In the complex web of crime that crisscrosses the globe, from developing countries to industrialized countries, the Neapolitan Camorra is a major player. Investigative journalists have found its networks not only in Italy, but also in North and South America and some European countries. They have also been able to demonstrate the increasingly close links between the Sicilian Mafia and the Neapolitan Camorra. Over the years, the latter had lost its plebeian-folkloric character and had taken on the characteristics of all modern criminal organisations. The rituals and customs associated with the culture of the narrow streets of Naples had given way to the use of Kalashnikov-type automatic rifles and the transfer of millions of dollars from one account to another.
The history of Camorra is a long story, rooted in the legends and chronicles of Naples in Spain, and it spans different eras – most notably the one that ended with the unification of Italy into a single country. But just as the story of the Sicilian Mafia is not just the story of Palermo, the story of the Neapolitan Camorra is not just the story of Naples, but much more.
The Neapolitan Camorra, like the Sicilian Mafia, saw the light of day in the 18th century and immediately attracted the attention of the authorities. With its unique structure, its precise hierarchy, its various organisational branches ranging from dungeons to neglected town quarters, its discipline and its consistent use of violence, it quickly came to attention. However, unlike the Sicilian Mafia, which is organised in a pyramidal fashion and headed by a “capo dei capi”, a supreme boss, it was organised differently, with the result that the various clans of the Camorra operated independently of each other and often clashed with each other.
The Camorra had its own rituals, similar to those of all secret societies, presenting itself as “Societá dell Umiltá”, a society of humility, or one that respects no one except “God, the saints and its own leader”. Above all, it had no respect for any legal authority. It had its own language and its own ideology, based on ‘honour’ and the principle that everyone must rely on his own strength. Hence the respect for anyone who had the courage to commit acts of violence and in any case did not seek justice from the state authorities. The organisation was also known by its pompous name, ‘La Bella Societá riformata’, and it ruled by violence and intimidation.
The origin of the word kamóra itself is explained by several versions. One, and the most plausible, is that it could be a corruption of two words, capo (boss) and morra (forbidden street games played by two people). Another explanation is that it means a short jacket of edgy cloth worn by armed merchants and Spanish robbers, called a gamurri. The word could also mean a box in which extorted money was put.
Naples underwent many changes with the beginning of Spanish rule in 1502. The Spanish kingdom wanted to get rid of some of the nobles who might oppose the king, so it sent them to Naples, gave them privileges and lucrative business deals, and took the money to support and enrich them away from the southern Italian provinces. In so doing, she drained them of their resources to the point that they began to turn into rural slums. Thousands of poor peasants began to leave for Naples, trying to find work in the houses of the rich.
This has created a layer of people in the city with no name and no hope for a better future. They wandered around the camps of the Spanish soldiers, who started calling them lazzari, people who fight with dogs for scraps of food. From this conglomerate of desperate people, the lazzars, groups led by thugs formed, and they would break up whenever the authorities tried to impose their laws on them. People also called them the crucifiers, because they were very skilled at wielding knives. In some neighbourhoods they controlled all illegal businesses, even though they were not organised in gangs. But they tried to organise themselves better in the heated conditions of Naples, and it was from these structures that the Camorra would later emerge.
It is true that not all the bad things that happened in Naples at that time can be blamed on the Spanish occupation and the Spanish soldiers, but the Camorra inherited some of their linguistic and cultural characteristics. Like the Calabrian ndrangheta and some Mafiosi, the Camorristi have always boasted of their Spanish ancestry. The Spanish Bourbon authorities tolerated the Camorra in a certain sense, as it did not engage in politics and sometimes collaborated with the police, helping them to control the liberals.
The Camorra appeared publicly in Naples in the 1820s. The Camóristi were becoming increasingly violent in the neighbourhoods where they lived and, unlike the Sicilian Mafiosi, they not only practiced their rituals but also wrote them down, as did the rules of the Societa dell Umiltá.
While Kamórists were people who lived outside the law and belonged to a secret society, they did not usually hide. This is strange at first sight, but their behaviour can be explained by the fact that the kamóra could count on broad social support among the simple, lower-class urban dwellers. In some respects, therefore, it was a phenomenon of the lower classes, a kind of political party of the poor without political representation. A party in embryo, characterised by illegality, which ended in crime. In this it was quite similar to the mafia.
