Mafia & Associates, Construction Company I was born in the years when 6000 soldiers were patrolling the streets of Sicily1 in an open air battle against Mafia; 8:00pm was the curfew for many districts in the city of Palermo. “Boom!”; the ground shakes and the people locked at home are glued to their radios, waiting to hear who or what was blown up. Alongside a great number of lives lost in the fight against Mafia, Palermo also lost invaluable architectural heritage, which was destroyed as a result of Mafia’s involvement in the unlawful grant of construction permissions and competitions to build some of the city’s most horrendous infrastructure. All this infrastructure has a common contractor: the Mafia. We are hereby talking about the so called Sack of Palermo (beginning in the 1940s), one of the most disruptive and criminal development and expansion of the city, and to many, a wrecking moment for the city. A time of pact between the government and the Mafia, when the citizens and their island were completely on their own, terrorised and abandoned by their own rulers. Car parks, council housing, dumping sites, vacant spaces and brownfields are part of a cityscape that encapsulates the real essence of the city, a constant reminder of how the period when the Mafia was ruling the city marked the territory architectonically. However, these spaces also resonate with the past that is underneath their new foundations; the art nouveau and Sicilian renaissance buildings which used to adorn Palermo, but were blew up in some nights to make room for housing and concrete buildings of little significance. Today the city of Palermo is dotted by polluted beaches and high rise council houses, which are hardly considered part of the city because they were promoted by the Mafia. Yet, regardless of the disgust and hate that is associated with these places today, it must be acknowledged that Mafia was one of the most prominent contractors employed by the local government when conducting this ambiguous expansion of the greater metropolitan area of Palermo, which stretches from the mountains and the Conca D’oro (the orange fields surrounding the city), to the Mediterranean coast. The complete lack of beauty in this urban expansion, and the destruction of the beautiful preexisting architecture that was required for its realisation, represent nonetheless an important aspect of our urbanism. It is the memory of Villa Deliella, Villa Rutelli, Palazzo Majo and all the other buildings buried under tarmac and concrete that donates a powerful memorial allure to the new developments standing in their place today.
We are hereby talking about the Vespri Siciliani operation (1992-1998), involving military reinforcements of 4200 to 6200 soldiers per day, 39000 checkpoints, 665,400 cars checked, 813,400 people checked, 168 weapons and 3000 kg of dynamite seized and almost 3000 hours of flying to patrol the territory. 1
Esercito.difesa.it. 2020. Operazione. [online] Available at: <http://www.esercito.difesa.it/operazioni/operazioni_nazionali/Pagine/vespri-siciliani.aspx> [Accessed 12 March 2020].
Letter to a Lost Friend (and his unborn city) Dear Vincenzo, It’s been 38 years since it happened2. I have been finding myself wandering in empty spaces; wandering in empty thoughts; they took everything from me. I had always heard it from others: “they slaughtered my husband like he was not a christian”; “It was my son, I saw him in a pool of blood, but by then, I had no more tears left to cry”; “We felt the house shaking, from the window we saw cars upside down,on fire. A hole appeared in the ground, with horror we saw parts of their bodies scattered on the tarmac, his wife Francesca was with them3”. Eventually, I found myself in anger thinking those same things. You are not here to witness this anymore, but when they take a part of your life, when they destroy the place you live in, then you are not just scared, you finally realise you have no power against something like the Mafia, you have no way of fighting the transformations they impose on you. I look around this hopeless place and your name comes to my mind. Do you remember when sometimes, in Isola delle Femmine, after the sun had gone down, we used to meet at the pier and fish with the nets, wait for the women to pass by after the mass, talk about the political situation in Sicily or just smoke a cigarette? You have been a good man, you have been a real good man, with a dream to change Sicily, to change the place we both called home. Vincenzo, you dreamt of a Sicily without Mafia, of cities with better homes for all of us, of a growth of our urbanism. You worked hard to become a building contractor because that was your way to create a better Palermo, expanding our borders and improving our infrastructure. And you were successful as a contractor, wealthy, your company was relevant; this is exactly was infuriated the Mafia and got you 6 gunshots in the back. The Mafia in those years conducted the majority of its This letter refers to a real case of murder by the Mafia. Vincenzo Enea was a constructor killed by Francesco Bruno in 1982. The murder was executed because Mr Enea was interfering with some of the Mafia businesses going on in Isole delle Femmine (Palermo), he was against the expansionist projects of Mr Bruno and rejected his proposal to partner up. 2
Isola Pulita - Isola delle Femmine, 2012. E nea Vincenzo Il Filo Rosso Che Unisce L'omicidio Mafioso Agli Avvenimenti I Fatti Di Sangue E Le Speculazioni Edilizie A Isola Delle Femmine. [online] Calameo. Available at: <https://en.calameo.com/read/0012258330032aaad669d> [Accessed 2 March 2020].
