«Pio La Torre a Botteghe Oscure. Mezzogiorno e la questione contadina alla prova degli anni Settanta»

Pio La Torre began to work in Rome at Botteghe oscure (the national office of Italian communist party) only in 1969, when he was more than forty years old yet. For being sincere, it was an advancement-removal: not a reward but a punishment for Sicilian communist party’s defeat in the last regional election, in the Spring of 1967. Nevertheless, along the following decade he became a very key protagonist of Italian comunist party’s politics, especially in the field of agricultural problem and about the southern question of Italy. So, he worked before as deputy of Gerardo Chiaromonte and Alfredo Reichlin, then leading the two important branches of the communist nazional office, becoming parlamentarian in 1972 too. In 1979 He was elected in the Italian communist national secretariat, abreast with Enrico Berlinguer. In spite of that, he urged to come back in Sicily as regional secretary in 1981. No one succeeded to persuade him of staying in Rome, so he came back to work in Palermo, where the mafia killed him and his driver in 1982.