9.
THE TREE IS THE WORLD
The tree is the world. The tree is the genealogy of families linked by dynastic relations and sealed in blood. The tree is knowledge.
But the tree is also real. In the story handed down in ’ndrangheta lore it is an oak tree on the island of Favignana, but the tree I encountered is in Calabria, a hearty chestnut with green leaves, though its massive gray trunk is as cracked and as concave as a grotto. At Christmastime that natural grotto often hosts a nativity scene, with the Three Kings who have arrived from the East and the Archangel Gabriel watching over all from above, perched on a surface root. For centuries, as storms raged in the mountains, this tree offered shelter to sheep and dogs and donkeys, who could at least stick their front paws and big heads in, and even to humans: shepherds, hunters, and brigands. That’s what I was thinking as I crouched in its hollow, breathing in the smell of musk and earth, of resin and stagnant water. This tree has always been here, in this gorge near the crest of Aspromonte. Men came later, and they took on the tree’s form and its meanings.
The ’ndrangheta tree covers nearly the whole world. Though not as mythologized as Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, in part because it is much more discreet, the Calabrian criminal tribe is arguably the most powerful organized crime group in the world; its estimated annual revenue, €53 billion, is over 3 percent of Italy’s GDP. We are in a new era of waxing ’ndrangheta power, invoked by three dates. In 2007: the August 15 massacre at Da Bruno restaurant in Duisburg, Germany, an extension of the feud that broke out in Calabria, among San Luca families, during Carnival celebrations in 1991. In 2008: the ’ndrangheta is added to the White House’s list of foreign narcotics kingpins, drug-trafficking organizations considered to be a threat to U.S. security and whose assets are immediately blocked. In 2010: Operation Crimine-Infinito, coordinated by the DDA (Antimafia District Directorate) of Milan and Reggio Calabria. Over three hundred arrests. Circulation of two videos: one, the meeting at the Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino Club in Paderno Dugnano, in the hinterlands of Milan, which documents Calabrian dominance in northern Italy; the second, the annual summit of the major ’ndrangheta bosses at the Polsi sanctuary, in Calabria, which reveals the rigid hierarchical structure of the entire organization.
But the truth is awkward for many Italians. One day, leafing through the papers, I let out a short, scornful laugh, as when you suddenly realize you’re the butt of some awful joke, even though it somehow doesn’t surprise you. “Add your signature against Saviano, who calls northerners mafiosi.” It was mid-November 2010. A week earlier I had spoken of ’ndrangheta transplants in northern Italy in comments on material that had already been in the public domain for four months. There’s none so deaf as one who won’t hear, I thought to myself. It occurred to me that the Calabrian bosses could have found reassurance in that proverb: Everything was still the same; no problem.
The ’ndrangheta owes as much to others’ shortcomings as to its own strengths for what it has become. One of its primary merits is the way it cloaked its expansion so that only the occasional growth spurt was noticed. Never the whole picture, never the full extension of the tree’s crown, even less its deep roots. For a good decade it disappeared from sight even in Italy. The state seemed to have won on all fronts: It had defeated terrorism, weakened the Sicilian Mafia after the season of bombs, occupied manu militari (with military aid) not only Sicily but Campania, Puglia, and Calabria, which was guilty of carrying out the killing of Judge Antonino Scopelliti, who was involved in the Palermo maxi-trial, the biggest trial ever against the Cosa Nostra, held in the second half of the eighties in Sicily. That “excellent cadaver” nevertheless fueled a dangerous misunderstanding: It appeared to be further proof of Calabrian subordination to the Sicilians, founders of the Mafia, the oldest and most notorious Italian criminal organization. What’s more, in the collective imagination the ’ndrangheta still had no face, or if it did, it was still thought of as a primitive rural outfit that relied on kidnappings as the primary source of its organization’s income, like the gangs of Anonymous Sardinian shepherds who dragged their hostages up onto the Gennargentu and treated them worse than their beasts, sending back severed ears in request for ransom money. They were beasts themselves, adding yet another element of terror to a country that in the 1970s was already far too bloody and unstable, but only by controlling areas that were totally backward. That was the idea that still stuck in people’s minds, and no new one arrived to correct it.