This particular description is a reference to a real fact happened in the fight against the Mafia. Remembered by everyone as “La Strage di Capaci”, the Capaci Massacre, it refers to the murder of judge Giovanni Falcone, one of the most important fighters against the Mafia, who was blown up by a bomb together with all of his bodyguards and his wife Francesca. Giovanni, along with his colleague and friend Paolo Borsellino, are the symbol of Sicily’s fight for freedom against the Mafia. 3
business in building and construction. They were taking all of the contracts for housing projects, delivering some of the most appalling spaces ever seen in the city, on our beaches, and that is what you were fighting up against. I remember with horror when they initially asked you to illicitly partner up, so they could have a say on the urban fabric of the city. But the tension quickly grew around the decision on how to fraction that patch of land bordering some of your developments; the Mafia wanted to build in it, and when the Mafia wants something, they will go any lengths to obtain it, they will blow up their way up to their goal. We knew, you knew; the moment the Mafia set fire to your warehouses, it was a sign that this would have led to something bigger if you did not bend to their will. You did not, and they murdered you. And there was nothing we could have done back then, other than stare at your lifeless body on the tarmac and the frameworks of the bungalows that you wanted to build to boost Sicily’s tourism in the background. Time passed and I always kept your memory with me, your dreams and hopes for the city, the anger for the terrorist group that took you and our city away. It was 1993, when I came to know the police had stormed into Letizia Battaglia’s house, looking not for her, but for her pictures. Giulio Andreotti, our Prime Minister, was under investigation for a possible collusion between him and the Sicilian Mafia, and Letizia had captured some shots of his men in conferences and rallies with Mafia exponents4. Photographs were talking to us, they were witnesses on trial, they became one of the most powerful tools to build a case against dozens of politicians in the country who had infiltrated into mafia organisations, and against mafia members who had infiltrated into politics. Letizia involuntary shot an archive of spaces narrating an island, a city, subject to a forced and violent urban development. A photo in that archive was the one she took of you and of those mafia developments, telling the story of a suffocated urban space. Similarly, many of Letizia’s photographs captured a landscape behind the murders, representing what the Mafia was building in those years, a succession of views showing the architectural abuse in Palermo. Vincenzo, not everything is lost as long as our memory honours the struggle of the people who fought against the Mafia. Letizia Battaglia is one of the most important photographers in Italy and possibly the most important in Sicily. She dedicated her life to shooting everything that she found wrong or unjust, from the Mafia, to the status of women, to the conditions in Psychiatric Hospitals. She worked for L’Ora, the left wing newspaper of Sicily and she was a politician in the Sicilian government and Palermo council. Battaglia took more than 600,000 photos, amongst which there were two picturing Giulio Andreotti, the prime minister at the time, in the company of Mafia exponents. These picture were used in what is now called the “Trattativa Stato-Mafia” or State-Mafia pact, an accusation towards many politicians, Andreotti included, to have dealt with and introduced the Mafia inside the government. The trial and investigations started in the 90s are currently not yet concluded. 4
Battaglia, L. and Stille, A. (1999). P assion, justice, freedom. New York: Aperture.
