As I say, I hadn’t really planned my trip. At the last minute on the plane to Sicily though, I decided I should perhaps scope out at least one aspect of Palermo that wasn’t on our cut-and-dried itinerary – at least one sight that wasn’t a cathedral or an ancient ruin. And I saw on a map of Palermo that had been sent to us in advance that our hotel was just two blocks away from a large prison. Ah, that looked like just the thing.
As soon as we linked up with our tour guide at the Hotel, I asked about the possibility of taking a tour of the Ucciardone Prison. (Well, it could happen. I’ve been on tours of Chicago/Illinois prisons.) That request took our guide aback. I think she immediately pegged me as something of a loose cannon in the group. She said no one had ever inquired about touring the Prison before. It was the largest, most notoriously brutal prison in Sicily. She said that was where convicted Mafiosi were incarcerated. (I would have thought that would make it the most luxurious, most benign of prisons, since I’d expect Mafia members to get special privileges behind bars – but maybe that’s not how things work in Sicily.) At any rate, our guide said she’d look into the possibility of a tour, but she very much doubted that any were given.
I don’t think she ever followed through on my request. I never heard back from her about it. But I thought since the place was so close, I’d walk over there myself. Only a few pictures of the place had been available on-line, where it had shown up as a concrete fortress. But as close as it was, I never got there. I was so exhausted after having walked in the other direction during my one free day in Palermo (going to the Marionette Museum and through the vast outdoor Conservatory), I just couldn’t make it the two blocks to the Prison in the late afternoon. So I’ll never know.
Our guide naturally did make reference to Mafia activities in the course of our touring. Sicily, and Palermo in particular, is the epicenter of Mafia operations. Our guide said that nothing got built in Sicily, no business opened, no government project went forward – without the proper Mafia figures being paid off. As our innocent little bus went jouncing through the countryside – on our way to a luncheon at a Duchess’ farm estate – on our way from one town to another – our tour guide pointed out some of the consequences of this conflicting, multi-layer power structure in Sicily. She pointed out numerous stalled building projects, projects that might remain stalled forever. Unlike the Greek and Roman theaters, they wouldn’t become ruins; they were starting life as ruins.
There was a half-finished hospital on a mountain overlook. Construction on it had perhaps been started with a Mafia OK, which had then been overruled by the legitimate government - or else it was the other way around - the government had started the project, but insufficient numbers of Mafiosi had been paid off to allow completion of the building. We passed any number of apartment complexes in the same state of indefinite suspension. Technically, there are large scenic parts of the countryside where new construction is not allowed. But someone gets a Mafia go-ahead and starts. Then the government rallies the strength to step in and assert itself and stop the building. And so all these shells of buildings can be seen, testament to some failed negotiation between Mafia and government and public.
Trials of Mafia figures are on-going in Sicily. But for every high-level figure convicted, another springs up to take his place. It’s life immemorial on the Island.
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