In American popular culture, the mafia gangster is either a tarnished
hero like Don Corleone or a likeable lowlife like Tony Soprano. But for
Italians, he is a much more malevolent figure especially as seen in a
number of art films that are often infused with the leftist and
neorealist traditions of the postwar period. More importantly, it is
much harder for the average Italian to cheer for Michael Corleone taking
revenge on a crooked cop and rival gang leader or Tony Soprano’s
malapropism when the mafia has functioned so often as a rightwing death
squad.
In Paul Ginsborg’s Marxist-oriented “A History of Contemporary Italy:
Society and Politics 1943-1988”, there’s an account of the mafia’s
attack on a peasant protest in Villalba in central Sicily in September
1944. This was a village dominated by a mafia boss named Don Calò
Vizzini, who had returned as part of the Allies entourage. Vizzini was
among the gangsters who supposedly helped prepare the American invasion
alongside Lucky Luciano and others.
The local CP leader, a man named Girolamo Li Causi, had asked for
permission to hold a meeting in the village square. Vizzini granted
permission but only if there was no talk about land reform or the mafia.
Ginsborg quotes fellow Marxist Carlo Levi on what took place there:
Causi began to talk to that little unexpected crowd about the Micciché
estate, about the land, about the Mafia. The parish priest, brother of
Don Calò, tried to drown Li Causi’s voice by ringing the bells of his
church. But the peasants listened and understood: ‘He’s right; they
said: ‘blessed be the milk of the mother who suckled him, it’s gospel
truth what he is saying.’ By so doing they were breaking a sense of
time-honoured servitude, disobeying not just one order but order itself,
challenging the laws of the powerful destroying authority, despising and
offending prestige. It was then that Don Calò,. from the middle of the
piazza, shouted ‘it’s all lies!’ The sound of his cry acted like a
signal. The mafiosi began to shoot.
full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/04/09/black-souls/
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