idee camminano sulle nostre gambe”, [You have not killed them: Their ideas walk on our legs.] All over Palermo these sheets were hanging from the balconies of most apartment buildings. They transmitted the sentiment that the Mafia was not a liked organization and that the people would fight back and no longer stand for such a backward and oppressive society.5

Berlusconi: Corruption and the Mafia Connection - 1993-2004

On January 26, 1994, Silvio Berlusconi a political outsider, business tycoon who owned and continues to own Fininvest, one of the top ten privately owned companies in Italy, Mediolanum, Mediaset, the soccer club A.C. Milan, the largest Italian publishing house Mondadori and centre right wing newspapers such as Il Giornale, announced his decision to enter the field of politics.