Put one evening, around the same table, from the Church and La Torre. Topic of discussion? Mafia and legality, one could (easily) imagine. But the dalla Chiesa and the La Torre we are talking about are not the general ones Carlo Alberto and the communist deputy Pio, both victims of the mafia in 1982, with the first descending in Palermo on the day of the funeral of the first. Nando dalla Chiesa and Franco La Torre sit at the same table in Milan on May 22, 2015, on the eve of the anniversary of the Capaci massacre where Giovanni Falcone was murdered.
The occasion is the presentation of the book by Frank La Torre, "On the knees“, a title that is also the first image that portrays father and son together. Pio La Torre he is a character in our political history who makes his way through hardship and with a thousand sacrifices. He was born into a poor peasant family, but with his ability and will he manages to enroll in engineering. He won't get to the degree because the political passion and the desire for social justice, to be achieved alongside the peasants of post-war Sicily, take over. His political career, first in Palermo and then in Rome, is not linear; setbacks don't make him retreat, on the contrary. He knows the mafia phenomenon, he has seen its evil effects.
Arrived in the House presents a bill for the introduction in the penal code of the crime of "mafia-type association" (art. 416 bis) and the consequent confiscation of assets/capital illicitly accumulated by the mafia. The “Rognoni – La Torre law” will come into force on 13 September 1982, ten days after the death of General dalla Chiesa.
Sons talk about their fathers and identify many similarities. The belief that honors and promotions must be earned on the field, not by origins, memberships and/or co-optation; the sacrosanct principle, and transmitted to the children, that freedom is (above all) responsibility; a life holding its head held high for the principles and dignity that inspire it even if (or perhaps precisely because…) both fathers are forced to settle accounts to make ends meet.
The communist deputy had distanced himself from his father to take that road; the carabinieri officer, on the other hand, had emulated him. Their children took different paths, also passing through protests in their youth, but, as Nando dalla Chiesa recalls, not before being informed by the general, penal code in hand, of which behaviors constituted a crime. With the due consequences.
Two exemplary victims who didn't get the recognition they deserved. Pio La Torre, recalls Franco, was excluded from the pantheon of the communist party: a political opponent, Gianfranco Fini, at the time when he was Speaker of the Chamber, dedicated a commemorative plaque to him in Montecitorio. On the calendar for the 190th anniversary of the Carabinieri, the activities of the military to beat terrorism are recalled but – Nando recalls with a cracking voice – no trace of the General. Examples of that oblivion that is often bestowed on the honest heroes of this curious country by its institutions. Which do not always, and not necessarily, represent the best part of it.
