Salvatore Giuliano

For the film, see Salvatore Giuliano (film).

Salvatore Giuliano
File:SalvatoreGiuliano.jpg Salvatore Giuliano, in his 20s.
Born	(1922-11-16)November 16, 1922 Montelepre, Sicily
Died	July 5, 1950(1950-07-05) (aged 27) Castelvetrano, Sicily
Other names	Turiddu, Turi
Organization	Sicilian Independentist Movement

Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian bandit of the mid-twentieth century who became world famous for his exploits. He rose to prominence in the disorder which followed the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, and died in 1950 after a spectacular career of banditry.

Early Life

Giuliano's parents, Salvatore (Sr.) and Maria Lombardo Giuliano, were landed peasants from the village of Montelepre. Turi, or Turridu, (as the bandit-to-be was known to distinguish him from his father), was the fourth and youngest of their children. Both parents had spent some of their earlier lives in the United States, where they earned the money to buy their farmland.

Very little of Giuliano's early life foreshadowed his later renown. He attended primary school in the village from the age of 10 to 13. Known as a good student, his preferred reading was heroic legend and myth, especially stories of Roland and Oliver so popular in Sicily. He was fond of all manner of mechanical devices, including firearms—he also enjoyed hunting.

In 1935 when his older brother Giuseppe was drafted into the Italian armed forces, Turi left school to help his father cultivate the family farm. Despite the economic contingency, he attributed leaving school to youthful impetuosity. He soon tired of the drudgery of farmwork, hired a substitute from the village to take his place, and began trading in olive oil, which brought additional income to the family, demonstrating a bit of the initiative he would show as a bandit.

The outbreak of World War II brought him opportunities in the form of jobs installing road barriers and telephone infrastructure. He performed well, but was dismissed from both jobs after disputes with his bosses. At the time of the Allied Invasion of Sicily, Giuliano was once again speculating in olive oil.

Invasion, Becoming an Outlaw

The invasion came near to a total disruption of Sicilian government and its economy. AMGOT's (Allied Military Government) primary concerns for the island were dictated by larger geopolitical concerns—defeating the Germans in Italy. AMGOTdid much to renew the fortunes of the rural Mafia by appointing a Mafioso mayor in 75% of western Sicily's village. Mafia men were chosen because its decimation by Mussolini's henchman Cesare Mori demonstrated its anti-Fascist credentials, and the Mafia had some part, however minor, in speeding the US leg of the invasion. The most immediate trouble caused by the invasion was the breakdown of the legal distribution of food. Especially in the cities, up to 70% of food was supplied through the black market, including small-time operators to large scale, well-financed and well-organized operations. With a horse brought home from the war by his brother and armed for protection with a Beretta handgun purchased from another homecoming soldier, Giuliano was soon a participant in the black market.

Officials of AMGOT were disturbed by the brazenness of the nominally illegal system and oblivious to their own role in its expansion. The remnants of government which still operated, especially the Polizia and Carabinieri, were pressured to suppress the black market. Since they weren't receiving regular pay and a large amount of their income consisted of bribes from the major black marketeers they were being pressured to eliminate, they instead focused their attention on small scale operators.

On 2 September 1943 Giuliano was caught by Carabiniere check point at Quattro Molini transporting 2 sacks of black market grain. He turned over his identification while pleading to be released if he surrendered the grain. His captors refused, but were interrupted by another trafficker to be apprehended. Giuliano drew his gun, demanding his card. When one of the officers raised his rifle, Giuliano fired, wounding the man mortally. Giuliano was shot in the back as he fled but not pursued, as the patrol tended to its dying member. 2 days later the bullet was removed in Palermo, where the new outlaw recuperated until returning home to live in hiding.

On Christmas Eve 1943, Carabinieri moved into Montelepre in force to apprehend the young outlaw. Warned by his arrested father's shouts as he approached the family house, Giuliano escaped (the house was on the edge of the village), but lingered in the village to observe events. Angered by the numerous, indiscriminate arrests and and occasional violence of the operation, he sneaked into the middle of the town and shot two Carabinieri, killing one. His career as a spectacular outlaw had begun. With intimate, lifelong knowledge of the surrounding mountainous terrain , Giuliano lived in the nearby Sagana mountains, communicating with his family (the house was on the edge of Montelepre) by mirrors, and visiting occasionally. On 30 January 1944, he helped eight of the arrested villagers escape from jail in nearby Monreale. Six of these asked to join him on Sagana, forming the core of his band-to-be, thus enabling him avoid the fate of a lone outlaw and expand his operations.

Career Begins, Pattern of Operation, Popular Support, Early Success

With followers to support and his own family without its primary (legal) breadwinner, Giuliano needed money--and turned to banditry, and later extortion and kidnapping. Unlike many of the other numerous bands of thieves in post-invasion Sicily, his exclusive target was the wealthy. This was partly from identification with the poor and beleaguered peasantry (styling himself 'difendore di poveri????'), and partly for efficiency's sake—the rich had more money. Thanks to Sicily's omerta tradition, the peasants were already very reluctant to cooperate with state law enforcement, and Giuliano didn't just forego preying on them—he made them his allies and effective co-conspirators. Throughout his career he paid up to ten times the going market rate for his supplies to the locals. Many clearly did very well out of this bargain—and became good sources of intelligence about rich targets for his crimes, as well the movements and plans of the the Carabinieri and Polizia. While Giuliano's core band was never seems to have been larger than 20 men, many peasants from Montelepre and nearby Giardinello would join him in the mountains from time to time for the excellent pay the bandit offered. This pattern continued until the last few beleaguered months of Giuliano's career.