With Love, Your friend
INTERVIEW AMONGST THE LEMON TREES Interviewer: Good morning, I’m a reporter for a local newspaper. Farmer: I don’t know anything. Interviewer: Nothing you need to know, I just have some questions to ask. Farmer: I’m not interested, don’t want anything to do with the government. Interviewer: I don’t work for the government, I am here on my own, just out of curiosity. Farmer: Leave, if you don’t want to get in trouble5. A child calls for my attention from a row of lemons just a few meters away. Giuseppe: You don't look local, p arri sicilianu6? Interviewer: Not quite, I understand a few words. Giuseppe: That’s no place for questions, they have ears and eyes everywhere. Interviewer: What’s your name? Giuseppe: Giuseppe. Interviewer: You work in this lemon field? Giuseppe: Yes Interviewer: It’s quite an amazing place, great fruits lemons. Giuseppe: Lemons are fruits full of blood, this is not like any other business you know. Interviewer: What are you referring to?
The Mafia has left in Sicily fear and distrust in the government, in the council and in the authorities in general. This distrust was also generated by the o mertá machine initiated by Cosa Nostra; talking or helping the authorities would have made you a traitor, a government sympathiser, often resulting in murder. 6 Sicilian Language meaning: “Do you speak Sicilian?” 5
Giuseppe: Now they don’t care much, but before, a long time ago, when my grandad was working here and the groves used to cover the whole island, these trees were the symbol of the Mafia7. British people used to come and buy lemons from us, because they cured scurvy; Sicily shifted most of its agriculture to lemon trees plantations, it was like gold back then. But look around, you can barely see me amongst all of these trees, entering the groves to steal the lemons was easy, brigants could hide and take everything in one night. My grandad used to tell me how the Sir he was working for, to avoid losing money on the plantations, hired wardens and guards to protect the land; violent people, with guns, they would have killed anyone on sight. Even for us kids it was forbidden to come and play here, “if they see you running amongst the trees, the day after we’ll find you with a bullet in your head” my dad always said. That’s… that’s the Mafia. The guards soon began to steal themselves from the groves they were protecting or from the lemon fields that had nobody protecting them, they used extorsion, threats, murders if needed, and soon the were in charge of the monopoly of lemons. Where there were lemons there was mafia, and where there is mafia you don't want to be. Interviewer: How would you know if mafia is involved? The kid laughed and looked at me almost with pity. Giuseppe: They are always involved. In Sicily, spaces talk to you, they tell you in which territory you are in. If you see a lemon nailed to the gate of a garden and a gun cartridge hanging from it, leave. Interviewer: There are not many lemon groves around in this area anymore . Giuseppe: This business does not make enough money anymore, you don’t see many orange and lemon fields around because of their new business. We used to call this 100 km2 land “La Conca D’oro” (Ed. “The Golden Bowl” or “The Shell of Gold”), this entire valley on which the city of Palermo sits used to be completely covered with golden citrusy fruits and olives, and the Oreto river crossed it until it met the sea. Now it’s all concrete and domestic buildings. Everything started when Mr Lima and Ciancimino became mayor of Palermo and public infrastructure alderman, respectively. They had inciuci8 with the Mafia and they started to change the urban legislation for the city, granting permissions to construct in the Conca D’Oro; 3000 contracts were signed to developers in one night, and half of them were commissioned to three people, some unaware carpenters they said on the
The cultivation and trade of lemons was one of the businesses the Mafia was involved in since the 19th century. Many think the Mafia phenomenon arose from here; studies showed a proportionality in the amount of lemon groves and the presence of mafia. Between 1837-50 the number of lemon barrels being exported from Sicily went from 740 to 20707 per year. 7
Dimico, A., Isopi, A., & Olsson, O. (2017). Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons. The Journal of Economic History, 77(4), 1083-1115. doi:10.1017/S002205071700078X 8
Sicilian Language meaning: “Strong and evasively tricky relations”
news9. After the War, people lost their homes due to the heavy bombing and the regional government saw a chance to profit from this; the trees and the meadows soon became plains of tarmac and concrete. Look over there, you see the airport? That is one of those constructions, they destroyed the entire area to build it10; this was not even a suitable area for an airport because of the sea and the winds11; but here is where the mafia had many businesses, like the export of cocaine to the States, they needed the place to be here, and they got the place to be here. Did you take the highway to come here? Interviewer: Yes, I did. Giuseppe: Then you saw it. Did you notice the amount of unnecessary curves, in a highway that could link the city with the airport in a straight line? That was to protect all the land plots owned by the mafia, so that they wouldn’t be expropriated.
