A small group of determined students in Palermo has succeeded where many have failed in the past by persuading local businesspeople in this Mafia stronghold to make a public stand against extortion.
A campaign launched nearly two years ago by students fed up with the unwillingness of their elders to speak out against the mob has finally borne fruit in recent months, as one by one local business people agreed to oppose the mafia extortion, known as pizzo.
Last month, a collection of businesses committed to "mob-free shopping" agreed to have their names and addresses published on an Internet site (adiopizzo.org), promoting resistance to the pizzo, despite the possible dangers.
The initiative is dedicated to the Sicilian businessman Libero Grasso, murdered in 1991 for speaking out against the pizzo.
"I don't feel brave: it just feels right. Even though I have never had any problems with racketeering in my shop, I wanted to be part of the fight against a taboo and to ensure people could speak freely about the pizzo," said Loredana Fulco, as she stands in yellow apron and flour-covered hands beside the table where she hand makes her fresh pasta.
It all began two years ago when the walls of central Palermo were plastered overnight in hundreds of anonymous stickers opposing the pizzo.
"A people that pays the pizzo is a people without dignity," read the tiny black and white notices.
Local media became interested by these anonymous messages and the mystery deepened so much that the local prefect convened an "extraordinary public order committee."
"When we realized the `sticker trick' had worked, we made ourselves known, then we started looking for businesspeople who we could convince, one by one, to continue the campaign with us," said Barbara Glangrave, a 24-year-old communications student.
Eventually, clothes shops, pizzerias, travel agencies were among more than 100 businesses that had agreed to sign up.
Maurizio Vara, 37, owns a small eight-room hotel in Palermo and paid the Mafia levy for three years. It took death threats for him to gather the courage to make a formal complaint to police.
"I had a metal workshop near Palermo, and employed 30 people," he said.
"One day two guys turned up. They told me who they were, why they were there, and demanded 5 million lire [US$3,250] `as a start,'" he said.
"I thought if I paid they would leave me alone. But if you start to negotiate, if you give in once, you are screwed," he said.
Everyone in the district knew who was practising the extortion, said Vara, but proof and witnesses were needed for them to be taken to court, as well as brave people, and that was never the case.
The "guys" came more and more frequently, once or twice a week, sometimes for small sums of a few hundred dollars sometimes to insist that an employee be taken on. In the event of a refusal, reprisals followed rapidly.
"One day after an argument I found my offices burned out. It became a living hell. I lost my peace of mind, my sense of values, I stopped thinking about the future, about innovating or developing my business," he said. "I always gave in because I feared the worst."
In June 2002 things took a serious turn for the worse.
"They came looking for me because they were due to take me `somewhere' in a car. And in Sicily when they take you `somewhere' a car without saying where, that is a really bad sign," he said.
Vara managed to escape and then went to the police who arrested some 10 people, and he had no subsequent problems.
Except that a few weeks later he found the button of his entryphone covered in glue, a classic Mafia warning sign. This time he went straight to the police.
Around 7,400 consumers have agreed to shop at adiopizzo businesses, and the local authorities have also come on board, agreeing to pay more frequent visits to the businesses that have signed up to ensure their safety.
The latest act of defiance came shortly after the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano in April after almost 43 years on the run.
Despite Provenzano's arrest, the Mafia is still very powerful in Sicily, with an estimated 80 percent of businesses in Palermo paying protection money to the mob.
The Mafia manages to maintain the pizzo system by asking for small sums from everyone, said Maurizio de Lucia, an anti-Mafia investigating magistrate.
"When you have a business, that allows you to survive, but not expand. People have an impossible choice: pay a few hundred euros and get rid of the problem until the next time; or file a complaint and run a huge risk of intimidation," de Lucia said.
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