Girolamo Li Causi - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Girolamo Li Causi was a Sicilian Communist

Italian Communist Party

The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

leader. As a Sicilian and communist he was actively involved in the post war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

struggle against the Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

. He labelled the large estate

Latifundia

Latifundia are pieces of property covering very large land areas. The latifundia of Roman history were great landed estates, specializing in agriculture destined for export: grain, olive oil, or wine...

(the latifondo) Sicily’s central problem.

Political activist

Li Causi was born in Termini Imerese

Termini Imerese

Termini Imerese is a town and comune in the province of Palermo on the northern coast of Sicily, southern Italy.-Ancient:The site where the town now sits has been populated since prehistoric times, as many archeologial excavations have shown through the years...

, a town in the province of Palermo

Province of Palermo

The Province of Palermo is a province in the autonomous region of Sicily, a major island in Southern Italy. Its capital is the city of Palermo. The Province of Palermo has 82 comuni , 1,239,272 inhabitants, and is 4,992 km² .-External links:...

on the northern coast of Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

. The son of a shoemaker, he graduated with an economics degree from the University of Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

in northern Italy. As a student he joined the Italian Socialist Party

Italian Socialist Party

The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...

(Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI).

Forced to leave Venice by the Fascists after Mussolini’s March on Rome

March on Rome

The March on Rome was a march by which Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party came to power in the Kingdom of Italy...

in October 1922, he went to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

and then Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, where he helped organise the Third Internationalist’ faction of the PSI. In the summer of 1924 he adhered to the Italian Communist Party

Italian Communist Party

(Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI). He was part of the editorial staff of the Communist newspaper l'Unità

L'Unità

l'Unità is an Italian left-wing newspaper, originally founded as official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party.-History:L'Unità was founded by Antonio Gramsci on 12 February 1924, as the newspaper of workers and peasants, the official newspaper of Italian Communist Party : it was printed in...

and the magazine Pagine rosse. After the failed assassination attempt on the fascist

Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

prime minister Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

in September 1926, the PCI was outlawed and the publication of l'Unità suppressed. A clandestine edition resumed on the first day of 1927 in which Li Causi was actively involved.

Resisting fascism

Li Causi became the PCI interregional secretary in Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

and Liguria

Liguria

Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...

, where he succeeded in producing clandestine copies of L’Unità and in helping organise rice workers’ strikes in Piedmont. He fled to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

in mid-1927, but was arrested on May 10, 1928 in Pisa

Pisa

Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...

, during one of his clandestine return trips. Li Causi was sentenced to 20 years and nine months in prison. In 1937, as the result of a political amnesty, he was released from prison and banished to the penal colony on the island of Ponza

Ponza

Ponza is the largest of the Italian Pontine Islands archipelago, located 33 km south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina in the Lazio region....

. When Mussolini was forced to resign on July 25, 1943, Li Causi stayed in the penal colony on the island of Ventotene

Ventotene

Ventotene, in Roman times known as Pandataria or Pandateria from the Greek Pandoteira, is one of the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Gaeta right at the border between Lazio and Campania, Italy...

, 40 kilometres to the east of Ponza.

After his release, he went north to join the resistance against the German occupation and remaining Italian fascists. He was the PCI representative on the National Liberation Committee for Upper Italy in Milan

Milan

, active in producing L’Unità clandestinely and in organising the resistance. Li Causi became a member of the national directorate of the PCI that was reinstated on August 29, 1943, in Rome

Rome

Back to Sicily

The PCI directorate sent Li Causi to Sicily

Sicily

reinforce the party with an experienced leader. He arrived in Palermo on August 10, 1944. Although the PCI – traditionally weak in Sicily – included a separatist faction, Li Causi led the Communists to a strong anti-separatist stance, and by late 1944, Communists and separatists were doing battle in the streets.

Li Causi’s arrival in Sicily marked a change in Communist fortunes on the island. He worked to curb dissension, prevent violence, and block Sicilian separatism, while supporting autonomy

Autonomy

Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...

. Li Causi believed that Sicilians would benefit from autonomy. Separatism, which represented a "vague sentimental attitude" that the island’s reactionaries supported, would only cause harm. Li Causi became the main rival of separatist leader Finocchiaro Aprile and the most consistent enemy of separatism.

The Villalba attack

On September 16, 1944, Li Causi and the local socialist leader Michele Pantaleone

Michele Pantaleone

Michele Pantaleone was a respected journalist and expert on the Sicilian Mafia and one of the first to shed light on the links between organized crime and political power....