The bandit also won allegiance by enforcing a rough sort of justice in the area he came to dominate. On at least one occasion, he killed a rogue bandit committing crimes in his name. He shot Salvatore Abbate, Montelepre's postmaster for stealing parcels from America destined for its citizens. He intervened with a local gabelotto to lease land to farmers from Montelepre. Storekeeper Giuseppe Terranova was executed for extortionate prices and usury. In April 1944 he attacked the Carabiniere post at Piano del Occhio for a crackdown on small black marketeers like his former self. From time to time, Giuliano and his men would attack Carabiniere outposts and patrols, sometimes killing both them and members of the Polizia. He and his men would kill 87 Carabinieri and 33 Polizia from 1943-49.

If benevolence failed, Giuliano killed informers ruthlessly. His first victim was an 18 year old who could not be persuaded to stop spying on Turi's family for the Carabinieri. In 1946 after the MIS revolt, 2 Misuraca brothers were killed, and in 1948 town barber Bernardo Frisella and his wife were gunned down at their own house in the heart of Montelepre for their cooperation with the authorities. There were others—whenever possible they were allowed a minute to pray before death and a note of responsibility was left to warn other potential spies, to protect the bandit from accusation for crimes he didn't commit, and to prevent law enforcement from using Giuliano's crimes against other outlaws.

Giuliano was seen by by the locals (and to some extent all of Sicily's peasantry), as one of their own and an innocent hounded for a nominal crime that was understandable and forgivable to any of of them. He was admired for his bravery and resistance—but even more because he routinely prevailed in contests of power—the ultimate measure of worth in Sicilian culture, with its premium on individualism and settling one's own scores outside the law using violence if necessary, codified as omerta.

Newspaper reports.

Giuliano's most famous exploit occurred early in his career in 1944—the robbery of the Duchess of Pratameno. His band sneaked into her estate unnoticed, and the bandit was in her salon before she knew what was occurring. After he kissed her hand and showed respect for her noble status, her refusal to acknowledge or surrender her jewlery impelled Giuliano to threaten the kidnap of her children before she handed the loot over. He took a diamond ring from her hand, which he wore for the rest of his life, and borrowed John Steinbeck's “In Dubious Battle” from her library before leaving (which was returned with a respectful note a week later). By mid-1945, Giuliano's daring, good looks, and theatrical flair were the talk of Sicily, and soon beyond.

MIS, EVIS, Kidnapping and Extortion

In April of 1945 venturing into the larger stage of politics, Giuliano issued a public declaration of his support for MIS, the Movement for the Independence of Sicily (also referred to as Separatism). Separatism coalesced in the aftermath of the invasion, drawing on long-simmering anger at Sicily's neglect by the central government since independence, and the sudden fluidity of the political situation. Its membership included a wide political spectrum such as revolutionary socialist Antonio Canepa, centrist Giovania Guarino Amella, right-wingers, most of them aristocrats, such as Baron Lucio Tasca and Duke Guglielmo Paterno, as well as some members with close ties to the Mafia, and outright Mafiosi such as Calogero Vizzini. The movement was dealt a severe blow when, for political and war strategy reasons, the Allies, who had courted, if not encouraged separatist leaders, handed control of Sicily to the Badoglio government in Rome in Feburary 1944. Strong sentiment for independence still existed in Sicily, but the three main Italian political parties of post-war Italy, Christian Democratic, Communist, and Socialist--whose renewal began with the establishment of the Badoglio government--were all opposed to Sicilian independence. The Palermo headquarters of the MIS was sacked by a government-enabled mob, and many regional offices were closed in early 1945. In the face of these obstacles, the MIS while campaigning politically for its goals, also made plans for armed insurrection. The movement's own small armed contingent,the EVIS, operated in Catania Province in eastern Sicily. To augment and divert attention from their “army,” the leaders of MIS and EVIS contacted Giuliano, who after negotiating for substantial funding, agreed to the rank of Colonel in the EVIS and to conduct an armed campaign in his zone. He recruited 40-60 young men (in addition to his regular band), provided them with uniforms, ranks, and weapons, and trained them. On 27 December 1945, Giuliano launched their first attack of the MIS insurrection on the Carabiniere outpost at Bellolampo—two days before the MIS (Potemkin) “army” was put out of existence in a tragi-comic action at San Mauro. Giuliano and his men, all politically unsophisticated, failed to realize that their small revolt was hopeless and isolated. Their campaign, the most publicly spectacular of the bandit's career, created havoc for the command of the Palermo Province carabinieri, who declared martial law in Montelepre and the surrounding region on 13 January 1946, and continued it for 126 days, going so far as to call in units of the regular national army. Giuliano's campaign was waged with such tactical skill that the state forces deployed against him numbered over 500. During the MIS campaign, the national Minister of the Interior Romita offered 800,000 lire for information toward or the capture of Giuliano—who responded with a 2 million lire reward for the capture of Romita. Despite the tactical victories, as the political reality of their situation became apparent even to his band, many of the new recruits went back to their ordinary lives and the revolt dissolved. Giuliano helped at least 2 of his men, at this and other times, to emigrate to the U.S. Giuliano's EVIS campaign drew international attention, increasing his celebrity.

After the bandit's campaign, the MIS resumed its political campaign, which was plagued by poor organization. Through surrogates, Giuliano campaigned for the MIS in the towns where he was the major power. In Giardinello, Monreale, and Montelepre he delivered a substantial majority of the voters, but island wide, the Separatists polled only 9% of the vote. For the rest of 1946 and until his death, Giuliano's main activity and source of revenue was kidnapping, often carried out by the squad of Antonio Terranova, the bandit's most formidable and resourceful operative. Giuliano and his men treated their captives well—almost chivalrously--often giving them favorite foods, reading to them to alleviate boredom, and providing necessary medicines. Negotiations were usually conducted through various mafiosi, but Montelepre's town physician, Dr. Francesco Lupo occasionally fulfilled the function, eventually being sent to exile on Ustica for his efforts. More than one kidnap victim remembered time with Giuliano in a positive light, despite its hardships. Giuliano also used the threat of kidnapping to extort money from wealthy Sicilians—some preferred kidnapping because Giuliano stuck to his own rule that no one would be kidnapped twice, while extortions had no limit.

