Disclaimer: The following blog post is not a reflection of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s opinion on the below topics.
Sicily is perhaps most known for its history of the mafia, but the history of movements against it are much less well known. Addiopizzo, meaning roughly “goodbye extortion,” refers to the pizzo, a “parallel taxation” exacted by the mafia from business-owners and community members, and people’s refusal to pay it.[1] The anti-mafia movement is often associated with the actions of the Italian police and criminal justice system against the mafia, but grassroots approaches to anti-mafia work have an even longer history.[2] The Addiopizzo movement is the most recent in a long legacy of Sicilians organizing against the mafia.
Grassroots anti-mafia organizing in Sicily can be traced back to the late 1800s with the Peasant Movement, also known as Fasci Siciliani (Though etymologically similar, this left-wing movement is separate from the later right-wing fascist movement).[3] Made up of communal groups of peasants and Workers’ Leagues, often socialist in inspiration, the Peasant Movement protested against the feudal system, challenging both mafia violence and state violence.[4]
By 1893, the Italian government temporarily suppressed the movement, attacking and killing more than a hundred demonstrators.[5] Around the turn of the century, however, the movement began to catch again as peasant farmers began building informal cooperatives to overtake the predominantly mafia-controlled landowners and establish systems of “collective renting.”[6] This meant that rather than working under landlords, peasants could pool resources and share ownership of the land they worked.
As fascism swept the country around the time of World War II, the Peasant Movement came under attack alongside other left-wing groups, and the mafia was thus motivated to help quash any antifascist action in Sicily. At the same time as police were brutally putting down antifascist and communist demonstrators, so too was the mafia carrying out targeted attacks against their leaders.[7] The mafia notoriously aided the Allies in the invasion of Sicily, so mafiosi then gained leadership positions in Sicilian government and aristocracy during the Allies’ subsequent occupation of Sicily.[8]
A turning point came in the 1960s, when the Italian politicians themselves began to participate in anti-mafia actions, establishing anti-mafia commissions and attempting to crack down on mafia corruption within the government. By the 80s, anti-mafia organizations began to appear across Italy, responding to mafia presences in their areas.[9] In response, this era was marked by an unprecedented number of assassinations of both officials and activists by the mafia.
In the 1980s and 90s, anti-mafia messaging became highly centered around the victims of these assassinations, turning them into martyrs or even heroes of the anti-mafia cause.[10] This veneration of mafia victims has continued to the modern day, with the March 21st holiday, La Giornata della Memoria (Day of Memory), which features a liturgical reading of the names of mafia victims.[11]
This period saw a gradual but significant shift in public opinion on the mafia, though there remains extensive debate on mafia ethics to this day. The mafia previously tended to be considered, for better or for worse, by both Sicilians and outsiders as an immutable part of Sicilian culture.[12] It was also not seen as a primarily violent force, but rather as an organizational force that utilized violence to maintain power.[13] On an island that had often lacked a strong or just government, this kind of organizational power was valuable. As mafia assassinations increased, however, so too did public discomfort with and fear of the mafia.
Following the 1992 assassinations of two judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, symbolic mourning became central to the anti-mafia movement. A woman in Palermo hung a sheet off her balcony saying “Palermo asks for justice,” an action that was mirrored by people around the city. One protest consisted of a human chain from the Justice Palace to Falcone’s house. Women organized a hunger strike that successfully pushed for the resignation of the police held responsible for Falcone’s assassination.[14]
Another major feature of grassroots anti-mafia organizing came in the form of cooperatives. After WWII, with the backing of Italian communists, the new constitution included the legal concept of a cooperative. Derived from earlier systems of collective renting, a cooperative is an organization of people who collectively own and manage a business, land, or venture. Co-ops serve as a sort of midpoint between the market and the state, allowing groups of people to share in property ownership and represent themselves in government.[15] These provided an alternative to the dominant kinship structures of the mafia.
