North of Naples, South of Rome by Tullio Paulo;

Author:Tullio, Paulo; [Paolo Tullio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 845037
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2011-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

9

Clean Hands

It’s not often that momentous changes can be pinned down as stemming from one specific event in history. Caesar crossing the Rubicon and the conversion of Constantine spring to mind, but little else. The breaching of the Berlin Wall has created changes throughout Europe that will continue to ripple for years. In Italy it could be said to have caused a revolution and the creation of the Second Republic.

Since the end of the Second World War the Christian Democrat Party has had an uninterrupted span of government. The reason for this is simple: the only alternative for the electorate was the Communist Party. As the largest opposition party, they were seen as a threat not only by the ruling élite, but also by the Americans. In the years immediately following the war millions of dollars were channelled into Italy overtly by way of loans and grants for rebuilding the war-damaged economy, but also covertly through the CIA, whose express aim was to keep the Communists from power. Gladio, a secret cellular network, was set up with CIA help after the war. Each cell was made up of three people – an officer and two others. No cell knew the members of any other cell; only the area commander knew the officers of the cells under his command. One of these well-armed, expressly anti-Communist cells was made up of my father, his cousin Dino and his uncle Antonio. In the event of a threatened Communist take-over, Gladio would be put into action – this despite the fact that secret societies were officially forbidden by the state.

As their name suggests, the Christian Democrats, ever since they were founded, have been closely allied to the Catholic Church. As with similar European parties, the main planks of their credo were family values and anti-Communist fervour. In this, at least, they were at one with the Church. This bipolar axis was augmented by a further accommodation with the Mafia in Sicily and the Camorra in Naples. Crudely speaking, this alliance had money to buy support through patronage, moral authority from the pulpit, and, with its links with the underworld, the means of policing its friends and enemies. Just as at local level a mayor increases his power with his length of tenure, the Christian Democrats built up an edifice that until recently seemed impregnable. Effectively Italy had a one-party state that dispensed jobs and government contracts to its friends and created difficulties and obstacles for its enemies.

Italians were well aware of the corruption in government. Everyone had been party to it to some degree or other. That their politicians were on the make was a self-evident truth; no one doubted it. It was reluctantly accepted by many as the price to be paid to keep the system functioning and the Communists out of power. The fact is that for perhaps the majority of Italians this Augean stable of corruption was not just the best of a bad lot, it was a system that brought prosperity.

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