Omerta'- not just Italian

A few nights ago I watched Marked woman (1937), which I think illustrates more than many better-known Mafia movies the mechanisms of organized crime and why it flourishes and persists. It is based on the arrest and trial of Lucky Luciano, a Sicilian-born New York mafioso who was instrumental in establishing Cosa Nostra in America.

Significantly, I was watching the rather obscure film just as a major round-up was made on the New York mob. Which was seen (and is) a major accomplishment. But also indicates that organized crime is still very much with us.

The stubborn survival and pervasive influence of organized crime can only be traced to omerta', often incorrectly (or rather, incompletely) defined as the Mafia's code of silence. It goes without saying that if you're a criminal you're going to be quiet- you're doing something illegal. The omerta' that keeps crime and other forms of evil going is the silence of others, as stirringly presented by a young and handsome Bogie in his closing argument. He refers to a "supine and cowardly city" that expresses outrage at corruption but will do nothing to fight it. Placing the burden on the shoulders of the few witnesses who will come forward- in this case, an unlikely group of night club prostitutes, headed by Bette Davis.

Highly recommended. Watch out for the subtle but menacing performance of Eduardo Ciannelli as the villainous Vanning, and his psychologically convincing explanation that his real motive all along was not money but power- "I like to tell people what to do."

The Case of the stupid mafioso

I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan, and I've started watching the series featuring Jeremy Brett on Netflix. Thus, when I saw this article in Il Corriere, I saw it in Sherlockian terms.

The case of the stupid mafioso, or to be quite precise, Watson, the case of the stupid 'ndrangheta boss. One Pasquale Manfredi, who was on the lam, got nabbed due to his affection for Facebook. Being an outlaw, he obviously scoffed at the Facebookian condition of enrolling with your own name. So, being a furbo (sly, cunning) dude, he signed on with the nickname of the Al Pacino character, Scarface, famed coke dealer. This apparently was enough to get the attention of Italian investigators (maybe they have a software program that trolls the social networks looking for famous criminal names.)

This goes to show that Italy is indeed becoming modernized. Just think of the progress since number two Cosa Nostra man Bernardo Provenzano got caught (after 43 years) because of communications involving his need for clean laundry while in hiding. He was using little hand-written messages. Progress marches on, but I bet even Manfredi, being an Italian male, wasn't washing his own underwear.

Speak of the devil (Facebook)- the New York Times has an article today about how much info can be gathered about you from the public domain through social networks. This should be elementary, Watson, but people seem not to realize it. Too late for Manfredi.

Roberto Saviano writes a bad article

What's gotten into this guaglione? He is celebrated and admired as one of Italy's foremost mafia-busters, the author of the best-selling Gomorrah, an expose' of the despicable Neapolitan mob known as the Camorra.

Now, it has become increasingly clear to me that people are not rational. Still, you think that there are islands of rationality here and there.

But more and more, in my humble veggie way, I've started to wonder.

So a few days ago I read Roberto Saviano's short op-ed in the New York Times about the revolt of some African immigrants in a small southern Italian town by the name of Rosarno. The hideously exploited immigrants got pissed off and rioted.

Now, enter our boy Bobby. He pens an article calling the put-upon Africans "heroes." And he makes an implicit analogy between the current African immigrants to Italy and the former Italian immigrants to the United States:

"Italy is a country that’s forgotten how its emigrants were treated in the United States, how the discrimination they suffered was precisely what allowed the Mafia to take root there. It was extremely difficult for many Italian immigrants, who did not feel protected or represented by anyone else, to avoid the clutches of the mob."

Yo, Bobby. This is extremely wrong-headed. The various mafias preceded immigration. The United States did not produce the Mafia, but (some) Italians brought it here. Most people who are poor and exploited do not give in to organized crime. They do not even give in to disorganized crime.

Thus, what Saviano has said (and he isn't the first) is a disservice to the majority of poor and oppressed people throughout the world who do not resort to wrongdoing.

Roberto Saviano- I hate Gomorrah

Three years after the publication of his ground-breaking work on the loathsome Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, 29-year-old Roberto Saviano expresses regrets about having published his book Gomorrah. In a very interesting article published by The Times of London, Roberto gives details of his so-called life under police protection. It includes moving every few months and being unable to do even the simplest things on his own, like going shopping.

He thought that when he was assigned protection, it would last a matter of weeks, maybe months. Now, not yet thirty, he sees the possibility of a life sentence, or rather, a non-life sentence. He maintains that he is not afraid to die but afraid that the powerful Camorra will eventually be able to defame him in order to discredit him. Asked if he regrets the expose', he replies that he regrets it as a man, not as a writer. Italian that he is, he points out that as a Southern male he never learned to cook and now sorely misses his good chow. Separating an Italian from good food is certainly cruel and unusual punishment.

