1969
09 April, Battipaglia (SA)
Teresa Ricciardi, 30 years old, teacher
Carmine Citro, 19 years old, printer

In April 1969, news reached Battipaglia of the imminent closure of two large companies in the city: the tobacco factory and the sugar factory. A protest march is called for April 9th. Already from the early hours of the day, a few hundred people gather and, escorted by police and carabinieri, begin to move in a procession shouting ‘Let’s defend our bread’ and ‘Enough with the promises’.
In the late afternoon we arrive at the decisive clash: the procession channels its anger against the police station in via Gramsci, inside which about a hundred police and carabinieri are barricaded and begin to shoot at the crowd, killing Teresa Ricciardi, a young teacher who was following the clashes from the window of his home, and the nineteen-year-old student Carmine Citro, who remains on the ground among the crowd. Many were injured. On April 11, the day of the victims’ funerals, Italy comes to a halt.