Salvatore Lima and Vito Ciancimino, the two sicilian politicians in collusion to the Mafia, are the anti-heros and the symbols of the Sack of Palermo. The two completely changed laws and norms in order to allow an unprecedented construction boom. This happened both by granting permission to build on land designated to agriculture, and by allowing historical buildings in the city center to be destroyed or to decay with no restoration plans, in order to build new housing instead. To do so, Ciancimino granted around 4000 permissions to build, of which 3000 were signed in a night and half reported carpenters names who had permission to build according to the constructors board but were unskilled and destitute. 9
O liva, E., 2020. L'ignorata DEVASTAZIONE DELLA CONCA D'oro. [online] Reportagesicilia.blogspot.com. Available at: <https://reportagesicilia.blogspot.com/2012/11/lignorata-devastazione-della-conca-doro.html> [Accessed 25 February 2020].
The cementification of the land in Palermo reached scary levels which are beginning to influence the ecosystems in and around the city. After World War 2 the urban land accounted for 600 hectares out of the entire surface of 11,000 hectares (5%); in 2006 the urban fabric reached 7000 hectares (almost 70%) and today the city has taken up more than 10
80%.
Spallitta, N., 2020. P alermo: Quando La Conca D’Oro Non Era Un Centro Commerciale. [online] lavocedinewyork.com. Available at: <https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/zibaldone/2015/03/24/palermo-quando-la-conca-doro-non-era-un-centro-commerciale-2/> [Accessed 23 March 2020].
Palermo was one of the busiest cities in Italy and its old airport, Boccadifalco, was the third in italy for air traffic. In 1953, this lead to the need for a second airport, for which a suitable area in the city was proposed, Acqua dei Corsari. However, the Autonomous Consortium for the Airport of Palermo pushed to have the infrastructure implemented in another area of the city, Punta Raisi, right in front of the sea and where part of the Conca D’Oro was. Not only was this location environmentally unsustainable, but also not suitable because of the proximity to water and high mountains, as well as because of the strong Sirocco winds blowing through that valley. This airport was mostly needed by the Mafia for their commerce of cocaine and weapons with the United States and the rest of Italy, and the location for the airport was indeed known to have a high number of Mafia families living there. 11
Dino, A., 2013. La mafia in aeroporto. Punta raisi: cronaca di una speculazione annunciata. H ISTORIA MAGISTRA, (11), pp.16-34.
The mafia is weird, first they turn our island in a gigantic lemon tree grove and then they destroy it completely to make space for construction and an avalanche of concrete. Sometimes, when I go up the valley, amongst those seized concrete formworks over there12, I can still smell the wild rosemary that used to grow around. I have some old photos my dad keeps in a drawer that show how this place used to look like, I’ll go get them.