Statutes of the Chamber
The camera was climbing fast. Around 1820, the first rumours about it appeared, and only a few decades later, it was already known that it had a “frieno” or statutes/rules of procedure. According to a police reconstruction, which is so precise and detailed as to be a little dubious, Francesco Scorticelli is said to have read out the very detailed statutes of the Camorra during a meeting of the Camorra on 12 September 1842 in the church of Santa Catarina in Formello.
Its provisions were simple and precise. They spoke of the members of the Camorra being brave men, united to help and support each other. The organisation was to consist of a large society, in which the various groups of the Camorra were members, and a small society, which included young men, boys and young men who were candidates for membership. It was also written that, according to the statutes, the kamóra has only one leader, who is elected by its members and chosen from among the bravest and most courageous. The leader (capintesta) can only be elected from the Porta Capuana group. Naples was then divided into 12 zones, and these represented the working area of the individual camorra groups.
At the head of each chamber was a leader (capintriti) and he chose someone for the extremely important position of accountant (contaiuolo), who had to be able to read and write and was in charge of the accounts, the paperwork and the speeches. Each group also looked after its own youth department. The Camorra could not avoid regulating the status of those who were in prison. If there were more than four members of the Kamora in prison, they could set up their own section with their own leader. This was the structure of the camorra, but even more important was the question of discipline. In the first place was omertá, or humility, which obliged each member of the kamóre never to divulge anything about the workings of the organisation, under any pretext, and to follow blindly the orders of their leader or the kamóre authorities.
Every kamórist wanted to be better than his comrades and to rise up the hierarchical ladder, and the only way to do that was to publicly challenge a rival or to attack without respecting the rules of the association, hoping that only the fait accompli would be taken into account later. Such disputes were settled by an internal tribunal called the “gran mamma”. The camera glorified the rural version of a duel in which a weapon or knife was used, and such a duel was called a ‘zumpata’. However, clashes between different camorra groups – usually in the street – were not uncommon, because of the division of areas of operation. Those who drew up the statutes of the kamóre were obviously aware that these clashes had to be limited and regulated in order to maintain the hierarchy and discipline of the organisation.
The Statutes also dealt with the very important issue of money. All the profits of the camera were shared according to certain rules. The head of the camoré (capintesta) got a quarter, the rest of the income was divided among the members according to their position, and a part was given to the camorists in prison and their families. However, even in prison, the kamórists were engaged in extortion of their fellow prisoners and were therefore in fact self-sufficient. The statutes also stipulated that the main headquarters of the Camorra should be in Naples, but also allowed the establishment of sections in other centres. Thus, in addition to Aversa and Caserta, other centres were created in the vicinity of Naples and, at one time, these provincial camores were stronger than the urban one.
The Camorra’s action was based on defending the old traditions and morals of the world it was oppressing. We must not forget that it operated among the mass of the poor without rights, and represented for them a kind of attainable rights and social triumphalism. For this crowd, the Kamórists were arbiters of peace, godfathers and supporters, giving hope and showing the way to at least a minimum social situation.
By the time the camera appeared in public, it had already reached a stage of maturity. It is therefore logical to assume that it had experienced quiet ups and downs prior to this period. In fact, the peaceful coexistence between the Spanish authorities and the camorra lasted for several decades, because the camorra did not cross the boundaries of its class and did not represent a political problem, it ensured that food came into the city regularly and it also controlled smuggling, something that the authorities were never able to do. It was, in fact, a state within a state, but it was only concerned with maintaining its influence among the poor people.
But in the 1860s, this balance was upset. Garibaldi clearly demonstrated the weak foundations on which Bourbon power rests. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had fallen apart. By June of that year, public order in Naples was on the verge of collapse. Everyone was trying to turn their property into gold and hide it in the countryside, waiting for better times. Word spread through the city that the Lazzari, led by the Camorristi, were going on a pillaging spree. The camóra began to step out of its boundaries, and the police were no longer up to the job and were showing up in the town as little as possible. Therefore, the Minister of Police, Libario Romano, decided to use the camouflage as a means of ensuring order in the city, calculating that the damage done by the camouflage would be less than that which could be done by an angry mob without leadership. This recipe had already proved successful in Sicily.
He summoned the best-known leaders of the camorra to his side and offered to turn a blind eye to their crimes if they proved themselves to be guardians of order. Thus the Camorra became the nucleus of the new city police, and Garibaldi was able to enter Naples without a care in the world.
