Partinico, the Municipality against the high school that wants to be called Peppino Impastato

It happens that a PartinicoMunicipality governed by the right (Mayor close to the Lega and majority close to Forza Italia, with only one member of the Council from the Left out of twenty-four), the administration wants to block the naming of the Scientific High School Peppino Impastatojournalist and activist victim of the mafia.

This was communicated by some militants of the Peppino Impastato club in Partinico, later confirmed by a press release issued by the country’s Communist Refoundation Party. We read: «This happens precisely at the moment in which, finally, a process is underway to remedy a historical error such as the naming of a high school to an ambiguous character like Santi Savarino, a signatory of the racial laws and who declared himself “at the disposal” of Frank Coppola, known as Three Fingers, one of the best-known exponents of the mafia of his time».

If the naming were really blocked, a serious political act would take place which indirectly would also contest the anti-mafia choice made by the institution itself, materialized in the desire to change its denomination in the name of Peppino Impastato, former student of this high school.

I asked Salvo Ruvolo, co-founder of the Peppino Impastato Prize and one of the activists who gravitate around Casamemoria (which, to date, has an all-female board, by choice and as a tribute to Felicia Bartolotta, Peppino’s courageous mother), who wrote me this unpublished letter:

«Dear Iacopo, as you can see we are still and always in our place, defending a name, a memory, an idea.

Partinico is a large village just a few minutes from Cinisiwhose municipal council was dissolved due to mafia infiltration in 2020. The prefectural commissioners who governed the municipal administration at that time accepted, last year, the school council’s proposal to change the name of the scientific high school from “Santi Savarino” to “Peppino Impastato and Felicia Bartolotta”.

Now, with the new majority fresh from the elections, the city council has decided to revise the decision of the commissioners, scheduling the motion of a majority councilor who asks to discuss the naming, already decided, in favor of Peppino.

We are faced with a really bleak political back flip: Santi Savarino has always been an embarrassing name, he was a journalist who collaborated in “the defense of the race”, a supporter of the fascist racial laws, who became a senator of the republic after the war. Savarino was also a loyal and devoted friend of the infamous Cosa Nostra boss Frank Coppolaalias Frank “three fingers”, one of the first criminals to undertake the drug deal between Italy and the United States, and most likely this friendship led him to be elected senator in ’53.

I can’t imagine two figures as distant from each other as Peppino and Senator Savarinoand it is disconcerting that in an area so exposed to mafia infiltration attempts were made to take a clear-cut position regarding certain characters who instead perfectly represent the intersection between mafia affairs and republican institutions.

If the municipal council of Partinico challenges the commissioners’ decision and chooses to keep the name after Santi Savarino, it will be a truly terrible sign, especially since the decision to dedicate the high school to Peppino and his mother had actually come from the students of the school.

You see, Iacopo, what do we still have to fight against? This year will be the forty-fifth year since the barbaric murder of Peppino, but the death of our comrade has never represented the epilogue of a story that continues to produce battles for freedom, truth and justice.
This is why there is a memorial house garrison in Cinisi, and this is why we established the Peppino Impastato prize: because unfortunately history often rewinds its course, and one must never let one’s guard down».

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