Mario Buda | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | October 13, 1883 |
| Died | June 1, 1963 (aged 78) Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy |
| Known for | Participation among Galleanists and involvement in multiple United States bombings |
| Part of a series on |
| Anarchism |
|---|
 |
Mario Buda (1883–1963) was an Italian anarchist who was active among the militant American Galleanists in the late 1910s and best known for being the likely perpetrator of the 1920 Wall Street bombing, which killed 40 people and injured hundreds. Historians implicate Buda in multiple bombings, though the documentary evidence is insufficient to prove his responsibility.
He emigrated from Italy's Romagna region, a cultural connection that would recur throughout his life. After working itinerant jobs across the United States and a short return to Romagna, Buda settled in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, where he ran a cleaning company and grew close to Italian anarchists and disciples of Luigi Galleani. The Galleanists Sacco and Vanzetti were among his best friends. Buda traveled with a Galleanist group to Mexico for several months in 1917 to prepare for European revolution that never arrived. With waning morale and news of Galleani's deportation, Buda and the Galleanists began to plan a series of retaliatory bombings. Buda was likely involved with if not responsible for a 1917 Milwaukee police station bomb, a 1918 dynamite plot, and a 1919 mail bomb campaign.
Buda's car was the link in the Boston robbery investigation that led to the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, a landmark American trial. Buda was never caught. Incensed by the prison sentence and charges against his friends, Buda is believed to have bombed Wall Street in retaliation. The federal investigation, now cold, did not name Buda in its files. Within weeks of the bombing, Buda left for his hometown, never to return to the United States. He continued his anarchist activism in Italy. During the 1930s, however, he became a collaborator of the Italian Fascist secret police OVRA and was involved in foiling an anarchist plot against Benito Mussolini, for which Buda's name was scrubbed from the state list of radical subversives. He returned to anarchist activism after World War II and continued to deny his involvement in the American bombings.