PIO LA TORRE: THE CORNERSTONE OF THE ANTIMAFIA SYSTEM

Pio La Torre was an Italian politician and trade unionist who became a symbol of the fight against the mafia. His commitment to justice led him to champion the law that defined mafia association as a crime and allowed the confiscation of illicit assets. Assassinated in 1982 by the Cosa Nostra, his legacy endures as the cornerstone of the Italian antimafia system.

Pio La Torre: the cornerstone of the anti-mafia system.

In the middle of the night, from the countryside and the ocean, goods are dispatched to be sold that same day in markets like the bustling Mercato di Ballarò—a market that never closes, or almost never closes. Its formal opening never happened. There were no businessmen, officials, dukes or duchesses to cut the ribbon, and yet the merchants began gathering on Via Ballarò as early as the High Middle Ages, amid the many military invasions that Sicily has endured. Since it never officially opened, perhaps that is why it has never officially closed either. Ballarò doesn’t close—or almost never closes. Twenty-four hours a day, or night, it is filled with people: buyers, sellers, workers, curious onlookers, tourists, and the occasional pickpocket. The city of Palermo is Ballarò Market on a larger scale. The capital of Sicily is a city that barely sleeps. It wakes early and goes to bed very late—if it truly sleeps at all. In the early hours, when it's relatively quiet, when the noise of an old engine or the cry of a night owl can no longer be heard, only then, for a fleeting moment, can one say that Palermo sleeps, and that the Palermitans rest. But that happens very rarely. Palermo and its children only doze, and in a city where no one truly sleeps, traffic is just one of its many nightmares.

Rosario had been his friend and companion for quite some time, and more recently had also become his driver and bodyguard. A native of Puglia—specifically from the capital, Bari—he knew Palermo's traffic quite well, but when it comes to Palermo’s chaotic streets, nothing beats a local. Rosario the friend, Rosario the companion, Rosario the driver, and Rosario the bodyguard was behind the wheel of a beige Fiat 132 on the morning of April 30, 1982. At that time of year, in Palermo, the sun sometimes warms the air enough to make people forget the recently departed winter that had formally left the northern hemisphere nearly a month earlier. That April 30th, the battle between seasons was undecided. Rosario had gone to pick up his friend, companion, passenger, and the man he was guarding. He repeated the usual routine: got out of the car, waited by the door, and once his friend, companion, passenger, and ward sat down in the front passenger seat, Rosario walked behind the car and returned to the driver’s seat. That day, like so many others, the friends, the companions, the driver and passenger, the bodyguard and the guarded were on their way to the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party, where they had both been active for many years.

Pio La Torre was born on Christmas Eve of 1927 in Altarello di Baida, at that time a rural village on the outskirts of Palermo. A member of a poor farming family without access to running water or electricity, he and his four siblings had to help their parents work the land owned by wealthy landlords in the Conca D’Oro—a region rich in resources and opportunities, controlled and exploited by the island’s mafia, who built their first fortunes there. He studied by candlelight in the few hours left after working, and at the age of 18—when World War II ended—he enrolled in university and joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

Land occupations mobilized thousands of peasants and political activists.

The government established after the Nazi army was expelled from the island of Sicily and the rest of the Italian peninsula launched a series of agrarian programs aimed at ensuring minimal living conditions for peasants—especially those south of Rome, the poorest. In the midst of a Cold War that was beginning to reveal the levels of tension it would eventually reach, such programs received support and approval from the Western Allies, who were concerned with curbing Soviet influence around the world, particularly in that part of the continent. Although geopolitical factors like those of the postwar period heavily influenced government decisions during the reconstruction of a territory devastated by two wars in less than half a century, the first Italian government after the long fascist night had to include members from different political parties. Strangely or not, one of those parties was the Italian Communist Party.

