Umberto Bossi and Sicily: theories on the autonomist mafia, alliances with Lombardo and Orlando, and the partisan relative

"If Lombardy had the special status like Sicily, we would recover half of the 57 billion euros in annual fiscal residual that the state currently retains." It was the year 2017 and Umberto Bossi was already having to deal with the new League led by Matteo Salvini. "Autonomy - he said - is the opposite of independence. They give us a little money just to keep us from leaving. But the North is deindustrializing, companies are closing. So out of necessity, even we independence supporters settle for the autonomy that Salvini wants."

The story of the founder of the Carroccio has crossed paths with Sicily several times: courted in the early '90s when secession was on the table and a push from the South was needed, insulted with vulgar stereotypes, under special observation due to that Statute which was sometimes envied but essentially considered reductive compared to the ambitions of free Padania. In between provocations and often delirious proposals on mafia and immigration.

On the other hand, Bossi has had a touch of Sicily already in the family: his second wife Manuela Marrone - with whom he had three children, including Renzo, known as the Trout, the only one to undertake a failed attempt at a political career - was born in Catania and is originally from Favara. His grandfather, Calogero Marrone, who emigrated to Varese, was one of the organizers of the partisan struggle. As a registry officer, he managed to save 200 Jews from Nazi persecution by issuing them false identity cards. Arrested by the SS, he died in the Dachau concentration camp. A well-known figure to Bossi, who in the past has claimed his anti-fascism by also referring to "martyrs of the resistance" within his own family.

But it is in the early '90s that the political story of the Senatur begins to reckon with the Sicilian one. It is the period of "Roma Ladrona" and independent Padania. And Bossi contributes to the birth of the Lega del Sud: in Sicily, his point of reference is the then thirty-year-old Ciccio Midolo. But the reception on the island is not the best. In 1991 in Catania for a rally, he is forced to flee due to the protests of a group belonging to the Fronte della Gioventù, led by national secretary Gianni Alemanno, with slogans like "Bossi is a racist". "If the League is seen as a racist movement - he replies - it is because the parties, which I believe are the true proponents of separatism, have an interest in launching these accusations to keep the underdeveloped South, to which clientelistic and welfare logic applies, separate from the North where they still find someone to vote for them."

Not looking favorably upon him are also the mafiosi, at least some. "One day Umberto Bossi was in Catania - testified at the trial on the Trattativa in 2013 Leonardo Messina, one of the most important turncoats of the Sicilian mafia, close to boss Piddu Madonia - I told Borino Micciché: this one has it in for the southerners and I said 'I'm going to kill him'. He told me to stop: this is just a puppet. The strongman of the League is Miglio who is in the hands of Andreotti. A Lega del Sud would have been created that was supposed to dismantle Italy and the mafia would have become the State." Accusations that Bossi dismissed as "jokes, things from confused characters."

Later he would refine his confused and delirious theory on the mafia and autonomism: "Cosa Nostra lost its chance as the ruling class of the South, when it liquidated the army in Sicily and made the agreement in exchange for control over welfare. It liquidated Giuliano and what was behind him instead of aiming, like all ruling classes, for the freedom of the people it represents. It should have continued the struggle it was engaged in, instead of managing welfare. From that come the Andreottis and everything that has happened in the South. It’s as if we, instead of fighting our battle, made a deal in exchange for a few ministries... The mafia should have fought for freedom, even if no one knows where it can lead: to independence, secession, or federalism."

In the transitional period between the end of the First Republic and the rise of Forza Italia, Leonardo Miglio - considered the ideologue of the Lombard League - especially after the massacres of 1992, openly speaks of "detaching Sicily" from the rest of Italy and "abandoning it to its fate." A proposal from which Bossi distances himself: "No. Let's detach the parties from Italy. Let's send them to Africa, to the former Belgian Congo, and the country will certainly have to struggle, but it will struggle with certain goals - he comments six days after Via D'Amelio - The mafia is the labor force, the picciotti are the labor force, but the cupola is political. There is a need to erase, to drive away these parties. So there is no need for concord."

Regarding the Sicilian events, during those months the Senatur demonstrates a surprising analytical ability: "In my opinion - he declares in August 1992 - there are two trends in the mafia. On one side, there is a current still closely linked to the Roman political forces. On the other side, there is a trend in the mafia to no longer trust the parties, to propose itself directly as a political force. In short, the mafia has a governmental desire. It is an anti-Italian attitude and it is fatal that politicians respond by sending in the army." He gets angry when an attempt is made to pass off, on May 18, 1993, close to the electoral appointment, the arrest of Nitto Santapaola as a victory against Cosa Nostra. "It is exactly the opposite - he says - because the mafia continues to command as before and more than before. Because the mafia and Tangentopoli are two sides of the same coin."

But the following year he sees that Cosa Nostra - according to the reconstruction by the Palermo Prosecutor's Office - for the 1994 elections decides to bet precisely on Forza Italia, the newly created entity of Silvio Berlusconi with which the Carroccio allies only to undermine it the following year. So much so that in April 1995, Bossi is in Palermo to "unite forces" with Leoluca Orlando, leader of the Rete, in an anti-Berlusconi key. "Here the old politics is returning - declares the Senatur on that occasion - If we cannot form a pact among forces of change to modify things, we will all remain in the mire of the swamp that is advancing again. Since Berlusconi arrived, there has been no more talk of federalism." Words that find support from the then mayor of Palermo: "The experiences of the Rete and Bossi's movement must be united to defend freedom and democracy. Federalism can be a meeting point."

The story will then go very differently. But a certain ambition to use Sicily as a centrifugal force, like the League, against Roman centralism, remains. From this idea comes the rapprochement and the federal pact with Lombardo's Mpa between 2008 and 2010. The flag of secession is in the drawer, the battle shifts to fiscal federalism and in this sense, Bossi says, «Sicily can be the lever to start right away». The relationship with the autonomist president, first of the province of Catania and then of the Region, oscillates between highs and lows. When Lombardo enters Palazzo d'Orleans, he takes on the role of the secessionist: «I will ask the Minister for Federalism Umberto Bossi - he announces - that this secession really happens once and for all, but in Sicily. He can send us to hell: I am sure that, as independents, we will manage better than remaining under the tutelage of Rome». But the Senatur dismisses it as «a local matter».

Finally, there will come the years of mass landings in Lampedusa, of the League's opposition led by Bossi to the redistribution of migrants from Sicily to the northern regions, and of the sadly famous solution of the Senatur: «Fora de ball».