A Memory That Still Walks

May 24, 2012

The State Funeral

The Italian State took sixty-four years to bury Placido Rizzotto. Not because it didn't know. It knew. Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa had identified the killers in 1950, written his report, delivered the evidence. But the network of cover-ups held, and Placido remained officially a missing person — as though he had simply vanished.

On March 16, 2012, the Council of Ministers approved a State Funeral. On May 24, President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano came to Corleone. He came in person, to that city which for half a century had meant one thing to the world: Riina, Provenzano, the Mafia. He came to honour a man who had challenged that Mafia with a red flag at dawn and his bare hands.

Napolitano spoke of a "sacrifice that has borne fruit". Placido's nephew cried from the altar: "May the Mafia never pass this way again." Sixty-four years of waiting, in a single sentence.

"The State Funeral of Placido Rizzotto" — CGIL Camera del Lavoro. Corleone, May 24, 2012. Sixty-four years after his disappearance, his remains were brought to light by two tireless detectives.

Placido Rizzotto is one of the 1,117 names read aloud every 21 March across Italy.

Every year, on the first day of spring, Libera reads aloud the names of all innocent victims of the mafias. A civic litany that lasts for hours.

Full list at vivi.libera.it →

Since 2001

Libera Terra: land given back

The impact of Placido Rizzotto does not end in the annals of history. His vision of land freed from exploitation has found concrete expression in modern policies for the social reuse of assets confiscated from the Mafia.

In 2001, in the Alto Belice Corleonese, the first agricultural cooperative under the "Libera Terra" brand was founded, named after Placido Rizzotto. This initiative has transformed land that once belonged to the Corleone Mafia into centres of certified organic production, providing dignified employment for hundreds of young local workers and proving that legality can be a stronger economic engine than crime.

Products bearing Rizzotto's name — wine, pasta, preserves — now travel worldwide, carrying a message of redemption and dignity.

Ongoing vigilance

The Placido Rizzotto Observatory

The FLAI CGIL established the Placido Rizzotto Observatory, which publishes periodic reports on the caporalato phenomenon (illegal gang-mastering) and agricultural Mafia networks. This body continues Placido's battle in spirit, monitoring new forms of agricultural slavery affecting Italian and migrant farmworkers alike.

Caporalato — the illegal recruitment of agricultural labour through intermediaries who exploit workers — is the modern form of the system of abuse that Rizzotto fought with his life. The Observatory keeps watch over this system which, though changing shape, constantly attempts to reassert itself in the Italian countryside.

8th Agromafie Report · 2024

The threat today: the numbers

Italy's legal agri-food chain is worth €620 billion, with record exports of €69.1 billion in 2024. Yet organised crime has nearly doubled its turnover in the sector in just over a decade.

Colonisation of the land

A key finding of the Report is that criminal organisations no longer limit themselves to controlling intermediate links in the supply chain (transport, wholesale markets, large retailers). They are now directly acquiring farmland and agricultural businesses. Using vast reserves of illicit cash, they offer loan-sharking to farmers in crisis who cannot access bank credit, then take over their businesses and use them to launder money. The phenomenon is nationwide: many provinces in northern and central Italy show very high agro-Mafia permeability indices.

Transnational caporalato and sham cooperatives

The Report identifies the rise of transnational caporalato: illegal end-to-end networks managing migrant journeys (mainly from India, Bangladesh and Africa), their placement into agricultural work and their exploitation, bypassing legal migration channels. Workers, indebted from their journey, are reduced to near-slavery. In northern Italy (Veneto, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna) the phenomenon hides behind sham cooperatives: fake labour contractors that underpay workers, dodge contributions and vanish within a couple of years.

EU funds and cybercrime

Mafia organisations (Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, the Gargano Mafia) siphon EU agricultural subsidies (CAP, AGEA funds) through false land ownership claims and compliant officials. On the digital front, ransomware attacks are disrupting food supply chains for cryptocurrency ransoms, while cyberlaundering and the online counterfeiting of PDO and PGI products represent the new frontiers of agri-food crime.

Agromafie — 8th Report on Agri-food Crime in Italy Observatory on Criminality in Agriculture · Coldiretti & Eurispes · PDF, 8 MB

Instruments of living memory

How his story continues