Lorenzo Tondo at the British publication
the Guardian offers a piece on how Sicilian organized crime has retreated to
the countryside in Sicily.
The Napoli sisters keep their
entire harvest in a glass jar, resting on a wooden table in the living room.
Inside, there are only a dozen stalks of wheat. The rest of the crop – 80,000
kilograms – was destroyed by the Sicilian mafia, determined to force out these
three women working in the land of The Godfather.
For three generations, the
Napoli family farmed wheat and hay in Corleone, the historic stronghold of Cosa
Nostra. Their father, Salvatore, was a hard worker who, after much sacrifice in
the fields, managed to send his three daughters – Marianna, Ina and Irene – to
university.
But a crisis in what was the
world’s most notorious mafia, broken apart by prosecutors, has pushed Cosa
Nostra back to their rural origins, and they want their land back.
… The crisis in the mafia’s
origins lie in the jailing of more than 4,000 mafiosi since 1990 and the
replacement of the old mobsters with younger bosses who lacked their authority.
Drug trafficking, once under
the monopoly control of Cosa Nostra, is now run by the most powerful Calabrian
mafia, the ’Ndrangheta. The Sicilian construction industry, which once
represented a giant business for the mafia, has lost more than €1bn since 2007,
according to the Italian Association of Builders.
Far from Palermo, hidden in
the Sicilian interior, Cosa Nostra is trying to start again from scratch.
“It is as if, pushed by the
crisis, Cosa Nostra has withdrawn into the countryside,” says Sergio Lari, the
head of the Caltanissetta prosecutor’s office in the centre of Sicily. “Far
from the pressure of the authorities in the big cities, the bosses seem to have
found a safe haven.”
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
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