Daniela Marcone, vice-president of Libera, told us what the purpose of the Day of memory and commitment is. And what memories give her the strength to fight every day.
On 21 March "what matters is participation, what matters is being there and joining a people that is not silent, that senses that the mafia presence must be countered through shared feeling, through a sense of citizenship and through the desire to be with others, because one is certain that it is important." Daniela Marcone, vice-president of Libera, is in no doubt about this.
21 March is the Day of memory and commitment in remembrance of the innocent victims of the mafias. "We spent months preparing for this event," Marcone confesses. In 2019, Padova is the centre of the national initiative, which for the first time does not involve a single region but three – Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trentino Alto Adige. In the squares of many other towns across Italy, the names of all those who lost their lives at the hands of the mafias will be read aloud – almost a thousand people "whose stories we know, but at the end of the reading of that endless list we will also remember those whose names we still do not know."
21 March is not the anniversary of one victim's death, but a day that remembers them all. And it coincides with the arrival of spring. The path that leads from pain to rebirth is undoubtedly tortuous and, like ivy branches climbing one over another, it intertwines with the one that leads from memory to commitment.
"Seventy-five per cent of the families of innocent victims do not know the truth about how their loved ones died. Living with the absence of truth is extremely difficult, something deeply painful: unfortunately I have lived this experience first-hand; I live it every day." Daniela Marcone's voice cracks just barely, only for an instant. "The many years of commitment with Libera have helped me find another truth: the value of the people who stand by my side, and an awareness of who my father was. It is by clinging to this that I have been able to survive. And when I speak with young people I realise that mine cannot be only a painful testimony, otherwise I leave them nothing but a fleeting emotion."
Founded by don Luigi Ciotti, Libera was established in 1995 and is a network made up of various actors, including cooperatives, dioceses and schools, all committed to fighting the mafias in a constructive way. To do so, the involvement of new generations is indispensable. Every year more than 4,000 young people take part in summer training camps on land confiscated from organised crime – places that, thanks to the organisation, acquire new life and become the setting for entrepreneurial or social cohesion projects.
"Young people respond well to stimuli, but they obviously need to be encouraged and cannot be left on their own. It falls to us adults to accompany them and to offer them an alternative model that is not the heroic one, because, while it is true that the most famous victims are regarded as heroes, they are in reality human beings who, starting from a life like the one each of us lives every day, made a choice."
Libera joins proceedings as a civil party in trials and provides legal assistance to witnesses, to the families of victims, and to those who find the courage to report incidents of extortion and violence. It is working extensively on what is known as "the third way": this does not concern collaborators of justice, but simply the people – above all women and minors – who decide to leave a mafia context.
"The number of women, especially mothers, who ask for help to escape the mafias, their world of lies and death, is growing all the time. I believe we must help them, as in our small way we are trying to do, offering footholds to their hunted and clandestine lives," these are the words of don Luigi Ciotti.
"As in our small way we are trying to do": don Ciotti himself, despite the size and strength of his organisation, knows that there is still a great deal of work to be done and that victories are won over time and through everyone's commitment. "A daily commitment," adds Daniela Marcone, "because if we act responsibly every day, with a strong sense of civic duty, we unknowingly counter the mafias. The mafias grow where there is neglect, indifference, silence, where people look the other way at what is happening around them, where there is ignorance. The people of Foggia, for example, did not understand what was happening, or perhaps they did not want to understand it; it made us feel safer to think that the mafia belonged to distant lands. Now awareness has grown."
Indeed, on 21 March thousands of people in Foggia too decided to march to show that they know, that they remember, that "collective memory is the greatest wealth a community can possess." And this wealth translates into great strength, into the desire to share with others and into the certainty of being able to count on them. Daniela Marcone takes part too, and she is not alone: in her heart burn the memory of her father and that of Angelica, a little girl whose story no one else knows. "I live for her, and she gives me the strength to always keep going. I do it not only for those who are no longer here, but with my gaze turned towards those who are living."