Among the recruits to Giuliano's MIS “army” was Gaspare Pisciotta, nicknamed Aspanu. He and Turi would be virtually inseparable friends for the rest of Giuliano's life, and by the end of the MIS military campaign Pisciotta would become his second-in-command, also for the rest of the chieftain's life. Contrary to many reports, the Montelepre native was neither a cousin, nor a close childhood friend of Giuliano.

Portella della Ginestra and Aftermath

Giuliano's next foray into politics would result in disaster. In the 20 April 1947 Sicilian election, he backed an MIS splinter group which performed well in his area of domination, and nowhere else, winning no seats in the assembly. The main MIS won 9% of the vote, but began a steady deterioration from which it never recovered. The winner of the election was the Popular Bloc, comprised mostly of the Communists and Socialists, which won 30 % of the vote, against less than 20% for the Christian Democrats. The island's conservatives and reactionaries were alarmed, and called on Giuliano for help, particularly to thwart calls for land reform—the Sicilian agricultural landholding pattern was a holdover from feudalism. Although Giuliano identified with the peasantry and had progressive ideas for land reform which would seem to have been in agreement with left-wing calls for the breakup of large landholdings (a remnant of feudalism), he was staunchly anti-Communist (in deference to his parents' experience and limited success in the US). This, and his practical desire for an eventual pardon from or through Sicily's power brokers, inclined him to cooperate with the existing, predominantly right-wing power structure. Giuliano may have been influenced by his interview earlier in 1947 with US pulp journalist Michael Stern. The American wore his WWII journalist sergeant's uniform to lend himself the air of official credibility during his interview. Giuliano spoke to Stern as though the reporter represented the US government, presenting a letter addressed to President Truman. The bandit emphasized his antipathy for Communism to Stern, who did nothing to discourage Giuliano's self-conception or unstated belief that he was talking to a representative of the US government--who agreed with Giuliano's views. Stern's interview led to a 5 page article in Life Magazine, (23 Feb 1948, pp. 60-4) and his impression on Giuliano may have influenced the bandit to cooperate with the Sicilian right.

The chosen target of the right-wing vested interests was the well-known annual May Day celebration at the Portella della Ginestra, a mountain pass between Piana degli Albanesi and San Giuseppe Jato, two of Sicily's most dominantly left-wing communes. A few days before the festivities, Pasquale Sciortino, Giuliano's new brother-in-law, delivered a letter that was evidently the culmination of negotiations. After reading it, the bandit chieftain burned it and announced, “The hour of our liberation has come. We are going to attack the Communists, to go to fire on them on May 1 at Portella della Ginestra.” One of his four men present protested that women and children would be present. The chieftain replied that only leaders would be targeted. The men Giuliano finally chose for the operation were told that the government wouldn't charge them with a crime. His language after reading the letter and subsequent dealings with his men indicate that he believed that he and his men had been promised some sort of amnesty for their work on May Day by a highly placed Sicilian. The operatives were also paid around 5000 lire for the day, a substantial sum. According to Giuliano's later statements, his main aim of the day was the capture of Girolamo Li Causi, head of the Communist party of Sicily—any other action was a diversionary tactic to facilitate Li Causi's capture.

On May Day, Li Causi was a no-show, while 3000 to 5000 celebrants were enjoying music and about to hear the first speeches of the day at Portella della Ginestra, when three volleys of gunfire erupted from an ambush on adjoining Mount Pizzuta. Bullets from the third volley went into the crowds. The result was mass terror and many casualties—11 dead (including a woman and 3 children), and between 2 and 3 dozen wounded. Giuliano, the perpetrator of the gunfire along with his band, left the scene quickly and surreptitiously, with the bandit leader unaware of the massacre. When he learned what had transpired, he was distraught over the deaths and angry that his plans had gone awry.

The political reaction throughout Italy began with profound shock, progressing to demands to know who the perpetrators were. Initial suspicion fell on the Mafia and Sicily's large landowners. Characteristically, major Mafiosi in the area had alibis so good that Sicilians and others knowledgeable in their ways assumed that they had been arranged in advance. Some of chieftains had also given warnings to likely May Day celebrants before the event. There were reports of four armed local Mafiosi leaving the Portella area shortly after the massacre, but when Giuliano's involvement became known, criminal investigation of the Mafia was effectively terminated and the bandits became the inquiry's focus. Giuliano and his men were relatively isolated and a convenient target for officialdom, while the Mafia was well-connected politically and difficult to deal with.

Pisciotta and eleven other members of the Giuliano band were convicted for the massacre at the Viterbo tribunal in 1951. While alive, Giuliano himself made various, somewhat inconsistent statements about the matter, while always insisting that the bloodshed was a mistake. At times (almost certainly to protect his men from potential prosecution) he assumed all responsibility, citing his antipathy for the Communists at the celebration. During his 1949 interview with Jacopo Rizza, he claimed that he had been promised liberty for the attack and betrayed after the fact by members of the Monarchist party, threatening to reveal their names as he had on other occasions (which he never did). At Viterbo, Pisciotta named the main conspirators as Leone Marchesano, a Palermo Mafioso and politician, and Prince Giuseppe Aliata of Monreale, with politician Cusumano Geloso as their intermediary—Pisciotta met only Geloso. This information was confirmed by a letter delivered in 1969 to Giuseppe Montalbano, a long time leftist opponent of the reactionary establishment of Sicily. The writer, Antonio Ramirez--a prominent Palermo politician--ordered the letter delivered after his death. It stated that Gioacchino Barbera, a ranking Mafioso, had confirmed Pisciotta's accusations concerning Sicilian power-brokers, and also confirmed Giuliano's claim that the main conspirator's did not intend the massacre. Barbera revealed all this to Ramirez in December 1951 conversation. Billy Jaynes Chandler concludes that Sicily's reactionary establishment was the cassus belli of the massacre, but it's never been determined how high in its ranks the conspiracy was hatched. A plaque erected by leftists in memory of the victims at Portella della Ginestra blames “landed barons and the Mafia.”*

On May 1, 1947, here, on the rock of Barbato, celebrating the working class festival and the victory of April 20, the people of Piana degli Albanesi, San Giuseppe Jato, and San Ciprirello, men, women and children, fell under the ferocious barbarity of the bullets of the Mafia and the landed barons, who mowed down innocent victims in order to put an end to the struggle of the peasants for liberation from the servitude of feudalism. The slaughter horrified the world. The blood of new martyrs consecrated in the conscience of the people the resolve to continue the struggle for the redemption of he land in a world of liberty and peace.

