The Mafia

 

This is a photo - one of dozens - from the "No Mafia Memorial", a free public museum on the main street of Palermo.

The dead person, and I will omit their name, is one of the hundreds or thousands of Sicilians who have been murdered by the Mafia over this century and the last. But also, significantly, nearly all of the dozens of dead shown at the memorial were magistrates, judges, prosecutors or police officers who were specifically working to crush the Mafia in Sicily. This wave of killings started in the late 1970s but carried on through the 80s and 90s. And the reason? Because the Mafia bosses knew they were finally in the firing line. For decades and decades all of the prosecutions had been of the foot-soldiers of the Mafia, the killers and enforcers. But the heads of the families, who never got their hands dirty, were never jailed.

Finally a brave judge and several prosecutors established that the Mafia was a criminal enterprise controlled from above and that the capos were as guilty of murder as the street guys. And the prosecutions started. And the murders of state officials started soon after.

What greater confession of guilt could there be? We will kill you because you have us - the real murderers, exploiters and corruptors - in your sights. 

The airport in Palermo has been renamed the Aeroporto di Palermo Falcone e Borsellino in honour of two of the most prominent institutional victims.

Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellini were both Palermo magistrates who had for years been organising the investigation and prosecution of the Mafia. They knew well the risks this entailed. Both were killed (along with several of their personal escorts) in two huge car bombings in 1992. The full story can be found here:

Giovanni Falcone Wikipedia

And here 

Paolo Borsellini Wikipedia

They are treated like secular saints in sainted Sicily, and they were in many ways martyrs for a cause. The nice thing about their iconography is that they are always shown in this lovely smiling portrait:

We saw it again today by a government office:

The Mafia, according to what I can find in news sources, still exists in Sicily but has been massively weakened, with boss after boss being jailed. The bad news is that other powerful criminal gangs such as the N'drangheta are taking their turf. But the work of these brave officials has borne fruit.

And you can see their motivation. To know that all your institutions have been infiltrated and corrupted by people whose claims to honour should be spat upon; to know that informants are offering your travel details to murderers because a culture of informants has been allowed to take root; to know that the economic blood of your island has been sucked dry by criminals. Motivation was clearly there.

All they had to offer in addition was hard work and bravery. And, as they knew it might turn out, their lives.