The centenary of the crime of Giacomo Matteotti, a young socialist deputy brutally murdered on 10 June 1924 in Rome by fascist squad members, was commemorated in Marsala. Matteotti dared to denounce the corruption and electoral fraud of Benito Mussolini’s government, committed by the nascent dictatorship.
The initiative was born thanks to a spontaneous committee with the intention of enhancing the knowledge of the politician Matteotti, a true symbol of anti-fascism. The committee includes: ANPI (National Association of Partisans), Italian Socialist Party, Green Europe, 5 Star Movement, Democratic Party, the Libera associations, Andè, Archè Onlus, CIF (Italian Women’s Center), Friends of the Third World, Con Te Donna , Legambiente Sicilia, Fidapa, Il Rumore delle Idee, Sapori & Colori, Storia Patria, as well as the trade union organizations CGIL, UIL and USB.
On Tuesday 4 June at the Golden cinema, which was sold out, the film “Il delitto Matteotti”, made in 1973 by director Florestano Vancini, was screened.
On Monday 10 June, in Piazza Matteotti, near the toponym, the laying of the tricolor flag and a laurel wreath took place. After the national anthem, a new plaque was unveiled, in the presence of Nino Oddo, regional secretary and national deputy secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, as well as representatives of the city institutions. The vice-president of the ANPI, Professor Giuseppina Passalacqua, intervened and meritoriously reconstructed the biography and the salient features of the political commitment of Giacomo Matteotti, while the municipal secretary of the Socialist Party, lawyer Antonio Consentino, focused on the events that led to the kidnapping, murder and hiding of the body of the socialist parliamentarian, in what remains one of the darkest pages of twentieth-century Italian history. Subsequently, two students from the Itet “Garibaldi” of Marsala read some passages from the parliamentary speech with which Giacomo Matteotti denounced the violence of the fascists which influenced the elections of April 1924. The speeches of the day were coordinated by the journalist Daniele Ienna.
The secretary of the PSI in Marsala, lawyer. Antonio Consentino: The anniversary of the centenary of the brutal assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, a true symbol of anti-fascism, could not go unnoticed, especially in an illiberal political phase whose scenario seems characterized by gags and worrying, latent authoritarianism. The commemoration of 100 years since Matteotti’s killing will not remain an isolated event. This is a spontaneous committee that will also be there in the future, which will make its presence felt whenever it is useful and/or necessary in the name of Giacomo Matteotti whose courage, even at the cost of his own life, can never be forgotten, indeed it must be periodically remembered, also so that the younger generations know fully who he was and what he represented from an anti-fascist perspective and how fundamental the good of individual freedom is. Sandro Pertini said that the most imperfect of democracies is always preferable to the most perfect of dictatorships. The citizens participated en masse and heartily in both events to honor a true socialist hero who paid a high price for having denounced, in his speech on 30 May 1924 in Montecitorio, the electoral fraud of the newly elected fascist government and the true face of the creeping dictatorship was shown, made up of abuses and prevarications.
