•
Rating: "The most severe despair that can take hold of a society is the doubt whether living honestly is useless"
This is what writer Corrado Alvaro, originally from San Luca, said, a town that, owing to its name, evokes ghosts of bloody and dark stories. Stories of blood, power, entire populations subjugated to the will of a few, of dirty money mixed with clean, of gray areas where "the ostentatious poverty of people in certain towns" (as a journalist writes) and thus the cultural backwardness that manifests itself in the practice of violence and oppression, blends with the acquiescence of those figures of civil society who hold the most important positions in the realm of a country's development and progress. Politicians, magistrates, entrepreneurs, even law enforcement.
San Luca is indeed the heart of the 'ndrangheta, the so-called "Mamma." In one way or another, all decisions (from affiliations to sanctioning the beginning of feuds, territorial alliances, etc.) must be examined in the cradle of the 'ndrangheta.
In this book, Felice Manti (writer for "Il Giornale") and Antonino Monteleone (who is dedicated full-time to studying the phenomenon) reconstruct the rise of the 'ndrangheta to the throne of Italy's economic capital, namely Milan. The result is interesting, achieved by utilizing information obtained from careful analysis of legal documents, informational dossiers and acts from the prosecution (from Milan as well as from Reggio Calabria), but also from informal relationships with certain figures who operate in this field in a silent and meticulous manner.
The story
In the beginning, there was the triad: Don "Mico" Tripodo, Don "Mommo" Piromalli, and Don "Antonio" Macrì. Initially, the 'ndrangheta was still tied to the convenience of cigarette smuggling, extortion from small and large businesses, usury. Then came the big business: drugs, cement, and with them, kidnappings for ransom to amass money. In a short time, the 'ndrangheta transformed from a quasi-rural reality into an entrepreneurial reality, beginning to seriously contaminate the world of institutional positions and expanding beyond regional borders. Over the period covering these significant evolutions, alliances and power dynamics were sanctioned by two mafia wars. The first would lead to the opening of new, more profitable markets. New generations take over from the older ones. The second, born out of strong conflicts among the most powerful clans over the division of large contracts, would seal the definitive evolution. That of the relationship of greater cooperation between the 'ndrine and the formation of the so-called flat pyramid. The De Stefano, Condello, Libri triad as a purely administrative organ of reference and prestige. Not a dome, then, as the very nature of the 'ndrangheta presupposes control of almost all the territory, including various provinces, by individual families (the 'ndrine, precisely) that divide and share zones of influence.
Everything the 'ndrangheta achieves, it does so with violence. A fierce violence that knows no mediation when it comes to becoming exclusivists in a particular market branch. The repentant Fiorenzo Loforese recounts:
"I was a good trafficker, the best on the Milan scene. I was dealing heroin and would receive twenty kilos every fifteen days. I supplied Lombardy, down to Versilia. I dealt on equal terms with the Turks, and if you asked them, they'd bring you the tons. Just had to ask. Strange people, the Turks. Then those from Corsico arrived, the Calabrians from Platì, and in the end, the game was over. Trucks would arrive, and they'd kill the driver. Intermediaries would come to get the money, and they'd send them to the other world. It lasted ten years, then even the Turks got pissed off. It was the Calabrians from Corsico who started these damn messes, they were the ones who screwed up where fifty people were eating. They wanted to eat alone, and they fucked us over. I got to know the Calabrians well. And I can tell you: Calabrians are all bastards. If you put them against the wall, they'll start shooting"
Not only that. The 'ndrangheta is the most powerful criminal organization in Italy and perhaps in all of Europe. This has been possible thanks to privileged relationships with the main drug traffickers who operate across the five continents, to the lack of media attention (did any of you know that two bosses were recently released from prison due to the expiration of the indicting dossiers' delivery terms?), to the apparent impermeability due to the rigid recruitment system within its ranks and the blood ties between affiliates, which leads to an almost complete absence of repentance. And, of course, thanks to widespread omertà logic.
The rituals
Even the famous affiliation ritual has indeed evolved over time to first determine the formation of the "santa" and then the "vangelo" as a superior collegial body to which only a few can access and that allows, unlike ancient rituals, to come into contact even with institutional positions. This has ensured that ancient principles did not stifle or compromise the criminal free aspiration of new generations.
The gray area
But this book mainly manages to give an idea of how the system set up by the Calabrian bosses to ensure a prosperous business future is absolutely effective and very difficult to combat and eradicate. Because just as the 'ndrangheta recycles money derived from illegal activities into legal activities (hence the interest of companies in declaring every penny to evade the attention of the tax authorities and make the original paths of the money untraceable), so the bosses' children are initiated into the world of criminal entrepreneurship not starting as simple soldiers, but becoming lawyers, managing the family's "clean" businesses, doing business and acting as intermediaries for the clans with politicians and entrepreneurs.
In the background, Milan and Reggio Calabria are linked by an invisible thread that is woven with great patience. But also stories of secret services, of deviated freemasonry, of judiciary cornered, of the Reggio Calabria riots. Stories that have the 'ndrangheta as their common denominator.
In this regard, I also recommend reading the book "Fratelli di sangue" by Nicola Gratteri and Antonio Nicaso, a real essay that completely reconstructs the history and mapping in Italy and in the world of Calabrian clans.
Conclusions
And meanwhile, we are here, waiting for the state to spare some more resources for the investigative bodies, hoping once again that God saves us from the wiretapping law or cursing the tax shield and the like.
There is a need for a strong awareness on the part of everyone, but especially on the part of us normal citizens, and it's not the usual cliché. Because soon, we will be completely at the mercy of ourselves. And we will be truly screwed.
Loading comments slowly