(Monte Finkelstein's book on Separatism summarizes the period from Giuliano's EVIS revolt to Portella della Ginestra as follows: “Police and military forces were unable to destroy Giuliano's EVIS formations. In fact with the aid of the peasants—many of whom saw Giuliano as a kind of Robin Hood—and the landholders—who feared him—Giuliano continued to operate almost untouched. But as more separatist leaders were arrested, his funds became limited and he was forced to find new sources of supply. He eventually alienated the peasants and became a tool of the landowners and conservatives. In this role he was manipulated to slaughter innocent peasants in the name of halting Communism in May 1947).

Despite Giuliano's sense of betrayal, his violence against the left didn't end at Portella della Ginestra. In June 1947 he attacked them in several villages and cities of size. Two men were killed, several wounded, and significant damage was done to party and union headquarters. In manifestos left at the targets and elsewhere, the bandit chieftain threatened more violence. In response Prime Minister de Gasperi, after an emergency meeting, replaced Ettore Messana as head of the effort to suppress banditry in Sicily, and raised the reward on Giuliano to 3 million lire. In early July nearly 2000 Carabinieri, Polizie, and regular army launched a campaign to capture the bandits. The end result was a mere 20 arrests, none of them regular members of the band. But Giuliano's campaign of violence against the left was over, despite his continued threats and rhetoric.

Also in June 1947, a threat to Giuliano was removed by a blunder of the Carabinieri, after wounding and capturing one of the bandit's squad leaders, Salvatore Ferreri, aka “Fra Diavolo.” He was subsequently killed during interrogation despite paperwork vouching for him as Messana's (and the Polizia's) informant—which he was. Ferreri had fooled Giuliano, who thought him a double agent, knowing of his contacts with Messana. The Carabiniere officer responsible for his death was transferred to a remote post in Calabria. Competition between the Carabiniere and Polizia had given the bandit a reprieve.

For the remainder of 1947, Giuliano maintained a low public profile while continuing his kidnap and ransom enterprise, occasionally engaging in ambushes and firefights with the law forces as opportunities presented themselves or to assert dominance in his area of operations. The killing of a Carabiniere colonel in October 1947 occasioned a brief incursion of 1000 men and mass arrests, which, as usual, didn't come close to capturing Turi. In January 1948, Giuliano and Pisciotta felt secure enough to make an early evening appearance in a popular coffee bar in the town of Carini. The event was covered well by the Sicilian press, which speculated that it followed a tryst in the the same town.

Final Political Campaign, Betrayal and Revenge

The main irritant of the Giuliano's life in the months after Portella della Ginestra was the plight of his family. On several occasions his mother, Maria Lombardo, and his sister Mariannina were interrogated at length and detained. (His house was under such surveillance that he could no longer visit.) Moved by their plight and by his own need for some sort of pardon, he once again answered the call of conservative politicians to work on their behalf in the 1948 elections.

In 1948 the parties of the Italian right and center were determined to undo the left's 1947 victory, and they were seeking every possible vote. Although Giuliano controlled only a few thousand votes in a relatively small area, the politicians couldn't afford to ignore him. In addition to Leone Marchesano, Santo Fleres, head of the Mafia and Liberal Party in Partinico, and prominent Christian Democrat Bernardo Mattarella from the Mafia stronghold of Castellamare del Golfo talked directly with Giuliano—who would not campaign without promises from the highest level of Sicilian power brokers. Despite his wariness after their involvement in the Portella della Ginestra debacle, they were his sole hope for the return to ordinary society he sought. He was promised a full pardon if he delivered a large majority of the votes in his district--and he and his band went to work making sure that only candidates from the right and center could put up posters or campaign in his district. All the communities where he exercised authority delivered extravagant majorities in favor of the center-right, and the election of 18 April insured that Sicily and Italy would remain in the anti-Communist, anti-Soviet alliance. Giuliano was forced to wait weeks after the election for the final notification of his legal standing—and he was finally informed that Minister of the Interior Mario Scelba, himself a Sicilian, had denied the bandit's pardon, and advised that Giuliano and his men could emigrate to Brazil where Prince Aliata had vast estates and the bandits would be protected.

Giuliano, who invariably kept his promises, was outraged and promised retaliation. He had very little to lose. His only alternatives were capture, death, or escape and exile—difficult for a man of his notoriety and legal status. Some time shortly after seeing his mother and Mariannina for what would be the last time on a June 'picnic' in the countryside, the bandit learned that, in addition to the broken promise of a pardon, Santo Fleres' Mafia faction was informing law enforcement of Giuliano's movements. On 17 July 1948 two of Partinico's Labruzzo bandits, hired by Giuliano, assassinated Santa Fleres in that town's square. Thereafter, most of the revivified Mafia organizations worked against Giuliano, for all intents and purposes sealing his eventual fate. In the first action by any Mafiosi after Fleres death, Giuliano opted out late in a law enforcemnent-Mafia plot to entrap him in a fake escape to Tunisia by speedboat, probably forewarned by a still friendly Mafia faction or politician.

