Between the Sicilian and the Mafia question. A study of the newspaper "L’Ora" in the late 1950s

In the 1950s, the Italian Communist Party acquired the newspaper "L’Ora" with the aim of strengthening Sicily’s left-wing public opinion. The new director, Vittorio Nisticò, former journalist of the Roman pro-communist newspaper "Paese Sera", followed a strongly regionalist line, critical of the Christian Democratic Party (Dc), and advocated a series of policies and alliances that did not necessarily follow those pursued at the national level. This strategy became clear in 1958-60 with the regional governments of Silvio Milazzo, which were supported by Dc dissidents, right-wing parties and, externally, by social-communists. At a certain point, this policy was accompanied by a pugnacious protest against the mafia and its relations with the Dc, which soon became the object of the newspaper’s attention. It is not surprising that a public discourse emerged describing "L’Ora" as an "anti-mafia newspaper". This article examines the initial phase of Nisticò’s direction, drawing from the newspaper’s archive and other historical documents. It argues that the regionalist dimension overlapped only partially with the anti-mafia one, which caught the public’s attention after the investigation that took place in the fall of 1958. The aim of this article is to shed new light on an understudied case-study.

Keywords: 2L’Ora", Nisticò, Sicilianism, Pci, Mafia, Milazzo

Ciro Dovizio, Tra questione siciliana e questione mafiosa. Sul giornale "L’Ora" nella seconda metà degli anni Cinquanta in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 297/2021, pp 36-66, DOI: 10.3280/IC2021-297002