Another Young Man Killed in a Palermo Night Club

Is Sicily more violent than other places?

It is has been another tragic night in the province of Palermo. Some sixteen miles west of the city, in the township of Balestrate, a young man has been killed in the course of a night out in a night club. You may remember that in December a youngster called Lino Celesia met a similar fate in Palermo. He was 22. The current victim is Francesco Bacchi, and he was just 20 years old. The news agency ANSA calls this the ennesimo (‘nth’) example of such a killing.

Francesco Bacchi, dead at 20.

Young Francesco was killed in the street outside the club. The fight started in the club and spilled out into the street, where Francesco, according to witnesses, tried to intervene between two people, but was knocked to the ground and died of head injuries, some as a result of kicks to the head.

Lino Celesia, dead at 22.

It is always very upsetting when a young person meets such an end, but consider how tragic this is in an Italian context. Italy is supposed to be a friendly, family-oriented country, where these things are not supposed to happen. The birth rate is low; the chances are that both victims of violence were only sons, possibly only children.

This is what the mayor of the town, Vito Rizzo, has to say, in my translation of his words:

‘We are dismayed by this event, which happens every weekend in the province of Palermo. Some young people go to night clubs not to have a good time, but to provoke fights. We simply cannot understand what is going on with our young people. This night club, the Medusa, had been open for a month. We had no complaints of previous incidents of violence, but complaints about people drinking outside the club, drink brought by outsiders to pass the evening. Drink and drugs can spark off fights. Our town is a friendly place. Lots of good things are going on here. News like this destroys years of progress. The night club was always policed. But today is a really bad day for our town. The situation is out of control.’

One sympathises with the mayor’s despair. Is the situation he describes something typical to Sicily, or is it a malaise that has spread all over Europe? The answer is possibly both.

Deadly violence has long been a characteristic of Sicilian life; while in other societies there may be plenty of aggression, quite a lot of that is talk and noise; in Sicily, by tradition, men have killed each other rather than just talking about it. The outlaw Salvatore Giuliano in a relatively short career (he was 27 when he died) killed about 130 policemen, and massacred 11 people at Portella della Ginestra, which included 1 woman and 3 children. More recently, the deceased Mafia boss Messina Denaro boasted of filling entire cemeteries. While in other cultures people threaten others with violence, in Sicily, men do it, usually after a warning, but not always.

It is a cliché, but southerners can be hot-tempered and tempers can get out of hand. Drugs and alcohol do not cause murder, but they certainly loosen inhibitions and act as catalysts.

The mayor talks of his small town as being accogliente, welcoming or friendly. This is something that Italians prize highly, and it needs to be understood. The opposite of accogliente is not cold or indifferent but exercising something called predominio di se, what the Americans call ‘being a big shot’, or we Brits would call bullying or abuse. This is at the heart of the problem: men thinking they are entitled to throw their weight around, to expect deference and compliance, and to be able to kick to death anyone who stands up to them. It was this attitude that cost Francesco Bacchi and Lino Celesio their lives.

Mafia is not so much an organisation, though it is that too, but a frame of mind, and attitude. Most of us experience it when we are in the school playground, where some of us are condemned as dirty rascals and others are exalted as king of the castle. But we leave that behind, thankfully. But not always and not everywhere.