Law enforcement also stepped up its own campaign against the bandit. At the end of 1948 his entire family was under arrest on some pretext (and the Carabinieri occupied the family house, which the band occasionally fired on at night). From the middle of 1948 until Giuliano's death Montelpre was occupied in some state of siege by law enforcement, making the inhabitants' lives miserable. Giuliano ambushed and, sometimes, killed Carabinieri and Polizie in retaliation, especially after he and a key band member, Giuseppe Passatempo were ambushed in December 1948, killing Passatempo with the chieftain lucky to escape alive. Late in 1948, Giuliano helped seven members of the band, including Antonio Terranova, into exile in Tunisia. One of them, Francesco Palma Abate, found his way into the French Foreign Legion, but the others were repatriated after some of their number caused a fatal auto accident.

Also in late 1948, a bit of relief arrived in the form of Maria Cyliakus, a Swedish dilettante journalist estranged from her Greek industrialist husband. Through audacity and luck she managed to visit, interview, and photograph Giuliano in the Sagana Mountains, enhancing his notoriety throughout Europe, and giving Cyliakus her own burst of celebrity status.

The End Approches, Bellolampo

Although Giuliano was under considerable duress by the beginning of 1949, he still had strengths to draw from. While his core band was diminished, men from the vicinity would still join him for the high wages he offered until the last months of 1949. His kidnapping and extortion rackets still produced enough income to support him and his men. For the first eight months of the year, he still dominated the forces of law in his bailiwick with his superior tactics and topographical knowledge--despite his opponents' superior numbers--staging numerous ambushes and occasionally attacking their outposts and town headquarters. A highlight of 1949 was the retaliatory assassination on 8 July of Alcamo politician and gabelloto Leonardo Renda. A close associate of Bernardo Mattarella, he had helped a contingent of 300 Carabinieri attempt to ambush some of Giuliano's men on his estate on Maundy Thursday of 1949.

Giuliano's continued domination of the forces of law and order caused great consternation to Italy's Christian Democratic government, and in August Minister of the Interior Scelba dispatched Colonel Ugo Luca, commander of Carabiniere in Lazio, to 'observe' enforcement activity in Sicily, then overseen by Ciro Verdiani. Aged 58 and known as the “Italian Lawrence” (of Arabia), Luca had a stellar military record, especially distinguished in intelligence work, and had been recommended to Scelba as a possible replacement for Verdiani. Giuliano, who had been planning to kidnap Bernardo Mattarella or Don Calo' Vizzini--the most prestigious Sicilian Mafia chieftain and a probable behind-the-scenes conspirator against Giuliano--instead attacked Verdiani and Luca near the Bellolampo Carabiniere post on 19 August. The government officials had made a quick inspection of the barracks. Giuliano and his men detonated a large explosion on the road under their convoy on its return to Palermo. Eight men were killed and over ten wounded. Had Luca and Verdiani returned in the vehicle they had ridden to Bellolampo, they would have been seriously wounded or killed. As a direct result, Verdiani was sent to Italy's Alpine region and Luca was dispatched to Sicily, along with 500 additional Carabinieri, to head up the campaign against Giuliano.

Colonel Ugo Luca

Luca would be Giuliano's last state opponent. He chose as his second-in-command Captain Antonio Perenze, who had fought against guerilla opponents in Libya and Ethiopia. After immediate demonstrations of bravado in the field by the two leaders, Luca implemented his 'isolate and neutralize' strategy. He began by dividing the bandits' operational area into seventy zones, each to be patrolled by 20 men, who were given superior radio communications equipment demanded by Luca. Most of the men assumed civilian dress. They remained in the field, not retreating to safe stations and barracks each night. They were also ordered to cultivate good relations with the populace, eschewing pointless intimidation. Luca also sought to infiltrate the band, a la Messana, or turn some of its members. Other officials had used similar tactics, but none were as thorough and relentless as the colonel.

Shortly after the Luca's arrival, a meeting of major Mafiosi decreed that its members were to work to eliminate the bandits. The Mafia men did not want a law officer of his caliber on the island any longer than necessary. Mafiosi all over western Sicily received and forwarded information to Luca.

Giuliano was isolated and his operations essentially crippled by October. None of his attacks on the Carabinieri or Polizia during Luca's command were successful. Only one of the one hundred and twenty law enforcers killed by Giuliano and his band met his end under Luca. Individual arrests of bandits began in late September and on 13 October, most of Giuliano's key squad and its leader, Giuseppe Cucinella, were captured in a gun battle in Palermo. Cucinella and his men had been located and Luca informed by Mafiosi from Palermo. Informants, Mafia and otherwise, enabled Luca to arrest bandits one or two at a time throughout Luca's campaign.

Under duress in the territory he formerly dominated, Giuliano (and sometimes Pisciotta) surrendered most of his independence, and retreated to the protection of a Mafia branch in Castelvetrano, near the south coast, headed by Nicola 'The American' Piccione, repatriated from a succesful career in the United States. Giuliano's main 'handler' was Piccione's mafia subordinate Giuseppe 'Pino' Marotta. The bandit's primary residence while in the Castelvetrano region was the home, in the heart of the city, of Gregorio de Maria, a childhood friend of Marotta. De Maria, an erudite and reclusive attorney, formed a bond with Giuliano as the bandit's intellectual mentor.

Although Ciro Verdiani had been replaced and dispatched, Sicily still consumed a great deal of his attention and effort. He had taken all his files when replaced, and maintained his contacts on the island. To spite Luca and their mutual superiors, in December 1949 he arranged for Jacopo Rizza of Oggi magazine to interview Giuliano and Pisciotta in the countryside near Salemi. To Rizza, Giuliano emphasized that his behavior would be dictated by official treatment of his mother. The articles, in successive issues of the weekly, caused a sensation, did embarrass the government, and resulted in a farcical prosecution of the author and publisher that ended with a rapid jury acquittal. Verdiani did much more, meeting with Giuliano near Castelvetrano, also in December. He agreed to help Giuliano into exile and to help free his mother, although his ultimate aim was almost certainly to kill the bandit and claim credit for the deed. (The Italian political establishment did not want Giuliano alive and discussing Portella della Ginestra and Giuliano's other dealings with politicians.) Maria Lombardo was released from jail, and the two men remained in contact until the last day of Giuliano's life, but in the end Verdiani's machinations failed.

