Portella della Ginestra massacre: Difference between revisions

Source:<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.lindro.it/portella-della-ginestra-vogliamo-la-verita/ |title=Portella della Ginestra: vogliamo la verità |last=Vecellio |first=Valter |date=2017-05-10 |work=L'Indro |access-date=2018-04-29 |language=it-IT |df=dmy-all |archive-date=2018-04-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180429160340/http://www.lindro.it/portella-della-ginestra-vogliamo-la-verita/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Li Causi suspected a campaign against the left and linked it with the crisis in the national government (under [[Prime Minister of ItalItaly|Prime Minister [[Alcide De Gasperi]]), 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 30 May 30, 1947, [[Giuseppe Alessi]], 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.<ref name=santino/>

Pisciotta also claimed that he had killed the bandit [[Salvatore Giuliano]] in his sleep by arrangement with Scelba. However, there was no evidence that Scelba had had any relationship with Pisciotta.<ref name=ser135/>

{{Quote|Those who have made promises to us are called [[Bernardo Mattarella]], Prince Alliata, the monarchist MP Marchesano and also Signor [[Mario Scelba|Scelba]], 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.<ref name=servadio128/><ref>{{in lang|it}} [http://www.leinchieste.com/scelba_portella.htm Mario Scelba: padre della Repubblica o regista di trame?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080621233043/http://www.leinchieste.com/scelba_portella.htm |date=2008-06-21 }} a at ''Giuliano e lo Stato'', an Italian language site about Giuliano and the Portella della Ginestra massacre.</ref>}}

[[File:Gaspare Pisciotta Viterbo 1951.jpg|thumbthhumb|right|200px|Gaspare Pisciotta (left) at the trial in Viterbo in 1951]]

Pisciotta was [[Sentence (law)|sentenced]] to [[life in imprisonment]] and [[forced labour]]; most of the other 70 bandits met the same fate. Others were at large, but one by one they all disappeared. Pisciotta probably was the only one who could reveal the truth behind the massacre. While he was in Giuliano's band, he carried a pass signed by a colonel of the [[Carabinieri]] that allowed him to move freely about the island. At the trial he declared, "We are one body: bandits, police and Mafia – like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."<ref name=dickie263/>

While serving his sentence he wrote his autobiography awaiting a new trial at which he would be charged with killing Giuliano. Some authorities were beginning to take his evidence more seriously, and [[perjury]] and other charges were made against police and [[Carabinieri]]. Pisciotta realised that he had been abandoned and was threatening to reveal much more than at the first trial, in particular who signed the letter which had been brought to Giuliano just before the attack.<ref name=ser135/> On 9 February 1954, he took a cup of coffee with what he thought was a [[tuberculosis]] medicine. Instead someone had replaced it with [[strychnine]]. Within an hour he was dead and his [[autobiography]] disappeared.<ref name=dickie263/>

{{Quote|On May 1, 1947, while celebrating the working class festival and the victory of April 20, men, women and children of [[Piana degli Albanesi|Piana]], [[San Cipirello|S. Cipirello]] and [[San Giuseppe Jato|S. Giuseppe]] fell under the bullets of the Mafia and the [[land owner|landed]] [[baron]]s to crush the struggle of the peasants against feudalism.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://ettoredeconciliis.com/portella-della-ginestra.html |title=Memorial for Portella della Ginestra (1979) |access-date=2011-02-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110710203605/http://ettoredeconciliis.com/portella-della-ginestra.html h|archive-date=2011-07-10 |url-status=dead}}</ref>|sign=Portella della Ginestra massacre memorial plaque}}

While some historians see the massacre as a [[conspiracy]] of the [[Mafia]], [[anti-communist]] political forces – the Christian-Democratic party in particular – and [[American intelligence]] services in the wake of the [[Cold War]],<ref name=gdm281010>[https://archive.today/20130111184552/http://www.lagazzettadelmezzogiorno.it/notizia.php?IDNotizia=378270 Sicilian bandit Giuliano's body exhumed], La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, October 28, 2010</ref><ref>Ciment, ''Encyclopedia of Conflicts Since World War II'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=cpCXBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT2073 p. 2073-74] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417165319/https://books.google.com/books?id=cpCXBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT2073 |date=2021-04-17 }}</ref> others consider the bloodbath as the culmination of local struggles for land rights and land reform in the area of [[Piana degli Albanesi]] and [[San Giuseppe Jato]]. Just as at the end of World War I, the post-war period saw an increase of violence between landowners backed by the Mafia and [[left-wing]] peasant movements. A few weeks before the massacre, the local Mafia boss of Piana, [[Francesco Cuccia]], and others had asked landowners for money to "put an end to the communists once and for all." They made clear that they were ready to go beyond the traditional acts of Mafia violence that had been used against the socialist peasant movement before the rise of fascism in the early 1920s when six socialist militants had been killed in Piana.<ref name=petrotta97>{{in lang|it}} Petrotta, ''[http://www.cgil.it/Archivio/EVENTI/1%20Maggio%202010/La%20strage%20di%20Portella%20della%20Ginestra.pdf La strage e i depistaggi] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927183417/http://www.cgil.it/Archivio/EVENTI/1%20Maggio%202010/La%20strage%20di%20Portella%20della%20Ginestra.pdf |date=2011-09-27 }}'', p. 97</ref><ref name=sic221109>{{in lang|it}} [http://www.cittanuove-corleone.it/La%20Sicilia,%20Portella,%20fu%20strage%20di%20mafia%2022.11.2009.pdf Portella, fu strage di mafia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726063035/http://www.cittanuove-corleone.it/La%20Sicilia,%20Portella,%20fu%20strage%20di%20mafia%2022.11.2009.pdf |date=2011-07-26 }}, La Sicilia, November 22, 2009</ref>