Calogero Vizzini - The Villalba Incident

The Villalba Incident

Vizzini, a staunch anti-Communist who opposed the fight for land of Sicilian peasants, organised his own peasant cooperatives in his area during both post-war periods, through which he deflected the appeal of the left-wing parties, maintained his hold over the peasants, and guaranteed his own continued access to the land. He was in a fierce dispute over the lease of the large estate Miccichè of the Trabia family in Palermo, with a peasant cooperative headed by Michele Pantaleone who had founded the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano – PSI) in Villalba. Vizzini had tried hard to persuade Pantaleone to marry his niece but failed. Pantaleone used his leverage with the left wing press. In return Don Calò arranged for the crops on Pantaleone family’s land to be vandalized. There was even a failed attempt on Pantaleone’s life.

On September 16, 1944, leaders of the Blocco del popolo (Popular Front) in Sicily, the communist Girolamo Li Causi and Pantaleone, went to speak to the landless labourers at a rally in Villalba, challenging Don Calò in his own personal fiefdom. In the morning tensions rose when Christian Democrat mayor Beniamino Farina – a relative of Vizzini as well as his successor as mayor – angered local communists by ordering all hammer-and-sickle signs erased from buildings along the road on which Li Causi would travel into town. When his supporters protested, they were intimidated by separatists and thugs.

The rally began in late afternoon. Vizzini had agreed to permit the meeting as long as land problems, the large estates, or the Mafia were not addressed. Both speakers who preceded Li Causi, among which was Pantaleone, followed Vizzini’s commands. Li Causi did not. He denounced the unjust exploitation by the Mafia, and when Li Causi started to talk about how the peasants were being deceived by ‘a powerful leaseholder’ – a thinly disguised reference to Vizzini – the Mafia boss hurled: It’s a lie. Pandemonium broke out. The rally ended in a shoot-out which left 14 people wounded including Li Causi and Pantaleone. Six months later Vizzini acquired of the lease for the Miccichè estate.

According to Vizzini’s own account, La Verità sui Fatti di Villalba (The Truth About the Events in Villalba) that appeared in separatist newspapers, it had been the Communist who had started the shooting. When Pantaleone and Li Causi had arrived in the town, they asked Vizzini if they were in hostile territory and whether their meeting might be disturbed. Vizzini “assured them that they were free to hold their meeting without any fear of disturbance if they were careful enough not to speak on local matters.” Vizzini admitted that he interrupted Li Causi, but denied that he had ignited the violence. The Carabinieri quickly restored order and arrested eight people, including the mayor. Several others, including Vizzini, evaded the police dragnet. Sixty persons were interrogated, but the investigation was doomed from the start. (Don Calò and his bodyguard were accused of attempted manslaughter. The trial dragged on until 1958, but by 1946 the evidence had already disappeared. Vizzini was never convicted because by the time of the verdict he was already dead.)

The Villalba attack inaugurated a long series of Mafia attacks in Sicily on political activists, trade union leaders and ordinary peasants resisting Mafia rule. In the following years many left-wing leaders were killed or otherwise attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of over thirty at a May 1 labour parade in Portella della Ginestra. The Portella della Ginestra massacre was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano. Nevertheless, the Mafia was suspected of involvement in the bloodbath and many other attacks on left-wing organisations and leaders.