But as soon as the camera was given a new role, it attacked police stations in some districts of the city, killing everyone it could find inside, followed by the burning of police archives. They then occupied the customs port administration and started collecting taxes. Thus the Camorra discovered that it could exert a strong influence on political decision-making and that it could benefit greatly from cooperation with the legal authorities. It began to enter into circles and alliances that it had not dared to think of before. She became involved in the National Guard, and some of the Kamórists became its officers, and she also succeeded in the army, albeit only in lower officer positions. She also began to appear in business affairs, in the shadows and under the aegis of the state administration. Thus, after 1860, the Camorra flourished.
The new government immediately saw and understood that it had made a mistake and sought to correct it. As early as December 1860, it began to restrict the power of the chamber with strong repressive measures. It arrested some of the Kamorists who had become police officers and sent about a hundred of them in one night to the city jails or to prisons on the islands. But the damage was already done. The authorities of the new Kingdom of Italy could not have known how deeply the Camorra had already penetrated into everyday life. Wherever it could, it destroyed all written information that might have indicated its strength. Thus, there was a misconception that there were no more than a hundred true kamórists.
Slowly, however, Italy was only learning what the Camorra was and what its impact was. The first names were also published, leaving clear traces in the court records. This was also the time of its rebirth. She retained control of all her traditional and illegal businesses, including extortion, but her ambitions increased with the creation of the Italian kingdom. She was now interested in public contracts in various fields, hospitals, pious institutions and even banks.
Thus, in 1875, a police officer wrote: “We observe cooperation between the Camorra and the police and customs officials, and consequently fewer crimes of smuggling, but on the other hand we find an increase in the number of ‘yellow glove’ (guanti gialli) Camorraists, that is, those who represent large business interests, and who, in doing so, have the assistance of the highest connections.” Therefore, many politicians and civil servants were considered to be “yellow glove camórists” because they granted concessions to the camórs for those things that were in fact the right of all citizens.
In 1901, Senator Giuseppe Saredo, who had to investigate what was happening in the south of Italy, wrote down what confirmed the observations of a police officer in 1875:
“In my opinion, the biggest mistake is that we have allowed the camouflage to spread and infiltrate all levels of public life and all social institutions, and the power structure has begun to erode. Instead of destroying it, or at least limiting its activities, the police do nothing. From the former camouflage, which mistreated the poor classes, another, new camouflage has emerged, in which the most cunning and insolent of the bourgeoisie operate.”
Many agree that the Chamber has lost its internal solidity as it has expanded its scope of action. Its rigid discipline and ritualistic forms of action have lost their meaning. Even its centralised structure has begun to falter. According to some police reports, at the end of the 19th century, individual families in some neighbourhoods of Naples acted as if the Capintesta did not exist and as if they were completely autonomous. This led to disagreements and bloody settlements of scores, and the spheres of activity of the individual families began to overlap territorially.
Thus, while the Kamóra lost its leading role among the poor through modernisation, it managed to integrate itself partly into the management of bourgeois society, which did not destroy the Kamóra, but tolerated and used it. Thus, in 1904, the bourgeois city authorities turned to it for help to defeat a socialist opponent in the elections.
Half-cylinders and handcuffs
At the end of the 19th century, however, the subculture of such camorra as honour, courage, generosity and alienation from civil institutions was still alive, but mostly only as a memory of a bygone era, echoes of which could still be found in folk theatre plays and street songs. At the end of the century, the urban camouflage was thus in the throes of an identity crisis.
And it was very much alive in the fertile Naples area. Families were at work here, using violence to secure their share of the profits, fixing the prices of goods and exploiting legal and illegal activities, from smuggling to prostitution. These camourist families thrived along the coast in the Caserta, Aversa and Nola areas and in the Nocerino-Sarnese fields. They were similar to the mafia organisations of rural Sicily and were usually linked to a specific business, such as miners, mule drivers, cattle thieves, citrus and vegetable growers, and, in the Naples area, dock workers. The rural cameras used violence and threats to mediate between large and small producers and the retail market.
As evidence of the declining power of the Neapolitan Camorra, the Cuocolo case of 1906 is well known in jurisprudence. The double murder resulted in a strong repression from which the Camorra emerged completely weakened. It began on 5 June 1906, when Maria Cutinelli, a former lightweight, was murdered at knifepoint in Naples in an apartment at 19 rue Nardones. The crime was discovered the next morning by a chambermaid and the police immediately suspected her husband, Gennaro Cuocolo, a man of bourgeois origin but connected to the Camorra. He was a “basita”, which means that he specialised in breaking into and stealing from the houses of wealthy townspeople and then placing the stolen goods on the market.
