Giovanni Falcone: an extraordinarily ordinary man
When an Italian goes abroad, s\he already knows what will be the first three words will have to be told gleefully: Ahhhhh Italia! pizza, mafia, mandolino!
This set of words might have slightly changed over time, being substituted by various other iconic ‘symbols’: gelato, The Great Beauty, Berlusconi…
But if there is one word that keeps being said to Italians, that one is, beyond any doubt, mafia.
However, while it is true that everyone knows about the whole world rotating around ‘mafia’ , with its symbols, lifestyle and hierarchy, (credits go to The Godfather), very few are actually familiar with names such as Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
A simple google research proves this as well. Try google ‘italian mafia’, and you will get 10.000.000 results. Try again with ‘antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone’: 22.400 results.
So: who was Giovanni Falcone?
Widely known as an Italian anti-mafia judge, Giovanni Falcone would eventually pay with his life his commitment towards dismantling the mafia organisation called Cosa Nostra.
Sicilian by birth, Falcone had direct and clear perception of the problems that his city, Palermo, was facing back then.
It was a time when almost all the businesses were forced to pay pizzo to mafia bosses, as a way to seek protection and avoid further problems with the local ‘mafiosi’; the streets of the city were often the theatre of bloody confrontations between rival mafia families and the State was not simply not equipped with the necessary tools to combat the phenomenon.
Against this background, Falcone brought about a real revolution in the way mafia was treated judicially.
It all started when as a judge in Palermo, he was asked by Antonino Caponnetto to join the first ‘antimafia pool‘: a group of 4 judges (besides Falcone, there were Paolo Borsellino, Giuseppe Di Lello and Leonardo Guarnotta) that would join forces, for the very first time, and conjunctly analyse the activities of ‘Cosa Nostra’ (literally translatable as: our own thing).
The latter was a powerful Sicilian mafia organisation whose structure was still thought to be, at the time, made of various groups with autonomous decision-making powers. Falcone was the first to understand the hierarchical nature of Cosa Nostra and, consequently, and how fundamental it would be not dispersing the efforts into separated investigations, one for each case that would arise over time.
During the investigations, he applied what would be known as ‘Falcone Method’ which can be best summed up with his words: ‘ In order to understand the mafia, you need to follow the money’. This interdisciplinary approach led him to liaise with banks and obtain critical information about capital flows and illicit affairs that the mafia was conducting abroad.
Meanwhile, the environment was exacerbating, making it more and more difficult for the judges to continue their work amidst death threats and spread suspicion.
For this reason, Falcone and Borsellino were forced to move with their families to a prison (what an irony, no?!), where they would continue their investigations in a more secure way.
Finally, the long investigations came to an end. On February 10th, 1986, on what would be remembered as a historical day, the very first and big trial against Cosa Nostra (known as ‘maxiprocesso‘ ) started.
This trial would change the way State-mafia relationships are governed, and will give the very first serious blow to the strongest mafia organisation of the time.
The ‘maxiprocesso’ is why Falcone and Borsellino are so widely acclaimed and remembered today; unfortunately, it was supposedly also the reason why they were both assassinated years after — respectively on May 23rd and July19th of the same year, 1992.
If you are wondering why it was called ‘maxi-processo’, a few figures could help put it into perspective: 475 defendants, 200 lawyers, 900 witnesses, 600 journalists for a judgment of overall inflicted 2665 years in jail.
But not just the numbers can testify to the singularity of this judicial proceeding. A look at the place where the trial was conducted itself, with blinded doors and bulletproof windows, can help convey the tension surrounding the happenings: these Youtube videos (in Italian) are a must to better understand the ‘mafiosi’ and their insolence, irony and attitude towards justice.
Eventually, Giovanni Falcone and its fellow judges could finally breathe a sigh of relief: they had just proven that mafia was not invincible. That the State was present and strong, and it was capable of holding even Mafia bosses accountable.
However, this positive spirit would not last for long. Soon enough, Falcone will be isolated; his revolutionary, multifaceted method of conducting investigations, jeopardised.
When it came the time to elect the successor of Caponnetto as head of the judicial office in Palermo, he was thought to be the natural candidate for this position. However, the National Council of Judges (CSM) voted in favour of Antonino Meli, an older judge who started to dismantle the work that the antimafia pool had done.
Believing that the Casa Nostra was made of various autonomous cells, rather than a single, vertical organisation, he did not embrace the unifying and interdisciplinary method of Falcone. To the contrary, he spread the judicial cases over various offices — in so doing, connecting the dots and looking for the ‘fil rouge’ linking all of these cases would become way harder.
But it was not just the lack of institutional support that caused the isolation of Giovanni Falcone. Even before his death, a mixture of suspicious theories, according to which Falcone had brought a ‘pentito’ (mafia informer) back to Sicily only to diminish the power of the antagonist mafia family, along with an environment of mistrust and delegitimisation, would lead the judge to say:
Si muore generalmente perché si è soli o perché
si è entrati in un gioco troppo grande.
Si muore spesso perché non si dispone delle necessarie alleanze,
perché si è privi di sostegno.
In Sicilia la mafia colpisce i servitori dello Stato che lo Stato
non è riuscito a proteggere.”
Giovanni Falcone
Lamentably, his predictions were right.
However, as we say in Italy, ‘time is a gentleman’. It puts everything back on the right track.
Following its cruel assassination, in fact, Falcone became a national hero. To date, streets, schools, festivals, awards have been named after him. As I am writing, a national manifestation is going on in Palermo with thousands of students coming from all over Italy to commemorate his figure.
Making him a national hero if, on one hand, seems like a necessary expiation for those guilty of overlooking his role back then, on the other hand, it epitomises the lust for justice the new generations have.
Given the changing nature of mafia, however, one should be wary of this ‘hero’ narrative that has pervaded the Italian media.
By defining those who have stood up for justice as ‘heroes’, one could start detaching their stories from reality. By delegating the fight on mafia to ‘extraordinary figures’, one could then justly feel exempted from fighting its own battle on injustice.
Giovanni and Paolo, before being visionary judges, were exceptional ordinary citizens with a great sense of respect towards Italian institution, the State, their beloved homeland. The thing is that they were too ahead of time; and, as it happens in this cases, they were not understood by the majority of the people.
They were seen as heroes because they were going against the tide.
If days like this still mean something, beyond all the rhetoric, it’s to prove that who stands for justice, today, is not alone anymore. Through small daily gestures of courage, by choosing honesty over mafia, education over shortcuts, legality over anarchy, we can make sure that nobody is left alone anymore: not because the tide has been stopped, but because it‘s finally going in the right direction.
