The man who wanted to change the world ….and Trapani
Mauro Rostagno (Turin, 6 March 1942 – Lenzi di Valderice, 26 September 1988) was an Italian sociologist, journalist and activist. [1]
He was one of the founders of the political movement Lotta Continua and the socio-therapeutic community Saman, initially inspired by the movement of Osho Rajneesh.
He was murdered in Sicily by Cosa nostra (Sicilian Mafia) after the murder of magistrate Antonino Saetta.
On the place of the ambush was placed a memorial that reads: Mauro Rostagno – “victim of the mafia” – «I am more trapanese than you because I chose to be». He was buried at the cemetery of Valderice, with a religious funeral.
Origins and training
Son of Piedmontese parents, both employees Fiat, grows up in Turin in a house in the area of Corso Dante. In 1960, at the age of 18, he married a girl slightly younger than him and by whom he had his first child, which is why he did not immediately achieve scientific maturity.
After a few months, he leaves his wife and daughter, first to Germany and then to the UK, where he adapts to the most humble jobs. He returned to Italy and settled in Milan, where he graduated from high school with the aim of becoming a journalist.
Participation in the Sixty-eight (Movement of 1968)
Returned to Italy, he enrolled in the newly founded faculty of sociology at the University of Trento.As a young PSIUP militant, in 1966 together with other students such as Marco Boato, Renato Curcio, Margherita Cagol, Marianella Pirzio Biroli, occupies the Trentino faculty, becoming soon one of the leading leaders of the Italian student movement “Sessantotto” (1968).
The experience led to a break in the old teaching patterns, but then several of its protagonists will lead to left-wing extremism and the experience of armed struggle: among these Curcio (who shared for some time the apartment with Rostagno) and Cagol, who later founded the Brigate Rosse.
Professors such as Francesco Alberoni, Giorgio Galli and Beniamino Andreatta confronted the students of the movement. There were moments of tension, occupations of the faculty, clashes with the missini and police forces. Mauro, a libertarian Marxist, non-violent and deeply opposed to armed struggle, was among the founders of the movement Lotta Continua together with Adriano Sofri, Guido Viale, Marco Boato, Giorgio Pietrostefani, Paolo Brogi, Enrico Deaglio in 1969.
The experience in “Lotta Continua” and the creation of “Macondo”
After graduation, for two years ago the researcher at CNR, then moved to Palermo between 1972 and 1975, because he is given the post of assistant in the chair of sociology at the University of Palermo. In those years he was responsible for spreading the political movement of Lotta Continua as a regional leader. In the 1976 parliamentary elections he ran for the Chamber as LC on the list of Proletarian Democracy in the colleges of Milan, Rome and Palermo, but the seat did not take place by a few votes.
After the dissolution of Lotta Continua, at the end of 1976, strongly wanted by him, he returns to Milan and in December 1977 is among the founders of Macondo (name taken from Cent’anni di solitudine by Gabriel García Márquez), a cultural center that became a reference point for the extreme left alternative.
The influence of Osho and the Saman community
After the closure of the cultural center Macondo, will choose to travel to India with his partner Elisabetta Roveri, who is for all Chicca, a girl from Milan, Brianzole origins, known in 1970 at the University of Milan, and their daughter Maddalena.
In Poona joins the oranges of guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho), which he became a follower by reading his own book, taking in 1979 from his Master the name of Swami Anand Sanatano (Anand Sanatano means “eternal bliss”).
In 1980, Rostagno returned to Italy and with Francesco Cardella founded the Saman community in Lenzi, near Trapani, together with Chicca Roveri, who had become his second wife. It is a commune inspired by the teachings of Osho Rajneesh, and when in 1981 Osho moved to the USA to found the controversial community of Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, Saman becomes a therapeutic community, which also deals with the recovery of drug addicts.
During this period he approached the socialist leader Bettino Craxi, who supports the activities of Saman and friends of Rostagno and Cardella.
The journalistic investigations in Trapani
Since the mid-eighties he has worked as a journalist and host for the local television station Radio Tele Cine (RTC), where he later also uses the collaboration of some boys from Saman. Interview with Paolo Borsellino and Leonardo Sciascia, and investigates Cosa nostra and its power.
Through the TV denounces collusion between Cosa nostra and local politics: among the many journalistic reports of the phenomenon, the broadcast of Rostagno followed all the hearings of the trial for the murder of mayor Vito Lipari, in which were accused the mafia bosses Nitto Santapaola and Mariano Agate, who during a break of an audience sent to tell Rostagno that «he should say less minchiate» on his account.
The ambush and death
On 26 September 1988 he was killed in an ambush in the district of Lenzi, a few hundred meters from the headquarters of Saman, inside his car, a white Fiat Duna DS, by some men hidden at the edge of the road; while returning to the community with a young guest (who will save himself becoming the only witness to the crime) the mafia hitmen shot him with a 12 caliber shotgun, which exploded in the hands of one of the assassins, and a 38 caliber pistol.
The crime of the mafia was the track immediately followed by the investigators: the head of the mobile team Calogero Germanà said that it was a typical crime of the mafia while the major Nazareno Montanti, Commander of the Operational Department of the Provincial Command of the Carabinieri of Trapani, he considered it a murder committed by amateurs, due to the fact that the gun exploded in the hand of the assassin.
During the last trial, which identified two members of the Sicilian mafia as those responsible for the murder, it became clear how clumsy the Carabinieri of Trapani, commanded by Major Nazareno Montanti, had conducted the investigation.
The public prosecutor Gaetano Paci reported during the trial that evidence had disappeared, that key witnesses had been heard late and that the wiretaps had been activated only eight months after the murder.
The magistrate declared in court:
” The first investigations into the murder of Mauro Rostagno conducted by the carabinieri of the Operative Department of Trapani were marked by too many anomalies. In this courtroom we have inevitably had to process certain attitudes of the police, but also of this courthouse, and in general of the city of Trapani. Because there were too many shortcomings in the investigation, omissions and underestimates. But also the thinking of certain institutional representatives of the time naturally adherent to the presence of the mafia.”
Strong emerged the suspicion of attempts to mislead on the first investigations that immediately excluded the mafia motive.
After some requests for filing and the constitution of some civil parties, in February 2011 began in Trapani the trial of first degree for the death of Rostagno, 23 years after his murder by mafia hand.
The Court of Assizes of the Sicilian city, presided by Angelo Pellino, in May 2014 sentenced to life imprisonment the bosses Vincenzo Virga and Vito Mazzara, accused of the murder of Rostagno.
Among the motives of the crime, decided by the leaders of Cosa nostra trapanese, there would be his numerous denunciations of the power of the Sicilian mafia (especially on the murder Lipari) and his refusal to more mild advice, made with threats and pressure.
