1972
March 11, Milan
Giuseppe Tavecchio, 60 years old, retired

Giuseppe Tavecchio found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he died “innocent”, as remembered by a plaque placed so as not to forget one of the many tragedies of the “years of lead”. The Municipality of Milan has chosen, after fifty years, to remember the Milanese pensioner who on 11 March 1972, while he was in Via Verdi, on the corner with Piazza della Scala, was hit in the neck by a tear gas canister fired from police.
A tragedy that for many years has undergone a “removal”, just like the title of a book by the writer Andrea Kerbaker who, thanks to his research work, has brought to light the story and the tragic end of a citizen who went out to do an errand and never returned home to his loved ones.
The plaque placed in memory of Giuseppe Tavecchio reads: “Killed innocent on 11 March 1972 by a tear gas canister during a walk on a Saturday afternoon marred by street clashes”.
That Saturday in Milan the Milanese anti-communist movement “Silent Majority”, which also included the then Missino Ignazio La Russa, had organized a demonstration in Piazza Castello. The anti-fascists announced a counter-demonstration and, during the rally in La Russa, attacked the police forces stationed to defend the anti-communist demonstration. The expected reaction of the police gave rise to clashes that raged in various city streets.
Giuseppe Tavecchio, who was 60 years old at the time, died during one of the phases of these clashes. A retired guardian of the municipal slaughterhouse, on the afternoon of that Saturday he went out to buy some meat from his trusted butcher, a former colleague of his. While he was at number 2 in Via Verdi, in a moment that according to some was of “apparent calm” in the clashes, he was accidentally hit by a tear gas canister fired by the police. He fell to the ground and hit his head, dying after a few days without ever regaining consciousness.
His death, also due to the direct intervention of the then Minister of the Interior Mariano Rumor, was dedicated to nothing but short articles in the newspapers: precisely those few lines struck a then adolescent Kerbaker, who in 2016 dedicated a book to restore dignity to a simple citizen, neither right nor left, victim of the violence of the Years of Lead. Kerbaker also dedicated a podcast to Tavecchio, the first of the “Milan is memory” series: you can listen to it here
https://www.comune.milano.it/web/incomune-webtvradio/podcast-e-video/milano-e-memoria?fbclid=IwAR3_z3a4eiNcCqVlIO5FyKOptz342YDj6LrsITI9mQqcIevx2uvW_cMhszA