They started looking for him, but soon discovered that he had also been murdered at about the same time as his wife, with forty-seven knife stab wounds in a small street near the sea. It was also discovered that he had been having dinner with a group of camouflage workers nearby before the murder. One of the group was a man called Erricone, who was unofficially considered to be the leader, and another important man was Giovanni Rapi, who travelled abroad frequently and was considered to be the intermediary between the camorra and the “mano nero” (black hand), a criminal association set up in the United States by Italian immigrants around 1880. The other two who were at the dinner were members of the camorra.
They were all arrested, but released after a month and a half due to lack of evidence. The investigation was at a standstill until Carlo Fabroni, the Carabinieri captain, took up the case, convinced that the deadlock was due to the incompetence and the police’s involvement with the Camorra. He let a jailed camorista go free, who in return told him everything he knew about the camorra. Thus it came to light that Erricone was presiding over the “gran mamma” meeting at which Gennaro Cuocola was accused of collaboration with the police and sentenced to death.
Fabroni did not give up, and his revelations resulted in the prosecutor committing suicide, because in order to cover up the traces of Cuoco’s murder and to conceal the collaboration of Neapolitan politics with the Camorra, he falsely accused two petty thieves who had nothing to do with the affair. Then the confessions and arrests began to pour in. The trial began in 1911 and lasted 16 months.
Dressed in smart suits, with half-cylinders on their heads but chains on their hands, the accused walked into the courtroom in Viterbo almost five years after the double murder took place. They were brought there from Naples by special train. They were sentenced to prison terms totalling almost 400 years. Eight of the accused were sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment, while the other 47 were sentenced to lesser terms because they were proven to be collaborators of the Camorra. The trial was followed by numerous journalists, with full-page newspaper reports and foreign press coverage. At the end of the trial, one of the main defendants, Erricone, shouted to the judges: “Look me in the eye! We are the ones who murdered us and you are our murderers!”
In 1927, one of the main defendants in the trial withdrew his confession and the proceedings had to be reopened. The fascist regime, while boasting that it was going to crack down on criminals, did not want to raise any dust this way and therefore released those convicts who were still alive and in prison. Not all at once, but gradually, over different periods of time. Captain Fabroni even had to defend himself against accusations that he had staged a mass trial on the basis of dubious evidence, threatening witnesses or promising them various benefits.
Of course, in such a massive trial, it was almost impossible to avoid some procedural errors, but the Camorrans have nevertheless dealt a powerful blow. Subsequent research has shown that this process was only possible because the camera was already weakened at the time. A few decades earlier, Captain Fabroni would probably not have dared to stir in this hornet’s nest.
The fascist regime, which as a totalitarian form of government did not allow any other form of power that was not included in its power structure, put a ring around the chamber. Not as forcefully as Cesare Mori did in Sicily, but effective nonetheless. He also took on the rural camorra, imprisoning 4 000 camorraists in the Caserta area alone.
But the decline in the power of the Camorra in that period did not, of course, mean the end of crime in Naples and its surroundings. In the dungeons, on the islands and in the narrow streets of Naples, its customs and rules were invoked. The “Gran Mamma” may not have worked, but many of the old-school camórists were still alive, even if they did not like to appear in public because of the situation at the time. This led the public to believe that the camorra was dead. In the countryside, criminal groups still occasionally fought each other, but it was felt that the kamóra was no longer capable of committing major acts.
Skin
The war and the post-war chaos, with the increase in illegal transactions, allowed violence to regain momentum and created the need for someone to intervene with the official authorities. Smuggling and other illegal activities always attract criminals. Naples, however, was the city in Italy that paid the highest price during the Second World War. It was the port from which the Italians and then the Germans sent most of their troops and equipment to North Africa, but it was also the centre of the war industry. And for this reason it was constantly bombed by the Allies.
After the Germans abandoned it at the end of September 1943, the town became a degraded rear area for Allied troops. The people were hungry, the city was ruined and law and order were just words on paper. And all this misery was now suddenly overwhelmed by an abundance of food and other things that the inhabitants had already become accustomed to. But everything that arrived in Naples was destined for the Anglo-American troops who were penetrating into the heart of the Apennine peninsula.
The most sensitive supply point for US troops was in Nola, ruled by mafia boss Vito Genovese. Tons of foodstuffs, medicines and other items were mysteriously disappearing from here, brought there by the Allies, only to turn up on the black market of Naples, the biggest black market the world has ever seen. All this took place in a climate of great political uncertainty and terrible moral decay. In Naples, everything could be sold and everything could be bought, from girls, boys and drugs, car parts that could not be obtained elsewhere, to penicillin as the last successful product of pharmacology. Military occupation, whether foreign or domestic, always brings with it disorder and degradation.