Giuseppe is here referring to another famous scandal about the Mafia’s involvement in the construction sector; “La Collina del Disonore”, “The Hill of Shame”. On Pizzo Sella, a small mountain in front of the beach of Mondello, 150 villas were constructed in 1978 without any concern for the feasibility or the environment. The council granted the permission to Sicilcalce, a company run by the Mafia boss Michele Greco, to start the project; many of those villas were already sold before the construction even started. In 1984, the police started investigating on the permissions and concessions given for the project, discovering everything was done for a collusion between the Mafia and the council. The works stopped and today the hill is still dotted by hundreds of unfinished cement carcasses. 12
Makhzoumi, J., Egoz, S. and Pugnetti, G., 2016. T he Right To Landscape. Routledge.
Buried History - Radiophonically Interviewer: Today we have here with us a survivor I would say, a survivor of an horrendous catastrophe, the destruction of the historical architectural heritage of an entire city at the hands of the collusion between the Mafia and the Sicilian government. Giacomo, what is the story behind this, after 60 years have passed since what happened that December night of 1959 in Palermo? Giacomo: This story is a story that does not have illustrations; it is a story where many pages have been ripped off; it is a story where some chapters have been reprinted and the words cannot be read anymore, yet it is a story still worth telling. As a kid, I used to go there and play hide and seek with my friends until the sun would set; the garden of Villa Deliella offered a perfect space to hide and to run around. I think even as children we could recognise the magic of that place, a symbol of the Art Nouveau boulevard of the city designed by Ernesto Basile. My dad used to work in the kitchen of the villa for Franco Lanza di Scalea, the last owner of Villa Deliella and the one who gave consent to its destruction. I remember my dad would sometimes let me in, when the owners were away on business; the dining room with the carved ceiling and the, now I know, Ducrot credenza, so beautifully designed, the living room with cantilevered walnut walkways all around, from where you could catch a glimpse of the private bedrooms, the armchairs… so soft and comfortable that I would have loved to take a nap on them. That place had an aura around it, it reminded all of us that once, Palermo was not a city ruled by corruption and destroyed by the Mafia, it was a cosmopolitan city alongside many other European hotspots. Gardens and parks made up the majority of the cityscape and beautiful buildings were scattered along the endless axis of the city, hosting some of the most prominent figures in Europe at the time. And then, suddenly, my dad was asked to leave, and my childhood playground was torn apart in just a couple of days. One morning, the 29th of November 1959, standing in the adjacent Croci square, I witnessed dozens of workers taking pieces of the roof away, smashing the window glasses, ripping tiles and wrought iron off. I saw the soft armchairs being roughly loaded on a truck directed to the market. The villa was being abused and torn down in front of everyone’s eyes. Interviewer: You seem very distressed, it must have been hard for you as a citizen, but mostly as a child who used to play there. Have you ever known the reasons why such devastation was allowed to take place? Giacomo: If I remember correctly, in 1954 the regional government made the property national heritage, being one of the masterpieces of architect Ernesto Basile, but after some years the council, at that time in collusion with the Mafia, revoked the act because of a formality: buildings could have been listed only after 50 years from their completion. On top of that, in those same days, the council began to give permissions to build in the area where all the Art Nouveau and Eclectic villas built in the 19th century were located.
