There was a before and after for the story of Italy inside Assassination of judge Giovanni Falcone in 1992, the lonely and courageous fighter against it mafia. What came next isn’t a pleasant story, but at least she made it Cosa Nostra He had to change his strategy and not base his approach on bloodshed, because public opinion would no longer forgive him. He explains this via video conference the man targeted by the mafiathe author of ‘Gomorrah‘, a universal bestseller that gave us at least a little understanding of the convoluted peculiarities of the ‘Honorable Society’.
Roberto Saviano (Naples, 1979) tells the life of Falcone between two explosions: the one that almost killed Totó Riina, the “Capo de tutti capi”, when his family tampered with one of the bombs that the North American troops left behind after landing in Sicily and the one who finally killed Falcone and his wife on the way to Palermo. And things come full circle when we consider that it was Riina who had Falcone murdered to strengthen her power among the clans. Saviano tells it “The brave are alone” (anagram), a fictional biography of the ill-fated judge that includes a whopping 60 pages of bibliography in case anyone thinks he made something up.
“The novel form allowed me to reconstruct dialogues and explain feelings and emotions from within. Everything is based on evidence, and when I make a hypothesis it is because there is already evidence for it,” explains the journalist, who arouses all kinds of sensibilities in his country. Proof of this is the censorship he suffered when RAI canceled his program last summer. ‘Insider’ for alleged violation of the code of ethics, while the author faces defamation lawsuits from President Giorgia Meloni and her Prime Minister and Lega leader Matteo Salvini.
Postmortem loas
Not all threats come from the extreme right, a powerless and less combative left is also skeptical of the author, and that seems to clarify another detail. the parallelism between the martyr Falcone and the threatened Saviano, something the author himself doesn’t shy away from. “Falcone was left alone, a defeated man who only received praise after his death. This is a very Italian custom” and begins by explaining an episode that depicts this attitude. “When they planted a bomb on the judge in Palermo, which failed to explode, the most important newspapers in Italy even insinuated that it was Falcone himself who had planted it there. Many years later I spoke to the gangster who planted the bomb and he told me that was it then Cosa Nostra knew they had carte blanche to put an end to this.”
Two months after Falcone’s death, another bomb killed the judge Paolo Borsellino, employee of it. “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 change it.” I follow this path and in my country they consider me a slanderer, which makes the English, French and Spanish think we’re shit. They would prefer if I limited myself to commenting on how good the pizza is, how beautiful the cities are and what excellent lovers we are.”
Andreotti’s shadow
The Christian Democrats’ collusion with the Mafia is already a topic that has attracted a lot of attention, and Falcone was accused at the time of not targeting it. Saviano, who also faced political power, exonerates him: “He was very careful about the forms, not just the content, that’s why he was very careful when he indicted politicians because he knew that other judges would indict them. “ acquit for lack of evidence as to how it actually happened Giulio Andreotti years later.”
What remains of this mafia culture in the 21st century? Although Italy has the best today Anti-Mafia jurisprudence in the worldthere are no more deaths and there is a very strong public opinion against it, but according to the author, deaths continue to occur in the country a mafia culture that is as deeply rooted as it is invisible. “It’s criminal capitalism. In economic terms, contracts and concessions follow mafia logic, protected by a powerful man. The economic power of criminal organizations remains important and they have no interest in Europe as an ally.”
Since 2006, a then-unknown journalist named Roberto Saviano was directly threatened by Cosa Nostra for violating the “Omertá,” the law requiring silence, and for exposing criminal practices in “Gomorrah,” the author has been forced to seek an escort to take with you. There is no turning back. The curse made him world famous: “If I could, I would tell 26-year-old Roberto not to publish it.” The book destroyed me, has made me something I couldn’t imagine at the time. I am brave? Courage is a choice, it is not given to you at birth.”
