Francesca Serio with the photo of the son.
On May 16, 1955, Italy was shocked by the murder of the socialist trade unionist Salvatore Carnevale, originally from Galati Mamertino (Messina) and founder of the Labor Chamber of Sciara (Palermo). It was not of the first political-firm-mafia-mafia attack against the Sicilian unions. Before carnival, in fact, dozens of trade unionists and capilega had been killed: by the Communist Accursio Miraglia to the socialist Placido Rizzotto, from the revolutionary Giovanni Orcel to the reformist epiphane Li Puma, from the Turatian Lorenzo Panepinto to Gramsciano Nicolò Azoti, from the martyrs of the massacre of Portella della Ginestra to the victims of the assaults against the trade unions.
Carnival murder was an emblematic crime for many reasons. For the first time a woman was a civil party against the mafia: she was the “mother-coding” Francesca Serio. The process saw two future presidents of the Republic opposed: the socialist Sandro Pertini among the stalls of the civil party (represented by lawyers Nino Sorgi and Francesco Taormina) and the Christian Democrat Giovanni Leone (defender of the defendants). The writer Carlo Levi dedicated one of his beautiful books to the story: “The words are stones” (with the title taken from a phrase pronounced by the victim’s mother). The poet Ignazio Buttitta dedicated one of his most famous poems to the heroic unionist: “Lamentu ppi the dead of Turiddu Carnival”. And the cinema also took care of the crime: the actor Gianmaria Volontè played Turiddu Carnival in the film “A life to burn” of the Taviani brothers, inspired by his sacrifice.
Salvatore Carnevale was unveiled not only to the mafia and the landowners, but also to significant sectors of the law enforcement agencies of the time, as told by the journalist Dino Paternostro, manager “Archive and historical memory” of the CGIL of Palermo and its province:
“From early August 1952, the young trade unionist was forced to leave Sciara, to take refuge in Montevarchi, in the province of Arezzo. Probably, to escape the Majus to Caccamo, who had assassinated Filippo Intili, unionist of the place on 7 August. Or because he feared a harsh sentence of the trial for the occupation of the Feudo Notarbartolo. He returned to Sciara two years later. Impulse to new struggles to ask for the assignment of the land to the peasants (of the 704 signed hectares, in fact, just 202 had been assigned), again occupying the notarbartal fiefdom. I work in the Lambertini Cava. at eight working hours “.
In the late night of May 16, 1955, Carnival walked, as always, in the direction of the Cava di Sciara, to punctually reach the workplace. The mother warned him of a bad warning dream and warned him to be “attentive to the quarry”. At dawn, Salvatore Carnevale was reached by a commando who killed him with rifle strokes.
The mother Francesca Serio went to Palermo and presented a complaint against four employees of a landowner. The four Campieri were arrested and indicted for trial by the preliminary section of Palermo, at the request of the deputy prosecutor General Pietro Scaglione (killed on May 5, 1971), who, in his indictment, denounced the unfair system of landowners, enhanced the trade union activity of carnival and peasant struggles, speaking of “land fever”.
In recent times it was discovered that, a few days after the assassination of Salvatore Carnevale, a new excellent crime had been foiled against the new secretary of the Chamber of Labor of Sciara, as revealed by Pippo Oddo, writer, historian, professor and, in the seventies, leader of the Sicilian Federbraccianti:
“Once again to the new generations, the holocaust of the trade unionist Salvatore Carnevale, years ago, in my book” The mirage of the earth “, published an unpublished document never investigated by a scholar and ignored by the same Assize Court of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, who also sentenced the four defendants to life imprisonment (later acquitted on appeal and in the Court of Cassation), but not the principals of the homicide and inspirers of the document intimidating. in essence, Thursday 19 May 1955, three days after the excellent murder, under the threshold of the home of the new secretary of the Labor Chamber of Labor, Salvatore Polizzi, his daughter Concetta found an anonymous letter that announced the certain death of the father and the fraternal friend of Carnival, Sebastiano Russo … “
According to Pippo Oddo, 85 years old, originally from Villafrati (Palermo), “to read the cards of the trial well against the Carnival killers and the other events now in the public domain, there would be the conditions to finally do justice to the unionist of Sciara and the other heroes shot down by the mafia barbarism. Mine is, however, and is destined to remain a vox clammatis in the desert”.
Today, the memory of that excellent crime of 70 years ago is held alive, among others, by the CGIL, by Libera, by the Municipality of Sciara, by the “Socialist Anti -Mafia Foundation Carmelo Battaglia” (led by the university professor Antonio Matasso, creator of the meritorious “Salvatore Carnival Prize”) and by the “Nebroideo Nebroideo Circle Independent Italo Tarcione” (chaired by Professor Fabio Cannizzaro, promoter. “Francesca Serio Prize”).