It was all a game, an extremely well planned one. The villa was torn down in just a few days so that the 50 years from completion wouldn't be reached and that was it. Even the rubble was quickly removed, there was nothing left where, only a few days before, a fine example of real Sicilian heritage was standing . Whether officially or not, that villa belonged to our history, to an old Palermo that saw Oscar Wilde and Sigmund Freud walking along its plamed boulevards. Interviewer: How could the owner allow all of this? Giacomo: Franco Lanza di Scalea? As a kid I did not see him much, but regardless of whether he granted the permission in order to earn more money from the building complexes planned for the plot, we have to understand Sicily was ruled by the Mafia at that time. The Mafia was a terrorist organisation orbiting around Sicily, but it was also a terrorist organisation deeply rooted within the government. In those years, if you were faced with such a decision, your choices were limited; either you were with the Mafia, or you died. Interviewer: You mentioned they built some housing complexes on the site of the former Villa Deliella? Giacomo: No, they had plans to do so, this was the reason for the demolishment of the villa, to allow developers manoeuvred by the Mafia to build housing in the center of the city. However, as for the majority of these “developments”, nothing was done after the demolition, not a single brick was laid. Concrete was poured all over the area and the place was illegally used as a carpark, which is the case to this day This was not a limited phenomenon, hundreds of villas, palaces and old industrial complexes were bombed or taken apart more or less legally so that developers could either build very low-quality buildings or get the funds for the construction and then suddenly run out of finances at the early stages of the works. Palazzo Di Stefano, Palazzo Majo, Palazzo Restivo, the villas Planeta and Nicoletti, Villa Castellano Orlando, the Enel industrial complex, the Piazzetta delle Palme kiosk, Barresi palace and many more, all gone because we, as citizens, did not fight the Mafia back, we were too scared and we let them take our city apart. Interviewer: How is this situation perceived today? Giacomo: All of this left an open wound in the city. We all know, but we haven’t been doing anything. In a way there is no point in fighting a war that is over. This is Palermo, this is the city we live in today, that’s what we inherited. This heritage might not be the same city where Goethe and John Soane spent months studying, but it tells the story of a city that was built with everyone’s silence and omertá, it tells of the Mafia and how they left so many horrendous housing complexes with no character and empty spaces everywhere. The gap left where Villa Deliella used to be, that car park, today that might be even more powerful than the villa itself. You see, a trait of Sicilians is that they do not care about all the beauties they have because they have always been there. That closed car park reminds everyone from Palermo what we let them do, it reminds us of the great vision of Ernesto Basile and the way we put shame on ourselves. Perhaps we should thank the Mafia for what it did to our city; as Letizia Battaglia once said “hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary”. If it was not for them, today our appreciation for the urban spaces
would be different, the value we give to what is left is so sacred that the Sack of Palermo could not happen again. Interviewer: Thank you, Giacomo, for your story, that is all for today from Nuova Radio Aut13.
A tribute to Peppino Impastato, son of a Mafia boss, who opened a radio station, R adio Aut and publicly reported and mocked the Mafia. He was blown up and his murder was for long considered a mistake he himself made while trying to blow up the railway tracks. Eventually, thanks to more Anti-Mafia activists the truth was revealed and the Mafia was charged for the crime. 13
Pentito14 Testimony of a City In Decomposition Trial 22nd of May, 2013. Palermo Courthouse, Palermo, Sicily Testimony of the Mafia repentant Francesco Bruno sentenced to a life imprisonment and a supplement of 30 years in conjunction with compensation for torts amounting to € 3 millions15. Judge: How can you describe the crimes you are accused of by the court? Francesco: I cannot respond to all of them on my only behalf, the Mafia, as such, is an organisation. Our actions are moved by mutual interests and are approved by the heads of families and the mafia councilors16. Yet, my hands committed crimes, of that I am aware and I take responsibility for it here, today. My role in Cosa Nostra was mainly taking care of the developments we were involved with. Judge: What did this role imply specifically? Francesco: Everything depended and was ordered from above; sometimes this meant taking care of those interfering with the process of public procurements and contracts, from political bodies to individuals. Sometimes it meant dealing with sub-members of the organisation and instruct them on what to do; other times it meant being on construction sites to supervise work. Judge: Could you be more specific when using the words “taking care” or “dealing”?
