/ustica/

/ustica/

On June 27 1980, the same moment 81 passengers of an airplane ceased to exist, beside the meaning of the word Ustica, a toponym evoking a place, a beautiful black island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, another meaning emerged suddenly: the tragedy, the mistery, the massacre.

Forty years of trials and decoys made possible that when Italians think to Ustica the first thing that come up to their minds is the white and red wreckage of the DC9. Can an ugly thing pollute the meaning of a word? Can the ugly Italian politics ruin the landscape, not only physically, as it happens with illegal constructions but also culturally, ruining its image therefore its idea?

The first comment an inhabitant of Ustica would have about the airplane accident is that the island has nothing to do with it, the accident happened in the open sea, 115 kilometres away. In the beginning of the 90s the municipality council has even approved a motion to protest against the image damage the island received from the attribution of the massacre to Ustica. Narratives feed on places and to “materialise” in our mind they need to be associated to a physical reality. There are other accidents which are related to geographical toponyms but we tend to forget the ones with a clearly defined dynamic than the events for which a satisfying truth has never been found. It could be that the never-ending serie of trials and news induced the stigmatisation of Ustica island. This phenomenon is linked to the social amplification of risk, how is defined according to social and geography studies, meaning the role that media and public narratives have in amplifying perception and fear of places and causes of accidents or threats.

As the anniversary approaches, every year, the mayor of the island receive phone calls from journalists asking if the Ustica airport is still working of if some elder remembers the night of the accident. The flight was between Bologna and Palermo, in the little Ustica there has never been any airport and clearly nobody saw what happened more than hundred kilometres away. There are no direct links between the island and the massacre, on the island there are no memorials but if we search carefully, between the memories and the landscape of the island, a strong connection exists with the geopolitics of the Mediterranean Sea, which set the conditions that allowed the massacre, the decoys and the trials to become reality. Among those the deep relation with Libya: starting from 1911 almost thousand Libyan deportees were confined on the island. And the American influence: ustica for thirty years has been the island of Baseball, the sport introduced to Anzio shortly after the landing of the Allied troops in 1944.

Almost forty years went by and still there are no culprits for the massacre of Ustica: Unknowns. There is no expiration for a massacre offence and the judiciary is obliged to continue the investigation as new elements emerge. It is not clear who was responsible for the accident but how it happened was clarified after 19 years of inquiry. After five thousands pages of surveys the judge Priore concluded: the Itavia DC9 has been shot down during an episode of aerial warfare. No further details were given on it. The area is under NATO control but the presence of other military planes cannot be ruled out as a Libyan military jet and the body of its pilot were found few days later in southern Italy.

The idea of combining images of life on the island and landscapes linked to the tragedy, wants to give a cue to think about the link between those two antithetic meanings, about how this connection was suddenly formed and its consequences. After forty years from the massacre we want to remember and honour the 81 victims while rehabilitating Ustica in its original meaning of island.