Historians, researchers, scholars from various Italian universities will participate for two days, 17 and 18 May, in Palermo in a reflection promoted by the Sicilian Gramsci Institute on the troubled transition from fascism to democracy. That process had begun precisely in Sicily with the landing of the allies on 10 July 1943 and had determined, with the collapse of Nazi-fascism and its mass bases, a new world order.
The welcome reserved for the allied invaders represented, according to the historian Manoela Patti of the University of Palermo and author of studies on Sicily and the allies, “the most evident aspect of this process, which matured in the civilian population and in the army during the difficult years of the conflict”. The occupiers thus transformed into liberators and the population “greeted their arrival as the moment that marked the end of the war”.
“The island – is Patti’s opinion – was the first piece of Italy but also of Europe conquered, occupied and administered by the Anglo-Americans. For this reason it represented a laboratory for the allies in which to experiment with occupation policies , to be extended to the occupied territories, which sought to reconcile the principle of self-determination of peoples with military needs”.
For a few months Sicily remained outside the process started with the landing first and the fall of fascism afterwards. “It was the political parties on a national scale that reconnected with national society, that gathered in regional society the energies necessary to address ancient and recent problems”, claims the historian Rosario Mangiameli who has done important research on the landing and the Sicilian post-war period. The democratic process passed in Sicily through the push for participation and the struggles of the peasant movement. “The national parties counterposed the utopian reaction proposed by the separatists and the insurgence of a mafia linked to the interests of the large estates – Mangiameli underlines – with an autonomist project as a development program framed in an equalization vision”. Sicily thus became not only a political but also a cultural and social laboratory, an “important part of democratic Italy”.
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