Severino Di Giovanni
Encyclopedia
Severino Di Giovanni was an Italian anarchist who immigrated to Argentina, where he became the best-known anarchist figure in that country for his campaign of violence in support of Sacco and Vanzetti
and antifascism.
(Italy), about 180 km from Rome. He was raised right after World War I in a period of hunger, poverty and wounded soldiers in the streets, and that had a huge impact in his ideals. He followed courses to become a teacher, and soon started teaching, before graduating, in a school of his town. He learnt by his own the art of typography
and read, on his free time, Mikhail Bakunin
, Malatesta
, Proudhon, and Élisée Reclus
.
Di Giovanni started rebelling against authority at a very young age. At the age of 19 he was orphaned, and at the age of twenty (1921), fully embraced the anarchist movement. He married his cousin Teresa Masciulli, a girl from Chieti, in 1922, the same year that Benito Mussolini
's Black Shirts took power during the March on Rome
. Giovanni and Teresa decided to exile themselves to Argentina, where they immediately became involved with anarchists and antifascist movements. Severino and Teresa had three children together.
before World War II. He lived in Morón
and travelled daily to Buenos Aires Capital to participate in meetings and plan actions against fascism
and Italian fascist supporters in Argentina.
Many Italian anarchists had already immigrated to Argentina. To this day, Argentina has the largest anarchist contingent of any South American country.
Di Giovanni's ideology was close to the radical factions of the anarchist movement in Argentina
, gathered around Ramón González Pachecho and Teodoro Antilla's La Antorcha magazine, then to the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation
(FORA) and the historical newspaper La Protesta, published by Emilio López Arango and edited by Diego Abad de Santillán
.
During the 1920s, Argentina was led by the moderate left UCR Party, headed successively by Presidents Hipólito Yrigoyen
and Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
. As an anarchist, Di Giovanni had nothing but contempt for the UCR, which he saw as nothing but a pale reflection of more right-wing and fascist elements in Argentine politics.
Severino Di Giovanni's first direct action took place on June 6, 1925, during the celebration of the 25th birthday of Victor Emmanuel III
's accession to the Italian throne, which took place at the Teatro Colón. President Alvear
, his wife, the opera singer Regina Pacini, and the count Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, ambassador of Fascist Italy
, were present at the act, as well as numerous Black shirts put in place by Marescotti to prevent any disorder. When the orchestra started the Italian hymn, Giovanni and his companions threw leaflets around, at the cries of "Assassins! thieves!" The Black shirts managed to overcome them, and hand them over to the police.
, members of the Galleanist anarchist
group, who were accused of a robbery and murder of two payroll guards. At the time, Di Giovanni was in Argentina one of the most active anarchists in Argentina defending the two Italian immigrants, writing in various newspapers, including his own, founded in August 1925 and titled Culmine, and in the New York publication L'Adunata dei Refrattari.
Culmine advocated direct action
and propaganda of the deed
. Di Giovanni worked at it at nighttime, supporting his activism and family by working in factories and as a typesetter. He summarized Culmines objectives:
On May 16, 1926, a few hours after the condemnation to death of Sacco and Vanzetti, Di Giovanni bombed the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, destroying the entire front of the building. The following day, president Alvear ordered several police searches of those suspected in the attack, and the police requested assistance from the Italian embassy in order to identify suspects. The embassy immediately named Giovanni, who had disturbed the celebrations of the Teatro Colón. He was soon arrested by the police and tortured for 5 days, but would not provide information. Di Giovanni was released for lack of evidence.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts
the defense counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti managed to postpone their execution until August 23, 1927. A movement in support of the Galleanist anarchists continued to agitate for their pardon and release. On July 21, 1927, the U.S. embassy published an article in the conservative newspaper La Nación
, which described the two Italian anarchists as common-law delinquents. On the following day, Di Giovanni and two of his anarchist comrades, Alejandro and Paulino Scarfó, blew up George Washington
's statue in Palermo
, and a few hours later, exploded a bomb at one of the most important concessions of the Ford Motor Company.
