Mafia & Associates, Construction Company I was born in the years when 6000 soldiers were patrolling the streets of Sicily1 in an open air battle against Mafia; 8:00pm was the curfew for many districts in the city of Palermo. “Boom!”; the ground shakes and the people locked at home are glued to their radios, waiting to hear who or what was blown up. Alongside a great number of lives lost in the fight against Mafia, Palermo also lost invaluable architectural heritage, which was destroyed as a result of Mafia’s involvement in the unlawful grant of construction permissions and competitions to build some of the city’s most horrendous infrastructure. All this infrastructure has a common contractor: the Mafia. We are hereby talking about the so called Sack of Palermo (beginning in the 1940s), one of the most disruptive and criminal development and expansion of the city, and to many, a wrecking moment for the city. A time of pact between the government and the Mafia, when the citizens and their island were completely on their own, terrorised and abandoned by their own rulers. Car parks, council housing, dumping sites, vacant spaces and brownfields are part of a cityscape that encapsulates the real essence of the city, a constant reminder of how the period when the Mafia was ruling the city marked the territory architectonically. However, these spaces also resonate with the past that is underneath their new foundations; the art nouveau and Sicilian renaissance buildings which used to adorn Palermo, but were blew up in some nights to make room for housing and concrete buildings of little significance. Today the city of Palermo is dotted by polluted beaches and high rise council houses, which are hardly considered part of the city because they were promoted by the Mafia. Yet, regardless of the disgust and hate that is associated with these places today, it must be acknowledged that Mafia was one of the most prominent contractors employed by the local government when conducting this ambiguous expansion of the greater metropolitan area of Palermo, which stretches from the mountains and the Conca D’oro (the orange fields surrounding the city), to the Mediterranean coast. The complete lack of beauty in this urban expansion, and the destruction of the beautiful preexisting architecture that was required for its realisation, represent nonetheless an important aspect of our urbanism. It is the memory of Villa Deliella, Villa Rutelli, Palazzo Majo and all the other buildings buried under tarmac and concrete that donates a powerful memorial allure to the new developments standing in their place today.
We are hereby talking about the Vespri Siciliani operation (1992-1998), involving military reinforcements of 4200 to 6200 soldiers per day, 39000 checkpoints, 665,400 cars checked, 813,400 people checked, 168 weapons and 3000 kg of dynamite seized and almost 3000 hours of flying to patrol the territory. 1
Esercito.difesa.it. 2020. Operazione. [online] Available at: <http://www.esercito.difesa.it/operazioni/operazioni_nazionali/Pagine/vespri-siciliani.aspx> [Accessed 12 March 2020].