Some of the commenters archly write: what did he expect, the naive child? A subtle insult- you weren't heroic, you were stupid. Yet why shouldn't a young person (or for that matter any person) in our society have the expectation that if he or she goes against corruption and wrongdoing they will be able to survive? To argue otherwise is to maintain that we are not under the rule of law and that the social contract is null. With the enormous implications you can imagine.

No, he wasn't naive. Go back to that great Western masterpiece, High Noon. Our small town sheriff, Gary Cooper, who is about to retire, is goaded into one last action against a newly-released gang of criminals who have terrorized the citizens. They say that they'll be with him in his fight. When the time comes, almost everyone reneges, placing Cooper in an impossible predicament. From which he is saved in the nick of time by his pacifist Quaker wife, Grace Kelly. The townspeople encouraged him to expose himself knowing they wouldn't act. How was he to know?

In this regard, a quote attributed to Edmund Burke is often cited: "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." But are they good men if they do nothing? And this is the crux of the matter. The millions who have bought his book, watched the movie, discussed him, praised him, signed online petitions supporting him cannot really count as doing something. Although they undoubtedly think they do. When Giovanni Falcone, anti-mafia judge extraordinaire, was predictably blown up with his wife and police escorts seventeen years ago, his colleague and friend, prosecutor Ilda Boccassini, said that he died because he was left alone.

And Roberto, acclaimed author of a book that has sold two million copies, is alone.

Roberto Saviano's site

I just discovered that Roberto Saviano has a site, which includes an English-language version. Check it out.

In case you haven't been paying attention, whippersnapper Saviano has written an outstanding expose' called Gomorrah, dealing with the loathsome Neapolitan mob known as the Camorra (the title is a play on words). For his pains he is now under police protection. The movie made from the book, directed by Matteo Garrone, has just received the Grand Jury prize at the Cannes film festival.

I highly recommend his book to all and sundry.

Matteo Garrone

In my opinion, Italian cinema has been in a bad way for some time now. But some small stirrings of interest may be present.

The Cannes Film Festival is now underway and a film directed by Matteo Garrone (in photo) is competing for the Palme d'Or. Garrone's latest effort has garnered much attention and was anxiously awaited, being based on the best-seller Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, on the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra.

I can't say much about this work, not having seen it. But Garrone also featured the Camorra in the background in a lugubrious earlier film, The Embalmer. Set in the Naples area, it has an unctuous, ugly semi-dwarf taxidermist prey on a handsome but not overly-bright young man. The taxidermist is also used by the mob for his cutting and re-sewing abilities (they use corpses in coffins stuffed with drugs). While the love (love, hmmm?) triangle seems to be foremost in the film- a young lady inevitably sets her sights on the young man- the movie can also be seen as a study in the ways in which the mafia sets about to recruit young people, with no little success, as Short Stuff attempts to seduce Handsome Blockhead with the lifestyle that goes with mafia money. The Italy that is shown in the film is purposely and relentlessly ugly, like our semi-dwarf.

And in fact, the reviews I've read of Gomorrah say that Garrone does not romanticize the mob, and attacks it by showing how pathetic it is in all its supposed power. This would run counter to a long-term trend of showing organized crime as glamorous and compelling. Garrone's film, like Saviano's book, is ultimately more about educating the audience and fighting the Camorra than about entertainment- and is thus in the tradition of the cinema d'impegno of Francesco Rosi.

(The Embalmer is available through Netflix, and can be watched instantly free of charge on their site if you have a subscription of $8.99 or above).

La Sacra Corona Unita

The baby, so to speak, of Italian organized crime is the Sacra Corona Unita (Holy United Crown), based in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot.

The SCU can be traced only a few decades back when it began as an offshoot of the Neapolitan Camorra. It has since thrived due to its location in southeastern Italy, allowing for all sorts of trafficking with the formerly Communist areas across the Adriatic. It is also involved in the flourishing wine and olive oil industries of the region.

In the photo, the Salento area of Puglia.

Italian food safety

The recent uproar about the trash crisis in Naples has brought to the fore the real situation of the environment in Campania, the area of which Naples is the capital. And the real situation there is one of incredible contamination.