The Italian writer Malaparte summed it up best in his book The Skin: ‘Those were the days of the plague in Naples. Colonel Jack Hamilton and I, after exercise and showers, would set out every afternoon at five o’clock on foot for St. Ferdinand’s, elbowing our way through the crowds that gathered from early dawn to curfew and thundered down Toledo Street. We were clean, bathed, well fed, in the middle of a Neapolitan crowd, sullen, dirty, malnourished and in rags, being pushed and shoved around by a group of soldiers of the liberation army, made up of every race in the world, in every language and dialect of the world.
The honour of being the first of all European nations to taste freedom fell to the Neapolitans, and to celebrate it, my poor fellow citizens, after three years of famine, epidemics and bombardments, gratefully accepted the role of a defeated nation, singing, clapping and jumping for joy in the ruins of their houses, waving foreign flags, still hostile yesterday, and showering flowers from their windows on the victors.
Women, dishevelled, with lipstick smeared on their lips and a layer of bleach on their faces, stood on street corners, offering their miserable work to passers-by, groped by Moroccan, Indian, Algerian and Malagasy soldiers, having their skirts lifted and their hands forced down the buttons of their trousers. Two dollars for the boys and three for the girls! The prices of girls and boys have fallen in recent days and are still falling, while the prices of sugar, oil, flour, meat and bread have soared and are still soaring. A girl between twenty and twenty-five years old, who was worth ten dollars a week ago, can now be had for four dollars, bone and all. The reason for this drop in the price of human flesh on the Neapolitan market is that women have come to Naples from all over southern Italy.”
In many areas of southern Italy – especially Naples – the period between September 1943 and May 1945 was a time of corruption and permissiveness, with civil authority on its knees, urban structures destroyed or non-existent, and the interests of the occupying military authorities generally at odds with the expectations of the population. This climate of disorder came in handy for all the criminals. Entire networks were formed for the distribution of illegal, mostly stolen goods, and groups were formed to impose their will on others by the methods of the camouflage, and they were not afraid even of murder.
In 1945, two leaders stood out; Carmine Spavone, nicknamed the Villain (o malommo), and Giovanni Mormone, called the Piantagrane (il piantagrane), both of whom believed that they had to resolve their differences in a direct confrontation, as the camomorians had done in the past. Thus, in February 1945, they met in front of the church, and Spavone, accompanied by his children, tried to enter, but failed because his opponent killed him with a few shots.
A few weeks later, Spavone’s brother Antonio met a Mormon in a restaurant and killed him with a butcher’s knife. According to popular legend, he then went to his mother’s home and called out to her, “Mama, I killed the Piccolo!” His mother, who was on the balcony, ran to the front of the house and hugged him. All these murders took place in public, as this was the only way for the killers to gain the respect of like-minded people. From that moment on, Antonio took the nickname of his brother, the Villain.
In the post-war period, Naples found that smuggling cigarettes on a massive scale paid off the most. The State had a monopoly on sales and was thus unable to meet the needs of smokers. Naples thus became as important a terminal for the illegal import of cigarettes as Tangier in Morocco. However, Tangier only held this position until 1960, after which the trade moved to the Yugoslav and Albanian coasts. As soon as the boxes of cigarettes arrived on the coast, they had already been taken over by networks of traffickers. This illegal trade helped many Neapolitans to survive and was therefore not too hindered by the authorities, as it supplemented what the official trade failed to satisfy and provided employment for those sectors of the population who could not find regular work. The cigarette trade in the Forcella district was thus the foundation on which the camorra was able to re-establish itself in the lives of the people of Naples.
“Camera nuova”
Post-war Naples, however, was also characterised by another phenomenon: the rural cameramen became more important than the urban cameramen. Control of the huge cigarette market shifted from Naples to the Salerno coast, where Vittorio Napi reigned supreme. After he had removed the mayor of Battipaglia, there was talk of a ‘camóri nuovi’, which also began to deal in meat and succulents, selling fabric door-to-door and supplying large shops with electrical appliances.
This new camorra was not hierarchically organised and was made up of a multitude of groups who were content to defend their territory and their supply channels fiercely. In fact, in the area of meat, juice and milk supplies, it was difficult to distinguish the illegal trade from the legal one. The Kamórists were traders, but the prices of their products and the choice of buyers and sellers were often the result of intimidation and violence.
