A Twentieth Century Warrior

By Patricia Winton

In May 1992, I visited Florence as an American tourist. As I left my hotel at dusk on May 23, I encountered a march through the streets. It was eerily silent. No chants. No music. Flaming torches and somber faces snaked through the Florentine streets. It turns out that similar marches wove their way across Italy to show respect for an anti-Mafia judge who died earlier that day in Palermo, Sicily. Giovanni Falcone is a modern-day warrior who relentlessly pursued the Mafia and was blown to bits by a roadside bomb for his trouble.

Born in Palermo in 1939, Falcone grew up with future mafiosi and at least one other future judge as playmates. Educated in the local classical high school before studying law, he was appointed magistrate in 1964. Falcone played a key role in investigating some of most famous Mafia-related cases of the time.

In the early years of his career, he worked on bankruptcy cases, eventually linking Mafia criminal actions with payouts and bribes to politicians and high-ranking government officials. He was known for his attention to detail and copious notes; working without a computer, he detailed data retrieved from studying multiple bank records. This work led to numerous prosecutions and convictions, putting Falcone in the crosshairs of the Mafia for the first time. He is credited with pulling together various arms of the Italian criminal justice system which, prior to Falcone, had operated independently of each other.

Using the “follow the money” skills he had honed on the bankruptcy cases, he traced the Marseilles heroin labs uncovered in the “French Connection” to their new locations in Sicily. The web of crime touched Turkey, Switzerland, and Naples. The money trail led him to Mafia connections in New York. Soon, Falcone began working with U.S. law enforcement, first with Rudy Giuliani (then U.S. attorney, and later New York City mayor) and Louis Freeh (then a New York prosecutor who later became director of the FBI). This work led to uncovering the famously complex “Pizza Connection,” whereby drug and other Mafia money was being laundered in New York pizza restaurants. Here, too, his focus on cooperation led to increased international crime solving.

Falcone and Borsellino

This period saw intense Mafia violence in Sicily. Various judges and police commanders were assassinated, and Falcone—a long-time member of a crack anti-Mafia pool of judges and prosecutors—rose to lead the squad. The team’s membership included Falcone’s life-long friend, Paolo Borsellino, who had kicked soccer balls with him and the future mafiosi in Palermo' Piazza Mangione decades earlier.

Because the death threats were frequent and credible, Falcone and his team worked in a bunker-like space beneath the judicial offices in Palermo. He was accompanied by bodyguards wherever he went, and his home was equally secure. Borsellino lived and worked in the same conditions. Falcone often said, "My life is mapped out: it is my destiny to take a bullet by the Mafia someday. The only thing I don't know is when." Borsellino was equally fatalistic. “Giovanni's my shield against the Mafia,” he said. “They'll kill him first, then they'll kill me.”

Together with the team, Falcone and Borsellino pursued their investigations which led to the “Maxi Trial” of 1986–87. In this trial, 400 defendants and 8000 pages of indictment yielded 342 convictions totaling 2,665 years in prison. The case hinged on testimony by informants. Perhaps because he kicked soccer balls with some players as a child or perhaps because their shared background meant he spoke their language, Falcone was able to wrench testimony from many. One of these, Tommaso Buscetta, had fled to Brazil where Falcone pursued and interviewed him. After giving Falcone valuable information, Bruscetta told him, “This will make you famous—and bring your death.” Buscetta later went into witness protection in the United States.

Remains of Falcone's bombed car

The strength of his security team made assassination difficult for his foes, but as Falcone had predicted, the Mafia got him in the end. They planted a half-ton of explosives under a bridge to the airport that he would drive over. Detonated by remote control, the bomb killed Falcone, his wife, and three bodyguards. And true to his prediction, Borsellino, along with five police officers, was taken out by another car bomb 57 days later on July 19.

Both men have been awarded Italy’s highest civilian honor, the Medaglia d’oro al valore civile (Gold Medal for Civil Valor). Streets and piazzas throughout Italy bear their names. For the tenth anniversary of Falcone’s murder, Nicola Piovanni, winner of the Academy Award for the musical score of La Vita È Bella, Life is Beautiful, wrote a commemorative piece performed at a memorial service in Palermo. In this, the twentieth-anniversary year, both Falcone and Borsellino have been honored across the country. And I remember those flaming torches and silent, somber faces in Florence.

I blog on alternate Thursdays on Italian Intrigues. Next week, I’m blogging about rosemary.

A Strike Against the Spanish

By Beth Green

A warrior largely ignored in the West, Lapu-Lapu was a chieftain in the 1500s who is celebrated in the Philippines today. His claim to fame?

Image from Rare Books Division, Princeton.edu

He killed Ferdinand Magellan.

