Salvatore Giuliano - Rise To Infamy

Rise To Infamy

On September 2, 1943, he killed a Sicilian carabiniere at a checkpoint near Quattro Molini while transporting illegally purchased grain. He left his identity papers at the scene and was wounded when a carabiniere shot him twice as he was running away, it was then that he returned fire and killed the carabiniere. His family sent him to Palermo to have the bullet removed. In late December, a number of residents of Montelepre, including Giuliano's father, were arrested during a police raid. Giuliano helped some of them escape from prison in Monreale, and a number of the freed men stayed with him.

In the Sagana mountains, Giuliano collected a gang of approximately fifty bandits, criminals, deserters, and homeless men under his leadership and gave them military-style marksmanship training. The gang took to robbery and burglary for the money they needed for food and weapons. When carabinieri came to look for them, they were met with accurate submachinegun fire.

He also joined a Sicilian separatist group, Sicilian Independence Movement (MIS), which included members of very different political views, such as revolutionary socialist Antonio Canepa, centrist Giovanni Guarino Amella, right-wingers, most of them aristocrats, such as baron Lucio Tasca and duke Guglielmo Paternò, as well as some members with close ties to the Mafia, and outright Mafiosi such as Calogero Vizzini.

The union between Giuliano and separatist leaders came to fruition in the latter part of 1945. Giuliano entered the armed branch of the movement, EVIS (Esercito Volontario per l'Indipendenza della Sicilia, Volunteer Army for the Independence of Sicily), as a colonel and was promised that in the event of a separatist victory, he would be pardoned for his crimes and appointed to some position in the newly independent state. Defenders of the Giuliano-separatist alliance justified the agreement by claiming that Giuliano had been forced to become a bandit by the cruelty and injustice of the Italian state. Although an EVIS commander, Giuliano remained cautious about subordinating himself to the movement's leadership.

Giuliano led small-scale attacks on government and police targets in the name of this movement. He supported the MIS and the similar MASCA with funds for the 1946 elections, in which both groups did poorly. Reputedly, Giuliano himself would have liked to have seen Sicily become a state within the United States of America. He sent president Harry S. Truman a letter in which he urged him to annex Sicily.

Giuliano remained a long term problem for authorities. He continued to fight the Italian government in the name of the separatist movement. His attacks gained worldwide attention and made him a legend. In January 1946, at Montedoro, Giuliano and his band fought a brutal battle with authorities in which perhaps a thousand separatists took part. His actions kept alive the vision of Sicilian independence accomplished through the force of arms. Police and military forces were unable to destroy Giuliano’s EVIS formations. In fact, with the aid of the peasants – many of whom saw Giuliano as a sort of Robin Hood – and the landowners – who feared him – Giuliano continued to operate almost untouched.

Giuliano also fostered a number of myths around himself. One tale tells how he discovered a postal worker was stealing letters that contained money Sicilian families had sent to their relatives in the USA; he killed the postal worker and assured the letters continued to their correct destinations. When he robbed the duchess of Pratameno, he left her with her wedding ring and borrowed a book she was reading; he returned it later with compliments. He fostered cooperation of poor tenant farmers by sending them money and food. Contrary to some claims, he was not a Mafioso.