Mattanza
The mattanza ( it. "Slaughter" ) is the traditional tuna hunt off the coast of Sicily and Sardinia .
From March the tuna schools migrate through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean to visit their spawning grounds. In straits, fishermen drive schools of fish passing by in a system of nets that form various chambers from May onwards. The tuna are drawn through the chambers, which are being drawn closer and closer together, to the inner chamber ( southern Italian: càmira dâ morti , "death chamber"), from which they are then lifted onto the fishing boats with grappling hooks. The tuna caught is processed on land directly in the tonnara (from tonno , "tuna").
The Mattanza between Trapani in Sicily and the island of Favignana , as well as that of Carloforte and the Isola di San Pietro in the southwest of Sardinia are known.
The yields of the Mattanza are constantly falling due to the overfishing of the stocks, so that the Mattanza is more of a tourist event today. In 2003 and 2004 it could no longer take place in Trapani. The schools of tuna have already been fully fished by international fishing fleets.
Importance related to the mafia
The term mattanza is also used in Sicily as a synonym for the Second Mafia War . It appeared for the first time as Mattanza di Corleone in connection with the Cosa Nostra disputes in 1958 . As a result, the bloody Second Mafia War initiated by the Corleonesians , which claimed up to 1,000 lives, was also referred to as the Mattanza di Palermo .
literature
- Theresa Maggio: Mattanza, love, death and the sea - a Sicilian ritual. 2001, ISBN 3-8284-5036-9
- Rob van Ginkel: Killing Giants of the Sea - Contentious Heritage and the Politics of Culture, 2005 VOL 15; Journal of Mediterranean Studies