Confronted with evidence of anarchist involvement in the bombings, on August 15, 1927, Eduardo Santiago, the Federal Police
officer in charge of the investigation, claimed that everything was under control and that no anarchist in the world would defeat him. On the following day, Santiago barely escaped from the bombing of his house by Di Giovanni and his group, having gone to buy cigarettes a few minutes before.
On August 23, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed; in response, a 24-hour general strike
was proclaimed in Buenos Aires, as well as many other capitals of the world. A few days after the executions, Di Giovanni received a letter from Sacco's widow, which thanked him for his work, and informing him that the director of the tobacco firm Combinados had proposed her a contract to produce a cigarette brand named "Sacco & Vanzetti". On November 26, 1927, Di Giovanni and his comrades duly bombed Bernardo Gurevich's tobacco shop Combinados on Rivadavia 2279. Di Giovanni and his comrades continued their anti-U.S. campaign of terror. The Citibank
and the Bank of Boston's headquarters were severely damaged in a bomb explosion on December 24, 1927, killing 2 persons and injuring 23.
At the beginning of 1928, the Italian liberal newspaper from Buenos Aires, L'Italia del Popolo, denounced the Italian consul, Italo Capil, as an informer and supporter of fascist elements in the Federal Police. Upon being told that the consul would visit the new consulate, along with the new ambassador, Giovanni and the Scarfó brothers bombed the Italian consulate on May 23, 1928, killing 9 and injuring 34. At the time, the Italian consulate bombing was the deadliest bombing ever to take place in Argentina. Opponents of the Italian fascist government took pains to note that the funerals of the consular employees were performed in accordance with the "fascist funeral rite", in presence of the ambassador and count Martin Franklin, the state delegate of Italian fascists in Argentina Romualdo Materlli, as well as president Alvear, his wife Regina Pacini and general Agustín P. Justo.
On the same day, Giovanni attempted to bomb Benjamín Mastronardi's pharmacy, in La Boca
. Mastronardi was the president of the Fascist Committee of La Boca. The bomb, however, was casually disactivated by Mastronardi's little son.
Giovanni's penchant for 'propaganda by the deed' triggered fierce debates inside the anarchist community; some anarchist leaders argued that Di Giovanni's actions were counterproductive, and could only result in a military coup and a victory for fascist forces. Anarchist journals such as La Antorcha and La Protesta criticized Di Giovanni's methods of direct action and indiscriminate violence. La Protesta, edited by a fierce opponent of Di Giovanni, the anarcho-syndicalist Diego Abad de Santillán
, took an openly anti-Di Giovanni line, which hardened as the bombings got more indiscriminate. La Antorcha was more ambiguous in its criticism. Neither paper particularly pleased Di Giovanni, and both were denounced at one time or the other from the columns of Culmine. The war of words escalated, and on October 25, 1929 someone assassinated Emilio López Arango, one of the editors of La Protesta. At first a group of bakers who were members of the same union as Arango were suspected of the killing but were never charged with the crime. Although it has never been proven conclusively, Di Giovanni and his group were the prime suspects in the assassination.
La Protesta immediately denounced the bombing of the Italian consulate. The criticism had no effect. Three days after the Italian consulate bombing, Di Giovanni struck again in Caballito
, bombing the house of César Afeltra, a member of Mussolini's secret police. Alfeltra was accused by Italian anarchist exiles of having practiced torture on members of various radical anarchist and anti-fascist groups in Italy.
U.S. President-elect Herbert Hoover
visited Argentina in December 1928. Giovanni wanted to bomb Hoover's train in revenge for the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, but the bomber, Alejandro Scarfó, was detained a short time before putting the explosives on the rails. This debacle led Di Giovanni suspend his bombing campaign; he focused instead on his journal Culmine. In 1929, he wrote:
Spending monotonous hours among the common people, the resigned ones, the collaborators, the conformists - isn't living; it's a vegetative existence, simply the transport, in ambulatory form, of a mass of flesh and bones. Life needs the exquisite and sublime experience of rebellion in action as well as thought.