Officials from that party designed programs aimed at ensuring land access for peasants, improving their living conditions, and reducing the outbreaks of violence that were occurring in the south of the peninsula and on the island of Sicily. One such official was Fausto Gullo, a Calabrian communist who, in 1944—when the Kingdom of Italy had recently become an ally of the United States against Nazi Germany and the war was still ongoing—was appointed Minister of Agriculture. In 1946, a decree bearing his name established a legal framework to recognize the land occupations that had been largely organized by peasant unions. That decree resulted in the definitive transfer of more than 180,000 hectares—previously owned by large landowners, uncultivated or underused—to the peasants. However, Fausto Gullo’s time in office was relatively short, and his successors adopted policies that completely reversed this progress.

One of the first victims of this political shift emerged from a historic alliance between landowners and the mafia. Epifanio Li Puma was a peasant and union leader in Petralia Soprana, west of Palermo. A tireless advocate for the right to own and work a piece of land, and a staunch defender of labor unions as tools for improving the lives of workers and peasants, he was murdered on March 2, 1948. While he was with his children, two men on horseback approached him, exchanged a few words, and then shot him in the head multiple times. Eight days later, in the town of Corleone, a mafioso from the clan led by the physician Michele Navarra kidnapped and murdered the peasant union leader Placido Rizzotto. The clan leader himself, the doctor Michele Navarra, personally administered a lethal injection the next day to a twelve-year-old boy who had unfortunately witnessed Rizzotto’s abduction. On April 1, 1948, Calogero Cangelosi—a peasant and leader of the “landless” movement in Camporeale, south of Palermo—was murdered while walking home accompanied by five comrades who also acted as bodyguards. Two of them were injured in the attack.

Pio La Torre at a May Day commemorative event in Portella della Ginestra.

The threats against the peasants were widespread and materialized with alarming immediacy. The landowners employed the violent force of the mafia to murder union leaders and to intimidate peasant families who refused to obey either group’s orders. One of the families threatened and harassed was the La Torre family, but in their case, it wasn't about extortion or land eviction—it was about Pio’s political activity. One day after a barely veiled threat, a group of mafiosi set fire to the doors of the La Torre family’s stable. These were the same men who had invited Pio to join the political party they supported—an offer he had firmly declined. Pio’s father ended up suggesting that his son either abandon politics or leave the house, as he was putting the entire family at risk. Pio immediately packed his clothes and books and left for the city of Palermo.

One October morning in 1948, Pio opened the door of the PCI headquarters to a young noblewoman from Palermo, the daughter of an army officer who had decided to give up her tennis and French lessons to join the peasant struggle. When that young woman, Giuseppina Zacco, walked through the door of the party, the doorman and the new activist fell in love almost instantly. The relationship between Pio and Giuseppina had begun and was filled with joy. Nearly a year after that April day when she crossed the threshold of the PCI and fell instantly in love, and after participating side by side in party activities, Giuseppina and Pio went to the civil registry and got married. That same day, in Calabria, in the small town of Melissa, police violently repressed a peasant protest, killing three people and injuring fifteen others. Among the dead were a woman and a child.

The government’s retreat from redistributive policies triggered a new wave of peasant and labor union protests across the country, but the epicenter remained in the south. As a result, Pio proposed to lead a massive new land occupation of more than two thousand hectares in the Santa Maria del Bosco estate, in the town of Bisacquino, Palermo. However, the land occupation and reclamation program led by unions, peasants, and parties like the Communist Party was no longer something the new government was willing to tolerate. They planned to put a definitive end to it at Bisacquino. March 10, 1950, was chosen for the occupation, marking the second anniversary of Placido Rizzotto’s abduction and murder. The occupation was a success: Pio and the peasants divided the land, a task that took the entire day. But when the six thousand participants began their return, they were met with a massive police deployment. Insults flew back and forth, tensions escalated quickly, and soon the police opened fire while peasants responded with stones. Pio tried to stop the repression, but the police charge was overwhelming. One hundred peasants, including Pio, were arrested. Pio was accused of assaulting a police lieutenant during the events, and while awaiting a trial that wouldn't arrive until a year and a half later, he spent seventeen months in Palermo’s Ucciardone prison.