It was an idea that proved useful to the ’ndrangheta. With the new Italian law introduced in 1982 that allowed for the freezing of mafia assets, the Sardinians were done in, and it was thought that the Calabrians were too. The mafiosi had stopped killing each other even in Reggio Calabria—peace seemed to be the right answer everywhere. But in Calabria it was a pax mafiosa. A strategic shift, a tactical withdrawal. The ’ndrangheta had decided to give up kidnapping, to stop letting Cosa Nostra get it mixed up in ineffective strategies against the state, and to keep from bleeding to death in fratricidal wars. The tree flourished in silence: Its roots continued to extend deeper into Calabrian soil through public works projects, such as the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, and its crown to reach into global trafficking, which now meant primarily cocaine.
The tree, which had long represented both the individual ’ndrina and the Onorata Società (the Honored Society, as the ’ndrangheta is called), also contained the answer to the growing need for cohesion and coordination. For a century more or less its symbolism had been handed down from father to son, from elderly boss to new affiliate. According to a ’ndrangheta code that came to light at Gioiosa Jonica in 1927, “the trunk represents the head of the society; the narrower part of the trunk the accountant and master of ceremonies; the branches the camorristi of blood and by crime, the twigs the rank and file; the flowers the young men of honor; the leaves the bastards and traitors who end up falling and rotting at the foot of the tree of knowledge.” Oral transmission has generated many variants, but the substance is always the same. The bosses are the base of the trunk or the trunk itself, from which the other members of the hierarchy branch out, all the way out to the smallest and most fragile twigs.
The ’ndrangheta hierarchy was not an imitation of the Cosa Nostra’s high command, as erroneously has been said; the Sicilian structure is that of a pyramid, the Calabrian tree can be simplified geometrically into its inverse: a downward pointing triangle, or a V, the sides of which can be extended and expanded into infinity.
And that was more or less what was happening. In Italy the Socialist and the Christian Democratic parties had crumbled, new governments came and went, rightist and leftist governments, and emergency governments, awkward coalitions of the two. There was Berlusconi and the Olive Tree Party, which was much more fragile than the ’ndrangheta tree. In Colombia, in the meantime, Pablo Escobar had been killed, and the Calabrians had redirected their middlemen toward Cali. Then the Cali cartel crumbled as well, and the ’ndrangheta had to do business with whoever was left, or whoever was starting to step in, secure in the knowledge that nothing was as immutable as their honored society, their tree.
Italy was forced to remember the existence of the ’ndrangheta in 2005, when Francesco Fortugno, vice president of the regional council of Calabria, was killed in the Calabrian town of Locri, and for the first time the area youth let out a collective cry: “Kill us all!” The shock didn’t last long, though, as is always the case with news stories from southern Italy, which are considered manifestations of an endemic problem that is confined to those lands without hope and have nothing to do with the rest of the country.
The tree had become enormous. It wouldn’t have been hard to notice it. It would have been enough to follow the news more regularly. It would even have been enough simply to reflect on a single story that made the national headlines. A story in which the tree reveals itself in its entirety. A leaf of the tree had fallen off and was gathere
d up by investigators before it could reach the ground. In and of itself the fallen leaf would not have constituted any risk. To date, the ’ndranghetisti who have decided to turn informers number less than one hundred, and you can count the bosses on two hands. It’s tremendously difficult to turn your back on an organization that coincides with the family into which you were born or to which you’re joined through marriage or baptism, and which almost everyone you have spent time with since you were a child belongs to. It’s almost impossible to break away from a tree once you’ve become a branch. But this wasn’t a branch, or even a twig. It was just a leaf, never anything more, what in the more elaborate versions of the myth are “contrasti onorati,” those who support the organization without being members.
• • •
The leaf was named Bruno Fuduli.
Bruno was still a kid when he collected his inheritance and became the head of his family. The fate of the first born. In the ’ndrine dynastic succession based on seniority is one of those hard-and-fast laws that prevent a power struggle if a chief dies or ends up in jail. In a family business it’s a widespread practice, and not only in Calabria or the South. The oldest son is the first to be brought into the business, to help out and to learn, and often to introduce new ideas, which younger generations can grasp more easily.