Following the September 1930 military coup, which overthrew Hipólito Yrigoyen
, replaced by General José Félix Uriburu
and Agustín P. Justo, Giovanni made plans to free his comrade Alejandro Scarfó from prison. Needing funds in order to bribe the prison guards, he assaulted Obras Sanitarias de la Nación on October 2, 1930, achieving the most important robbery until then in Argentina, taking with him 286,000 pesos. However, the planned breakout never took place, and Alejandro Scarfó remained in prison.
In 1927, Giovanni left his wife, and had commenced an affair with America Josefina ("Fina") Scarfó, the fifteen-year-old sister of the Scarfó brothers, Alejandro and Paulino. Fina had married anarchist Silvio Astolfi as a convenience so as to remain with Giovanni, but was promptly cut off from all contact with her family. At the beginning of the Infamous Decade
initiated by the military coup, Di Giovanni passed long periods of his time in reclusion, working on Elisée Reclus's complete works. The police attempted to arrest him at a printing shop, but Di Giovanni managed to escape during a gun battle in which one policeman was killed and another injured.
In January 1931, Di Giovanni was arrested after being seriously injured in yet another gun battle, along with Fina and Paulino Scarfó. Two other anarchists were killed in the firefight. Di Giovanni announced that the 300 chickens found in their house were to be given to Burzaco
's poor.
The military junta publicized the arrests as victories of the new regime, and immediately organized a military tribunal. Di Giovanni was ably defended by his appointed defense counsel, Lieutenant Juan Carlos Franco, who spoke out in favor of the independence of the judicial system, and alleged that Di Giovanni had been tortured by the police. Lt. Franco's spirited defense of his client caused his own arrest after the trial; he was later dismissed from the ranks of the armed forces and briefly imprisoned before his deportation from Argentina. It was all to no avail; the evidence against Di Giovanni was overwhelming. Both he and Paulino Scarfó were sentenced to death; Fina, being underage, was freed.
Severino Di Giovanni was executed by firing squad on February 1, 1931. Di Giovanni shouted "Evviva l'Anarchia!" (Long live Anarchy!), before being hit by at least eight 7.65 mm Mauser rifle bullets. After exchanging a final farewell, Paulino Scarfó was also executed few hours later. Di Giovanni's body was secretly buried on orders of the Interior Minister Matías Sánchez Sorondo, in La Chacarita
. Despite these precautions, on the following day his grave was anonymously decorated with flowers.
. On July 28, 1999, Fina Scarfó obtained the love letters which Di Giovanni had sent to her from prison decades earlier, but which had been seized by the police. Fina died on 19 August 2006, at the age of 93.
Teresa Masciulli, Di Giovanni's wife, also remarried; Di Giovanni's children changed their names.
Alejandro Scarfó, after serving a term of imprisonment for the attempted assassination of President Hoover, was released from prison in 1935. Abandoned by his relatives and even his fiancée, he vanished into obscurity, embittered and resentful.
Sacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...
and antifascism.
Italy
Di Giovanni was born on March 17, 1901, in the town of Chieti, in the AbruzzoAbruzzo
Abruzzo is a region in Italy, its western border lying less than due east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east...
(Italy), about 180 km from Rome. He was raised right after World War I in a period of hunger, poverty and wounded soldiers in the streets, and that had a huge impact in his ideals. He followed courses to become a teacher, and soon started teaching, before graduating, in a school of his town. He learnt by his own the art of typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
and read, on his free time, Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
, Malatesta
Malatesta
Malatesta may refer to:*The House of Malatesta, an Italian family which ruled over Rimini from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century*Errico Malatesta , an Italian anarchist*Malatesta , a 1970 German film...
, Proudhon, and Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...
.