Betrayals, Endgame

The conspiracy that ended the bandit's career and life took shape in January 1950. The key turncoat was Benedetto Minasola, a Monreale sheepherder in his fifties who served as Giuliano's treasurer and lent his estate, Villa Carolina, to the bandit as the main lodging for his kidnapping victims. A native Sicilian Carabiniere, Giovanni Lo Bianco, at the suggestion of a Palermo Mafia chieftain, began to pressure Minasola with the threat of arrest and prison. The Monreale man eventually agreed to cooperate only with the permission of the Miceli Mafia organization of Monreale. Since the head of the organization, Ignazio Miceli, was a part of Verdiani's conspiracy, he lent his nephew, Antonino, to the operation. By April, all of Giuliano's remaining operatives except Piscotta were dead or in custody, but the bandit's location was still unknown to Luca and his subordinates.

The endgame began in June 1950 when Giuliano ventured into his former fiefdom and visited the uncle of Castrense Madonia, one of the bandits captured in April. Asked about his location, the uncle told Giuliano that Benedetto Minasola had told him, the uncle, that Castrense was with the bandit chieftain. Inferring betrayal, Giuliano kidnapped Antonino Miceli and confirmed Minasola's betrayal. He kidnapped Minasola, but rather than killing him, decided to use him as a bargaining chip, writing a letter to Luca, proposing an exchange of prisoners. Giuliano left his prisoners in the care of Aspanu Pisciotta, who already doubted that the Verdiani conspiracy would get either bandit out of Italy. Within half a day, Minasola had convinced Pisciotta to betray his best friend and blood brother. (The two men had exchanged blood in vow of good faith earlier in 1950.) Pisciotta, who had thought for some time that any attempt at exile should have been attempted years ago, turned the captives loose, and when Giuliano returned convinced him that he'd fallen asleep and the escapees had freed themselves.) Giuliano returned to Castelvetrano to find out if Piccione and his men were trustworthy, while Pisciotta remained in the north, ostensibly to wait for a communique from his friend. The date was approximately 15 June.

Meanwhile Minasola contacted LoBianco who thought the Monreale man already dead. After a report was made to Luca, a meeting was arranged beteen Pisciotta and LoBianco, which led to a meeting between Luca and Pisciotta on 19 June. Two more meetings followed, the second attended by an attorney from Rome, procured by Luca for Pisciotta. The meeting ended with Luca giving Pisciotta a free conduct pass, forging Antonio Scelba's signature on the document.

On 2 July Giuliano, isolated and desperate in Castelvetrano, signed a letter absolving Minister of the Interior Antonio Scelba and claiming full responsibility for the Portella della Ginestra massacre—in effect, surrendering his trump card.

After machinations and intrigue among Luca's command, it was decided to kill Giuliano on the morning of 5 July in Castelvetrano. Pisciotta would lure Giuliano out to the street, and a squad of Carabinieri led by Captain Perenze would assassinate the bandit chieftain. Unfortunately for Luca, one of Verdiani's partisans was at the planning meeting, and Verdiani sent a letter warning of Pisciotta's betrayal to Giuliano. Aspanu arrived at the de Maria house shortly after midnight. Turi immediately confronted him with Verdiani's communique and cuffed his friend around. Somehow, Pisciotta convinced him that he was more trustworthy than the policeman, and both men laid down, ostensibly to sleep. Pisciotta, who knew that he couldn't lure Giuliano outside into the night, concluded that he had only one choice left. When he was sure Giuliano was asleep, he shot him twice killing him instantly. Gregorio deMaria heard the shot and met Pisciotta, who left the house while informing the attorney that there had been shots. DeMaria went to Giuliano's room, and discovered the corpse. In terror, he did his best to comfort his mother, and then sneaked out a window, intending to visit Pino Marotta. Instead he was detained by a nearby Carabiniere. Pisciotta had told a waiting Perenze what he'd done, and had been spirited out of town. Perenze told deMaria to clean up evidence of the shooting, including bedclothes, and never to discuss the event or be arrested for aiding a fugitive. He and his squad hauled Giuliano's corpse to a nearby courtyard, shot it with several rounds, and concocted a story of an informer, Giuliano's plan to flee the country from a Mazzara del Vallo airstrip, and the bandit's death in a running gun battle.

The next morning, amid a disorderly scene of reporters, photographers, and local men traipsing through the courtyard to the see the bandit's body where he had ostensibly fallen, Luca and Perenze patiently repeated the concocted story. Many observers, especially locals who'd heard rumors that didn't coincide with the offical account, expressed varying degrees of skepticism over the their story. DeMaria's maid, not fully informed, had hung a bloody sheet at their home. In the afternoon, when the body had been moved to the local morgue, Maria Lombardo arrived. She fainted upon seeing the body, and after the doctor who'd traveled with her revived her, identified the body, and then insisted on kissing bloodstains on the ground where her son had fallen.

Thanks to official wrangling, the body remained in Castelvetrano until 19 July (allowing hundreds of locals to view it in the interim). The funeral mass and burial in Montelepre that afternoon were private, on official orders, to prevent publicity.

Cover of “L'Europeo” of July 1950 about the mysterious death of Giuliano

The official story, so clearly dubious to locals and observers, was unraveled accurately by Tommaso Besozzi of the Milanese weekly L'Europeo. In the 16 and 24 July issues, he named Pisciotta as the murderer, but substituted misleading initials for Minasola. In spite of later official testimony by Pisciotta, deMaria, and Perenze confirming Besozzi's reportage, the concocted story remains as the official account.

