The Associated Press
By Tom Rachman
January 31, 2003
 

CORLEONE, Sicily (AP) -- This is bloodied land, stained by murder and
torture during years as the private property of Sicily's most notorious
Mafia boss, a man they call "The Beast."

Today, however, after years of association with Italy's ugliest products,
the Mafia, this turf yields one of its tastiest: pasta. Young farmers have
taken confiscated mob land and turned it into fields of grain for pasta --
finally harvesting good from towns such as Corleone and showing that Mafia
culture can be defied.

"Ten years ago, something like this would have been unimaginable,
impossible," says the pasta project leader, Gianluca Faraone, standing on
what once belonged to Corleone's ruthless boss of bosses, Toto "The Beast"
Riina. "In the grottoes around here, there used to be dead bodies, people
who had been killed."

"We're not just contrasting the Mafia's negative image with the positive
image of pasta," the 28-year-old says. "We're looking at having more
concrete results, to change things in our territory, to demonstrate that
it's possible to create development and jobs legally."

Anti-Mafia spaghetti is only the most attention-grabbing result of a battle
to grab mob property and turn it into something useful.

About 500 million euros ($540 million) worth of Mafia property has been
confiscated in Italy so far, with about one-third handed over for new uses.
Mafia-owned land now produces wine and olive oil. Buildings owned by thugs
now house police barracks and schools.

There has even been a recent suggestion to house the homeless of Palermo in
mobsters' old apartments.

In other countries, crooks' wealth is sold off with the profit going to the
state. Not in Italy.

"It was difficult to assure that the goods didn't get back into Mafia hands
through front men, family members or other ways. Also, the goal was to give
a symbolic use to this wealth," said Giovanni Colussi of the Libera
organization, which was behind the 1996 law that assigns Mafia property to
social uses.

"It's not just an issue of money -- there's also a value in showing that the
state won a battle against the Mafia," he says. "And this victory must be
immediately visible to the people of the towns where they live."

Blighted Mafia towns in Sicily could do with decent examples. The island has
long lagged behind the rest of Italy and far behind other parts of Europe.
The Mafia is in great part responsible, by punishing Sicily's courageous,
holding back the talented and eating away at growth.

Corleone, south of Palermo, has suffered further indignity as home to the
mob's most bloodthirsty gang. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Corleone family
produced Sicily's darkest Mafia period, as Riina's gang murdered anyone who
impeded it, including judges and police.

Finally, they went too far, killing two famous anti-Mafia prosecutors --
Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino -- who were admired around the
country. The 1992 murders produced such rage that the state had to act.

Authorities arrested Riina in 1993 after more than 20 years on the lam, and
most other top Corleone mobsters followed. Riina is now serving life in
prison.

Prosecutor Roberta Buzzolani says that confiscating mobsters' property is a
fundamental way to hit back at them. "Prison may be something that the
criminal takes into account," she said. "But the confiscation of wealth is
something a mafioso just can't stand."

As for the ravaged mob towns, anti-Mafia groups put together projects to
educate kids about obeying the law, while small groups of farmers began
turning dirty land into something clean.

Faraone's project employs 14 people, aiming to hire those with troubles,
such as physical handicaps or drug problems. Their "Libera Terra," or "Free
Land," pasta arrived in a small number of Italian supermarkets last month.

The project employs the master pastamakers of Corleone, who use
old-fashioned bronze molds and a 40-hour drying process. The pasta comes in
several forms, including spaghetti with three-foot-long strands.

In the short-term, Faraone hopes his project will help change Corleone's
ugly image. His long-term plan is that the town's people will be able to
live from their land legally and with pride.

"Pasta represents the work of man, the toil, the chance to nourish, to live
with a simple food that is born of the hard work of man -- not through short
cuts aimed at getting rich easy through illegal methods," he says. "It's a
chance to live with dignity."