Pentito (plural Pentiti) refer to those Mafia members who decide to be “repentant” and collaborate with the authorities giving information about how the Mafia works and on specific crimes 15 Even though the date of the trial is real, in reality Francesco Bruno was not a repentant, but rather he had been a fugitive since the Maxi-Trial beginning. The Maxi-Trial, spanning f rom 10 February 1986 to 30 January 1992, was a trial to prosecute all of the 475 Mafia members arrested during the Vespri Siciliani operation. A special courthouse was built for this trial, the Bunker-Courthouse, a huge court able to host not only the great numbers of defendants, but also all of the lawyers and the authorities patrolling the space. Built inside the Ucciardone prison, the space had special measures in place to avoid the possibility of escape, bombing or missile attack. Francesco Bruno was processed and given a lifetime sentence during the Maxi-Trial in the Bunker-Courthouse, but being a fugitive he was not present. Years later, when he was caught by the authorities, his case was reopened and he received a second trial resulting in 30 more years and 3 million euros of compensation being added to his earlier life-time sentence. 16 From the recordings of the Maxi-Trial it was understood that the Mafia had a strong hierarchical structure, with bosses and councilors taking care of different jobs. 14
Francesco: Mr judge17, “ammazzar’”18. I will give you an example; at Isola delle Femmine, there was this guy, a contractor or something similar. That was my territory, that was were I had my businesses. Now, that guy was interfering with our work, he did not want to cooperate. I set fire to one of those cabins he was building, nothing; we killed his watchdog, nothing; we destroyed part of its constructing material, nothing; we burned one of his warehouses, nothing. This Mr Enea did not want to collaborate, so I asked permission from above to get rid of him, just so that we could carry on with the works. One morning we went to the construction site, we waited until he came out and we shot him, after that we carried on with the developments. This was one of the many roles I had in the organisation. Taking care of people was not my main job, my work had more often to do with the actual developments for the various projects we had going on in the city. Judge: How did Cosa Nostra receive the permissions for the developments? Francesco: The mayor, Salvo Lima, was our friend, and so was Mr Ciancimino; with just a call they could have easily moved things around to grant us the permissions. When sending the strategies for the competitions, we had extremely low prices for construction19, any other company could not have competed with us! Judge: Mr Bruno, why is it that your developments had such competitive budgets? Francesco: Essentially we, as the Mafia, in the developments carried out throughout the city, were using a cement which was not really cement, but similar enough, and the mixes for concrete were done with the sand taken down at the beach, this was significantly lowering the costs. Judge: Were these materials approved throughout the construction process? Francesco: Nobody really knew, we provided the materials and the companies responding to us would build. If you asked me personally, I would never live in any of those buildings. Some of them have recently being finished and chunks of the balconies are already falling apart, many already have those green nets underneath, to avoid more falls. Judge: Where is the majority of these developments located? Mafia members during the trials are remembered also for their informal and ignorant ways of referring to the court; many famous mistaken sentences were told through the trial, showing the low level of education many of these people had. 18 Sicilian Language meaning: “Murder” 19 The building projects winning the competitions and the construction contracts submitted by the Mafia always had extremely low and unrealistic prices, not only due to the low quality of the materials employed, but also because of the lack of controls on how feasible the projects were. 17
Sacco, S., 2010. L a Mafia In Cantiere. [online] Palermo: Collane studio e ricerca. Available at: <http://www.piolatorre.it/public/pdf-pubblicazioni/La%20mafia%20in%20cantiere.pdf> [Accessed 14 March 2020].
Francesco: Mr Judge, don’t you see? Walk around Libertá Boulevard, go to Via Regione Siciliana, they are everywhere! Imean, I am not responsible for all of them, but in one way or the other all of those rectangular buildings are children of the Mafia, they somehow have a connection to Cosa Nostra. Everyone, even those who weren’t part of the Mafia, increased their profits with illegal maneuvers; that is the norm in this city, I was not doing anything out of the ordinary. Mr judge, in all honesty, Palermo is sminchiata for real. Every colonisation and domination we had, Byzantins, Arabs, they shaped the city somehow. Cosa Nostra is just another domination that structurally modeled Palermo into what it is; unfortunately it is in the nature of this city to be silently abused and not react to it. Judge: We have heard enough Mr Bruno, thank you for your deposition.
