Fasci Siciliani - Foundation and Rapid Growth

Foundation and Rapid Growth

The Fasci were the result of the revolt of the Sicilian peasants against the introduction of capitalist relationships into the rural economy aggravated by the world depression in agriculture of the 1880s. The agrarian crisis between 1888 and 1892 led to a steep decrease in wheat prices. The island’s main sources of wealth – wine, fruit and sulphur – suffered a heavy blow. The dominant landowning class channeled most of the economic burden on to the peasantry, in the form of higher rents and discriminatory local taxation. As social tension rose, a handful of young and hitherto quite unknown socialist intellectuals – many of them recent graduates of Palermo University – seized their opportunity. The movement grew under the first government of Prime minister Francesco Crispi (1887-1891) and coincided with unpopular tax increases and ratification of a series of laws curtailing personal freedom. The Italian economy had been sliding into a deep recession since the late 1880s. New tariffs had been introduced in 1887 on agricultural and industrial goods, followed by a trade war with France, which badly damaged Italian commerce. Many farmers, especially in southern Italy suffered severely.

The first official Fascio was founded on May 1 (Labour Day), 1891, in Catania by Giuseppe de Felice Giuffrida. (An earlier Fascio was set up in Messina on March 18, 1889, but was dormant after its founder, Nicola Petrina, was arrested in July of that year and not released until 1892. Another reason why the first Fascio of Messina – formed after the example of the Fasci operai constituted in Central and North Italy from 1871 – did not develop was that it brought together not individual workers but the workers' associations of the city, which retained their independence, their status and economic orientation.) Other leaders included Rosario Garibaldi Bosco in Palermo, Nicola Barbato in Piana dei Greci, Bernardino Verro in Corleone, and Lorenzo Panepinto in Santo Stefano Quisquina. While the ruling elite depicted the men of the Fasci as treasonous socialists, communists and anarchists seeking to overthrow the monarchy; in fact many were devout Catholics and monarchists. The movement sometimes had a messianic nature, characterised by statements as "Jesus was a true socialist and wanted just what the Fasci were demanding." Nicola Barbato was known as "the workers' apostle."

The keenest socialist among the Fasci leaders was Garibaldi Bosco. In August 1892 he attended the Socialist party’s congress at Genoa and on his return obediently purged his fascio of its anarchist and other non-socialist members. His ideal of a united democratic front was shared by the father of Sicilian socialism, Napoleone Colajanni. The leader in Catania, De Felice, also maintained contact with leading anarchists like Amilcare Cipriani. On these and other important issues there was much friction between Catania and Palermo.

Crispi was replaced by Antonio Di Rudinì in February 1891, who was succeeded by Giovanni Giolitti in May 1892. On January 20, 1893, when peasants of Caltavuturo occupied communal land that they claimed was theirs, local authorities killed 13 and wounded 21 in the Caltavuturo massacre. Disturbances continued throughout the year. The Fasci started out as urban movements, animated by artisans, which evolved into a more popular and combative mass movement with the adherence of sulphur miners, and in a later stage with the involvement of peasants and sharecroppers. In the autumn of 1893, labour conflicts in the cities and the mines came together with the protests and claims of the farmers. The movement reached its greatest breadth in the manifestations against taxes, involving the lowest tiers of the city and the countryside, becoming difficult, if not impossible, to control by its leaders.