Di Giovanni started rebelling against authority at a very young age. At the age of 19 he was orphaned, and at the age of twenty (1921), fully embraced the anarchist movement. He married his cousin Teresa Masciulli, a girl from Chieti, in 1922, the same year that 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....
's Black Shirts took power during the 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...
. Giovanni and Teresa decided to exile themselves to Argentina, where they immediately became involved with anarchists and antifascist movements. Severino and Teresa had three children together.
Arrival in Argentina
Di Giovanni arrived in Buenos Aires with the last big wave of Italian immigrantsImmigration to Argentina
Immigration in Argentina, can be divided in several major stages:* Spanish colonization starting in the 16th century, integrating the indigenous inhabitants ....
before World War II. He lived in Morón
Morón, Buenos Aires
Morón is a city in the Argentine province of Buenos Aires, capital of the Morón Partido, located in the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area, at...
and travelled daily to Buenos Aires Capital to participate in meetings and plan actions against fascism
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...
and Italian fascist supporters in Argentina.
Many Italian anarchists had already immigrated to Argentina. To this day, Argentina has the largest anarchist contingent of any South American country.
Di Giovanni's ideology was close to the radical factions of the anarchist movement in Argentina
Anarchism in Argentina
The Argentinian anarchist movement was the strongest such movement in South America. It was strongest between 1890 and the start of a series of military governments in 1930. During this period, it was dominated by anarchist communists and anarcho-syndicalists...
, gathered around Ramón González Pachecho and Teodoro Antilla's La Antorcha magazine, then to the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation
Argentine Regional Workers' Federation
The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation , founded in 1901, was Argentina's first national labor confederation...
(FORA) and the historical newspaper La Protesta, published by Emilio López Arango and edited by Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán , born Sinesio Vaudilio García Fernández, was an author, economist and leading figure in the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements.-Early years:...
.
During the 1920s, Argentina was led by the moderate left UCR Party, headed successively by Presidents Hipólito Yrigoyen
Hipólito Yrigoyen
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Irigoyen Alem was twice President of Argentina . His activism became the prime impetus behind the obtainment of universal suffrage in Argentina in 1912...
and Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
Máximo Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear Pacheco , better known as Marcelo T. de Alvear was an Argentine politician and President of Argentina from October 12, 1922 to October 12, 1928.-Biography:...
. As an anarchist, Di Giovanni had nothing but contempt for the UCR, which he saw as nothing but a pale reflection of more right-wing and fascist elements in Argentine politics.
Severino Di Giovanni's first direct action took place on June 6, 1925, during the celebration of the 25th birthday of Victor Emmanuel III
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy
Victor Emmanuel III was a member of the House of Savoy and King of Italy . In addition, he claimed the crowns of Ethiopia and Albania and claimed the titles Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania , which were unrecognised by the Great Powers...
's accession to the Italian throne, which took place at the Teatro Colón. President Alvear
Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
Máximo Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear Pacheco , better known as Marcelo T. de Alvear was an Argentine politician and President of Argentina from October 12, 1922 to October 12, 1928.-Biography:...
, his wife, the opera singer Regina Pacini, and the count Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, ambassador of Fascist Italy
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
, were present at the act, as well as numerous Black shirts put in place by Marescotti to prevent any disorder. When the orchestra started the Italian hymn, Giovanni and his companions threw leaflets around, at the cries of "Assassins! thieves!" The Black shirts managed to overcome them, and hand them over to the police.
Culmine, Sacco & Vanzetti, and Propaganda of the Deed
After being quickly released, Di Giovanni took part in international protests against the arrest and trial of Sacco and VanzettiSacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...
, members of the Galleanist anarchist
Luigi Galleani
Luigi Galleani was an Italian anarchist active in the United States from 1901 to 1919, viewed by historians as an anarchist communist and an insurrectionary anarchist. He is best known for his enthusiastic advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", i.e...
group, who were accused of a robbery and murder of two payroll guards. At the time, Di Giovanni was in Argentina one of the most active anarchists in Argentina defending the two Italian immigrants, writing in various newspapers, including his own, founded in August 1925 and titled Culmine, and in the New York publication L'Adunata dei Refrattari.