Because his offense was considered political, Pio was placed under isolation—a prison regime that forbade any contact with the outside world. His wife Giuseppina, pregnant with their first child, was only allowed to see him after several months thanks to the pressure and connections of her family. But even then, although Pio found solace in speaking to his wife, he was not allowed to touch, embrace, or kiss her. The visit was conducted through the cell door, and they could only see and talk through a small window. The unjust imprisonment, the distance, and the lack of contact with his wife were painful but bearable. The most agonizing moment of those seventeen months in prison was the death of his mother from uterine cancer—a goodbye he was never able to say. During his incarceration, their first son, Filippo, was born. Pio met him for the first time when a prison guard placed the newborn in his arms; Giuseppina had to hand the baby over and wait in an office. The trial for the alleged assault during the Bisacquino land occupation finally took place in August 1951. After ten hearings in which the police failed to provide any evidence of the alleged attack, Pio was acquitted and released.

Pio La Torre, second from the left, at a CGIL event.

Pio’s time in prison had been extremely difficult. He wasn’t able to be with his wife during her pregnancy, missed the birth of his first child, and couldn’t say goodbye to his mother before she died. Despite all that pain, he quickly returned to political activity. A year after regaining his freedom, he was elected secretary of the Chamber of Labor and later ran for a seat on the Palermo City Council, to which he was elected and remained until 1966. One of his first actions in office was the mass collection of signatures as part of a global campaign against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He also returned to university to continue his studies and tried to spend more time with his wife and son. In 1956, Franco, the couple’s second child, was born. The political activism of Pio and his wife moved in tandem. In 1959, he became the regional secretary of the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labor), and the following year, he joined the Central Committee of the PCI (Italian Communist Party).

Pio’s time as a city councilor coincided with what came to be known as the sack of Palermo. From the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, a group of Christian Democratic (DC) officials—the dominant party of Italy’s First Republic—known as the “young sultans of Sicily,” began a campaign of reckless demolition and construction across the city. Taking advantage of their political and state positions, and in alliance with a group of businessmen and mafia families, they carried out disorganized, substandard, and aesthetically unappealing urban developments. Vito Ciancimino, Giovanni Gioia, and Salvo Lima were the three DC leaders in Sicily who led and directed this looting of Palermo’s beauty and resources. It all began when Salvo Lima, elected mayor of Palermo, appointed Vito Ciancimino as head of the Public Works Department. Ciancimino awarded multi-million lira contracts to mafia-linked businessmen associated with Giovanni Gioia, the DC’s General Secretary and the mastermind behind the electoral machine that secured votes in Sicily through public and private employment—facilitated by a close alliance with the mafia. During those years, Gioia was also informally accused—though only in whispers, as fear always accompanied power in Sicily—of being involved in the murder of Pasquale Almerico, the mayor of Camporeale who had refused to allow mafia members into the DC ranks. Pasquale had informed Gioia of the threats he was receiving for that decision, to which Gioia replied that the party needed men to build a coalition—“new men”—and that those men (i.e., the mafia with territorial power) could not be excluded. The mafia boss accused of the mayor’s murder was Don Vanni Sacco, who was also believed to have instigated the killing of union leader Calogero Cangelosi.

Pio’s political commitment and developing leadership skills led him to become the general secretary of the PCI in Sicily from 1962 to 1967. Two years after his term ended, the responsibilities of the party led him to move to Rome, where he chaired the Agrarian Commission and later the Commission for Southern Affairs. At the PCI’s 12th Congress, Pio was appointed to the party’s national secretariat. His political growth both within and beyond the party was consistent and noteworthy. He had already earned his degree in Political Science from the University of Palermo, and his knowledge of Sicily’s two major issues—land and the mafia—was not only deep but also clearly articulated in every public speech he gave. All of this positioned Pio as a strong candidate for the Chamber of Deputies for the Western Sicily district, and in 1972 he was elected.