Comedian and activist Beppe Grillo and others have rightly been emphasizing the unacceptable shortcomings of the Italian media. But I have also found that information is indeed there if you look for it. And today I went looking for my answer to the question: if Naples and its surroundings are in fact poisoned, how does this affect the food chain? With special reference to those products that may be imported such as mozzarella di bufala dop and pomodori di San Marzano dop. In other words, the famed (and expensive) buffalo cheese and tomatoes that enjoy the protection of the denominazione di origine protetta label (means you know where they're coming from).

The answer, which I had already guessed at, was bad. Really bad. Much-maligned Italian TV provided the rather horrifying facts, figures, and images which can be seen in this mid-December 2007 program, presented by the beauteous Ilaria D'Amico, on La7. It's in Italian, but even those of you who are scanty in the lingo can take a good, long look midway through the video (at about 13 minutes) when the dying sheep are shown. Embattled farmers are interviewed, one of whom has a father who died of the cancer which has much higher rates in the region than elsewhere. He himself is shown to have very high blood levels of dioxin, which, as I stated in my recent post on Naples, is the toxin associated with the Vietnam War's Agent Orange.

What's more, as pointed out in the service, Italian law does not usually call for the regional identification of produce, only for the specification of domestic or foreign. So that you would not know, for example, if wine and olive oil came from grapes and olives from Campania. All the more so that the area is in the hands of the local mob, the Camorra. Which is also largely responsible for the environmental mess in the first place. Agricultural products from the South go all over Italy.

At this point, would I eat foodstuffs from this area? No. Buyer beware, eater beware. Give some thought to where your next Caprese salad is coming from.

Is Naples burning?

Is Naples burning? Yes, it is. Literally. The garbage "emergency" (an emergency lasting over ten years) has reached crisis status, with heaps of garbage in the streets of Naples and the surrounding areas of Campania. Exasperated citizens have taken to setting fire to the heaps, thus releasing the poison dioxin (associated with the infamous Agent Orange of the Vietnam war) into the air. Quite apart from these health risks, an area in the Campania has been found to have high levels of cancer because of the inappropriate disposal of waste, much of which is in the hands of (you guessed it) organized crime, in this case, the Camorra. The European Union is making ineffectual noises about this and slapping Italy's wrist. Of course, if you had to mess with one of the Camorra's biggest cash cows, you might be ineffectual, too.

Being the literary/historical Eggplant that I am, I was struck by the juxtaposition of this headline news with the current exhibition which is on in Rome, called "Pompeii Red." It features a number of frescoes from Pompeii which were detached from its walls long ago. Pompeii, of course, is near Naples. This occasions all sorts of reflections on the reality of progress and brings to mind Giacomo Leopardi's great poem, also set near Naples, called "La Ginestra" (in English, "The Broom"). From the very long work, a ferociously ironic phrase has become known to all Italians: "le magnifiche sorti e progressive." The magnificent and progressive destiny.

Above, a detail from the house of the Vettii.

Roberto Saviano - vedi Napoli e poi muori

I was just thinking recently of blogging about young writer and journalist Roberto Saviano when the New York Times made his Gomorrah, written in 2006, one of its most important books of the year.

The book is a work of investigative journalism on the Camorra, the organized crime centered in the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital. The title is a play on words about the wholly accurate representation of the city as a byword for darkness and corruption. The administration of Prime Minister Romano Prodi briefly considered sending in the Army to preside over Naples last year at this time, but decided against it- it would have been an implicit acknowledgment that Italy has lost control of the South. Which it has.

It is hard to over-emphasize how rare this book is in the context of Italian journalism. A measure of this and why it should be so rare is given by the consequences of Saviano's work: he is now in hiding and receives police protection. What this means, pragmatically, is that one is not really free to report on the various Mafias, of which the Camorra is just one. And this means that we are not cognizant of the size, the nature, the extent and the pervasiveness of the phenomenon of the Camorra. The same can be said about Cosa Nostra and the 'ndrangheta. And the Big Three do not even account for all of organized crime in Italy.

Why should you care? The Big Three are international organizations with interests throughout the world. Interests which often seem to be legal and legitimate. You may be living in a building owned by the 'ndrangheta. You may stay at a luxury hotel controlled by Cosa Nostra. You may eat adulterated products from Camorra businesses.

Read this book. You may want to see the NYT's thoughtful review beforehand (thoughtful apart from the fact that the author thinks the Mantuan Virgil was from Campania- must e-mail her). Donadio asserts: "how this could exist in democratic Europe is an excellent question for political theorists." It is an even more excellent, not to mention urgent, question for European politicians and citizens.

Gomorrah is available through Amazon.