Aspanu Pisciotta remained at large until 5 December 1950 when he emerged from a secret space in his family's home. He had been hiding with his family since shortly after Giuliano's murder, when the Carabinieri command, who couldn't grant the amnesty he sought, turned him loose. Carabinieri also took him into custody, denying the Polizia an oppportunity to embarrass the paramilitary force.

Viterbo Trial

A trial, which nominally concerned the massacre at Portella della Ginestra but spun into a wide examination of Giuliano's career, had begun in an old church converted to a courthouse at Viterbo, Lazio on 12 June 1950, but was quickly adjourned and reconvened in 1951. There were thirty six defendants, all with attorneys, many of whom wanted to expand the scope of the trial to embarrass the conservative government. All of the defendants except Pisciotta denied even being present at the May Day event. Pisciotta named many of the names previously cited, but also included Mario Scelba, Minister of the Interior. His revelations often occurred during barely coherent outburts—his behavior indicated a man in the grip of fear and uncertainty. On 11 May 1951, he admitted murdering Giuliano.

A great deal of testimony, some the most dramatic of the proceedings, concerned a reputed diary or journal that Giuliano kept, naming the names of powerful politicians with whom he collaborated. Pisciotta, Perenze, Luca, Marotta, and especially deMaria figured in its saga. DeMaria was accused by a Mafioso, Stefano de Peri of telling him that he had destroyed the memoirs. None of the accused admitted to knowing what became of Giuliano's testament. Testimony concluded late in 1951, and in May 1952 twelve defendants including Terranova and Pisciotta were sentenced for life; four were given shorter sentences, and the remainder were acquitted. Other trials followed; the Micelis, Marotta, deMaria, and other players in the drama received short sentences often short enough so that credit for time served set them free after the trials. Benedetto Minasola and Mariannina Giuliano were both acquitted of all charges. The last arrest of a Giuliano confederate on related charges was in 1964; the last prisoner among them was released by 1980.

Deaths of Participants

On 10 February 1954, a few days after he talked to Pietro Scaglione, an assistant prosecutor from Palermo, Aspanu Pisciotta was assassinated by poison in his cell at Ucciardone Prison in Palermo while breakfasting with his cellmate father. The dose was a substantial 20 centigrams of strychnine, enough to kill 40 dogs. There can be little doubt that elements of Mafia committed the crime, with the blessing of the conservative and reactionary politicians with whom they were connected. When Ciro Verdiani and Cusumano Geloso died before their natural life expectencies, suspicions of poisoning were voiced. Benedetto Minasola was murdered in 1960. The Mafioso who was suspected of poisoning Pisciotta was shot in 1961, and Pietro Scaglione became the first of the “excellent cadavers” as Prosecutor General of Palermo in 1972.

Historical Context and Interpretation

Non-academic authors vary widely (and colorfully) in their assessment of Giuliano. Joseph Stern's first impression of the bandit was 'Errol Flynn portraying Pancho Villa.' Gavin McLeod pointed out that Giuliano was an romantic, hankering after justice from an early age—the bandit's favorite author, Emilio Salgari, made a career from idealistic, romantic novels. Giuliano was still reading them in his twenties living rough in the mountains. Gaia Servadio sees the bandit as a tool of the Mafia, whose notoriety and success were not the a product of his extraordinary qualities, but entirely a function of his mafioso protectors. She judges that he was easily eliminated once the protectors withdrew their support. For John Dickie, the “truth” of Giuliano resides not in his character, but in the tangle of power and politics that enmeshed his life—centered on the Mafia. Natalia Danesi Murray described Giuliano as a “theatrical megalomaniac.”

The academics Monte Finkelstein and Eric Hobsbawm both see Giuliano's historical role as being a tool of the existing power elite of Sicily—Hobsbawm recognizing ambiguity and naivete' in Giuliano's political role:

Giuliano became the plaything of political forces he did not understand, when he allowed himself to become the military leader of the (Mafia-dominated) Sicilian Separatists. The one obvious fact about the men who used him and threw him away is that their conception of an independent Sicily was very different from his, which was certainly closer to that of the organized peasants whose May Day meeting he massacred at the Portella della Ginestra in 1947. Hobsbawm classifies Giuliano as a “social bandit,” which he defines as “peasant outlaws whom the lord and state define as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case men to be admired, helped and supported.” He further defines Giuliano as a member of the “noble robbers” subset of social bandits—Robin Hood being the prototype.

Central to Billy Jaynes Chandler's analysis is Giuliano--his personality and psychology. The bandit definitely saw himself as a Romantic, heroic figure. He mused about his epitaph: “Here lies Giuliano, hero of Sicily.” He made photos of himself heroically astride a horse, labeled, “Robin Hood.” He cultivated his image carefully, with an eye on history., He was, according to Chandler, audacious (turning the tables on the Carabinieri Christmas Eve, 1943), intelligent and astute (when negotiating with EVIS and, later, with Sicily's power brokers). At the same time, he was unsophisticated and naive—an inexperienced village boy negotiating with far more worldly men when he played politics. Compounding his naievete' was his monumental ego and overly-grand self-conception. (Maria Lombardo shared his conception—she told Joseph Stern that the three outstanding personages of history were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and her son, Turi.) Eric Hobsbawm agrees with Chandler's assessment of the bandit, emphasizing the role of the MIS leaders in helping Giuliano see himself as a major political player.

In historical context, Chandler concurs with Hobsbawm's assessment of Giuliano as a 'heroic robber.' (Chandler's book identifies Giuliano as a heroic robber. Bandits had not been published and Hobsbawm had not categorized Giuliano so decisively as a heroic robber, so the two historians' accord is 'after the fact.') Giuliano can also be interpreted through the prism of Samuel L. Popkin's rational peasant concept, according to Chandler. The bandit's acquisitive urge coincides well with the rational peasant model, and he and his mother engaged in mafia-like rational acquisitiveness by demanding a fee from a bakery attempting to open a branch in Montelepre. But his “foolhardy, impulsive” act of resistance in the dragnet at Quattro Molini was the polar opposite of careful calculation. The ordinary peasants who joined his armed actions in the moments of greatest need were more rational—willing to take significant risks from time to time for a better payday than they would ordinarily earn in the difficult years after the war. Mafiosi arising from the peasantry are even better examples of rationality: their entire lives are dedicated to material acquisition.

