There was a before and after of the story Italy inside In 1992, judge Giovanni Falcone was assassinated. The lonely and brave warrior against Mafia. What comes next is not a happy story, but at least Cosa Nostra He had to change his strategy and not base his modus operandi on bloodshed because public opinion would no longer forgive him. He explains this via video conference The man targeted by the mafiaauthor of ‘Gomorrah‘, ‘A universal bestseller that provides some insight into the complex ins and outs of the Honorable Society.
Roberto Saviano (Naples, 1979) chronicles Falcone’s life between two explosions: the explosion that nearly killed Totó Riina, the ‘capo de tutti capi’ in which his family manipulated one of the bombs left in Sicily by North American troops after the landing, and the definitive death that killed Falcone and his wife on the road to Palermo. person who kills. And if we take into account that it was Riina who killed Falcone to strengthen her power among the clans, the circle closes. Saviano explains this ‘The brave is alone’ (Anagram), A fictionalized biography of the hapless judge, with a massive 60-page bibliography in case anyone might think he invented anything.
“The novel form allowed me to reconstruct dialogues and explain emotions and feelings from the inside. “Everything is based on evidence, and if I put forward a hypothesis, it is because there is evidence beforehand,” explains the journalist who arouses all kinds of sensitivity in his country. The censorship RAI faced when it canceled its program last summer is proof of this. ‘From the inside’ The author faced defamation complaints from President Giorgia Meloni and Prime Minister and Lega leader Matteo Salvini, while a lawsuit was filed for alleged violation of ethics rules.
Postmortem Credits
Not all threats come from the far right; A weaker and less combative left is also skeptical of the author, and this seems like a detail that needs to be identified. The parallel between the martyr Falcone and the threatened Saviano, The author himself does not shy away from this. “Falcone was left alone, a defeated man who received only posthumous praise. “This is a true Italian tradition,” he says, and begins to describe an episode that reflects this attitude. “When they planted a bomb that did not explode on a judge in Palermo, Italy’s most important newspapers even implied that Falcone himself had placed it there. Years later I talked to the gangster who planted the bomb and he told me that was when it happened. Cosa Nostra knew they had full power To put an end to this.”
Two months after Falcone died, another bomb killed judge Paolo Borsellino, its collaborator. “It was Borsellino who said that Italy was a very beautiful and unhappy country and that he criticized it precisely because he loved it and wanted to transform it. I follow this path and in my country they see me as a slanderer who makes the British, French and Spanish think of us as shit. “They’d rather I limit myself to commenting on how good the pizza is, the beauty of the cities, and what great lovers we are.”
Andreotti’s shadow
The Christian Democrats’ collusion with the mafia was already a highly publicized issue, and Falcone was accused of not targeting it at the time. Saviano, who also faced political power, exonerates him: “He was very careful not only about the content, but also about the forms; that’s why he was very careful when accusing politicians, because he knew that the other judges would accuse them.” due to lack of evidence, as in reality Giulio Andreotti after the years”.
What remains of mafia culture in the 21st century? Although today Italy has the best The world’s anti-mafia jurisprudenceThere is no more death and there is a very strong public opinion against it, but according to the author, what is happening in the country continues. A mafia culture so deep-rooted that it is invisible. “This is criminal capitalism. In economic terms, contracts and concessions follow the logic of the mafia, where a powerful man protects. “The economic power of criminal organizations remains significant and they have the indifference of Europe as an ally.”
In 2006, when an unknown journalist named Roberto Saviano was directly threatened by Cosa Nostra for ignoring ‘omertá’, the law requiring silence, and publishing criminal practices in ‘Gomorrah’, the author had to get him an escort. . No return. The curse made him world famous: “If I could, I would tell 26-year-old Roberto that I wouldn’t publish it. The book destroyed me, transformed me into something I could never have imagined at the time. I brave? Courage is a choice, not something you are born with.”