for public rations. Yet local landowners and wholesalers could see that if they managed to bypass the authorities they could make large profits selling food to a starving population, not just in Cinisi, but in nearby Palermo as well. The huge amount of money to be made meant it was relatively easy to bribe local officials and to be let through road blocks, otherwise these newly created criminal gangs quickly became powerful enough to shoot it out with the police if the police decided to resist them. Quick to seize on an opportunity, Mafiosi took over local mills that ground wheat into flour, thus effectively gaining control over bread and other food supplies at source.
Whether these gangs were run by true Mafiosi is unclear; in many ways it doesn’t matter because even if they weren’t, they acted just like them, and in any event by the 1950s a stable and widely recognised Mafia structure had emerged in the town. A clear sign of increased criminal confidence was revealed after a mayor appointed by the Allies resigned in February 1946. Soon after the new mayor took office, a grenade exploded one night outside his house, apparently a warning that the authorities shouldn’t check up on the food rationing system.
A New Opposition
Just as the Mafia resurfaced in Cinisi after the end of fascism, so too did the fight against organised crime. Here and elsewhere in Sicily, for well over a century, mass opposition to the Mafia has not concentrated on polite parliamentary politics but on local resistance, which has often been led by Communists and Socialists.
The Communist Party opened a branch in Sicily just after the Second World War, and it was originally run by just two men, Stefano Venuti and Filippo Maniaci. Venuti came from a liberal middle-class family, whereas Maniaci was far more working class. The key moment occurred when Venuti came back to Cinisi after the war and received two offers, the first of which he refused. The first was from Don Masi Impastato, who offered to find him a good job, and the other was from Maniaci, who suggested they opened a party branch together.
One Communist activist from nearby Terrasini remembers what happened when the new branch opened:
I remember the inauguration of the Communist Party branch in Cinisi. It was in the town square, on the left hand side coming up the Corso. We left Terrasini with our huge party banner, which used to be the pole of the Fascist Party banner, but I had sewn on our own flag because I was a tailor. We had a marvellous comrade there called Filippo Maniaci who gave the first speech. He began by saying: ‘comrades, we have to fight the Mafia.’ There was a group off to the left who started to make a noise – sadly at that time it was normal that meetings were disrupted – so Maniaci shouted at them ‘You’re bastards, and so is the man standing behind you.’ The man stood behind was no less than Cesare Manzella.
Although Communists and Socialists sometimes just reacted instinctively, as in this case, their strategy was to give people hope, to show them they could keep their self-respect and resist the Mafia and its ways. The main platform in this strategy was demanding rights: to decent housing, employment and – in broader terms – a society where everybody obeyed the law.
In the first national election in 1946 the party received just three votes, and the following year its branch suffered a bomb attack. Venuti showed what he was made of by bravely accusing Manzella and Masi Impastato of the crime. However, they were soon released without charge. Only a huge amount of political commitment could explain why Venuti and Maniaci didn’t give in and choose an easy life. So they stuck at it: in 1948 the party’s vote rose to 130, and throughout the 1950s it scored an average of around 700 votes in the town.
In 1948 a dispute erupted over the building of a road from Cinisi to Furi, which was an illustration of what was to become a vital area of Mafia
Whether these gangs were run by true Mafiosi is unclear; in many ways it doesn’t matter because even if they weren’t, they acted just like them, and in any event by the 1950s a stable and widely recognised Mafia structure had emerged in the town. A clear sign of increased criminal confidence was revealed after a mayor appointed by the Allies resigned in February 1946. Soon after the new mayor took office, a grenade exploded one night outside his house, apparently a warning that the authorities shouldn’t check up on the food rationing system.
A New Opposition
Just as the Mafia resurfaced in Cinisi after the end of fascism, so too did the fight against organised crime. Here and elsewhere in Sicily, for well over a century, mass opposition to the Mafia has not concentrated on polite parliamentary politics but on local resistance, which has often been led by Communists and Socialists.
The Communist Party opened a branch in Sicily just after the Second World War, and it was originally run by just two men, Stefano Venuti and Filippo Maniaci. Venuti came from a liberal middle-class family, whereas Maniaci was far more working class. The key moment occurred when Venuti came back to Cinisi after the war and received two offers, the first of which he refused. The first was from Don Masi Impastato, who offered to find him a good job, and the other was from Maniaci, who suggested they opened a party branch together.
One Communist activist from nearby Terrasini remembers what happened when the new branch opened:
I remember the inauguration of the Communist Party branch in Cinisi. It was in the town square, on the left hand side coming up the Corso. We left Terrasini with our huge party banner, which used to be the pole of the Fascist Party banner, but I had sewn on our own flag because I was a tailor. We had a marvellous comrade there called Filippo Maniaci who gave the first speech. He began by saying: ‘comrades, we have to fight the Mafia.’ There was a group off to the left who started to make a noise – sadly at that time it was normal that meetings were disrupted – so Maniaci shouted at them ‘You’re bastards, and so is the man standing behind you.’ The man stood behind was no less than Cesare Manzella.
Although Communists and Socialists sometimes just reacted instinctively, as in this case, their strategy was to give people hope, to show them they could keep their self-respect and resist the Mafia and its ways. The main platform in this strategy was demanding rights: to decent housing, employment and – in broader terms – a society where everybody obeyed the law.
In the first national election in 1946 the party received just three votes, and the following year its branch suffered a bomb attack. Venuti showed what he was made of by bravely accusing Manzella and Masi Impastato of the crime. However, they were soon released without charge. Only a huge amount of political commitment could explain why Venuti and Maniaci didn’t give in and choose an easy life. So they stuck at it: in 1948 the party’s vote rose to 130, and throughout the 1950s it scored an average of around 700 votes in the town.
In 1948 a dispute erupted over the building of a road from Cinisi to Furi, which was an illustration of what was to become a vital area of Mafia
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