Lamezia Terme – Reflection by the lawyer, Mario De Grazia, author of “Victims of oblivion” and “The night of the city” on the occasion of the thirty-third anniversary of the double murder of the street cleaners ‘to find out more and, given what happened, to preserve it memory’.
“On the morning of May 24, 1991, around 5 am, Francesco Tramonte and Pasquale Cristiano, while they were intent on their work as municipal ecological operators, were killed with a barrage of Kalashnikovs, near some garbage bins in the old Miraglia district of Sambiase. They were innocent and sacrificial victims “of a bloody struggle that broke out between mafia groups” as promptly reconstructed by the sentence of the Court of Assizes of Catanzaro, which although acquitted the only accused due to insufficient evidence, ascertained that “the barbaric massacre was intended to be a significant message, all the more effective the more it was determined by bestial brutality, addressed to everyone, public and private operators, a message that heralded new mafia balances and which could not fail to be taken into account in the spending of billions in urban waste collection”. The sentence, not appealed by the then prosecutor, closed the trial against the accused, but created the conditions to be able to continue the investigations into the mafia gangs fighting each other. The two innocent young workers died only because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But can a city, a civil community, be satisfied with just such an assessment and response? Can we be content with celebrating the ritual commemoration of this tragic event every year (which is certainly meritorious) and thus believe that we have fully fulfilled our tasks? Commemorate comes from the Latin cum memoro which means: I remember together. Therefore not a private memory, but a public, community one made with the mind and the heart (I remember = with the heart). This would require, albeit thirty-three years later, during which there have been three dissolutions of the City Council due to mafia infiltration, that: – on the one hand the memory is maintained and the memory is cultivated, but on the other that the city and its institutions, resume dealing with this past, with the many unpunished deaths and murders (spouses Superintendent Aversa, lawyers Ciriaco and Pagliuso, and before them also the Lo Moros, father and son, and the judge Ferlaino), affected by the hands and minds of the mafia present in the area. I especially remembered the two street cleaners in two books, ‘Victims of oblivion’ and ‘La notte della città’ (Pellegrini Editore). I tried to make a contribution to help keep alive the memory of the sacrifice of these two honest and humble fellow citizens and with it the need for the fight and civil commitment against the ‘Ndrangheta and its continued pervasiveness. Despite the long time that has passed, I still believe that it is necessary to find a way to continue the investigations to ascertain the truth and pursue the justice that has so far been incomplete. It is the first and authentic compensation that the city and the republican institutions owe to the victims of the ‘ndrangheta, their families and also to the many honest and hard-working citizens of this community of ours who want a free future, made of legality and civil progress”.
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