, as leaders of the Blocco del popolo (Popular Front) in Sicily, went to speak to the landless labourers at an election rally in Villalba, challenging the Mafia

Mafia

boss Calogero Vizzini

Calogero Vizzini

Calogero Don Calò Vizzini was a historical Mafia boss of Villalba in the Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily. Vizzini was considered to be one of the most influential and legendary Mafia bosses of Sicily after World War II until his death in 1954...

in his own personal fiefdom. In the morning tensions rose when Christian Democrat mayor Beniamino Farina – a relative of Vizzini as well as his successor as mayor – angered local communists by ordering all hammer-and-sickle signs erased from buildings along the road on which Li Causi would travel into town. When his supporters protested, they were intimidated by separatists and thugs.

The rally began in late afternoon. Vizzini had agreed to permit the meeting and assured them there would be no trouble as long as local issues, land problems, the large estates, or the Mafia were not addressed. Both speakers who preceded Li Causi, among whom Pantaleone, followed Vizzini’s commands. Li Causi did not. He denounced the unjust exploitation by the Mafia, and when Li Causi started to talk about how the peasants were being deceived by 'a powerful leaseholder' – a thinly disguised reference to Vizzini – the Mafia boss hurled: It’s a lie. Pandemonium broke out. The rally ended in a shoot-out which left 14 people wounded including Li Causi and Pantaleone.

Always the Communist ready to educate the proletariat, Li Causi hurled at one of the peasant attackers: "Why are you shooting, who are you shooting at? Can’t you see that you're shooting at yourself?" (Don Calò and his bodyguard were accused of attempted manslaughter. The trial dragged on until 1958, but by 1946 the evidence had already disappeared. Vizzini was never convicted because by the time of the verdict he was already dead.

Election surprise

The Villalba attack inaugurated a long series of Mafia attacks in Sicily on political activists, trade union leaders and ordinary peasants resisting Mafia rule and claiming land titles. In the following years many left-wing leaders were killed or otherwise attacked. On April 20–21, 1947, the Blocco del popolo – a coalition of the communist PCI

Italian Communist Party

and socialist PSI

Italian Socialist Party

– won a surprise victory in the elections for the Constituent Assembly of the autonomous region of Sicily

Sicily

. The Blocco obtained 29 percent of the vote, while the (Christian Democrat Party) got 20.5% and the Qualunquist

Uomo Qualunque Front

The Front of the Ordinary Man was a short-lived populist libertarian and poujadist party in Italy...

-Monarchist

Monarchist National Party

The Monarchist National Party was a political party in Italy founded in 1946, uniting conservatives, liberal conservatives, conservative liberals and nationalists...

bloc came third with 14%.

Li Causi furnished an explanation for the success of the left-wing block:

Portella della Ginestra massacre

Twelve days after the left-wing election victory, the May 1 labour parade in Portella della Ginestra

Portella della Ginestra massacre

The Portella della Ginestra massacre was one of the more violent acts of in the history of modern Italian politics, when 11 people were killed and 33 wounded during May Day celebrations in Sicily on May 1, 1947, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi...

was attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of over thirty. The attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death...

, intending to capture Li Causi. Nevertheless, the Mafia was suspected of involvement in the Portella di Ginestra massacre and many other attacks on left-wing organisations and leaders. The massacre created a national scandal.

The Communist-controlled Italian General Confederation of Labour

Italian General Confederation of Labour

-External links:**...

called a general strike in protest against the massacre. The Minister of the Interior, the Christian Democrat Mario Scelba

Mario Scelba

Mario Scelba was an Italian Christian Democratic politician who served as the 34th Prime Minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955...

, reported to Parliament the next day that so far as the police could determine, the Portella della Ginestra shooting was non-political. Scelba claimed that bandits notoriously infested the valley in which it occurred. Li Causi disagreed and charged that the Mafia had perpetrated the attack, in cahoots with the large landowners, monarchists and the rightist Uomo Qualunque Front

Uomo Qualunque Front

The Front of the Ordinary Man was a short-lived populist libertarian and poujadist party in Italy...

. The debate ended in a fist fight between the left and the right. Nearly 200 deputies took part in the brawl.

Denouncing the massacre

Li Causi and Scelba would be the main opponents in the aftermath of the massacre and the successive killing of the alleged perpetrator, the bandit Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano

, and the trial against Gaspare Pisciotta

Gaspare Pisciotta

Gaspare Pisciotta was a companion and close friend of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano, and considered to be the co-leader of his outlaw band.- Origins :...

and other remaining members of Giuliano’s gang. While Scelba dismissed any political motive, Li Causi stressed the political nature of the massacre – and tried to uncover the truth. Li Causi claimed that the police inspector Ettore Messana – supposed to coordinate the prosecution of the bandits – had been in league with Giuliano and denounced Scelba for allowing Messana to remain in office. Later documents would prove the accusation.

Li Causi suspected a campaign against the left and linked it with the crisis in the national government (under Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi was an Italian statesman and politician and founder of the Christian Democratic Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive coalition governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics...

