NINETEEN YEARS AGO THE ANTIMAFIA JUDGE GIOVANNI FALCONE DIED: PAST INDIGNATION HAS BECOME THE REDEMPTION OF A GENERATION, THANKS TO INITIATIVES LIKE DON CIOTTI’S “LIBERA”…WINENEWS INTERVIEWED FARAONE, PRESIDENT OF “PLACIDO RIZZOTTO"

19 years ago, Giovanni Falcone, the anti-mafia judge, his wife Francesca Morbillo and three police body guards, Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montanaro, lost their lives in Capaci, victims of one of the most violent mafia attacks ever: one of the darkest days in the history of the Italian Republic and which marked the indignation and revolt of the Sicilian people. Today, many things have remained the same and many others have changed. Mafia members are now wearing suits and ties instead of luparas and Coppolas, but many sectors of the Sicilian (and not only) economies are still under mafia control, starting with the fruit & vegetable sector, which the associations and cooperatives have reported to State authorities.

And yet, the anti-mafia revolt began in those years, in the fields, with “Libera”: today the President of the Cooperative Placido Rizzotto is Gianluca Faraone, who was sixteen years old at the time. “The Capaci massacre, and the following massacre in Via D’Amelio, where Paolo Borsellino lost his life, threw the city into a climate of disbelief and disorientation because we did not know,” says Faraone, “if the Italian State would have a really strong reaction. We realized then that each and every one of us would have to do his part, because up until then, all the high profile murders had hit men who had been left alone by the State and the citizens”.
That is why Don Ciotti founded “Libera” in 1995 and because of him in 1996 the popular initiative law Nr. 109 went into effect: “the first law to refer to the social use of property confiscated from the mafia. In 2001 the first cooperative, Placido Rizzotto, which also includes 80 hectares of vineyards was founded on land confiscated from the mafia bosses Riina and Provenzano, Through continuous daily work in the fields confiscated from the mafia, we are creating the conditions to combat the mafia and give growth opportunities to young people as well as producing excellent quality wines. This initiative is completely different from what the State offered - a vehement response to the massacres, but no solutions”.