Giuliano's dearest wish was to be pardoned for his crimes, and the only people who could possibly accommodate him were the power elite of Sicily (and Italy)—and so he did business with them. As Chandler says, this made him “above all else, an outlaw who accommodated himself to the existing structure of power.” Hobsbawm again agrees with Chandler, again with more emphasis on the politics and ideology of the situation.

Three residents of Montelepre during the years of Giuliano's banditry have added their commentary to the historical record.

At a sparsely attended Separatist commemorative ceremony in 1980, his sister Mariannina summed up his character: “He was good and honest. Turridu did what he did only from fear and out of poverty.”

Padre diBella, Montelepre's parish priest, summed up the tumult of the bandit's life, and its effect on the village: “And all this for a few bags of flour!”

Saverio remarked to Tomaso Bessozi, “ What times those were, eh? When Giuliano was king of the mountain, and made the world tremble.”

Doubts about Giuliano’s death

Over the years doubts about Giuliano’s death have been expressed. According to some Giuliano fled from Sicily to Tunis and went on to live in the United States. The historian Giuseppe Casarrubea, son of one of the victims of Giuliano, compiled material to demonstrate that the body buried as Giuliano belonged to someone else. On October 15, 2010, the Public Prosecutor's Office in Palermo decided to exhume the body and compare its DNA with living relatives of Giuliano.

The DNA tests showed a 90% likelihood that the skeleton belongs to Giuliano. The DNA match between the skeleton and Giuliano's relations means that Sicilian prosecutors are now archiving the probe they opened in 2010 into the possibility that someone was murdered and passed off as Giuliano.

Dramatizations

A film of his life, Salvatore Giuliano, was directed by Francesco Rosi in 1961. Novelist Mario Puzo published The Sicilian, a dramatized version of Giuliano's life, in 1984. The book was made into a film in 1987, directed by Michael Cimino and starring Christopher Lambert as Giuliano. An opera, Salvatore Giuliano, was composed in 1985 by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero and premiered on January 25, 1986 at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. The libretto outlines in short, graphic scenes the network of intrigue between Sicilian independence activists, Mafia and State that surrounds, and eventually destroys, the bandit hero.

See also

• Sicilian Independence Movement
• Brigandage

Sources

• (Italian language) Bolzoni, Ottilio, Lì dentro non c'è il bandito Giuliano, La Repubblica”, 15 October 2010, [1]
• Chandler, Billy Jaynes, King of the Mountain, Northern Illinois University Press, 1988 ISBN 978-0875801407
• Dickie, John, Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet, 2004 ISBN 978-1403970428
• Finkelstein, Monte S, Separatism, the Allies and the Mafia: The Struggle for Sicilian Independence, 1943-1948, Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1998 ISBN 978-1565846197
• Hobsbawm, Eric, Bandits, The New York Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1565846197
• Hobsbawm, Eric, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Manchester University Press, 1971, ISBN 978-0393003284 (First published in 1959)
• Hobsbawm, Eric, Robin Hoodo, The New York Review of Books,, 14 February 1985
• Malcolm, Derek, Francesco Rosi: Salvatore Giuliano, The Guardian, 4 January 2001, [2]
• Italy: Unearthed remains '90%' likely those of Sicilian 'Robin Hood', Adnkronos International English 30 October 2012

• Maxwell, Gavin, Bandit, Harper and Brothers, 1956 ASIN B000KDIG76 (In Great Britain God Protect Me From My Friends, Longmans, Green, London, 1956 ASIN B0007IZYLU)
• Murray, Natalia Danesi, Man Against Authority, United Nations World Magazine, April 1950
• Servadio, Gaia, Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg, 1976 ISBN 978-0385285971
• Sicilian bandit Giuliano's body exhumed, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 28 October 2010 [3]
• Stern, Joseph (uncredited), King of the Bandits, Life Magazine, 23 Feb 1948

Further Reading

• Duncombe, Stephen (ed), Cultural Resistance Reader, Verso, 2002 ISBN 978-1859843796
• Norman Lewis, The Honoured Society: The Sicilian Mafia Observed Eland Publishing Ltd, 2003 ISBN 978-0-907871-48-4
• Popkin, Samuel L. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam, University of California Press, 1979 ISBN 978-0520039544

Periodical Literature (listed by magazine name)

( These articles show Giuliano's international notoriety. Some are more in depth than others. Some address Sicily at large. Only a Life and United Nations World articles are cited above.)

• Harpers Magazine, June 1954, Barzini, Luigi,The Real Mafia, pp. 38-46
• Life Magazine, Stern, Joseph (uncredited), King of the Bandits, pp. 63-7

  16 January 1950, Bandit Meets Press, pp. 47-8

  24 July 1950, Death of a Bandit King, pp. 43-4

• National Geographic, January 1955, Marden Luis, Sicily the Three Cornered, pp. 1-44
• Newsweek, 19 September 1949, Hip Firing Robin Hood, p. 36
• New Yorker, 8 October 1949“Genet,” Letter from Rome, p. 72

  4 February 1950, “Genet,” Letter from Rome, pp36-8

• Time Magazine, Battle of the Inkpots, 12 May 1947

  Beautiful Lightning 12 September 1949, p. 28

  17 July 1950, Bandit's End, pp. 33-4

  30 April 1951, Execution, p. 35

  22 February 1954, The Big Mouth, p. 35

• United Nations World Magazine, April 1950, Murray, Natalia Danesi, Man Against Authority, pp23-7

External links

• Template:It icon Blog di Giuseppe Casarrubea
• The Life and Times of the Sicilian Robin Hood-Crime Libarary
• Giuliano Project