Camorristi, Politicians and Businessmen

The Transformation of Organized Crime in Post-War Naples Vol 11

Felia Allum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351196499
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"This work presents a detailed study of the political role of a criminal organization, the Neapolitan Camorra, in its historical context, that of Naples over the last fifty years. In Campania, until 1991, the population tacitly accepted the relationship between the Camorra and the local political elite (based on the exchange of votes for state contracts and protection), and because of the lack of reliable sources it could not seriously be studied by political scientists. In 1991, however, a law was passed which gave generous remission of sentences to criminals who wanted to cooperate with the police. Following this, many members of the Camorra revealed important aspects of the criminal, economic and political activities of their organization. This new information has permitted a re-examination of the Camorra and has provided material for the story to be told."

Part I
The Transformation of the Neapolitan Camorra

Chapter One
The Campania Region: The Territory, the People, and the Polity

Έ' stato detto giustamente che la camorra non spiega Napoli; è semmai la storia ultima di Napoli e della Campania a spiegare la camorra.'¹

The 'territory', the 'people', the 'polity' of Naples and its region are often presented and represented by foreigners with mythical or quasi-mystical connotations. It is not a straightforward task to construct an overall sense of Napoletanità, to explain what it means to be Neapolitan, without falling into this trap. However, an attentive reading of Neapolitan sources and an acquaintance with the harsh realities of the city and its hinterland should help to keep a clear sense of perspective and highlight without oversimplifying or romanticizing the contradictions and characteristics of the region which has become the stronghold of the Camorra since the early 1970s.

Neapolitan Contradictions

As many studies have already shown,² the Campania region is beset by a number of contradictions. Geographically, it has, on the one hand, the barren mountains of the interior, with a dying pastoral economy; and, on the other, the very fertile coastal plains, Campania felix, with intensive market-gardening and rich horticulture (tomatoes, citrus fruit, vineyards and fruit trees), not forgetting the presence of a disruptive and unpredictable element: an active volcano, Vesuvius.

Campania has always been, agriculturally, the most productive region of Italy and yet in the 1950s its peasantry remained chronically poor because of the extreme fragmentation of the land and the high proportion of both landless labourers and tenant farmers, who were subjected to iniquitous lease arrangements while also often having to cope with the burden of large-family responsibilities. Far from the idyllic images of the Neapolitan family banqueting in bucolic farmhouses, they lived in very stark conditions and were often locked into a master-servant relationship with their landlords. Even when they owned their land, small farmers were vulnerable, at the mercy of the weather and market prices, and prey to middlemen and racketeers for the sale and distribution of their produce.

As a result there has been, from the 1950s onwards, a strong population movement from the mountains and the countryside to the cities: Naples, the provincial capitals of Caserta and Salerno, and the coastal towns of Torre Annunziata, Castellammare di Stabia or Torre del Greco, which as a result have become densely populated and, indeed, often overpopulated areas. Naples currently houses over half of the population of its province of some three million persons. This important demographic growth created a problem for the economy, as employment in the region could not keep pace with the increase in population, thus exacerbating the unemployment problem.

Industrially, another contradiction plagued the immediate post-war period: on the one hand, there were a few large modern industrial plants employing reasonably well-paid workers (Italsider, Falck, MCM³) while, on the other, there remained a large number of small artisanal family workshops employing many (underpaid) relatives and feeding even more: again, the same fragmentation and vulnerability in this small type of industry as in the agricultural sector.

However, the major feature of the Neapolitan economy since the war has been the existence of a large stratum of 'officially' unemployed people, most of them unskilled workers, who have to moonlight to survive, in what has been called 'the slum economy' (P. A, Allum, 1973a, p. 40); or, as Belmonte describes them, 'these unskilled, un-regimented and endlessly resourceful masses, labouring here one day and there another, idle and then not idle, starving and not starving and alternating always between today's life and tomorrow's despair' (pp. 139-40).

It has been argued that this was due to the fact that Naples changed too rapidly from being a pre-industrial to an industrial city in the first half of the century, with some socioeconomic features of the pre-industrial era persisting while others were transformed and modernized. 'Changes are taking place which are pushing the sub-proletariat into a worse position than before the breaking up of the traditional forms of subsistence, with the consequent incapacity to take part in the economic life of the city.'⁴

The socio-economic situation has been desperate throughout the post-war period. Naples and the Campania region suffered greatly during and after the war, in particular from Allied carpet-bombing, German sabotage in September 1943 and military occupation in 1943-46. Norman Lewis, a wartime British military policeman and writer, recalls the city on liberation in 1943: 'the city of Naples smells of charred wood, with ruins everywhere, sometimes completely blocking the streets, bomb craters and abandoned trams. [...] To complete the Allies' work of destruction, German demolition squads have gone round blowing up anything of value to the city that still worked.'⁵