Community-building also came in less formalized forms. In the 1960s, Sicilian peasants organized “little universities” where people would talk and gain political education, and where the role of the mafia in Sicilian society was deconstructed and analyzed.[16][17] After the assassination of Falcone and Borsellino, the newly-strengthened civil society of Sicily worked to pass a law (109/1996) that would allow confiscated mafia property to go toward educational or social services.[18] A major result of this law was the rise of social agriculture, or green care, which utilized cooperatives to govern former mafia land and centered the development of rural communities.[20]
The movement that has come to be known as Addiopizzo (led by an organization of the same name) serves as perhaps the most modern form of this anti-mafia legacy. As its name suggests, the concept of Addiopizzo centers around taking away the economic power of the mafia. The mafia’s main income source comes from the pizzo; as of 2017, around 80% of local businesses in Palermo paid the racket.[21] By encouraging small businesses to refuse to pay the mafia, the Addiopizzo movement utilizes the power of collective action to protect individuals from mafia retaliation.
The Sicilian mafia is now in a greatly weakened state, though it is certainly not gone. The most obvious reason for this is the arrests of thousands of mafiosi in the 2010s, but it was arguably the influence of Addiopizzo that weakened those who would take the place of those arrested.[22] Community members have also become bolder in standing up to the mafia and bringing them to justice. In one instance from 2016, eleven immigrant shop-owners came together with the help of the local Addiopizzo organization to testify against the mafiosi who had been extorting and threatening them.[23]
Trust between community members and belief in non-mafia structures of community form the scaffolding of the modern anti-mafia movement.[24] These communal ties that have built up over time — co-ops, social agriculture initiatives, “little universities” — protect and strengthen people’s commitment to resisting the mafia.
[1] Umberto Santino, Mafia and Antimafia Yesterday and Today, ed. Anna Puglisi, trans. James Campbell, 3rd ed. (Palermo: Centro Impastato, 2023), 8.
[2] Umberto Santino, 41.
[3] Umberto Santino, 35.
[4] Christina Jerne, “From Marching for Change to Producing the Change: Reconstructions of the Italian Anti-Mafia Movement,” Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements 7, no. 1 (May 2015): 188.
[5] Umberto Santino, Mafia and Antimafia Yesterday and Today, 29.
[6] Umberto Santino, 32.
[7] Umberto Santino, 38.
[8] Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, “Mafia, Antimafia, and the Plural Cultures of Sicily,” Current Anthropology 46, no. 4 (October 2005): 505.
[9] Christina Jerne, “From Marching for Change to Producing the Change: Reconstructions of the Italian Anti-Mafia Movement,” 195.
[10] Diego Gavini, “Funerals of Mafia Victims, 1963-2012: The Construction of a New Civil Religion,” Modern Italy 23, no. 3 (2018): 253–67.
[11] Diego Gavini, 255.
[12] ane Schneider and Peter Schneider, “Mafia, Antimafia, and the Plural Cultures of Sicily,” 504.
[13] Theodoros Rakopoulos, “The Anthropology of Co-Ops, the Mafia and the Sicilian Lens,” in From Clans to Co-Ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily, vol. 4, The Human Economy (Berghahn Books, 2018), 42.
[14] Christina Jerne, “From Marching for Change to Producing the Change: Reconstructions of the Italian Anti-Mafia Movement,” 195–96.
[15] Theodoros Rakopoulos, “The Anthropology of Co-Ops, the Mafia and the Sicilian Lens,” 44.
[16] Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, “Mafia, Antimafia, and the Plural Cultures of Sicily,” 506.
[17] Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, 508.
[18] Luca Fazzi and Susanne Elsen, “Actors in Social Agriculture Cooperatives Combating Organized Crime in Southern Italy: Cultivating the Ground,” Sustainability 12, no. 9257 (2020): 2.
[19] Luca Fazzi and Susanne Elsen, 3.
[20] Lorenzo Tondo, “Sicilians Dare to Believe: The Mafia’s Cruel Reign Is over,” The Guardian, September 22, 2019, sec. World news.
[21] Theodoros Rakopoulos, “The Anthropology of Co-Ops, the Mafia and the Sicilian Lens,” 37–38.
[22] Lorenzo Tondo, “Sicilians Dare to Believe.”
[23] Ismail Einashe, “The Bangladeshi Shopkeepers Who Took on Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Mafia,” The Sunday Times, 2020.
[24] Carina Gunnarson, “Changing the Game: Addiopizzo’s Mobilisation against Racketeering in Palermo,” The European Review of Organized Crime 1, no. 1 (2014): 39–77.
[24] Photo by author (Stella D’Acquisto).
[26] Tondo, “Sicilians Dare to Believe: The Mafia’s Cruel Reign Is over.”