2024-04-08 23:00:00
“The mafia is characterized by its speed in adapting archaic values to the needs of the present, by its ability to blend in with civil society, by the use of intimidation and violence, by the number and criminal stature of its followers, for its ability to always be different and always the same”. More than thirty years have passed, but Giovanni Falcone’s words can be expressed in the present as if they had just been spoken. The martyred magistrate knew deeply that organized crime’s ability to adapt and camouflage itself, which allowed Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta, to keep their DNA intact despite the transformations induced by the victories of the State and by social evolutions (or involutions). and economic ones of the country.
“Ability to blend in with civil society”, said Falcone: and nothing embodies this characteristic like the intersection between mafias, politics and administration of public affairs, a hub through which enormous flows of economic resources pass. The large criminal organizations, it is commonly believed, now travel in the empyrean of international finance and globalization. The leap in quality is unquestionable, but it would be a mistake to think that in the meantime the tentacles of the octopus have left their territories of origin, where politics and administration continue to be exposed to the infiltration of the mafia, in the traditional “game” of exchanging roles, influences , powers.
It is nothing other than the “grey area”, which some also define as the “mafia bourgeoisie”, a humus that feeds and feeds on crime. “By mafia bourgeoisie – wrote Isaia Sales in the pages of Repubblica – we must understand the social landing place of the mafiosi and at the same time the relationships with those who should have repressed and removed them and did not do so. Not the origins. With the mafias violence does not for the popular classes it is more an instrument of revolt against the wealth of others, but of integration. The modernity of the mafias consists in the fact that they free themselves from the historical conditions that produced them and become a method: the use of violence as enrichment and power through political and social relations. Attributing the success of the mafia to the bourgeois social origin is ahistorical, but highlighting the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes (in all the implications that this term implies) is a duty”.
Concepts also expressed at the time by Rocco Chinnici, another martyred magistrate: “The most relevant, most emblematic aspect that gives the mafia a very particular connotation is constituted by the relationship with sectors of power, a relationship which, although it has also existed in The past has never been so intense as from August 1943 to today”. And the prefect Mori had used stony words on this topic: “The mafia not caressed by the authorities, or rather targeted by them, is similar to a plant without light: it becomes sad and dies”.
The plastic (and statistical) representation of mafia infiltration in public affairs is that of the Italian municipalities placed under commissioners and/or liquidated: 387 local authorities placed under commissioners from 1991 to today, including 7 healthcare companies (in 138 cases the assessment procedure was concluded with an archive). In practice, one mafia commissioner per month. Average also maintained in the last 6 years (96 commissioners), a sign of the current nature and relevance of the phenomenon: 24 decrees annulled by administrative judges (6% of the total) but only one in recent years. There are currently 24 municipalities under commissionership, while the verification of possible infiltrations in 9 other local authorities (including an ASL) is still underway.
Calabria is the region most affected by infiltration phenomena (over 30% of the Municipalities were involved in the procedures for verifying mafia infiltration), followed by Campania, Sicily and Puglia; 4 commissioners in Lazio; several cases also in Northern Italy. The most affected provinces are Reggio Calabria, Naples, Caserta, Palermo, Vibo Valentia. Many entities have undergone more than one commissionership, confirming the endemic crisis of some political and civil communities: Marano di Napoli has been dissolved 4 times and 20 other entities 2 times.
Repubblica, in the wake of the civil commitment that has always characterized our newspaper, from today makes available an exhaustive digital archive which, through government reports, sentences, documents of the Anti-Mafia Commission, parliamentary questions and other documents, reconstructs and represents for the first the overall picture of the infiltration phenomenon once again in Italy. The database and related graphs will be updated in real time and will be accessible, free of charge, to political forces, administrations, universities, journalists and institutions thanks to an easy-to-use search engine.
Knowing these data helps to understand the extent and importance of the penetration of criminal organizations into public administration, offering the reader a constantly updated snapshot of one of the main threats to collective security and freedom. If those who attack the law aim for invisibility in order to multiply crime, our newspaper’s commitment to transparency arises from the desire to use the tools of knowledge to use them as a shield in order to protect the rights of citizens and combat who puts them in danger.
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