They extorted payments to producers, setting when crops had to be harvested and the prices traders had to pay. For example, they determined which slaughterhouses would slaughter and at what price. They bought large quantities of textiles and gave credit to the sellers, who had to commit themselves to selling only their goods. Their importance only diminished with the development of the clothing industry. But now they also started to sell counterfeit clothing from well-known world brands.
Naples is still one of the largest markets for fruit and vegetable products. The city also had a veritable stock exchange, which in the 1950s controlled a third of Italian production. However, this stock exchange had no official headquarters or offices, but only a series of offices and bars in the Novara square near the railway station. This was where, among other things, the camourists did business, always having on hand the goods that people demanded and setting the prices, even if they had to use weapons to do so.
In 1955, the most famous camorists were Pascalone and Esposito. Each controlled his own territory, they were rivals, aware that agreements meant little and that the borders of their territories were only vaguely defined. They also knew that there was no “gran mamma” who could smooth over their disputes. They were getting commissions on every deal, even the smallest one, and everyone knew that they were already locked up and that they had put many of their rivals out of business.
On 16 July 1955, a hired assassin from the Esposito clan fired three shots at Pascalone. Pascalone did not die immediately, but languished in hospital for some time. He told his young wife, Pupetta Maresca, who came from a family of camóristos and to whom he had been married for only six months and was expecting a child, who the killer was and who had hired him. When questioned by the police, he refused to say anything.
In October of that year, a young widow hired a taxi to take her to Novara Square. There she saw Esposito and shot him. She was probably not acting alone, but in court she took all the blame. She said that she could not do anything other than avenge her husband. It was a classic revenge camouflage. She was not sentenced harshly, she served her time and got on with her life. The trial was an opportunity for everyone to get the word out about the new cameo.
In the 1960s, however, foreign groups began to dominate the organised crime scene. The people selling cigarettes on the streets were Neapolitans, including children and women, but behind and above these beggars’ networks were criminal groups from Sicily, Genoa and Corsica. The streets and markets were dominated by petty criminals, made up of families who engaged in extortion, the sale of stolen goods, the sale of counterfeit goods, illicit games and the exploitation of prostitution, but who did not have the means to enter the circle of big crime. For this reason, the parliamentary commissions that investigated illicit dealings did not deal with the Neapolitan Camorra, because they did not consider it to be as dangerous as the Sicilian Mafia.
However, Naples had a port whose position was strategically very important for the illegal trade, and even more important for the drugs trade. After the war, Lucky Luciano, who had been deported from America as an undesirable, settled here. In Palermo, he would certainly have been too visible, but here he controlled the drug trade but never had close contact with the Neapolitan Camorra. He was therefore not the one who linked the Mafia and the Camorra.
This was done for him by “respected persons” from Sicily who regularly spent weekends in Naples in the 1960s. They recognised the importance of the port and ensured that heroin coming from Asia and cocaine from South America were safely shipped out. It should be remembered, however, that the Mafiosi did not particularly value the camórists. They attracted too much attention, bragging and blustering. Even in America, they were rarely socialised with, although there were many of them in the Black Hand organisation. During their time in Naples, the Sicilian Mafia was involved in large illegal businesses, especially cigarettes, and realised that there was a wide distribution network in the city, controlled by the local Camorra. All that was needed was to change the robots and things would run smoothly.
The Mafia began to make alliances with certain local groups that controlled certain neighbourhoods, especially the port quays, and were skilled in moving illegal items from one place to another, from cigarettes and meat from illegal slaughterhouses to stolen electrical appliances. Police records from the time are full of these links. Even the leader of the Corleone clan, Luciano Liggio, who was already on the run, was doing a successful business here before his arrest. In fact, the Camorra was in a sense “Sicilianised”. It was Sicilian mafia groups that put the Camorra families on the international stage. The mafia’s contribution was mainly financial, but it also brought with it some organisational and, in a sense, cultural changes in the way the camorra operated.
The Camórists themselves did not have the means to buy large quantities of cigarettes and were therefore unable to enter the drugs business on their own. At a certain point, the mafia entered with money, and the camóra’s input ensured a wide distribution network and security in the areas it controlled. The camórists, who began to call themselves families after the Sicilian and American model, were subordinate to the mafia, which in turn meant that they could earn a lot of money. Mamelas filled their wallets, so they didn’t particularly bother if the mafia earned much more.