Maurizio Valenzi's (PCI Mayor, 1975-83) impressions a few months later were similar: 'the thing which really upset me was my encounter with Naples. Until then, the image I had was rather conventional, a picture-postcard image, a folklore picture in the worst sense of the word. [...] Certainly, it was not easy to survive, in the midst of the war ruins — there was not one building, not one home which was spared by the bombs and added to this dire starvation and abject poverty.'⁶ A young Monarchist historian, Antonio Degli Espinosa, added: 'all public services, trade and honourable occupations had broken down and the population, which had previously lived in an orderly manner, was now transformed into a mass of people determined to survive at all cost.'⁷

These and other testimonies confirm the disastrous effects of the war on Naples. Consequently, the population resorted to all types of legal and illegal economic activities to survive. Black market and smuggling became a "regular job" for hundreds of Neapolitan families'.⁸ The culture of illegality which is so often associated with Neapolitan life flourished: 'the storm of the war and of the post-war period caused the growth of illegal markets, giving renewed vigour to violent crooks and to their role as mediators above and against the law.'⁹

These illegal activities were so essential to everyday survival that they were tolerated by the city authorities; any repression would have caused a mass revolt. As a result, delinquent individuals and groups were able to organize themselves seriously and take over these illegal markets.¹⁰

Thus, Naples in the 1950s was a turbulent place where the slow and chaotic reconstruction of economic activities and of normal living conditions allowed the culture of illegality and criminality to thrive with the complicity of the law enforcement agencies.

In the 1980s, the circumstances remained almost as desperate as in the 1950s, especially for the poorer classes. Peter Robb, the Australian writer, describes his arrival in Naples in 1978 in vivid terms:

Naples in 1978 was, after nearly three millennia, showing her age. The unutterable scenic beauty of the bay and the city hardly bore a closer look. A lot of it was a filthy, polluted slum standing on the foulest sea in Christendom. Twelve rats for every human, someone had calculated. Its schools, libraries, hospitals, universities, museums, prisons must have been the worst in Europe. Visits to a bank, a post office, the town hall were hallucinatory experiences. The res publica, taken to include health, education, transport, politics, communications, entertainment, sport, personal safety, was a lost cause. By the usual measures of social well being Naples was a disaster area. Five years earlier there had been an outbreak of cholera. The incidence of hepatitis was the second highest in the world, as I found when I became infected myself. A wave of infant deaths panicked poorer districts for much of my first year. There was a lot of talk about a mystery illness but there was nothing mysterious about the squalor that bred infection. The third world begins in Naples, people used to say, and a lot of statistics were third world.¹¹

A small well-to-do class with large apartments in Posillipo, a summer house in Capri or Ischia and an expensive lifestyle, existed alongside a mass of unemployed (about 25 per cent in Naples), who were often illiterate, living in squalid, overcrowded conditions in the bassi, hardly making ends meet, engaging in casual labour, moonlighting (lavoro nero) and, whenever necessary, in illegal activities in order to survive. These were the 'two cities' (due città) or 'two societies' described by the writer Domenico Rea:¹² 'two populations who live in the same districts, the same streets, the same buildings but have two different languages, two different visions of life, of work, of society, of customs, of morality which are totally distinct.'¹³

We must also remember that, to make things worse, an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale hit Campania on 23 November 1980. It had tragic consequences for the region and its future: not only were 2735 people killed, more than 7500 injured and 1500 reported missing, but many villages, towns, and cities were badly damaged. More than 3000 people in Naples were made homeless, with their houses requiring urgent repairs. Even today, twenty-four years later, many streets and flats in Naples still need repair.

All these contradictions concurred to create in the post-war period a situation of precariousness and fragmentation, of vulnerability, marginalization and poverty among the larger part of the population. And yet, last, but not least, of the city's contradictions, Neapolitans have always had a wealth of liveliness and creativity and a very strong sense of identity. Indeed, 'the poor boys of Naples are the living symbols of its history and the carriers of its tradition, much as altar boys mediate the flow of grace from deity to worshipper' (Belmonte, p. 6).

Historical Heritage and Culture

The history of Naples and its region is that of the big capital of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It has shaped the topographical and architectural appearance of the town, with its wealth of palaces, villas and monuments but, above all, it has shaped the attitudes and beliefs of all Neapolitans, popolino and bourgeois alike. As the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Preamble
• INTRODUCTION Towards a Better Understanding of Organized Crime
• PART I The Transformation of the Neapolitan Camorra
• CHAPTER ONE THE CAMPANIA REGION: THE TERRITORY, THE PEOPLE AND THE POLITY
• CHAPTER TWO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CAMORRA
• PART II Who Are the Members?
• CHAPTER THREE 'YOU ARE NOT BORN A DELINQUENT . . .
• CHAPTER FOUR . . . YOU BECOME ONE'
• PART III The Resistible Rise of the Camorra
• CHAPTER FIVE THE CAMORRAS IN THE 1950S
• CHAPTER SIX THE CAMORRAS IN THE 1980S–2000S
• PART IV The Camorras' Relationship with Politics
• CHAPTER SEVEN THE CAMORRAS' EXCHANGE CURRENCY
• CHAPTER EIGHT POLITICAL AND BUSINESS 'OBLIGATIONS'
• Conclusion
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Index