Culmine advocated direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
and propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
. Di Giovanni worked at it at nighttime, supporting his activism and family by working in factories and as a typesetter. He summarized Culmines objectives:
- To spread anarchist ideals among Italian workers;
- To fight the propaganda of pseudo-revolutionary political parties, which use fake anti-fascism as a tool for winning political elections;
- To start anarchist agitation among Italian workers and keep anti-fascism alive;
- To interest Italian workers in Argentina in protest and expropriation;
- To establish an intense and active collaboration between anarchist groups, isolated partners and the regional anarchist movement.
On May 16, 1926, a few hours after the condemnation to death of Sacco and Vanzetti, Di Giovanni bombed the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, destroying the entire front of the building. The following day, president Alvear ordered several police searches of those suspected in the attack, and the police requested assistance from the Italian embassy in order to identify suspects. The embassy immediately named Giovanni, who had disturbed the celebrations of the Teatro Colón. He was soon arrested by the police and tortured for 5 days, but would not provide information. Di Giovanni was released for lack of evidence.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
the defense counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti managed to postpone their execution until August 23, 1927. A movement in support of the Galleanist anarchists continued to agitate for their pardon and release. On July 21, 1927, the U.S. embassy published an article in the conservative newspaper La Nación
La Nación
La Nación is an Argentine daily newspaper. The country's leading conservative paper, the centrist Clarín is its main competitor. It is the only newspaper in Argentina still published in broadsheet format.-Overview:...
, which described the two Italian anarchists as common-law delinquents. On the following day, Di Giovanni and two of his anarchist comrades, Alejandro and Paulino Scarfó, blew up George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
's statue in Palermo
Palermo, Buenos Aires
Palermo is a neighborhood, or barrio of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. It is located in the northeast of the city, bordering the barrios of Belgrano to the north, Almagro and Recoleta to the south, Villa Crespo and Colegiales to the west and the Río de la Plata river to the east. With a total...
, and a few hours later, exploded a bomb at one of the most important concessions of the Ford Motor Company.
Confronted with evidence of anarchist involvement in the bombings, on August 15, 1927, Eduardo Santiago, the Federal Police
Policía Federal Argentina
The Policía Federal Argentina is a police force of the Argentine federal government. The PFA has detachments throughout the country, but its main responsibility is policing the Federal District of Buenos Aires...
officer in charge of the investigation, claimed that everything was under control and that no anarchist in the world would defeat him. On the following day, Santiago barely escaped from the bombing of his house by Di Giovanni and his group, having gone to buy cigarettes a few minutes before.
On August 23, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed; in response, a 24-hour general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
was proclaimed in Buenos Aires, as well as many other capitals of the world. A few days after the executions, Di Giovanni received a letter from Sacco's widow, which thanked him for his work, and informing him that the director of the tobacco firm Combinados had proposed her a contract to produce a cigarette brand named "Sacco & Vanzetti". On November 26, 1927, Di Giovanni and his comrades duly bombed Bernardo Gurevich's tobacco shop Combinados on Rivadavia 2279. Di Giovanni and his comrades continued their anti-U.S. campaign of terror. The Citibank
Citibank
Citibank, a major international bank, is the consumer banking arm of financial services giant Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, later First National City Bank of New York...
and the Bank of Boston's headquarters were severely damaged in a bomb explosion on December 24, 1927, killing 2 persons and injuring 23.
At the beginning of 1928, the Italian liberal newspaper from Buenos Aires, L'Italia del Popolo, denounced the Italian consul, Italo Capil, as an informer and supporter of fascist elements in the Federal Police. Upon being told that the consul would visit the new consulate, along with the new ambassador, Giovanni and the Scarfó brothers bombed the Italian consulate on May 23, 1928, killing 9 and injuring 34. At the time, the Italian consulate bombing was the deadliest bombing ever to take place in Argentina. Opponents of the Italian fascist government took pains to note that the funerals of the consular employees were performed in accordance with the "fascist funeral rite", in presence of the ambassador and count Martin Franklin, the state delegate of Italian fascists in Argentina Romualdo Materlli, as well as president Alvear, his wife Regina Pacini and general Agustín P. Justo.
