There are stories that never really end. They remain suspended in the memory of a country like a wound that does not close, even when the years pass, even when generations change, even when the news seems to have turned the page. Cristina Mazzotti’s story is one of those. She was eighteen years old when, on the evening of July 1, 1975, she was kidnapped in front of the family home in Eupilio, near Lake Como. A kidnapping like many in those years, when the ‘Ndrangheta had discovered that kidnappings could become a gold mine to finance its expansion in the North. Cristina was the daughter of a wealthy family, she studied at the Carducci high school in Milan, she had friends, projects, the clear horizon of being eighteen.
A few minutes were enough to erase everything: a car that stops, armed men, the girl dragged away and the silence that remains in front of the house gate. The kidnappers took her far away and hid her in a concrete hole in the Novara countryside. A tiny, damp space, almost a tomb dug into the earth. Cristina remained in there for more than a month.
To keep her sedated they administered tranquilizers, heavy doses that weakened her body already worn out by imprisonment. When the family paid the ransom, one billion lire, an enormous sum for the time, it was too late. Cristina died on July 31st, suffocated by imprisonment and drugsthe. His body was found a few weeks later, abandoned in a landfill.
He was eighteen. That kidnapping marked a season in Italian history: the years in which the Calabrian gangs used kidnappings to accumulate capital and consolidate their economic and criminal roots in the North of the country. It was not an isolated episode, but part of a precise strategy: seizures, ransoms, investments. Dirty money transformed into businesses, land, economic activities. A parallel economy that grew in the shadows while a large part of the country still struggled to recognize the presence of mafias outside the South. The legal case linked to the kidnapping of Cristina Mazzotti was long and complex. Some perpetrators were identified and convicted in the following years, but not all. For decades that story remained incomplete, suspended between partial judicial truths and unanswered questions. Until today.
Last February 4, the Assize Court of Como pronounced a new sentence on that matter: two of the perpetrators of the kidnapping and murder were sentenced to life imprisonment: Giuseppe Calabrò, 81 years old, and Demetrio Latella, 71 years old. Fifty years after the events, justice has put another piece in the right place. It is a sentence that came late, inevitably late compared to the life of a girl who no longer exists. But it is not a useless sentence. Because justice, even when it arrives after decades, continues to say something to the collective conscience of a country.
And above all because, in that courtroom, there were not only magistrates, lawyers and the victim’s family. There were also many young people. Boys who were not yet born when Cristina was kidnapped. Among the people sitting on the benches in the classroom was Arianna Mazzotti, Cristina’s niece. She was born precisely in those days of 1975, a few weeks before her aunt’s body was found. He never knew her, yet Cristina has always been present in his life. «There was no anger in the family», he says today. “Our grandparents made a clear choice: not to let pain turn into hatred.” It is a phrase that explains a lot about the way in which the Mazzotti family has lived through these fifty years. The pain was not removed, but transformed. «Our grandparents», Arianna continues, «tried to transform that tragedy into something that could be useful to others». This is how the idea of a foundation dedicated to Cristina was born, wanted by her grandfather Helios shortly before his death. A way to ensure that that name didn’t just remain a family memory, but became a story to tell to kids. «Memory», says Arianna when she meets students in schools, «must become responsibility». It is a word that often returns in his sentences. Responsibility to know, to remember, to understand. Responsibility to not look the other way.
And it is precisely this responsibility that led many young people to sit in the Como courtroom during the trial. Almost ninety students followed the hearings together with the victim’s family members, accompanied by the Milanese Libera garrison named after Lea Garofalo. Among them was Lavinia Torelli, twenty-two years old, a graduate in International Sciences at the University of Milan with Professor Nando Dalla Chiesa and now a master’s student in International Security Studies at Charles University in Prague. For her, following the trial was not only a symbolic gesture, but also a concrete training experience. «Studying international security», he explains, «it also means understanding how mafias operate and how justice mechanisms work».
Sitting in the courtroom, listening to the testimonies, following the work of the magistrates and lawyers was a way to see justice at work. «Sometimes», he says, «hearing certain reconstructions was very hard. But precisely for this reason it is important to be there.” Because the mafia is not a distant story in time or space. It is within society. Gabriele Ambrosio, twenty-nine years old, from the secretariat of Libera’s provincial coordination of Milan, also knows this well. It was he, together with other volunteers, who promoted the presence of students in the courtroom during the trial. «Mafias thrive when society is distracted» he says. “When citizens stop looking, when they think it’s a problem that only concerns others.” For this reason, accompanying the Mazzotti family during the trial became a simple but powerful gesture. «It was not a symbolic initiative», explains Ambrosio. “It was a choice of presence.” The boys arrived from Milan on the morning trains. They remained in the courtroom for hours, listening to interrogations, reconstructions, speeches. Sometimes they returned home tired, but with the feeling of having participated in something important. «It wasn’t a school activity», underlines Ambrosio. “No one was forced to be there.” Among all those kids, one presence particularly struck the Mazzotti family. Leonardo Verza is seventeen and attends the Virgilio scientific high school in Milan. He was one of the few to follow all the hearings of the trial, from beginning to end. “At first I was curious,” he says. «I had heard about Cristina’s story during a Libera training camp». Then he decided to go to court. Once. Then another. Then again. Until you never miss a session again. «It struck me that Cristina was my age» he says. “She was a girl who studied in Milan, just like many of us.” During the trial Leonardo learned much more than can be read in school books. He listened to the stories, the reconstructions of the investigators, the details of the imprisonment. He saw up close how justice works. «I understood that the mafia is not something distant“, explains. “And I also understood another thing: that mafiosi don’t have the faces of monsters.” It is one of the hardest lessons of real anti-mafia. The defendants appeared like ordinary men, people you might meet in a bar or on a bus. «If I met them on the street», says Leonardo, «I probably wouldn’t recognize them». And it is precisely this apparent normality that makes the mafias so dangerous. They don’t always have the ferocious face that the collective imagination likes to attribute to them. They often have ordinary faces, apparently normal lives. For the Mazzotti family, seeing those kids in the courtroom was a strong signal. «We didn’t expect it», admits Arianna. «When we entered the classroom and saw all those kids sitting and listening, we understood that that story was no longer just ours». Some took notes. Others asked questions at the end of the hearings. Many told their classmates, friends and parents about the experience. «The most beautiful thing», says Arianna, «it’s when a boy comes home and tells this story to his family».
This is how memory lives on. Not like a ritual, but like a story that passes from hand to hand. On March 21, on the Day of Remembrance and Commitment in memory of the innocent victims of the mafia, hundreds of names will be read throughout Italy. These are the names of the innocent victims of mafia violence. Behind every name there is an interrupted story, a family, a wounded community. But there is also something that resists. It’s not just justice, which sometimes arrives late but continues to seek the truth.
It is the memory that passes from one generation to another. From those who have suffered to those who decide not to look the other way. For this reason, in the Como courtroom, the presence of those boys was not just testimony. It was a silent promise. The promise that Cristina Mazzotti’s story will not end with a sentence. It will continue to live every time someone chooses to listen to it, to tell it, to take it with them into the future.