), which would lead to the expulsion of the communists and socialist from government, as well as to prevent the left from entering the regional government. On May 30, 1947, Giuseppe Alessi

Giuseppe Alessi

Giuseppe Alessi is an Italian footballer who currently plays midfielder in Lega Pro Prima Divisione for Reggiana.Alessi started his career at Torino. Then he played for S.S.C. Napoli, before joining Spezia Calcio.-External links:...

, became the first president of the Sicilian region with the support of the centre right and the same day De Gasperi announced his new centrist government, who had been in the national union governments since 1945.

Challenging Giuliano

Speaking at Portella della Ginestra on the second anniversary of the massacre, Li Causi publicly called on Giuliano to name names. He received a written reply from the bandit leader: "It is only men with no shame who gives out names. Not a man who tends to take justice into his own hands; who aims to keep his reputation in society high, and who values this aim more than his own life."

Li Causi responded by reminding Giuliano that he would almost certainly be betrayed: "Don’t you understand that Scelba will have you killed." Giuliano again replied, hinting at the powerful secrets that he possessed: "I know that Scelba wants to have me killed; he wants to have me killed because I keep a nightmare hanging over him. I can make sure he is brought to account for actions that, if revealed, would destroy his political career and end his life."

At the trial for the Portella della Ginestra massacre

Portella della Ginestra massacre

, Gaspare Pisciotta

Gaspare Pisciotta

Gaspare Pisciotta was a companion and close friend of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano, and considered to be the co-leader of his outlaw band.- Origins :...

said: "Those who have made promises to us are called Bernardo Mattarella

Bernardo Mattarella

Bernardo Mattarella was an Italian politician for the Christian Democrat party . He has been Minister of Italy several times...

, Prince Alliata, the monarchist MP Marchesano and also Signor Scelba

Mario Scelba

Mario Scelba was an Italian Christian Democratic politician who served as the 34th Prime Minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955...

, Minister for Home Affairs … it was Marchesano, Prince Alliata and Bernardo Mattarella who ordered the massacre of Portella di Ginestra. Before the massacre they met Giuliano…" However the MPs Mattarella, Alliata and Marchesano were declared innocent by the Court of Appeal of Palermo, at a trial which dealt with their alleged role in the event.

In Parliament

Li Causi was a member of the Italian Constituent Assembly in 1946 and a Senator

Italian Senate

The Senate of the Republic is the upper house of the Italian Parliament. It was established in its current form on 8 May 1948, but previously existed during the Kingdom of Italy as Senato del Regno , itself a continuation of the Senato Subalpino of Sardinia-Piedmont established on 8 May 1848...

from 1948–53 and 1968–74, as well as national deputy in 1953-68 and vice-president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies

Italian Chamber of Deputies

The Italian Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Parliament of Italy. It has 630 seats, a plurality of which is controlled presently by liberal-conservative party People of Freedom. Twelve deputies represent Italian citizens outside of Italy. Deputies meet in the Palazzo Montecitorio. A...

in 1958-63. While in Parliament he was largely responsible for setting up a parliamentary commission of enquiry into the Mafia

Mafia

, and was vice-president of the Antimafia Commission

Antimafia Commission

The Italian Antimafia Commission is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate . The Antimafia Commission is a commission of inquiry into, initially, the “phenomenon of the Mafia”...

from 1963-1972.

In an interview in the 1970s he said about the changes in the Mafia:

Speeches and books

Intervento di Girolamo Li Causi alla Assemblea Costituente, seduta del 15 luglio 1947 Intervento alla camera dei deputati di Girolamo Li Causi, seduta del 26 ottobre 1951 Li Causi, Girolamo (1974). Il Lungo cammino: autobiografia 1906-1944, Rome: Editori Riuniti Li Causi, Girolamo (2007). Portella della Ginestra. La ricerca della verità , Ediesse, ISBN 8823012011

Sources

Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet ISBN 0-340-82435-2
Finkelstein, Monte S. (1998). Separatism, the Allies and the Mafia: The Struggle for Sicilian Independence, 1943-1948, Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press ISBN 0-934-22351-3
Lane, A. Thomas (1995). Biographical Dictionary of European Labor Leaders, London/Westport (Connecticut): Greenwood Press ISBN 0-313-26456-2
Lupo, Salvatore (2009). History of the Mafia, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-13134-6 Santino, Umberto (1997). La strage di Portella, la democrazia bloccata e il doppio stato, Centro Siciliano di Documentazione "Giuseppe Impastato", April 1997
Servadio, Gaia (1976), Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg ISBN 0-436-44700-2

External links

Giuliano e lo Stato: materiali sul primo intrigo della Repubblica an Italian language site about Giuliano and the Portella di Ginestra massacre.

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