One of his first and most important roles as a Member of Parliament was as a member of the Anti-Mafia Commission. For the previous ten years, the commission had issued nothing but vague statements, without a single concrete proposal for action against the mafia. Moreover, the Italian State still refused to recognize the mafia as a centralized organization. Pio had a deep understanding of the mafia phenomenon and the power system it deployed on the island. He was aware of the transformation the mafia was undergoing at that time. Originally rooted in land ownership and rural markets, the mafia was now shifting—with its full structure—into the cities, following the flow of government reconstruction funds aimed at post-war recovery. Old and new business mechanisms alike were being adapted for the urban setting. During his first term as a Deputy of the Republic, Pio worked alongside Cesare Terranova, a Sicilian magistrate who, after a series of judicial failures in the fight against the mafia, accepted a proposal to become a left-wing deputy, backed by the PCI.

Judge and MP Cesare Terranova (with glasses), on the right, MP and union leader Pio La Torre.

As a magistrate, Cesare Terranova had led a series of major investigations into the mafia in Sicily. One of the most significant was against the so-called Corleonesi, a group of mafiosi from the Corleone region who, in 1958, were led by Luciano Leggio—the same mafioso who had kidnapped and murdered union leader Placido Rizzotto ten years earlier. Leggio rose to the top of the Corleone mafia family after murdering its former boss, Dr. Michele Navarra, the man who had ordered Rizzotto's abduction and who, the following day, personally killed a twelve-year-old boy with a syringe because the child had witnessed the kidnapping. When Cesare had the chance to question Leggio, the mafia boss refused to answer a single question. He wouldn’t even name his parents. In response, the magistrate ordered that it be recorded that “Leggio does not know who his parents are.” Leggio’s rage extinguished any other emotion he might have had. Cesare later told his wife that the mafioso "had foam at his mouth—if he could, he would have killed me with his own hands in that moment.” By writing that phrase, Cesare had implied that Leggio was a bastard—an intolerable insult for someone like him. When Cesare left for Rome to take up his role as a member of parliament, Leggio had already been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Michele Navarra, his former boss. However, it wasn’t until 1974 that Leggio was captured in Milan, after four years on the run.

Pio and Cesare sought to breathe new life into the stagnant Anti-Mafia Commission in the Italian Parliament. The commission had been created in response to the first mafia war, which began in 1962 and ended seven years later, leaving dozens dead—including Palermo boss Michele Cavataio, who was murdered by a new mafia alliance led by the Corleonesi. The two Sicilian deputies compiled reports, requested information from other branches of the state, and interviewed victims of mafia organizations. Before the end of their first term, Pio and Cesare submitted a minority report in which they did not hesitate to name the politicians in Sicily—particularly in Palermo—who were in collusion with the mafia, especially the three young DC “sultans.” They concluded that “the interpenetration occurred historically as a result of a deliberate and desired encounter by both parties—the mafia and political power. Therefore, the mafia is a phenomenon of the ruling classes.”

Alongside that minority report, the deputies submitted a bill proposing concrete and highly innovative judicial tools to fight the mafia—measures that would later become standard in the global fight against organized crime. The report included an annex titled Provisions Against the Mafia, in which Pio and Cesare proposed introducing into the Italian Penal Code the possibility of sentencing individuals to up to ten years in prison for belonging to a mafia organization. These provisions also included a measure that deeply worried the mafia at the time: the confiscation of assets obtained through criminal activity.

After being re-elected as a member of parliament, Pio joined the Defense Committee and launched a campaign from that position to prevent the installation of a NATO missile launcher in the province of Ragusa, in the far southeastern corner of the island. A committed pacifist, Pio did everything he could to prevent Sicily and the Mediterranean from becoming yet another pawn in the Cold War chessboard. Meanwhile, after finishing his term in parliament, Cesare Terranova decided to return to Palermo and resumed his role as a magistrate. He was appointed as the chief investigating judge in the courts of the Sicilian capital. Just three months after his return, on September 25, 1979, while traveling by car through Palermo with police officer Lenin Mancuso—his driver and bodyguard—he was shot and killed by a pair of mafiosi. The order to assassinate Cesare came from Luciano Leggio, whom the anti-mafia magistrate had publicly shamed by calling him a bastard for refusing to name his parents. The rest of the mafia leadership approved Leggio’s request because Cesare Terranova had become a powerful and unwavering opponent of the mafia.

Pio La Torre at an activity organized by the PCI.