Most children in the West learn about Magellan, the Portuguese sailor exploring for Spain who set out to find the westward route to the Spice Islands around the tip of South America. But I’m betting not so many of our readers remember the warrior who commanded Magellan’s downfall.

Here in the Philippines, especially in Cebu City where I now live, Lapu Lapu is a national hero. I’ve been reading quite a bit about him—though I’m guessing there’s more I haven’t learned yet!—and I’d like to share here something about this daring man who fought a foreign invasion.

At the time of Magellan’s death, Lapu-Lapu (his name varies a bit in the annals of history, but this is the currently used version), was a datu, or ruler, of Mactan Island. Mactan is a small island, which in present day is ringed with imported sands and fancy resorts. It’s connected to Cebu City, the oldest city in the Philippines, by two bridges and a lot of economic ties.

Speaking of economics, Magellan arrived in the Philippines looking for spices, directions to spices, and more spices. Oh, and converts to Christianity. Those were good too. He didn’t have much luck with the spices here, but the ruler of Sugbu (now Cebu City) and his queen decided they’d throw in with the newly presented deities and get baptized. Now named Carlos and Juana, they set the stage for Catholicism to enter the Philippines, and even now, more than 500 years later, it is the most popular religion in the country.

Carlos and Juana’s neighbor Lapu-Lapu wasn’t in such a big hurry to change his old god for anybody new. (Some web-pages I’ve visited suggested Lapu-Lapu was Muslim, other sources disagree.)

Either because of the question of converting to a foreign faith was abhorrent to him,  because he didn’t like these weird-looking sailors in their strange ships, or possibly because he had a feud going with Humabon-now-named-Carlos, Lapu-Lapu refused to bow down to the might of the foreign ships, sovereign, or god.

Lapu-Lapu Memorial Statue. Image by whl.travel/Flickr

One source quoted on Wikipedia suggests that Magellan may have made a faux pas when approaching Lapu-Lapu as well. Magellan may have approached the islands with the idea that the ruling classes were structured like those in Europe. That thinking would have led Magellan to believe that Carlos was more powerful than Lapu-Lapu because the latter controlled a lesser population on a neighboring island. However, to get to Cebu City harbor, ships would have had to pass through a narrow channel between Cebu Island and Mactan Island. Therefore, Lapu-Lapu probably was more powerful than Carlos because of his strategic location even though he had a smaller population under his command, or so the theory goes.

Anyway, whether Lapu-Lapu disliked Magellan because he felt the European was disrespectful, or he just had a bad feeling about the newcomers, when Magellan told him that he’d attack Mactan Island if Lapu-Lapu didn’t swear fealty to Spain, Lapu Lapu called his bluff.

Magellan was accompanied on his round-the-world cruise by an Italian adventurer, AntonioPigafetta. Pigafetta kept a faithful diary of events that occurred along the way (and unknowingly discovered the international dateline when he got back to Europe and realized he was a day off in his diary), and it’s from his account that we get most of our details today. Lapu-Lapu’s locals asked for one more day’s leniency before the battle so that they could gather more troops and make it a fairer fight. In fact, though, they had plenty of fighters, but they wanted a little more time to dig some traps before the Spaniards disembarked.

Mactan and Cebu today. A fluvial parade. Image by Storm Crypt

Magellan and his men were at a clear disadvantage from the beginning. First, the men on shore were fighting for their homes and freedom. And, once Magellan ordered his men to set fire to huts in the village, I can imagine any locals who were initially ambivalent about fighting the foreigners decided that Lapu-Lapu was right to attack. Second, the Spanish were wearing heavy armor in a humid climate. However, because of the reefs and shallows around Mactan Island (I’ve been scuba diving there several times) Magellan couldn’t bring his ships Victoria or Trinidad close enough to shore for either the ship’s guns to come into play or to get the Spanish fighters off easily. Even using smaller vessels to get nearer, the foreign troops had to exert themselves wading through water over their knees to get to the beach—while Lapu-Lapu’s townspeople rained poisoned arrows and bamboo spears on them from relative comfort. The Spaniards weren’t wearing armor on their legs, and—you’d have seen this coming if it were a movie--Magellan caught a poisoned arrow in his leg. 

Realizing he was done for, Magellan ordered the rest of his men (Pigafetta among them) to retreat, and they watched in horror as Lapu-Lapu and his freedom fighters hacked Magellan to bits with long knives.

Today, Lapu-Lapu is remembered in the name of a town on Mactan Island, which still guards the waters of the Cebu City harbor. His statue stands in the square, and legends have cropped up around his story.

But, perhaps the greatest token of his fame as a warrior is his depiction on the PhilippineNational Police badge, representing “the symbol and embodiment of all the genuine attributes of leadership, courage, nationalism, self-reliance and a people-based and people powered community defense.”