About one hundred meters away from Gerlando Sferrazzanetti’s tomb there was that of Antonio Colinari, who was reputed to be a Mafia boss. He was killed in an ambush while on his way to his farm. In the world of criminals, even the bosses cannot feel safe. He had a gun in the glove compartment of his car, but he didn’t have time to pull it out. Two masked men on motorbikes came abreast of his car and shot him dead. According to the investigators, he was killed by order of another faction of the  Mafia hostile to him.

Was he a mafioso? Was he killed by the Mafia? I cannot know. I only say that there is an official truth, which comes from the authorities, and the real truth. The two truths not always match.

To say that it was the Mafia that killed him is equivalent to say that nobody killed him. The Mafia doesn’t have a name like a person. It is something indistinct. With the alibi of the Mafia, criminals go unpunished. It would be more honest for the authorities to say, “We are unable to find the killers,” rather than say, “It was the Mafia that killed him.”

The Mafia recalls the myth of Odysseus and Polyphemus. When Polyphemus’s friends asked him who had been the one who had blinded him, he answered, “Nobody”. The same goes for the Mafia. When the authorities are unable to detect a culprit, they say, “The culprit was the Mafia,” that is nobody.

This is an excerpt from November 2: The Day of the Dead in Sicily

Ettore Grillo author of these books:

– November 2 The Day of the Dead in Sicily
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo