Today I had to look at Italian news online. I had just received “Cacao quotidiano,” a newsletter of “good news,” that is published daily the community of Alcatraz, in Umbria. Alcatraz is a rural community of progressive people where you can go to spend some time and relax, be fed wonderful food, and do unusual activities such as demential yoga and comic-therapy. At the center of the community there is Jacopo Fo, son of Nobel laureate Dario Fo, and his wife Eleonora Albanese.
Today, there were no good news on Cacao. Just a sentence: “We suspend the publication of Cacao, to grieve the great tragedy that has hit Eleonora and her family, and Jacopo.”
What happened, it didn’t say. But it was clear that was something important enough to be on a newspaper. And there it was, on the first page of La Repubblica. Eleonora’s father, Emilio, 69 years old, had been killed in a crowded square in downtown Naples, just as he was leaving the bank after withdrawing 3,300 Euro. The robbers probably followed him, then confronted him, hit him on the head, stole the money, and left him bleeding in the middle of the street. He died few hours later in the hospital. Eleonora made some furious declarations about the city and its inhabitants. “I cannot understand why my parents still live in this city. What happened to my father is not normal. Naples is ill, very very ill.”
But what caught my attention were other two front-page news. The first was the end of an appeal trial on a terrorist bombing that happened 35 years ago. At 4:37 pm of December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in front of the “Banca dell’Agricoltura” in Milan. 17 people died and 80 were wounded in the blast. At first an anarchist from Milan, Giuseppe Pinelli, was accused of the bombing. He turned out to be innocent, but not before he “committed suicide” by fallling from the window of a police station in Milan where he was being interrogated. The bombing was almost for sure a right wing affaire, and several people from neofascist organizations were investigated. The trial moved from Milan to Rome, from Rome to Catanzaro, from Catanzaro to Milan. In the last 35 years different people were arrested, convicted, exhonerated, rearrested, re-convicted. In this trial, the last three people accused of the attack, and who had been previously convicted and given life in prison, were absolved and released. But the chilling part was that the relatives of the victims, still hoping for justice after 35 years, will have to pay all the trial expenses.
The second news got me really confused. It was the murder of two women, Maria Carmela Linciano and her 14-year-old daughter, Valentina. The murderer was Angelo Izzo. I remember Angelo Izzo, he was convicted 30 years ago for killing two women. He also was a neofascist, and with his buddies kidnapped and tortured two young women for hours before killing one of them and almost killing the other. The newspapers called him “il mostro del Circeo.” But wait, they were not mother and daugher, they were friends, their names were different, and why would the newspapers talk now about a murder that happened 30 years ago… It turns out that this was a new murder. Angelo Izzo, after 30 years, was released from prison; he seemed a totally reformed man and appeared really sorry for what he had done. That was six months ago. A few days ago, in a chilling replay of that day 30 years ago, he killed women again.
What’s happening to my country? It seems that Italy is caught in a temporal loop. Tragic events that have traumatized and infuriated us many years ago replay over and over again as in a nightmare or in a bad horror movie. Naples is still a very dangerous place. The people responsible for the bombings that killed hundreds in the ’60, ‘70s, and ‘80s have never being found, let alone convicted (and the relatives of the victims are paying the price, metaphorically as well as literally). Angelo Izzo still kills women. Can somebody break the spell, please?