Gerardo Chiaromonte

Biography

He was born in Naples into a poor family from Roccanova, a small village in the province of Potenza. After obtaining a degree in engineering he moved to Milan in 1945 and became involved in the Italian resistance movement, a partisan force against the German occupation and remaining Italian Fascist forces of the Italian Social Republic (RSI) during World War II.

In 1945 he became a member of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI). Chiaromonte’s political ideas were somewhat moderate in the context of the PCI. He belonged to the so-called "meliorist wing" (corrente migliorista) of the party, whose members notably included Giorgio Napolitano, Giorgio Amendola, Nilde Iotti and Emanuele Macaluso. The term migliorista (from migliore, Italian for "better") was coined with a slightly mocking intent. In 1991 he supported the transformation of the PCI in the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito democratico della Sinistra, PDS).

In 1963 he was elected in the Italian Chamber of Deputies and in 1968 for the Italian Senate. He remained a senator until his death in 1993, heading the Communist group in the Senate from 1983-1986. From 1986-1988 he was the director of the party's newspaper l'Unità.

In March 1988, Chiaromonte became the president of the Antimafia Commission. The Commission studied the connections between the four Mafia-type organizations and the links between the Mafia and secret Masonic lodges. It lobbied for the introduction of new legislation such as the reform of the Rognoni-La Torre law whereby asset seizure and confiscation provisions were applicable to other forms of criminal association including drug trafficking, extortion and usury among others.

He died at Vico Equense in 1993.