On the same day, Giovanni attempted to bomb Benjamín Mastronardi's pharmacy, in La Boca
La Boca
La Boca is a neighborhood, or barrio of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. It retains a strong European flavour, with many of its early settlers being from the Italian city of Genoa. In fact the name has a strong assonance with the Genoese neighborhood of Boccadasse , and some people believe that...
. Mastronardi was the president of the Fascist Committee of La Boca. The bomb, however, was casually disactivated by Mastronardi's little son.
Giovanni's penchant for 'propaganda by the deed' triggered fierce debates inside the anarchist community; some anarchist leaders argued that Di Giovanni's actions were counterproductive, and could only result in a military coup and a victory for fascist forces. Anarchist journals such as La Antorcha and La Protesta criticized Di Giovanni's methods of direct action and indiscriminate violence. La Protesta, edited by a fierce opponent of Di Giovanni, the anarcho-syndicalist Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán , born Sinesio Vaudilio García Fernández, was an author, economist and leading figure in the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements.-Early years:...
, took an openly anti-Di Giovanni line, which hardened as the bombings got more indiscriminate. La Antorcha was more ambiguous in its criticism. Neither paper particularly pleased Di Giovanni, and both were denounced at one time or the other from the columns of Culmine. The war of words escalated, and on October 25, 1929 someone assassinated Emilio López Arango, one of the editors of La Protesta. At first a group of bakers who were members of the same union as Arango were suspected of the killing but were never charged with the crime. Although it has never been proven conclusively, Di Giovanni and his group were the prime suspects in the assassination.
La Protesta immediately denounced the bombing of the Italian consulate. The criticism had no effect. Three days after the Italian consulate bombing, Di Giovanni struck again in Caballito
Caballito, Buenos Aires
Caballito is a barrio of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. It is the only barrio in the administrative division Comuna 6....
, bombing the house of César Afeltra, a member of Mussolini's secret police. Alfeltra was accused by Italian anarchist exiles of having practiced torture on members of various radical anarchist and anti-fascist groups in Italy.
U.S. President-elect Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
visited Argentina in December 1928. Giovanni wanted to bomb Hoover's train in revenge for the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, but the bomber, Alejandro Scarfó, was detained a short time before putting the explosives on the rails. This debacle led Di Giovanni suspend his bombing campaign; he focused instead on his journal Culmine. In 1929, he wrote:
Spending monotonous hours among the common people, the resigned ones, the collaborators, the conformists - isn't living; it's a vegetative existence, simply the transport, in ambulatory form, of a mass of flesh and bones. Life needs the exquisite and sublime experience of rebellion in action as well as thought.
Following the September 1930 military coup, which overthrew Hipólito Yrigoyen
Hipólito Yrigoyen
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Irigoyen Alem was twice President of Argentina . His activism became the prime impetus behind the obtainment of universal suffrage in Argentina in 1912...
, replaced by General José Félix Uriburu
José Félix Uriburu
General José Félix Benito Uriburu y Uriburu was the first de facto President of Argentina, achieved through a military coup, from September 6, 1930 to February 20, 1932.-Biography:...
and Agustín P. Justo, Giovanni made plans to free his comrade Alejandro Scarfó from prison. Needing funds in order to bribe the prison guards, he assaulted Obras Sanitarias de la Nación on October 2, 1930, achieving the most important robbery until then in Argentina, taking with him 286,000 pesos. However, the planned breakout never took place, and Alejandro Scarfó remained in prison.
