“To serve”
The Shape of Water“To serve” is the watchword attached to Silvio Luparello’s public image, condensing his cultivated posture of humble duty into a phrase that his political legacy makes deeply equivocal. Presented as a commitment to work quietly for others, it also accompanies the rise of a man who gathered influence, allies, and control of public and private contracts while remaining, for years, just behind the visible leaders.
A public language of service
Luparello’s career made service sound like self-effacement. He appeared at demonstrations, assemblies, and galas beside party leaders, but a step behind them, with a half-smile that suggested he stood there by choice rather than through protocol. Though repeatedly nominated for local and parliamentary elections, he withdrew each time for publicly announced reasons of humility, professing the wish to serve in silence and shadow. The phrase thus belonged to a carefully sustained public identity: restraint in the foreground, attention and influence accumulating out of sight.
The power beneath the posture
The narrative sets that language against the scale of Luparello’s actual political reach. For nearly twenty years he served from the shadows, then gathered followers of his own, beginning with Chamber Deputy Cusumano and later including Senator Portolano and Chamber Deputy Tricomi. The party in Montelusa and its province passed into his hands, along with about 80 per cent of public and private contracts. Even the upheaval brought by Milanese judges against a political class long in power left him untouched; his position outside the most visible roles allowed him to emerge as a critic of party corruption and standard-bearer for renewal.
The contrast between declared service and practical influence also appears in the employment of Pino Catalane and Saro Montaperto. Young land surveyors without surveying work, they had been hired as temporary ecological agents by Splendour through Cusumano’s generous political string-pulling, after giving their bodies more readily than their souls to his electoral campaign. This detail does not establish that the slogan itself caused their hiring; it does show the patronage environment around the politics Luparello shaped, where service and political loyalty coexist with access to work.
The watchword after Luparello
Luparello became provincial secretary as the standard-bearer of renewal, but the appointment came only three days before his death. In the televised account of the succession, the party elected Dr Angelo Cardamone unanimously and then asked Pietro Rizzo, described as Luparello’s spiritual heir, to work alongside him. Rizzo accepted after some resistance, calling the burden necessary if he was to remain faithful to his mentor and friend’s memory; the report said Luparello’s watchword had always been and only “to serve.”
The phrase consequently passes from the dead leader to the political arrangement made in his name. Cardamone had been Luparello’s open rival within the party, while Rizzo had been his most loyal right-hand man; their sanctioned partnership gives the language of service a new function, presenting compromise and continuity as fidelity to the predecessor. A left-opposition commentator identifies Rizzo as the alloy joining the two political figures, sharpening the irony: the watchword sounds like a pure principle, but it circulates through a system of alliances and negotiated power.
Meaning and irony
The expression is not disproved by the evidence that Luparello helped others or was remembered for generosity. Rather, the book places that reputation beside his command of party relationships and contracts, making “to serve” both a statement of public virtue and a revealing political formula. Its apparent modesty is especially resonant because Luparello’s power depended on remaining in the background until circumstances allowed him to step into the light.
Rizzo’s repetition keeps the phrase alive after its originator’s death, but also changes its effect. What once framed Luparello’s long, quiet accumulation of influence becomes a justification for a rapid succession and a new partnership between former opponents. The words promise service; the surrounding events show how readily that promise can be used to present political continuity as duty.