In the 1970s, however, it was noticeable that the activity of the official authorities against the camorra, which had become very active, declined. The authorities later retaliated by underestimating its activity. During these years, the camoría also provided other services to the mafia, helping it to pursue foreign criminal gangs, particularly those from Marseille, who wanted to nest in the port. After the Marseilles people had to withdraw, the Camorristi, with their Sicilian cronies, took full control of one of Europe’s most important ports for the distribution of illegal borders. The power of the Camorra increased and it began to buy up hotels, farms, cattle ranches and building companies, thus entering into risky businesses which were resolved by violence.
In the degraded dormitory settlements around Naples there were thousands of unskilled workers, young men with no perspective and no sense of the former values of the camorra, and the heads of the new camorra families lived in real armed fortresses, monitored by security cameras. They hoarded expensive works of art that they knew nothing about. They bought villas all over the world, but perhaps only stayed in them a few days a year. As there was no organisation to coordinate the activities of individual families, bloody clashes between families multiplied in Naples and in the countryside. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, things were breaking with incredible ease. The struggle of all against all was barbaric. They killed each other with knives, but also with machine guns and bombs.
The rise of corruption brought small and medium-sized entrepreneurs under its wing, they joined the Camorra as mercenaries and tried to take advantage of illegal deals. Thus, kamórists became entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs became kamórists. The number of corrupt state officials, including local ones, who knelt before threats, increased. During this period, the desire of some families to organise the kamóra as a strong centralist organisation reappeared.
This thinking resulted in hundreds of dead camourists and attracted the attention of the state authorities. Based on the testimonies of the “penitents”, they launched a harsh repressive action. This was a particular period in the operation of the Camorra, linked to the activities of a fanatical and capable and bloody criminal called Raffaele Cutolo.
Nuova camorra organizzata
“O’ professore”, as this Camorista was respectfully called, was born in Ottaviano in 1941. His father was a respectable man, but Raffaelo left school at the age of twelve to work as a servant. And a very violent one at that, as a boy he was already going around armed. At the age of twenty-two, he committed his first crime. He slapped a woman over a minor traffic dispute and when her companion intervened, Raffaelo pulled out a revolver and shot him.
In prison, he completed his criminal education, fascinated by past events involving the Camorra and collected stories from former members about its mythical past. He understood the causes of the decline of Neapolitan society, as the young men who came to the dungeon to serve their sentences told him about it again and again. “O’ professore” considered himself very clever and spent hours in prison honing his criminal skills and sharpening his communication and persuasion techniques. He had an immense imagination and he told his fellow prisoners so:
“I saw four knights with spears and shields coming towards me. They looked at me and smiled. At that moment I realised that I had been entrusted with the task of restoring the Camorra and putting it on a new footing, so that the stories of its fathers would not be lost. I am the incarnation of the most glorious deeds of Neapolitan history and the heir of those who suffer in prisons, I am the dispenser of justice and the one who eradicates usury and poverty. I am the true law, not those in the courts.”
He came out of prison in 1970 and became increasingly famous. He devised a precise organisational model that combined the 18th century “gran mamme” rituals and the tradition of travelling salesmen with the success of a modern distribution company. He also invented a new name, Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO).
The organisation is said to be mainly involved in what Cutolo called “door-to-door selling of intimate lingerie”. All the revenues of one area were to be shared according to accounting rules. Each shop paid the organisation according to the number of shop windows in accordance with the prices of that area. Its personnel policy was to attract all the young people who were unemployed and had no future to the organisation. All these desperadoes were carefully selected and duly instructed in the customs and practices of the camorra, total obedience to the leader and the justice that only the NCO can provide.
It has managed to introduce a system of adequate social protection for its members, so that everyone receives a minimum monthly salary and each new member receives a monthly stipend. Of course, he had to risk his life for the camouflage, but he was also in charge of distributing certain goods in a certain area, working as a debt collector and, sooner or later, killing on the orders of the camouflage.
Cutolo spent more time in prison than at large, but with the help of a network of associates, he managed to organise a real intelligence network from there too, threatening judges and jailers. Anyone who did not submit to his will had to die. Whichever prison he was transferred to, he became the head of the prisoners everywhere, with his own secretaries and meetings in his own cell. He was always armed, he had drugs in abundance, and he had money in cash. He received substantial sums of money from abroad in his bank account and paid the salaries of his members from prison, whether they were at large or in prison. Many young people joined the NCO because they were convinced that they were entering a community that would care for them and support their families when they were in prison or dead.
In the meantime, Cutolo amassed a large fortune, bought the abandoned castle of Ottaviano and restored it. The new camorra organizzata had a structure in which modernity and archaism met. Cutolo wanted to go beyond the former division between urban and rural camorra and unite them, although he was aware of the historical contradictions and their different interests. But between his imprisonment and his freedom, he managed to realise a large part of his programme.
