30 years since the Sicilian mafia massacre that changed Italy

palermo. It is 17 hours, 56 minutes and 48 seconds on Wednesday, May 23, 1992. The Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Mount Erice detects “a small seismic movement” with its epicenter in a curve of the highway between the Isla de las Mujeres and Capaci, which connects the Sicilian city of Palermo with the nearby airport. But this time it is not mother nature. The explosion of some 500 kilos of trinitrotoluene (TNT), located underground puts an end to the life of the judge symbol of the anti-mafia fight in Italy, John Falconeto that of his wife, also a magistrate Francesca Morvilloand that of shooting guards Rocco Di Cillo, Antonio Montinaro and Vito Schifani.

The accuracy of the precise moment of the massacre was recorded in this way, in a moment of big crisis in Italy after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the consequent political metamorphoses in the country. In a good mood, Falcone, the chronicles of the time say and the survivors have recounted, was driving his armored car himself with his wife in the other front seat, with the intention of spending a few days off in Sicily. But all that was interrupted when the Sicilian mafia activated, by remote control, an explosive device that would also end up injuring twenty people and destroying part of the highway.

This Monday is fulfilled 30 years of this murder, which would be followed 57 days later by that of Falcone’s deputy, Paolo Borsellino. And Italy has prepared to commemorate this anniversary. But neither Sicily is what it used to be, nor does Italy resemble that of those years, more than in Hollywood movies. Those attacks gave a boost to the country’s fight against Cosa Nostra of Sicily, laws were passed to financially hit the mafias, and criminal organizations such as the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria -today the most important and dangerous in Italy- took advantage of the moment to expand their power in Europe and the world.

Repressive capacity of the State

Thus, despite the fact that in recent years some Sicilian mafia bosses have been released from prison after serving their sentences, the repressive capacity of the Italian state to neutralize them has been evident. An example of this has been the attempts to reorganize Cosa Nostra after the death of the “capo of capos”, Salvatore Toto’Riinain 2017, which unleashed a series of maneuvers for the different clans to try to recover a certain unity, without being particularly successful.

With this preamble, the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, whose brother Piersanti was also murdered by the mafia in 1980, has made the decision to travel to Palermo on Monday to remember the judge who most marked Italy’s fight against the Sicilian mafia. The head of the Transalpine Police, Lamberto Giannini; the national anti-mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo; and that of Rome, Francesco Lo Voi, as well as journalists, trade unionists and several ministers of the Government of mario draghi and representatives of the Italian Parliament, have also done the same. The intention is to show that the State has not forgotten those terrible years and transmit that heritage to the youngest.

memory of the legacy

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Proof of this are the acts organized in Palermo with more than 1,000 students, and the various events planned in the most symbolic places of this Italian city, including the Lungaro police station, in the house where Falcone lived in the city Sicilian, and in the church of San Domenico, where the late magistrate is buried. In this way, the great investigations of Falcone will also be remembered, who in 1986 managed to put almost half a thousand mafiosi on the bench, also thanks to the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta, the first great pentito (collaborator of justice) of Cosa Nostra. “Italy remembers with great shock” this murder, said Draghi, who considered that thanks to Falcone this country is today “freer and fairer”.

The anniversary, however, has also been a moment for Italian society to reflect on the failures of the state. Although the material executors of Falcone’s murder were identified, tried and imprisoned -and it was determined that Riina was the mafia boss who ordered the murder-, there are still shadows about the events that led to the judge’s death. This is what Falcone’s sister, Maria, has been saying for years, who has stressed more than once that the country has yet to learn “the truth” about the relationship between Cosa Nostra and the Italian political-business fabric which then would have facilitated that massacre.