Italy mourned the victims of organised crime on its annual Mafia Remembrance Day on Wednesday.
Some 30,000 Italians, many of them children, filed through the streets of this town in Calabria's most mob-ridden area, putting up posters of 700 Mafia victims since the 1980s and calling for change.
At the end of the march, led by campaigning priest Father Luigi Ciotti's Libera (Free) organisation, a monument was unveiled to the dead - Italy's second permanent tribute to Mafia victims after one in Rome.
"We have to say 'basta', enough," Father Ciotti said.
"The thought of so many lives being claimed by the Mafia is unacceptable in a democracy like Italy".
Premier Romano Prodi sent a message to the 12th annual event, saying "we kneel before the sacrifice of the victims and pledge never to forget them".
He said recent anti-Mafia protests, especially by the young, were "a sign of hope on a day of hope, the first day of spring".
Sport and Youth Policy Minister Giovanna Melandri said the government would do more to create jobs in areas of the south where youth unemployment is over 50%, depriving the Mafia of a prime lure for recruits.
Looking at the masses of children and teenagers waving tricolor flags and anti-Mafia banners, she said:
"You are beautiful, you are a warning and hope for the rest of us".
She said school history curricula should be changed to include accounts of the fight against the Mafia, starting with the story of heroic officials like prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, slain in the early '90s.
The Remembrance Day was marked in many other cities across Italy.
Flags flew at half-mast in Sicilian capital Palermo as a sign that "we will not bow to the Mafia threat," said Mayor Diego Cammarata.