But he knew that other camourist groups in Naples were controlled by the Sicilian Mafia. He therefore launched a campaign to achieve the independence of the Camorra from foreign criminal groups, and to achieve this he allied himself with the Calabrian Ndrangheta. But what he really wanted was more freedom in the drug trade. That is why, at the end of the 1970s, he was at loggerheads with all the Neapolitan clans. It did not matter how many people died in the process. Every morning, dozens of his followers went on their death missions, outside and also in prisons. The attacked clans, of course, did not stand still and, in their defence, formed a cartel called ‘la nuova famiglia’.
But the struggle also became increasingly political and administrative, especially after the earthquake that hit the provinces of Campania and Basilicata on 23 November 1980. The Italian government decided to radically rebuild the earthquake zone, which covered almost all the municipalities in the provinces. The investment was enormous and, under the pretext of haste, the management of the post-earthquake assets was left to the municipalities and their administrations. This was a real blessing for the corrupt local politicians linked to the camorra.
Clans started setting up construction and service companies and expanding old ones. Arguments over who would build what resulted in dozens of deaths.
But the link to politics has also been felt beyond local administration. On 27 April 1981, local councillor Cirillo, a low-ranking democrat but chairman of the planning committee for post-earthquake reconstruction in Campania, was kidnapped in Naples. He was ambushed by members of the Red Brigades, who also killed his companion and driver. Almost all Italian politicians were in favour of his release, and soon remembered that the camera could secretly help them to do so.
Cutolo was asked for help, he agreed to cooperate, and high-ranking members of the secret services, envoys of political parties and terrorists began to visit his cell in the prison. What did they promise him? Maybe release, or at least a reduced prison sentence, even greater benefits in prison? Nobody knows.
But in the end, Cutolo failed to realise his dream of a united Camorra as a mass organisation for southern Italy. The orgy of brutal murders he unleashed turned public opinion against him. Even the members of his organisation felt threatened, never knowing when they themselves would fall victim to their own organisation. For Cutolo never forgave anyone.
Pasquale Barra, known as The Animal, was a born killer and carried out his murderous business in prison. At one point, he felt that he had aroused Cutolo’s suspicions and that he had turned from hunter to hunted. He escaped assassination but realised that he would not be safe enough in any prison. He became contrite and decided to cooperate with the police. Several other members of the Nuova camorra organizzate followed his example.
In June 1984, the penitents confessed and betrayed everything they knew about the organisation, all the technical details, the networks of collaborators at home and abroad, the corrupt lawyers, jailers, businessmen and politicians. But the crisis that Nuova camorra organizzata now had to face also affected its rivals. Increasingly, they too began to emerge as penitents, and the penitents gave birth to new penitents, who also discovered who all was behind the scenes protecting the camoristas.
The many Mafia scandals, such as those of Buscetta and Contorno, compounded the crisis of those Neapolitan families linked to the Coso Nostro. It was almost unbelievable how many municipal officials, lawyers, businessmen and politicians had for years covered up, facilitated or helped to sweep the crimes of the Camorra under the carpet. In 1994, the Ministry of the Interior published some studies showing that there were still 107 camorra clans in southern Italy, with 6 000 members, mainly in Naples, Caserta and Salerno, and that they had 1 000 assistants and 50 000 to 60 000 people directly involved in their business.
The pain point of the camorra was still the port of Naples. Everything in the world passes through here, and it is the terminus of all kinds of illegal trade. Above all, everything made in China and destined for Europe is disembarked in Naples. Illegal goods are therefore almost impossible to detect, because all the work is immediately unloaded, loaded onto trucks and taken off in an unknown direction. The familiar game of cats (financiers, tax authorities and police) and mice (camorristi) is played out constantly here. And the mice always win.
In the countryside, things were different. Here, the camera discovered many niche markets where there was excellent money to be made. They also made a lot of money from rubbish, but not the rubbish that was left on the streets of Naples and stank, but the rubbish that was trucked to southern Italy from Milan, Turin and other industrial cities. Of course, this rubbish was hazardous waste, dyes, heavy metals, poisons, in fact, and the camorra made sure that it disappeared into the deserted places of Campania, poisoning the land. And thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa worked in the fertile fields of tomatoes, fruit, vegetables and other succulents under the watchful eye of the camera for meagre sums. Incidentally, there is always a major earthquake in Italy and, no matter where it is, buildings have to be rebuilt with money from the public budget. And the camouflage workers are always there.
