For all these reasons, dear colleagues who have announced our trial in the streets, we tell you that we will not be prosecuted...
Aldo Moro has always been considered a calm politician. For this reason, the words he spoke on 9 March 1977 in the Italian Parliament, during a discussion on the Lockheed scandal, caused a certain sensation.
Surely many of his colleagues will have remembered them a year later when, on the morning of 16 March 1978, news agencies began to report that the president of the Christian Democrats had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades. They had killed the five men of his security escort and had taken him to the 'people's prison' to subject him to a 'proletarian trial'.
The 55 longest days in the history of the Italian Republic begin that day - 16 March - and ended on the following 9 May, when the terrorists left the body of the Apulian statesman in a red Renault 4, parked in a central street in Rome.
Who was Aldo Moro?
Aldo Moro at that time was probably, together with Giulio Andreotti, the most powerful politician in Italy.
He was spoken about openly as the next president of the republic. On that 16 March, the Parliament was preparing a confidence vote in the new government led by Andreotti.
This government was strongly supported by Moro, against many of his own party comrades. For the first time since 1947, the Communist Party would be an integral part of the majority. There is also discontent among the communists, but his kidnapping and the massacre of the men of his escort overshadow all the doubts that still hovered among the parliamentarians the evening before.
First, the Chamber and, secondly, the Senate take very little time to vote for the confidence in the Andreotti government, in order to have an executive with full powers in what will immediately be announced as the most difficult days in the history of the Republic.
Terrorism is not an exclusively Italian phenomenon. Spain and Ireland had to deal with separatist armed groups such as ETA and IRA, France and Germany live experiences, albeit at a lower intensity, similar to those in Italy. In France between 1979 and 1987 a group called Action Directe operated, while in Germany, the Rote Armee Fraktion, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, were active from 1970 to 1998. Just a few months before the Moro kidnapping, it had kidnapped the head of the German industrialists Hanns-Martin Schleyer, kidnapping which ended dramatically with the killing of the man and the death in prison of the group's founders.
A media kidnapping
During the kidnapping, the Red Brigades tried to exploit the press, trying to transform the media into a sounding board for the communications coming from the so-called people's prison, with which they intended to update the country on the 'process' they were subjecting the Christian Democratic leader to.
Many newspapers questioned whether it was the case not to publish those communiqués and some did.
The first communiqué, in which the terrorists claim the kidnapping and massacre of the security escort, was dated 18 March and was accompanied by a photo of the Christian Democratic leader, proof that Moro is alive, something that some had questioned.
They speak for the first time of the 'SIM', the imperialist state of multinationals and, as in the other communications, the language is twisted and you can read in filigree studies of the Marxist classics and an analysis that tries to take hold of the working class from which, however, precisely in those days, they seem sidereally distant.
The killing of Aldo Moro
This will be followed by eight other communiqués, to which the terrorists soon begin to add letters that Aldo Moro writes to his family and, above all, to the politicians on whom, he realises, his fate partly depends on.
The political parties firmly reject any negotiation and mediation, with the only exceptions of the PSI and the extra-parliamentary left who are afraid of creating a precedent, and that citizens may not understand.
Thus, on 5 May 1978, the Red Brigades send the 9th communiqué: 'In words, we have nothing more to say to the DC, its government and the accomplices who support it. The only language that the servants of imperialism have shown they can understand is that of weapons, and it is with this that the proletariat is learning to speak. We, therefore, conclude the battle that began on 16 March, carrying out the sentence to which Aldo Moro was convicted'.
Four hectic days of meetings and indirect messages follow. However, on 9 May 1987, the Red Brigades announce the execution of the Christian Democrat leader, giving directions to find his body in Rome's via Caetani, a few steps from the national headquarters of the Christian Democrats and the Communist Party.
What emerged clearly during the 55 days of the kidnapping was that the state was totally unprepared to handle an event of that magnitude. Terrorism was defeated a few years later, with the repentants, and because it was isolated in the country and very far from the interests of the classes it said it wanted to represent.
The Moro kidnapping in literature and cinema
A few months after the killing of the Christian Democrat leader, Leonardo Sciascia, one of the greatest Italian intellectuals, wrote The Moro Affair an instant book on the kidnapping, thus explaining what had prompted him to do so:
Aldo Moro dying, despite all his historical responsibilities, acquired an innocence that makes us all guilty, even me … By dying, Aldo Moro stripped himself, so to speak, of his Christian Democratic tunic. His body does not belong to anyone, but his death puts us all under accusation.
Many other texts, essays and novels have been written. But above all, it was cinema that tackled terrorism in general and the kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro and his escort in particular. In 1983, the first film was Colpire al cuore directed by Gianni Amelio, in which the 'years of lead' surround a difficult relationship between a father and a son.
Many controversies welcomed, in 1986, the release of Giuseppe Ferrara's film Il caso Moro, almost a chronicle of the days of 1978, but which evidently touched nerves still very much exposed, something of which the director was well aware, but which he boldly claimed.
On the other hand, Marco Bellocchio, who in 2003 directed Boungiorno, notte, completely changed the register: while not renouncing the news elements, he chooses an almost fairy-tale ending, in which he imagines Aldo Moro, let escape by a terrorist from his prison, on a spring morning, who finds himself walking in a deserted Rome on the notes of the splendid 'Shine On Your Crazy Diamond' by Pink Floyd.
This blog is part of the editorials of Europeana Subtitled, a project which enabled audiovisual media heritage to be enjoyed and increased its use through closed captioning and subtitling.