“Postponing the planned fiction 40 years after the Via Carini massacre, due to my sister Rita's candidacy, was an excessive choice, a setback to her memory,” says the general's son. Which opens the album of memories. And only one fault is given ...

The nativity scene remains in the living room. 'He keeps Me company,' he says. He bends down, takes a little shepherd boy, smiles: 'He is the first one who bought my father.' If a house speaks to us of those who live there, that of Nando dalla Chiesa is a very faithful story. On the one hand, the books on Cosa Nostra, corruption, those on beloved Sicily. The calendars of the weapon stacked. On the other hand, the worn folder of the Student Movement newspaper, the collection of Civil Society . Economic theory texts make room among the statuettes of carabinieri on horseback. The Don Diana award next to the Sport Stand. The many editions of his many books: in spans he will have written about forty. Then a small table filled with framed photos. Those of Emilia, his wife he met at twenty, who died last year. That of a young Carlo Alberto from the Church in 1950, one of his men in Corleone. On 3 September, 40 years have passed since the Mafia-style attack in which he was killed in Palermo.

Professor, his sister Rita is a candidate with Forza Italia and Rai has postponed the fiction he remembers your father. «An unfortunate decision, an excessive choice. It is a setback to her memory: broadcasting it in October is like Christmas on January 7th. It happens to go around and hear me say “the general? Ah yes, Rita's father ”. To my regret, however. TV gives great popularity, but Rita already has it, it won't be a series that will give her another '.

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Rita from the Church with the center-right, she on the left, doesn't it create embarrassment for you? 'But it has always been like this: me, Rita, Simona, three brothers who are in love and get along well but who have different ideas. Then, center-right… it is not. Rita has always been Berlusconian, because of her work, for having seen him in action as the creator of Fininvest. She is a non-aligned person. '

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The general from the Church explained to a child: what would he say? “He was a carabiniere, a representative of the state who dedicated his entire life to the state. One who also strongly believed in the family, but a family that was placed at the service of larger causes, not closed in on itself. Which is not easy to make understood in this country. Many times we have asked ourselves: why have we never said “dad, stop accepting the riskiest jobs, do it for us”? But he was the state that does not run away: against the Nazis, the BR, the mafia. He is one of those figures whose public memory, almost as a paradox, grows over time. It happened with Falcone and Borsellino and it happens again now: I have never seen so many appointments and celebrations as for this 40th anniversary ».

Purse. The daughter Fiammetta refused any official commitment. Don't you see the risk of making a beautiful holy card from the Church too? «“ Making someone a saint ”means that that someone does not evoke contradictions: it is different to remember by explaining that people like Falcone, Borsellino, my father, evoke the contradiction. Memory does not produce holy cards, but restlessness and questions. It is uncomfortable ».

The massacre of '82 and those of ten years later. It almost seems that the history of Italy has stopped since then ... 'Palermo in that extended decade - I would say from the late 1970s to 1993 - is the capital of Italy, but of the criminal one. The attack in via Carini consecrates the beginning of that period, the massacres of Capaci and via D'Amelio celebrate its end. The murder by the Church certifies that in Palermo the law cannot exist even in its highest expressions. In '92 Lamafia fails to complete her design and is forced to kill: the beginning of her decline '.

In 1984 she published Imperfect Crime. Resounding indictment. Have these 40 years historicized responsibilities? “The crime is not perfect. It is in fact: principals and executors have been sentenced. Then there is the question of the principals external to the Cosa Nostra, of complicity, starting with the role of the Andreotti current which was the backbone of the relationship between the mafia and politics. Here too there is a sentence of the Supreme Court. Andreotti's Italy went far beyond his current, the responsibilities are more articulated, but he was still the terminal of those dark ties. I believe that it remains, even in this sense, an imperfect crime: you thought you were preventing it from going back to you, in reality you opened the way for this to happen ».

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Would he do it all again? «Also for what I paid and I paid a lot, yes. I felt the duty to report. But I was not only the son who had suffered the wrong, I was the son who reacted to the wrong, immediately, with names and surnames. Unforgivable. I would laugh at everything, also because there was nothing wrong with it. I regret only one thing: that I believed that he would not be killed. At the end of August, when we broke up for the last time, I thought: 'They are so exposed, they can't do it.' I was sure. I did not understand that in Italy crimes can be signed and people do not want to read their signature. It was the biggest lesson. I am still distressed by the fact that in the interpretation of the crime unlikely reconstructions related to Moro's papers continue to emerge, with which we try to explain by rummaging in the drawers what is instead very clear. Like in Little Prince : what is essential is invisible to the eye. A huge thing has happened, a clash between a party, the system of power that revolves around it and this prefect who arrives as a heresy in Sicily, just as Mattarella, La Torre, Chinnici had been and with the strength of his prestige. , resubmits their complaint. Yet, we look for something else. I found it difficult to see such inadequate journalism and magistrates ».

Your relationship? Those were years of strong generational confrontation. «A rigorous father: he was a general of the carabinieri. Attention, even a very sweet grandfather. I remember a scene from Today the comedians : Carlo small ( one of the two sons ) that drives me crazy, me chasing him to give them to him and him chasing me to stop me ... A relationship made up of diversity of ideas, but affectionate. So many times I think back: the one in which he stays up all night writing the bibliography for my thesis with his green fountain pen. Those in which he suddenly appears to see me take an exam. Or the help he gave to start a family with Emilia. They were very close: he knew her as a girl, my sister Simona's classmate. Emilia was fundamental in defending his memory. Now I say “I would do it all again”, but without her… ».

Mafia and politics, the country is not that of 1982. 'I think so. The Cosa Nostra no longer has the omnipotence of that time, the 'Ndrangheta has begun to suffer major offensives. A magistrate today would not be in the situation in which Falcone and Borsellino found themselves, also because they have learned that the state cannot be challenged in that way. The problem remains the politics that does not take its responsibilities. We are witnessing an electoral campaign in which there is no mention of the mafia. Everyone knows that billions of European funds will arrive, that the level of corruption is rising, money laundering is widespread, that the clans are less strong but that the pro-mafia society has grown. In a similar situation, a country is mobilizing: but no. Fortunately, in the structures of the state, people who know how to fight the mafia have grown up. They changed it from within. It is the reason why, despite many governments not being interested in it, the fight against the bosses has continued ».

Among the many celebrations, which one do you care most about? «It is precisely the fiction with Sergio Castellitto. I was asked to reread the script and we also agreed on the poetic licenses necessary for a product for the general public. I say TV fiction because it is popular narration, a powerful message: four prime time episodes are a lot. And then, because it tells a collective story. My father would have thought it unfair not to mention the men who worked with him. Often they were young people who had come from the South, without major studies behind them, only to understand much more about terrorism than certain intellectuals ».

Source: oggi.it