A pink sweater, a string of pearls and coloured stones: she
smiles.
Threats and intimidations don’t frighten her: Adriana Musella denounces men
and Institutions colluded with organized crime, who are destroying the patient
job she is doing in schools to seed sprouts of legality and hope .But it’s hard
to fight a counter-revolution, especially if it’s one against an
institutionalized power.
" Will you ever be able to erase that gray
stain from your memory ? "
During the conference
against the mafia, Adriana Musella
recalls a story thirty years ago.
May 3, 1983 . Via Apollo , Reggio Calabria.
A car bomb explodes,
scattering in the surrounding area strips of flesh of an engineer from Salerno . A gray stain
remains on the wall of the building in front of the one where the young Adriana
lives . Traces of Gennaro Musella’s brain .
That man was not a
bureaucrat, neither a judge, nor a politician.
That man was his
father.
A common man, a
professional who had done something “wrong”, something that was not supposed to
do, who had denounced irregularities in a tender piloted by the "Cavalieri
dell’Apocalisse”, a Mafia association in Catania.
Victim of Mafia: an
ordinary person’s name.
That’s the title of
the book published on for the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Gennaro
Musella.
"I Never will get rid of that gray
spot" Adriana Musella
said.
"I will never take it out of my memory, I will
never be able to erase the pain. However, I can try to give it a sense building
an ethics of memory, based on education and information".
That is how she has
started her own mission in schools, engaging in a battle to raise awareness
against mafia and its crimes.
"Until a few years ago many were those who
even denied the existence of the Mafia. Now the memory of what happened to my
father lives beyond me. "
To remember all the
victims of mafia, she has chosen a flower, a yellow gerbera, symbol of sunshine
and rebirth, an image of the hope and determination of those who strive not to
forget.