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Piece 1 - 1981, Isola delle Femmine. The customary ritual of relatives and policemen waiting for the judge to arrive and authorize the removal of the body. The entrance of Vincenzoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction site for holiday bungalows in Isola delle Femmine, showing a detail of the typical sicilian sea side decoration of perforated walls against the anonymous, concrete Mafia property bordering the site.
Piece 2 - 1976, Palermo. His name was Vincenzo Battaglia and they killed him in the dark, amidst the garbage. His wife tried to help him, but it was too late. The body lies in front of the old, decaying housing in the center of the city, which the Mafia government stopped funding for restoration. The title Letizia gave to this photograph is of extreme importance for it to become a piece of evidence of the lack of infrastructure for the collection of garbage and rubbish; everything was left around the public areas of the city.
Piece 3 - 1976, Palermo. They killed him while he was going into the garage to get his car. In the background of the picture is another of the housing buildings the Mafia was delivering at the time. No decoration and minimal design. Just another concrete block entering the long list of similar constructions in the neighborhoods of Palermo.
Piece 4 - May 5, 1982, Palermo. Woman watching the funeral of Pio La Torre, member of parliament, regional secretary of the Communist Party, and the author of a law calling for the seizure of mafia property, who was killed with his driver, Rosario di Salvo. An image that, beyond showing the decadent conditions of the city due to the absurd political governance, shows a change in the social behaviour towards architecture. Mediterranean houses, and particularly Sicilian ones, have as their pivotal element a high ratio of windows/balconies per walls, a trait that is used for ventilation in hot temperatures, but also as a means of interaction for the inhabitants amongst the neighborhood. When a murder was executed by the mafia, all the blinds would be closed and very few people were seen watching, for fear to be asked by the police about the facts, as well as for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;omertĂĄ, a conspiracy of silence constructed by Mafia. The photograph is informing us about the language of architecture in the city. Keep your blinds closed when some mafia-related crime is happening on the street and you are silently agreeing with their actions; open them and you are publicly daring them.
Piece 5 - 1986, Palermo. In Arenella beach the party is over. Palermo has many beaches scattered along its coast, but very few could be enjoyed by the people. A number of them were turned into dumping sites for garbage and industrial pollutants by the Mafia during the Sack of Palermo, making them unusable by the citizens. This shot depicts the state of the Arenalla coast; people used to use the area for Sunday lunches or as personal dumping sites due to the lack of appropriate infrastructure in the city, so the beach was left on its own and polluted by any type of rubbish.
Piece 6 - 1990, Palermo. Serena, an actress, does theater for poor children in the Capo district. The Capo district, being in the very center of the city, was left to decay according to the new laws the Mafia government implemented, which consisted of waiting for the existing to be considered unfit so that developers could have taken old (often historical) buildings down to rebuild from scratch. The debris in the background highlights this condition of decay.
Piece 7 - 1975, Palermo. Murder on the chair. In the back, the new cityscape of Palermo, stretching its perimeters where lemon and orange trees used to be; high rise housing blocks begin to be part of the view of the Sicilian capital.
Piece 8 - 1976, Palermo. Reception of the nobility at Palazzo Ganci. This is where the director Luchino Visconti shot the famous dance scene for his 1963 film The Leopard, adapted from the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa A shot of the inside of an aristocratic palace, which was later discovered to be owned by a prince involved in the Mafia organisation. Here, in his house, is where the Mafia was holding meetings. A contrasting image to what the mafia was delivering architectonically for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;normal peopleâ&#x20AC;?. The prince was arrested in a Mafia roundup in the 80s.
Piece 9 - 1980, Palermo. The scene, with that dry tree and the almost theatrical light, seemed surreal to me, but they had actually murdered the man just a few minutes earlier. The city was in a state of abandonment for the most, rough and broken cement was the ground of Palermo. During the Sack the legislation changed in order to avoid any restoration of the city, but pushing instead towards new, low-quality and impersonal construction. In the background are baskets of lemons, a symbol of Sicily and of the old Mafia trading interests.