Salvatore Giuliano
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Salvatore Giuliano (Montelepre, November 16, 1922 – Castelvetrano, July 5, 1950) was a Sicilian bandit, black marketeer, and separatist, who has been mythologized after his death.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Salvatore Giuliano was born in Montelepre as the fourth child of Salvatore and Maria Giuliano and was nicknamed Turiddu or Turi. He had a decent primary education, but then went to work on his father's land at the age of thirteen. He transported olive oil and worked as a telephone repairman and on road construction. He was called into the Italian army, but the US invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) prevented his actual enlistment. He became involved in the wartime black market and was armed in case of attacks from bandits.
[edit] Criminal life
On September 2, 1943, he killed a Sicilian carabiniere at a checkpoint near Quattro Molini while transporting stolen grain. He left his identity papers at the scene and was wounded when another officer shot him as he was running away. His family sent him to Palermo to have the bullet removed. In late December, a number of residents of Montelepre, including Giuliano's father, were arrested during a police raid. Giuliano helped some of them escape from prison in Monreale, and a number of the freed men stayed with him.
In the Sagana mountains, Giuliano collected a gang of approximately fifty bandits, criminals, deserters, and homeless men under his leadership and gave them military-style marksmanship training. The gang took to robbery and burglary for the money they needed for food and weapons. When carabinieri came to look for them, they were met with accurate submachinegun fire.
He also joined a Sicilian nationalist group, the MIS, with close ties to the Mafia and led small-scale attacks on government and police targets in the name of this movement. His actions continued post-war, and he supported the MIS and the similar MASCA with funds for the 1946 elections, in which both groups did poorly.
Reputedly, Giuliano himself would have liked to have seen Sicily become a state within the United States of America. He sent president Harry S. Truman a letter in which he urged him to annex Sicily.
Giuliano also fostered a number of myths around himself. One tale tells how he discovered a postal worker was stealing letters that contained money Sicilian families had sent to their relatives in the USA; he killed the postal worker and assured the letters continued to their correct destinations. When he robbed the duchess of Pratameno, he left her with her wedding ring and borrowed a book she was reading; he returned it later with compliments. He fostered cooperation of poor tenant farmers by sending them money and food.
In 1947 with his group steadily shrinking he turned to kidnapping for ransom and turned regular profits. Also in that year there were more elections, following a limited victory for socialist-communist groups. On May 1 Giuliano led his remaining men on a raid to Portella Della Ginestra, intending to capture prominent communist Girolamo Li Causi. However, the event turned into a massacre. Eleven civilians, including woman and three children, were killed and more than thirty wounded. For almost half a century the responsibility for the crime was put down to Giuliano and his followers. Recently, through analysis of the ballistics records, the eyewitness accounts, and the necroscopic records, it has been discovered that the bullets the 11 victims received were shot from below, with 9mm Thompson beretta pistols, which neither Giuliano nor his men had in their possession.
[edit] Decline and death
Giuliano continued to work against socialist groups whenever he had the opportunity but by 1948 his popular support was ebbing. Locals and even the Mafia were less willing to aid Giuliano and helped the police, despite Giuliano's tendency to kill suspected informers. Giuliano dared police by sending them boisterous letters about himself and dining in Palermo restaurants and leaving a note about his presence with a tip. The reward for his capture was doubled, and a special police force was instituted to suppress banditry. 300 carabinieri attacked his mountain stronghold, but most of Giuliano's gang escaped. On August 14, 1949 Giuliano's men exploded mines under a convoy of police vehicles near the Bellolampo barracks outside Palermo. As a result the Italian government dispatched an additional 1000 troops to Western Sicily, with all troops under the command of Colonel Ugo Luca, perhaps Italy's most distinguished and capable military leader.
On July 5, 1950, Giuliano was shot in Castelvetrano. According to police, carabinieri captain Antonio Perenze shot him as he was resisting arrest. However, Gaspare Pisciotta, Giuliano's lieutenant, claimed later that police had promised him a pardon and reward if he would kill Giuliano. Giuliano's mother Maria reportedly believed this story. Pisciotta died four years later in prison from poisoning, after ingesting 20 centigrams of strychnine.
[edit] Dramatizations
A film of his life, Salvatore Giuliano, was directed by Francesco Rosi in 1961. A monument to Giuliano was raised in Montelepre in 1980. Novelist Mario Puzo published "The Sicilian", a dramatized version of Giuliano's life, in 1984. The book was made into a film in 1987, directed by Michael Cimino and starring Christopher Lambert as Giuliano. Probably the most significant work to date on Giuliano is Professor Billy Jaynes Chandler's "King of the Mountain," published in 1988 by Northern Illinois University Press.
[edit] External links
- Biography of Salvatore Giuliano
- Review of the film Salvatore Giuliano directed by Francesco Rosi by Derek Malcolm in The Guardian
- Bandit and Murderer, or Hero and Patriot? Biography of Salvatore Giuliano