Word of the week: omerta'

Our word of the week is a very important one: omerta' (oh-mare-TAH). As you may know, this refers to the code of silence surrounding criminal activity, especially that of organized crime. But it is not specifically the silence of those involved in the crime itself, but more interestingly those not directly involved. What could be the motivation for this behavior? Fear? Cowardice? Secret complicity? One thing is sure: without them, evil could not thrive.

The great analyst of the phenomenon was the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia (SHAH-shah) (in the photo, looking unusually relaxed and smiling), one of my favorites.

The person who shows this behavior is called an omertoso (both a noun and an adjective).

Italy and immigration

The ancient Romans used to call the Mediterranean "mare nostrum," our sea, and of course all Italians know this. Yet Their Sea is increasingly not theirs.

Today's Italian papers cite a report from the non-profit Caritas according to which immigrants are now 3.7% of the population, up 21.6% just in the last year. Thus, they would make up 6.2% of the population, as against a EU average of 5.2%, putting them in third place behind Germany and Spain.

Immigration is facilitated by the geography of Italy, notably its proximity to Africa and the Middle East. The island of Lampedusa (Sicily)(in the photo), the scene of many immigrant arrivals, is actually closer to Tunisia than to Sicily itself, which is of course an island with respect to the mainland. The scenario is further complicated by the role of organized crime throughout Southern Italy, which feeds on the phenomenon. For more, see this recent article from the British daily The Guardian.

Mafia, Inc.

From the front pages of today's Italian papers comes the news that the number one business enterprise in Italy is the Mafia, comprised of the various major organized crime associations Cosa Nostra (based in Sicily), 'ndrangheta (Calabria), Sacra Corona Unita (Puglia), Camorra (Naples), and other lesser players. Together they would account for 7% of GNP.

The report (in Italian, pdf format) from the Confesercenti (a national business association) makes for a very interesting read. The various mafias have branched out and embraced what the specialists call "criminal versatility." In other words, they have their finger in every pie. From the classic extortion (pizzo) of tiny businesses such as fruit and vegetable stands to collusive relationships with giant Italcementi. They have come into the modern age, allowing more opportunity to women and operating in cyberspace. In an ironic mirror image of police dogs, they have also taken to corrupting man's best friend to serve man's worst enemy, using dogs to intimidate, defend (themselves) and attack (others).

In the photo above, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, legendary Sicilian anti-Mafia judges, both assassinated in 1992.

La Santa- the 'ndrangheta

As reported in today's Corriere della Sera, there is a new work of investigative journalism out on the 'ndrangheta (also called La Santa, the saint) by Ruben H. Oliva and Enrico Fierro.

I quote (my translation):

"The Saint is the most frightening Mafia, the richest, most powerful, most violent and most protected one. Also the oldest: blood, honor, family and sophisticated codes with which to exchange orders. The Mafia whose bosses from isolated San Luca in Aspromonte, where the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Polsi is found, have conquered the entire world. The least fought, the most underrated, the bloodiest and most ruthless Mafia. The one in which there are no turncoats because the members are all connected by kinship ties. The Mafia in which little religious icons are seared into the hands and the Cross is carved by knife into the back. The one that punishes most strikingly, with chopped off heads and disinterred coffins that are set on fire... the one that throws an entire society into a panic, that destroys government by the State, that takes over from the state and ridicules it, that does business throughout the world, to the point of being involved with the doings of Russia's Gazprom."

Reliable statistics now show that the 'ndrangheta accounts for 3.5% of Italy's GNP. Scary stuff, and a further indication that neither Italy nor Europe is seriously confronting its real problems.

The book/DVD is called La Santa: viaggio nella 'ndrangheta sconosciuta, published by Rizzoli. A must read.

In the photo, a town in Aspromonte.

Word of the week: 'ndrangheta

What is the meaning of this strange-looking word? The 'ndrangheta (pronounced nDRAHNgetta, with a hard g sound) is the organized crime group based in Calabria, the toe of Italy, of which the beautiful coast is shown in the photo. Its etymology may be found in the Greek words for "good man," as the ancient Greeks had colonized southern Italy and left their mark.

This thriving syndicate is based on family ties even more than its Sicilian counterpart, Cosa Nostra, which sees it as a rival. As such, it has spread to various countries by means of immigration and recently came to the world's attention in sleepy mid-August due to a feud in Duisburg, Germany, which left six local Italians dead. The 'ndrangheta used to specialize in kidnappings but has modernized itself and now deals with money laundering, drugs (especially cocaine, which is big in Europe) and even "legitimate" businesses such as construction and restaurants.