For some time, the mafia had made the decision to assassinate State officials who opposed them. Cesare Terranova was not the first of the so-called “exquisite corpses.” That same year, a few months earlier, the regional secretary of the Christian Democrats (DC), Michele Reina, and the head of the Mobile Squad of the police, Boris Giuliano, had been murdered. The following year, the President of the Region of Sicily, Piersanti Mattarella, Carabinieri Captain Emanuele Basile, and Prosecutor Gaetano Costa were also killed. The island of Sicily was soaked in blood. These killings occurred in the midst of a second mafia war, launched by the Corleonesi faction against the families that had historically controlled the city of Palermo. The proposal that Pio and Cesare had attached to the Anti-Mafia Commission's report was finally submitted as a draft law to the Chamber of Deputies in 1980. Registered as bill number 1,581, the proposal created a political, social, and criminal shockwave. For the first time in history, a segment of the ruling class was proposing special measures to tackle the mafia phenomenon. In a RAI interview about the proposal, Pio stated: “We propose focusing on illicit enrichment, because the mafia’s aim is precisely illicit enrichment—so that is where we must concentrate our efforts.”

The situation in Sicily was becoming increasingly dire. In addition to the mafia’s unilateral power over life and death, there was now a real risk of dragging Sicily—and all of Italy—into a conflict that could endanger much of humanity. In 1981, Pio asked the PCI leadership to return to his former post as Regional Secretary of the PCI in Sicily, in order to coordinate actions against the installation of NATO missiles. When he returned to the island, he met Rosario, who would become his driver and bodyguard. One of their first initiatives was collecting one million signatures to present to the national government in opposition to the missile launchers. The mobilization committee’s campaign brought together a wide array of social and political organizations, from trade unions and the Communist Party to the Catholic Church. The signatures were submitted on October 11, 1981, the same day as the first major protest at the proposed missile site. More than thirty thousand people took part in the demonstration. It was part of a broader wave of pacifist activities across the continent. An earlier march connecting the cities of Perugia and Assisi had drawn sixty thousand demonstrators. On October 10 in Bonn, Germany, a summit and protest organized by the European Peace Movement brought together three hundred thousand participants. Fourteen days after the Ragusa march, another protest, which had started several days earlier in Milan, ended in Rome, once again drawing three hundred thousand demonstrators. Peace demonstrations continued to be held in nearly every major city across the continent.

Demonstration against the NATO missile deployment in Sicily. Pio marches in the center, with Rosario Di Salvo on his right, arm in arm with him.

At the beginning of 1982, assemblies and demonstrations continued across Sicily. On January 14, during a party congress, Pio declared: “We must reject this perspective by calling on the Sicilian people to fight, to say no to a destiny that, even before becoming the target of atomic retaliation, would transform our island into a land of thorns, terrorists, and provocateurs of all kinds, paid by the secret services of all the opposing blocs. Such a situation would also feed the mafia's power structure and the degenerative processes within autonomous institutions, condemning Sicily to economic and social degradation.” Although the installation of missiles in Sicily was the central issue on the island—and across the continent—Pio never lost focus on the damage the mafia continued to inflict. The war launched by the Corleonesi and their allies against the rest of the mafia increased the death toll daily, especially in Palermo.

Shortly after 9 a.m., Palermo was already fully awake, and anyone trying to move through the city found themselves trapped in a nightmare. As the beige Fiat 132 entered the side street by Piazza Generale Turba, a high-powered motorcycle carrying two armed men sped ahead, cut it off, and opened fire. More assailants emerged from a parked car—stationed there for hours—and joined the shootout, targeting the occupants of the beige Fiat. Rosario, who acted as driver and bodyguard—though he was really just a friend and companion, something so simple and so complex at once—managed to draw his weapon and fire up to four times while using his body to shield his passenger, his protectee, but above all, his friend and comrade. Rosario died instantly. Several of the forty bullets fired by the gunmen struck Rosario as he tried to protect Pio La Torre, the trade union leader and Member of Parliament for the Italian Communist Party. His friend, his companion, his passenger, his protectee—already lifeless by the time Rosario threw himself over him.

