The fathers of the country belong to everyone, especially when they are martyrs, somehow commandeered from collective memory. Being children of the fathers of the country means sharing them with the burden of their public life while growing up, and then as adults cherishing their memory and safe from exploitation. 40 years after that September 3, 1982 that saw the death of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa in a Mafia attack, his son Nando admits that he has had a difficult summer with requests for photos and stories that he has with the usual grace granted.
Which father was General Dalla Chiesa?
“He raised us above all by his example, which consists of a sense of duty, study and respect for the institutions, starting with the teachers with whom there was an alliance. If it was my mother who acted as the interface to the school in the difficulty of often changing cities, my father personally took care of the transfer when I went with him to Turin for the first time, where he had suddenly been transferred, because I had the exams in the fifth year. Once he spoke to my drawing teacher: Dad loved beauty, that I didn’t draw well depressed him. Writing was also close to his heart: he gave me and Rita more topics that he then read».
During the protest you expressed left-wing ideas: a line criticizing the general’s work. Have you raised the issue at home?
“I remember a heated discussion about the Palestinian issue, but he was a respectful father. There was never a break between us, there were important mediations, for example during my thesis I was an officer in the complementary Carabinieri students. I stuck to the ideas of the protest, with a fundamental respect for the institutions: I had lived in the barracks, I knew that the image of a purely repressive state, made up only of people with anti-grassroots ideas, is not realistic”.
How did you welcome France’s refusal to extradite the former terrorists?
“I see it as a sign that France is falling in love with itself, but the greatness of a country is also measured by its ability to let go of pride, think of the Pope’s apology to the indigenous people of Canada. France could not admit that it had taken unfortunate decisions at the time, confusing a terrorism that had sowed death in Italy with political dissidence, a democracy born of one of the most progressive constitutions».
You worked on the fiction Our General, which airs on Rai 1. Why did you choose to focus on the years of terrorism?
«It would have been difficult to reconstruct the whole story, which began with the resistance and then continued with the fight against the Mafia at different times between Corleone and Palermo: this part is only hinted at. It was decided to remember my father and to reward people from the anti-terrorist special forces who risked their lives for too long without saying thank you. Without them, Italy would not have defeated terrorism, public opinion did not immediately rebel en masse, as they say: I still remember the applause that greeted the news in the square in 1980 that Judge Minervini had been killed».
You are a mafia scientist, has September 3rd marked your career path?
«I had already dealt with the mafia before, at that time I was oriented towards other studies. The first writing about the anti-mafia movement in recent decades was the result of notes I made between 1982 and 1983 when I went to schools after my father’s murder: the questions they asked, the climate there how they connected teachers and students. In hindsight, I felt like a researcher that it was precious material. After all, it would have been impossible to face the Maxi Trial (of which Nando Dalla Chiesa was a witness, ed.) without resuming the study of the Mafia: a more intense and engaging field study than what I considered purer academics would have done ».
How would you tell your father to someone who wasn’t around?
«A general of the carabinieri and a prefect who helped radically change the attitude of the state towards the mafia: he had important insights into the mechanisms of mafia power, he declared that rights must be recognized by the state for citizens, not be offered as favors to the mafia. His going into schools as a prefect when nobody did, giving symbolic protection to teachers who spoke of the Mafia, created the conditions under which students who until recently viewed law enforcement as the enemy changed their minds: You know what it means to go from “Carabiniere, black beret, your place is the graveyard” to a moral alliance with the legacy of General Dalla Chiesa in three to four years’ time.
They say that in this country you have to be killed to get credit for your work, is that true?
“There’s a lot of truth to that. When a person is gone, hypocrisy and rhetoric can be used to celebrate them. Those who disturb certain social balances by fully representing the meaning of institutions that are not always alive are honored. At the funeral of Antonino Caponnetto, so to speak, not even a Secretary of State was to be seen”.
Among the family rituals, her father left her the crib. Was it a sign of faith?
«A basic religiosity, not bigoted, maybe not practiced every Sunday, but present. Our upbringing was Catholic, I was an altar boy, Rita the Heraldine. He spoke to Cardinals Martini and Pappalardo. In his construction of houses and cork stairs for the nativity scene there was also love for the family: he passed this tradition on to us so deeply that even my grandchildren have a cult of the nativity scene and my students give me the figures when they go abroad. .
Interview published in number 36/22 of the Famiglia Cristiana on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the General and his second wife Emanuela Setti Carraro, killed by the Cosa Nostra on September 3, 1982.