“THE ROSES, WHERE ARE THE ROSES?”
Chronicles and reflections on expressions of affection for Sara and Sandro, and on the anti-Mafia movement as a tool for counter-insurgency
During the night of Thursday 19th to Friday 20th March, a loud bang shook the neighbourhoods of eastern Rome near the Parco degli Acquedotti; inside the park, an explosion caused part of an abandoned farmhouse to collapse. The explosion and the collapse killed two of our comrades, Sara and Sandro. Their unwavering consistency between idea and action led them to take risks and cross the line between life and death.
Following this tragic event, the state attempted to take possession of their bodies, with the aim of rewriting their history; of concealing the love, respect and fraternity that surrounded them; of erasing their ideas and of erasing the proof that it is possible to act against this system.
It is possible that their bodies were located and identified in the hours immediately following the explosion, but the news of their deaths was kept hidden for a long time and only released in the afternoon via the mass media, through which everyone, including their families, learned of the tragic event. The State was thus able to decide how to tell this story, how to describe the two comrades, attempting to impose its own narrative on everyone and manage the affair according to its own ends.
If one of the aims they had set themselves was to secure a dissociation from our comrades and their disavowal, this could never have happened for the simple reason that these wretched loopholes never belonged to us.
Immediately, numerous statements were issued clarifying that Sara and Sandro are our comrades, comrades who were known, respected and loved, comrades who fell in action.
At this point, the state attempted to seize their bodies, holding them for days, thereby venting a belated vengeance against those prey who had never been captured and had now escaped forever from the courts and prisons.
Their bodies were suddenly released, and the families were forced to bury them immediately. This haste was intended to make it difficult for those who wished to pay their last respects, to make the two comrades appear as isolated and abandoned individuals, and to try to prevent this farewell from becoming an occasion for public commemoration of their figures, or for the vindication of their ideas and deeds. Continue reading “Italy: “The roses, where are the roses?”. Chronicles and reflections on the displays of affection for Sara and Sandro and on the anti-Mafia movement as a counter-insurgency mechanism”