ABSTRACT: Twenty five years ago when I wrote »Il Giorno della Civetta , (1) "every Sicilian of the western provinces" could have told you a lot about the Mafia. In each village the Mafiosi the herds and their heads, were well known to the authorities, and so were the politicians that the Mafia "carried", that is, supported. No one hid himself, on the contrary at that time exhibitionism of the power one exercised almost seemed to rule. It is also true that in speaking of the Mafia one used the word "friendship" and some people were capable of nonchalantly denying the existence of the phenomenon. But the police marshal who "rejected the modus vivendi" with the Mafia was transferred, not killed. Then when the centre-left (2) came to power the Mafia investigating commission was born and so too came drugs. As a result today some politicians either refuse being mixed up with the Mafia or try to cover up. This is the cause for the Mafia's anger. Furthermore the latter cannot manage to believe that the Church, which

for centuries maintained a benevolent "silence" about them if not solidarity with them, can today proclaim them an "enemy".

(L'ESPRESSO, May 15, 1983)

Twenty five years ago when, through joining up a news item with a session of the Chamber of Deputies I had attended, I got the idea for the book »Il Giorno della civetta , what a Sicilian from the western provinces, of a certain sensitivity and perspicacity, was able to know about the Mafia was far from little. In every village and in every quarter of every town the herds and their heads were known as well as the captains and men of the Carabinieri stations. The politicians they "carried" (that they recommended, that is, to the electorate) and who in effect carried them were also known, as were their systems of illicitly enriching themselves, for the most part consisting in imposed mediations and sometimes, to avoid the imposition, requests.

The heads not only did not try to hide, but they even showed off. They never pronounced nor accepted the word "Mafia" and liked to replace it with the word "friendship". And they made a great show of a pessimistic and sceptical philosophy with regard to their fellow men, society, and the institutions. The institutions, for their part, denied the existence in Sicily of a vast and efficient criminal association called the Mafia and did so with arguments not dissimilar from those of Capuana (3) when, against the Franchetti-Sonnino inquest, (4) he wrote »L'Isola del sole .

Thanks to the election factor, between the institutions and the Mafia there had been established co-existence and connivance to the point that a Carabinieri official or marshal who rejected such a modus vivendi was quickly transferred. There was, thus, no need to murder him. But then came the centre-left (you can speak as ill of it as you like, but it had its uses) and with it commission to investigate the Mafia. Both a part of the Sicilian and national political spheres and of the Mafia it was established and carried on like a kind of game. But there had to be at least some pretence to seriousness: and when one gets caught up in a game for long, the game ends up being no longer a game. As in the plays of Pirandello, getting caught up in the game of honesty someone ended up enjoying it. And this was encouraged by the fact that the Mafia had taken over the drugs monopoly and so it became dangerous to continue being in or near it. In the relationship between Mafia and politics I believe that today one can

make this graded list: the politicians who rejected inherited or only recently established ties; the politicians that want to cover themselves and cannot yet manage it; the politicians who do not want to, or who notice that they cannot or have no natural aptitude for it. The Mafia obviously became aware of this sort of movement, and this accounts for its angry reaction.

These considerations can be applied as well to the case of the Ucciardone prison who refused to listen to the mass celebrated by a cardinal. The Mafiosi include the cardinal archbishop of Palermo among those by whom they feel betrayed. They can hardly believe that the Church, the Sicilian Church, after centuries of silence has decided to speak loud and clear against them (and in fact, the following Sunday they went disciplinedly to the mass celebrated by the chaplain): and so they attribute to a single man, precisely the cardinal archbishop, the condemnation that the Church has finally proclaimed. They had been so very used to the silence of the Church that in certain moments became benevolence and complicity, that the rupture worked by the cardinal made them commit the imprudence of showing him all their aversion.

One must not forget that Don Pietro Ulloa, the king's procurator at Trapani in 1838, reported that among the Mafia chieftains there were some deans and that, more than a century later, a cardinal counted among Sicily's enemies those who believed in the existence of the Mafia. Devoted sons of the Church, which they have always professed to be, they are surprised and confused that in 1982 a cardinal should have proclaimed them to be enemies. A chieftain as wise as Don Caḷ would have resigned himself, would have continued to show his devotion ("Bend, oh reeds, for the flood tide will pass"). But, evidently, there are no longer any chieftains with the wisdom of Don Caḷ.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) A novel of Sciascis' about the Mafia.

2) A coalition born in Italy in 1962 composed of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Republicans and for the first time the Socialists. It governed the country, except for brief intervals, until 1976.

3) Capuana, Luigi (1839 - 1915) Sicilian writer and critic who was one of the major exponents of "verismo".

4) Franchetti, Leopoldo, scholar and politician, and Sidney

Sonnino, politician, prime minister, who collaborated in writing in 1876 an important investigation into social conditions in Sicily.