Fasci Siciliani

The Fasci Siciliani (), short for Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori ('Sicilian Workers Leagues'), were a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration that arose in Sicily in the years between 1889 and 1894. The Fasci gained the support of the poorest and most exploited classes of the island by channeling their frustration and discontent into a coherent programme based on the establishment of new rights. Consisting of a jumble of traditionalist sentiment, religiosity, and socialist consciousness, the movement reached its apex in the summer of 1893, when new conditions were presented to the landowners and mine owners of Sicily concerning the renewal of sharecropping and rental contracts.

Upon the rejection of these conditions, there was an outburst of strikes that rapidly spread throughout the island, and was marked by violent social conflict, almost rising to the point of insurrection. The leaders of the movement were not able to keep the situation from getting out of control. The proprietors and landowners asked the government to intervene, and Prime Minister Francesco Crispi declared a state of emergency in January 1894, dissolving the organizations, arresting its leaders and restoring order through the use of extreme force. Some reforms followed, including workmen's compensation and pension schemes. The suppression of the strikes also led to an increase in emigration.

Characteristics

The Fasci movement was made up of a federation of scores of associations that developed among farm workers, tenant farmers, and small sharecroppers as well as artisans, intellectuals, and industrial workers.Bruno Cartosio, ''Sicilian Radicals in Two Worlds'', in: Debouzy, ''In the Shadow of the Statue of Liberty'', pp. 120-21 The immediate demands of the movement were fair land rents, higher wages, lower local taxes and distribution of misappropriated common land.Seton-Watson, ''Italy from liberalism to fascism''
pp. 162-63
/ref> Between 1889 and 1893 some 170 Fasci were established in Sicily. According to some sources the movement reached a membership of more than 300,000 by the end of 1893. The Fasci constituted autonomous organizations with their own insignia (red rosettes), uniforms and sometimes even musical bands, and their own local halls for reunions and congresses. They were called Fasci ('' fascio'' literally means "faggot", as in a bundle of sticks, but also "league") because everyone can break a single stick, but no one can break a bundle of sticks.Il tribunale militare fu un abuso di Crispi
La Repubblica, 5 February 2009

While many of the leaders were of socialist or anarchist leanings, few of their supporters were revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the peasants who assembled into the Fasci were eager for social justice and convinced that a new world was about to be born. A crucifix hung beside the red flag in many of their meeting-places, and portraits of the King beside those of the revolutionaries Garibaldi, Mazzini and Marx. Cheers for the King were often heard in their marches that almost resembled quasi- religious processions. Many of the Fasci were part of the Italian Workers' Party ('' Partito dei Lavoratori Italiani'', the initial name of the Italian Socialist Party) that had been founded at a conference in Genoa on August 14, 1892.Scolaro, ''Il movimento antimafia siciliano'', p.18

The rural Fasci in particular were a curious phenomenon: both ancient and modern. They combined millenarian aspirations with urban intellectual leadership often in contact with workers’ organizations and ideas in the more industrialized Northern Italy.Clark, ''Modern Italy, 1871 to the present''
pp. 124-25
/ref> According to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the Fasci were millenarian insofar as the socialism preached by the movement was seen by the Sicilian peasantry as a new religion, the true religion of Christ – betrayed by the priests, who were on the side of the rich – that foretold the dawn of a new world, without poverty, hunger and cold, in accordance with God’s will. The Fasci, which included many women, were encouraged by the messianic belief that the start of a new reign of justice was looming and the movement spread like an epidemic.Hobsbawm, ''Primitive rebels''
pp. 98-101
/ref>

Foundation and rapid growth

The Fasci were the result of the revolt of the Sicilian peasants against the introduction of capitalist relationships into the rural economy aggravated by the world depression in agriculture of the 1880s.Hobsbawm,
Primitive rebels
', p. 96 The agrarian crisis between 1888 and 1892 led to a steep decrease in wheat prices. The island’s main sources of wealth – wine, fruit and sulfur – suffered a heavy blow. The dominant landowning class channeled most of the economic burden on to the peasantry, in the form of higher rents and discriminatory local taxation. As social tension rose, a handful of young and hitherto quite unknown socialist intellectuals – many of them recent graduates of Palermo University – seized their opportunity. The movement grew under the first government of Prime minister Francesco Crispi (1887–1891) and coincided with unpopular tax increases and ratification of a series of laws curtailing personal freedom. The Italian economy had been sliding into a deep recession since the late 1880s. New protective tariffs had been introduced in 1887 on agricultural and industrial goods, followed by a trade war with France, which badly damaged Italian commerce and affected Italy’s agricultural exports, the only potentially dynamic economic sector of Southern Italy. Many farmers suffered severely.Seton-Watson, ''Italy from liberalism to fascism''
p. 161
/ref>Duggan, ''The Force of Destiny''
p. 339
/ref>

The first official Fascio was founded on May 1 (Labour Day), 1891, in Catania by Giuseppe de Felice Giuffrida (an earlier Fascio was set up in Messina on March 18, 1889, but was dormant after its founder, Nicola Petrina, was arrested in July of that year and not released until 1892. Another reason why the first Fascio of Messina – formed after the example of the '' Fasci operai'' ("Workers leagues") constituted in Central and North Italy from 1871 – did not develop was that it brought together not individual workers but the workers' associations of the city, which retained their independence, their status and economic orientation). Other leaders included Rosario Garibaldi Bosco in Palermo, Nicola Barbato in Piana dei Greci, Bernardino Verro in Corleone, and Lorenzo Panepinto in Santo Stefano Quisquina. While the ruling elite depicted the men of the Fasci as treasonous socialists, communists and anarchists seeking to overthrow the monarchy; in fact many were devout Catholics and monarchists. The movement sometimes had a messianic nature, characterised by statements such as "Jesus was a true socialist and wanted just what the Fasci were demanding". Nicola Barbato was known as "the workers' apostle".

The keenest socialist among the Fasci leaders was Garibaldi Bosco. In August 1892, he attended the Socialist Party’s congress at Genoa and on his return obediently purged his Fascio of its anarchist and other non-socialist members. His ideal of a united democratic front was shared by the father of Sicilian socialism, Napoleone Colajanni. The leader in Catania, De Felice, also maintained contact with leading anarchists like Amilcare Cipriani

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