I learned late of the death of the Honorable Livio Stefanelli, a lawyer and militant of the Italian Communist Party from the city of Brindisi. I knew him as the provincial secretary of the young communists in the early 70s and before he was elected deputy in 1972. He was a point of reference, for his commitment also as a lawyer, for the CGIL and for the workers. He was their lawyer. I remember above all his dedication alongside the first workers’ struggles against wage cages (wages until 1969 were also established in collective contracts for geographical areas so in the same sector workers from the south had to earn less than those from the north) and for workers’ rights that were later recognized in the “Statute of Workers’ Rights”. But his social, cultural, political and then legislative commitment that made him a point of reference also nationally, was that for the struggles to overcome the colony and sharecropping which was the form of management by the peasants of the agricultural land entrusted to them immediately after the Second World War by the large landowners of Salento. A form that provided for the complete management and related work to be paid only by the farmers and the division of 50% of the cultivated product (grapes and olives especially) between owners and farmers. After years of struggles thanks to men like Livio Stefanelli and the PCI the colony was transformed into a rental with a law. That law was proposed and approved in parliament by Livio Stefanelli and had his signature. The Salento countryside and agriculture benefited from it. We got rid of a form of feudal and parasitic relationship that until the mid-70s was still prevalent in our countryside. His political and professional history as well as his militancy in the PCI was a democratic and anti-fascist reference in the city. As a city councilor he contributed in the 60s/70s to consolidate the social and working-class settlement of the PCI in the city but as an intellectual and lawyer he was able to represent an exceptional synthesis between city and countryside in the most delicate moment of the territory and its industrial transformation. After his parliamentary experience of two short legislatures (at that time in the PCI two parliamentary mandates were made) he returned to his profession and loosened his political and institutional commitment, characterizing it towards the end in 1983 in opposing the choice to build the Enel power plant in Cerano which was included in the reindustrialization plan following the petrochemical crisis of the early 80s.
In the PCI of Brindisi on this choice there was a tough debate and almost a clash that was perhaps one of the reasons for Stefanelli’s definitive estrangement from the party of which he had been an important representative. Reserved, gentleman, rigorous lawyer, as he was, he was an Italian communist not repentant like many who contributed to building the democracy of rights and duties. And of this democracy the PCI together with many like Stefanelli was one of the builders.
His reserve and his long illness may have contributed to his being forgotten but I believe that the city and the little left that remains of it have the duty to remember him.
I also remember him for two strictly personal aspects. In his office I met my wife when I was a young legal trainee. When I went to live in Rome in 1979 for a position in the national CGIL he rented me his house in Trastevere where I lived for over a year.
I want to remember him like this, aware as I am that in that clash in the PCI over the power plant I did not think like him and this contributed to damaging our relationship.
Carmine Dipietrangelo