Florence: the archives of memory on the massacres and the Mafia

Keepers of the law: Florence the archives of memory on the massacres and the Mafia




FLORENCE - were the years in which ended the First Republic. These were the years of the Clean Hands and Mafia massacres of Capaci and Via D'Amelio, a confused and turbulent time in the history of Italy. It was 1994 - the year before it was a car bomb exploded in Via dei Georgofili in Florence - Tuscany and was born in the Documentation Centre of Democratic Culture of Lawfulness: still something unique from the Alps to Sicily and even more so for a region, a archive on the mysteries and occult powers, the massacres, the subversion, the Mafia and organized crime opened to scholars, enthusiasts and insiders, but that works (sometimes) even with the schools and with young people. A 'house of memory', not to forget and to promote a stronger and more solid democratic and civic consciousness. Until the eighties, there was no talk of legality almost in Italy. In the newspapers the term almost did not appear and the meaning was often also different. Then it explodes. It takes place the Church. Organizations are as Free and Public Notice, Tuscany at the forefront. The center is part of this rut.



View of the Duomo
If you think the public administration as a world gray and colorless, the store housed in an attic on the fourth floor of the Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati, once home of nobles and bourgeois fallen and now the seat of the Presidency of the Region of Tuscany, will probably make you think again. Or at least will surprise you. In fact few people know this store, which also is located in the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, one of the most famous places in the world. But here, to tell the truth, has only recently found a home on the third move.

Outside there is the masterpiece of Giotto and Brunelleschi: a small square window you look out the back of the cathedral and the dome, in all its majesty. Inside, the rooms of the center, four employees work with passion and regional officials, who take on the role of historians and archivists. On a table is open, there is a thesis on the Red Brigades. The walls are plastered with posters that recall efforts against the Mafia and anniversaries of the massacre Georgofili. On a moving colored photographic diaries tell of the commitment of the youngest and the guys who work on land confiscated from the summer in Sicily. For the first approach just a click away on the Internet: the catalogs are all online, which is essential in a world almost perpetually connected to the network but not granted. Then you just have to start the journey 'real' between the shelves, volumes of paper and scanned documents, with thousands of different possible routes.




The Young and the Mafia
"Most young people prefer for their research Mafia and organized crime" tell Andrea Biondi and Leonello Toccafondi, 'keepers' and 'guides' in the center. "A couple of students are collecting documents on the assassination Lima and the Nineties" reveal. In the Archives on the fourth floor of the Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati the rest will find everything from acts of parliamentary committees on special reports on the mafia infiltration. And the Mafia is not to say, mind you, only Sicily Tuscany are dozens and dozens of items confiscated from the mafia or all'ndrangheta. The center manages the observatory: on-line, accessible to all, there is a geo-referenced map. And on those assets the region has long been committed to social management: the latter case the estate of Suvignano Monteroni d'Arbia.





Terrorism and P2
"Anyone who has a few more years - and still tell Andrea Leonello - do not forget the season instead of terrorism and also studies the massacres of Italian seventies." Basically just arm yourself with patience. Locked in a two wardrobes and there are all 130 volumes of the parliamentary commission on the assassination Moro. There are those who return regularly and those who stay for weeks or months for all, available, a computer and a consultation room with four beds. The P2 is another line of research. Even for the Masonic lodge of Licio Gelli was established a parliamentary committee of inquiry and Florence are kept in the archive of all documents. A boon, that a student is now sifting through to a PhD.

At the center of knocking even from overseas
The most frequent visitors are researchers for study and profession, but sometimes people who are not lacking, just for fun, want to know more years and dark passages of the Republic. There is an American professor, even an Italian-American, who holds the U.S. a course on the history of Italy and terrorism and has repeatedly visited the archives of the Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati: an affectionate now.
There are plenty of journalists, those who write books or prepare documentaries. At the heart has turned in the past Rai, for programs of inquiry as "Midnight Blue" or "The story is us." The log also included a troupe of Spanish journalists and a German television, which has prepared a program on right-wing terrorism and massacres in Italy. And then the students (even high school last year and not just the university), researchers, professors: from Italy but also from Switzerland, England and Austria. Even some judge considered it more convenient to travel to Cathedral Square and look there and not elsewhere one or more sentences. Who comes up often has clear ideas. For all other useful are the tips of the staff of the center. "A challenging work" confess. And for those who can not move also works on home loan and copies of documents can be sent home or e-mail.

The funds Bonsanti and Sandra Rosario Poma
Just a few numbers to sense the richness of the archive in the center of the legality Tuscan over five books, five volumes of parliamentary commissions of inquiry and other documents, including those on the earthquake in Irpinia and Basilicata in the eighties, two hundred dissertations and again periodicals, a hundred films, documentaries and audiovisual nine thousand documents and judgments (mostly digitized) and access to many other databases. It 'a treasure grown over time, result in part from donations. As the bottom of the journalist Sandra Bonsanti. former director of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which has provided 216 books and 102 folders and calendars full of notes about Sid, the P2, the Red Brigades, the extra-parliamentary left, the massacres, the Mafia and Gladio collected in direct contact in the course of his long activities. Or the 135 books and 305 folders and notebooks on the Mafia and Italian politics from 1993 to 2005 fellow of the Nation Rosario Poma. Other documents have been made available to judges like Judge Mina, Vigna or Margara.

Not only a library
But the center is not just a library. And 'the support structure to the many initiatives put in place, in all these years, by the Region. The center maintains contacts with the non-profit and voluntary organizations that work to create un'argine against usury with loans and guarantees to offer those loans from banks can no longer receive them. The center acts as a liaison with the associations, as Arci, who organize with youth work camps, especially in the summer, in the torn land to the Mafia and organized crime in Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and not only . The Region of Tuscany was one of the first to support them. The center has cared for and care prints and original publications on the issues of legality, but also on the safety of particular phenomena such as bullying. Collaborates with the association of victims' families Georgofili and works with schools, the last open channel covers high school, high school Michelangelo in Florence last year and the next Leonardo da Vinci. "In 2014 - Announce preview - also return the call and contributions for schools to initiatives for the law." They were interrupted in 2010, victims of the spending review, after sixteen years had funded hundreds of projects. And why so much effort is easily explained. The legality is in fact memory and respect for the law, but it is also a way of being and thinking, it's culture and education. And for this you need a daily practice that starts from the school. A few months ago the journalist Sandra Bonsanti brought reporters to reopen the files, to meet and get to work on the front lines of the darkest history of the Republic. The Center for legality (and the region) is also ready for it to give its support.