On May 2, the day after International Workers’ Day, a joint funeral was held for Pio and Rosario in Palermo’s Piazza Politeama. Over 100,000 people attended. Pio had always known that his public and political attacks on the mafia amounted to signing his own death sentence. He had always been aware of this and only grew more determined with each new killing that occurred on the island. Knowing death was near, Pio had almost prophetically asked his comrades that, in the event of his assassination, his funeral “not be just a day of mourning, but also a day of struggle for all workers.” That he and Rosario were killed the day before May 1 made the moment all the more poignant—a fusion of sorrow and celebration in a single act.

As with many other “exquisite corpses,” the mafia tried to cover its tracks by releasing a series of false communiqués, attributing the killings to groups that either had nothing to do with the attack or didn’t exist at all. In the case of Pio and Rosario, responsibility was falsely claimed by the Red Brigades, by Prima Linea, and even by an alleged far-left group called the Organized Proletarian Groups. Despite these attempts, Pio’s comrades and family always maintained that the mafia had both planned and carried out the murders. The day after the assassination, General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa of the Carabinieri expedited his move to Sicily, tasked with confronting the Sicilian mafia. His public mandate came after his recent successes in combating terrorism, but privately, he was given confusing orders and lacked the legal, technical, and human resources needed to carry out the mission. His time in Sicily was tragically short, marred by betrayal and bloodshed. On September 3—just a few months after his arrival—he fell victim to a carefully orchestrated ambush by the Sicilian mafia. A motorcycle intercepted the car driven by a police officer acting as the general’s escort, gunning him down in a burst of Kalashnikov fire. Another car blocked the path of the vehicle driven by Emanuela Setti Carraro—Generale Dalla Chiesa’s second wife—in which the general himself was riding. A second burst of thirty Kalashnikov rounds ended the lives of the Dalla Chiesa couple.

Joint funeral of Pio La Torre and Rosario Di Salvo, attended by more than one hundred thousand people.

A day after the assassination of Dalla Chiesa, his wife, and his escort—amid the shock, the immediate organization of the state funerals, and inter-ministerial meetings—the Chamber of Deputies in Rome began moving to address the bill originally presented by Pio La Torre and magistrate Cesare Terranova. Both were already dead. Ten days after Dalla Chiesa’s murder, and 136 days after the assassination of Pio and Rosario, under the initiative of Interior Minister Virginio Rognoni, Law No. 646 was passed, enacting provisions against the mafia. Solving the murders of Pio and Rosario required the collaboration of mafiosi who turned state’s witness—men considered traitors by the mafia, with death sentences hanging over their heads. Mafia informants Tommaso Buscetta, Francesco Marino Mannoia, and Gaspare Mutolo told magistrates that mobsters Pino Greco, Giuseppe Lucchese, Nino Madonia, Mario Prestifilippo, and Salvatore Cucuzza were part of the hit team that murdered the two friends, comrades, driver and passenger, protector and protected—for the very anti-mafia proposals that Pio had submitted. For a long time, there were suspicions of the involvement of figures beyond the mafia, including ties to state officials. In 1990, the existence of an organization called Gladio was uncovered across several European countries—created and directed by the CIA to counter a potential Soviet invasion of Europe. In Italy, this organization had, at various points in history, maintained contact with the Sicilian mafia. For this reason, Giuseppina—Pio’s widow—and the family’s lawyers requested that authorities investigate whether members of Gladio or similar groups had played a role in his assassination or interfered with his objectives. When mafioso Salvatore Cucuzza was finally arrested in 1996, he confirmed the names of the hit team to the justice system and also identified the mastermind behind the attack: the self-proclaimed boss of Cosa Nostra, Salvatore “Toto” Riina. In January 2007, Riina and his lieutenants were sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Pio and Rosario.

The law proposed by Pio in 1980 came to be known—both popularly and legally—as the Rognoni–La Torre Law, and it became the cornerstone of the fight against the mafia in Italy and other parts of the world. Pio was perhaps one of the first to develop a comprehensive view of the mafia phenomenon—far ahead of his time. He not only studied the behavior of the mafia, but ultimately paid for his knowledge and activism with his life.