Forty years is a long time and to measure its depth enough to think that in 1959 had passed quaran'anni since 1919, ie one year of the "red biennium", which was forming and strengthen the fascist party, which in 1969 had gone forty years by the Lateran Pacts, which closed the sessanennio the "Roman Question", which in 1979 celebrated the forty years since the beginning (August 1939) of World War II with the 'Nazi invasion of Poland.
In this turbulent 2009, marked by the global economic crisis and from the miseries of the Italian political scene, marks the fortieth anniversary of massacre Piazza Fontana, the first major event (after the assassination of both Kennedy) that I can claim to have direct memory, although outlined nell'inquietante play of light and shade of black and white era of TV news.
of those images on the evening of Friday, December 12, 1969 cherish the memory of the black hole on the floor of the central hall of the National Bank of Agriculture, lounge strewn with debris, which had already been taken away the dead and wounded, and the dismay of the fact that, in my eyes of eleven, he was frighteningly prodigious and inexplicable.
Even the photos of crime scenes are in black and white, which is the color of memory and that, in contrast tra luci e ombre, non restituisce ma paradossalmente attenua la cruda verità che apparve agli occhi di polizia, carabinieri, vigili del fuoco, medici, infermieri: le pareti chiazzate di sangue, frammenti di ossa e di materia cerebrale, i corpi anneriti dei morti, i pezzi anatomici sparsi, il colore della vita annientata o segnata per tutta la vita.
E le foto non dicono gli odori di quella scena, dall'acro della nitroglicerina uguale ai disinfettanti di ospedale al dolciastro della carne bruciata, al sentore di mandorle amare del binitrotoluolo (che era uno dei composti dell'esplosivo).
Leggo da qualche giorno "Il segreto di piazza Fontana" di Paolo Cucchiarelli (Ponte alle grazie), perhaps the most complete and documented essay on the massacre and attacks that hit Rome on the same day (the basement of the National Bank of Labor, Altare della Patria, side yard and Museum of the Risorgimento, the bomb at the Commercial Bank of Milan, is not likely to burst but leave a "signature" that would serve the political overtones was hastily made to shine in the courtyard of that institution's credit).
It 's a big book of 700 pages (including a technical note on the type of explosive used in Piazza Fontana, thanks, the dense index of names), also full of references to analytical engineers (the kind used for bags and boxes which contained the explosives, ad esempio), molto diverso nell'impianto e nella narrazione da "La notte che Pinelli", il saggio con il quale Adriano Sofri ha ricapitolato la vicenda del ferroviere anarchico che precipitò da una finestra della Questura di Milano e i suoi sviluppi giudiziari; e ancora diversissimo dal lucido e tenero ricordo di "Spingendo la notte più in la" che ha proposto la inedita prospettiva delle vittime dei fatti di terrorismo, a partire dal ricordo di Mario Calabresi, che perse il padre quando aveva appena due anni eppure conserva un ricordo puntuale di quei giorni.
Il segreto della strage, nella lucida e argomentata ricostruzione di Cucchiarelli, è nel fatto che essa fu una strage "doppia", in cui furono coinvolti gli Anarchists believe to have a blast just "demo" and in fact lured into a trap by the beams of the New Order (Freda, Ventura, and their group Veneto-Padova) and National Vanguard (Stefano Delle Chiaie), which in turn operated one part of the secret services, who wanted to attack but striking demonstration to support a plan of authoritarian turn, the nature of what he had brought to power the Greek colonels, but where someone plays dirty, and instead just the massacre, even to force his hand, you get the opposite effect to stop the authoritarian turn, feeding only the theory, however politically useful, the "extremists on both sides."
It is worth quoting a passage from the book:
"The secret of the massacre has endured for so many years enjoying the silence of all stakeholders: state, fascists and anarchists. Valpreda plans had to exonerate and vindicate the innocence of Pino Pinelli. We were made to pull in, and now the situation has not let anyone escape political difficulty was proved in court their good faith did not want to cause deaths. From a legal point of view, the participation of anarchists to the story would was at least a competition in the massacre. The units that were guilty of complicity with the Fascists had to protect themselves. Nor could jump out of the role of political police that the secret services were held, covering and detecting, by fleeing witnesses and evidence-concealing or subtracting just to prop up the advantage that the massacre had offered. Similar priority was the need to remove from the real culprits materials sentences of the massacre, the fascists. Would otherwise have been able to deploy an incredible blackmail against those who, inside the equipment, had supported the operation. Which in fact happened with the subsequent massacres. Saving the secret of the massacre, he also saved the fascists. That's probably because of the massacre was followed on both sides, the acquittals, the same state. If he had distinguished between a stock and the other, everyone would be forced to admit something unmentionable in public. The trap in which the anarchists had fallen, that the left had to defend at all costs, had now become a secret shared political protection. By all stakeholders. Fall into that trap so a whole generation. "
second Cucchiarelli In practice, the afternoon of Friday, 'Dec. 12, 1969 between 16 and 16:25 in the hall of BNA entered two people at different times: first, Valpreda, had a bag containing a metal box with an explosive triggered by a timer (probably believed that the "rush" timer was set at 120 minutes, and then the bomb would explode at the bank now empty), the second with a bag containing plastic explosive with a fuse primer, which placed his bag on the shelf of the central octagonal table close to what was left unconscious Valpreda, it was the first bomb to explode in a few tenths activating second of even the first bomb, which was equipped with a detonator outside, no one felt two explosions, because they were almost instantaneous.
reconstruction, argued and documented, it is quite likely, and has the honor of sending to place virtually all the pieces.
If I may add a personal impression, I would say that is quite consistent with the image of smallness sprovvedutezza and I had one night of Peter Valpreda when autumn of 1976 (or 1977? here I am comforted by the memory not good), I went with another Bari collaborators of Radio One to take the building of the University of Bari, in a classroom the Faculty of Arts where he held a meeting on fire right on Fountain Square, to take him up on the eighth floor of Via De Giosa corner with Piazza Luigi di Savoia Carulli street where they were studying Bari Radio One.
That evening aired a radio interview conducted by Carlo Brienza, then director of Bari Radio One, and I seem to remember that there were also Peppino Garibaldi, Bianca Tricarico, Fortunata barley, perhaps Susan Napolitano and ask apologize if I forgot someone.
I had no way (I was one of the latest additions to the editorial staff) to ask questions to Valpreda, but I saw him well, I watched, listened to his answers, especially on the role of Mario Merlino, the fascist infiltrated the circle XXII Marzo Valpreda founded by Rome.
one gets the impression that it was a modest person, very modest for general intelligence and politics, general culture and politics, completely unsuited to the role that was allotted, and yet something about him I'm not persuaded of the everything I could not see the stigmata of the martyr, the innocent do absolutely destined to be the scapegoat.
was a vague impression that has remained buried, and that comes to my mind re-reading the pages of Cucchiarelli.
If the hypothesis of the book is accurate Valpreda accomplice was active (but unaware of the fatal and that he never imagined he would not want) the massacre, was the man who, along with other anarchists, he fell into the trap, and that had all the characteristics of smallness and sprovvedutezza to become an instrument of a design raffinatssimo could not understand, in its mediocrity and inadequacy, as he could not understand, except when the massacre was a done deal and irreversible, Giuseppe Pinelli.
Cucchiarelli I fear that may have been right after ten years of research, consulting all available sources and some oral source informed of the facts.
If so, we really fell into that trap all of them and the history of the last forty years must be rewritten from this uncomfortable truth.