Capture and execution
Infamous Decade
The Infamous Decade in Argentina is the name given to the period of time that started in 1930 with the coup d'état against President Hipólito Yrigoyen by José Félix Uriburu...
initiated by the military coup, Di Giovanni passed long periods of his time in reclusion, working on Elisée Reclus's complete works. The police attempted to arrest him at a printing shop, but Di Giovanni managed to escape during a gun battle in which one policeman was killed and another injured.
In January 1931, Di Giovanni was arrested after being seriously injured in yet another gun battle, along with Fina and Paulino Scarfó. Two other anarchists were killed in the firefight. Di Giovanni announced that the 300 chickens found in their house were to be given to Burzaco
Burzaco
Burzaco is a city in Almirante Brown Partido, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Its municipal area of 22.77 km² holds a population of 86,113 . Its located 27 kilometres from Buenos Aires city, and connected to it by the Ferrocarril General Roca South...
's poor.
The military junta publicized the arrests as victories of the new regime, and immediately organized a military tribunal. Di Giovanni was ably defended by his appointed defense counsel, Lieutenant Juan Carlos Franco, who spoke out in favor of the independence of the judicial system, and alleged that Di Giovanni had been tortured by the police. Lt. Franco's spirited defense of his client caused his own arrest after the trial; he was later dismissed from the ranks of the armed forces and briefly imprisoned before his deportation from Argentina. It was all to no avail; the evidence against Di Giovanni was overwhelming. Both he and Paulino Scarfó were sentenced to death; Fina, being underage, was freed.
Severino Di Giovanni was executed by firing squad on February 1, 1931. Di Giovanni shouted "Evviva l'Anarchia!" (Long live Anarchy!), before being hit by at least eight 7.65 mm Mauser rifle bullets. After exchanging a final farewell, Paulino Scarfó was also executed few hours later. Di Giovanni's body was secretly buried on orders of the Interior Minister Matías Sánchez Sorondo, in La Chacarita
La Chacarita Cemetery
Cementerio de la Chacarita in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is known as the National Cemetery and is the largest in Argentina.-Location:The cemetery is in the barrio or district of Chacarita, in the northern part of Buenos Aires...
. Despite these precautions, on the following day his grave was anonymously decorated with flowers.
Postscript
After Di Giovanni's execution, Fina left her husband Silvio Astolfi, and eventually remarried, settling down to a quiet life in Buenos Aires. After serving a lengthy prison term, Silvio Astolfi returned to Europe and carried on with his antifascist activity: he was later killed during the civil war in SpainSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. On July 28, 1999, Fina Scarfó obtained the love letters which Di Giovanni had sent to her from prison decades earlier, but which had been seized by the police. Fina died on 19 August 2006, at the age of 93.
Teresa Masciulli, Di Giovanni's wife, also remarried; Di Giovanni's children changed their names.
Alejandro Scarfó, after serving a term of imprisonment for the attempted assassination of President Hoover, was released from prison in 1935. Abandoned by his relatives and even his fiancée, he vanished into obscurity, embittered and resentful.
See also
- Anarchism in ItalyAnarchism in ItalyItalian anarchism as a movement began primarily from the influence of Mikhail Bakunin, Giuseppe Fanelli, and Errico Malatesta. From there it expanded to include illegalist individualist anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalism. It participated in the biennio rosso and survived fascism...
- History of ArgentinaHistory of ArgentinaThe history of Argentina is divided by historians into four main parts: the pre-Columbian time, or early history , the colonial period , the independence wars and the early post-colonial period of the nation and the history of modern Argentina .The beginning of prehistory in the present territory of...
- History of Argentina (The Radicals in Power, 1916-1930)History of Argentina (The Radicals in Power, 1916-1930)The period spanning from 1916 to 1930 in Argentina is known as the Radical Phase , as it began with the election of the Radical Civic Union candidate Hipólito Yrigoyen, ending the conservative Generation of '80's domination on politics...
- IllegalismIllegalismIllegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
- Sacco and VanzettiSacco and VanzettiFerdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...