Bruno was just over twenty when his father died, leaving him his stone masonry business, the Filiberto Fuduli company in Nicotera, an ancient village that looks over the Tyrrhenian Sea and a famous stretch of long, white beach that fills with tourists in the summer. He also inherited half a billion lire of debt, but he was sure he’d be able to manage things if he revitalized the company, made it competitive.
Marble, granite, and all the other stones that his craftsman father had worked with were coming back in style. There was a demand for large stone surfaces in private homes, in addition to their timeless use in cemeteries. So Bruno throws himself into the fray: He updates his range of products, changes the name of the company and the corporation, and then opens two more companies, in partnership with his brother-in-law. But there are other obstacles Bruno has to face. Along with his father’s debts, Bruno also inherited another aspect of his business: theft, vandalism, malice. An elastic response to such obstacles is usually what is expected in southern Italy, but Bruno stays true to the old Filiberto stubbornness. Instead of going to the right people to set things right, he goes to the police.
For the family who rules the entire province of Vibo Valentia, this sort of thing is a mild annoyance, like a fly that disturbs your postprandial nap on a muggy summer afternoon. The Mancuso family has been there forever. They can boast of a 1903 court sentence, when their great-grandfather Vincenzo was condemned for criminal conspiracy. By now they’ve got their hands in every sort of illegal activity and are on friendly terms with the ’ndrangheta families in the Gioia Tauro plain. The Piromalli family gang controls the territory where the port and the steel plant are being built, and the Mancuso family gang controls the quarries in Limbadi and environs, which supplied the building materials. The amount the young Fuduli refuses to cough up is nothing to them, small change. But he’s setting a bad example with his arrogance. It’s routine, standard practice, to repeat their requests for payment, something they do on principle, till the stubborn kid learns to lower his head. It’s merely a question of time. Time is not only the best healer, it’s also the best fee collector.
Debts. Bruno manages to keep them under control for years, even with all the expenses and additional losses inflicted on him by the forces he refuses to give in to. He practically works himself to death to pay the interest, but the sword of Damocles still hangs over his companies. It wouldn’t take much to upset his precarious balance. All it would take is one more problem, a few more customers whose checks bounce, or who don’t pay at all. Which is exactly what happens toward the end of the 1980s, a moment in which the entire country’s economy starts slowing down, nudging Italy toward the financial crisis that will explode in 1992. So one day the bank tells Fuduli that, for want of guaranties, it is forced to close his credit line. Either he declares bankruptcy, or he finds some other way to survive. Those are his only options.
The people he contacts don’t have a problem lending him money, but they charge 200 percent interest, even more. Loan sharks. The Mancuso family usurers are becoming more and more threatening. But suddenly a man with unlimited resources holds out a helping hand to him: Natale Scali, boss of the town of Marina di Gioiosa Jonica, an experienced drug trafficker. He needs a guy like Bruno: a young businessman toughened by years of training, during which he used every possible resource to defend his companies. Intelligent, dynamic, determined. Someone who knows how to behave, and who speaks Spanish well. His record is spotless; in fact, it’s even adorned with repeated reports of extortion threats. Scali tells him so, quite openly. He doesn’t push, doesn’t rush. He flatters him, telling him each time they meet that he needs someone like him, someone clean. And for a sum that no bank would ever lend him—1.7 billion lire—Scali asks him for a favor, in the form of a plane trip. An arrest warrant has forced Scali to hole up in his bunker house in his hometown, but before, when he used to go to Bogotá himself, to take care of business, he’d live like a fat cat, the guest of a governor’s brother. All Bruno has to do is go and renew Scali’s old contacts. He can think of it as a vacation.
Natale Scali was a far-sighted businessman with lots of experience. The Aquino-Scali-Ursino ’ndrangheta families, like the other ’ndrangheta families on the Ionian coast, had become so specialized in importing cocaine from Colombia that they were allowed to have their own representative in loco: a man named Santo Scipione, who goes by the name of Papi, and who was sent directly from the town of San Luca, the ’ndrangheta stronghold, known as mamma, from whom all things come. She’s the one who makes the rules, the one who slaps you, punishes you, caresses you, rewards you, the one with whom all problems must be discussed. If problems arise among ’ndrangheta sons anywhere in the world, mamma San Luca resolves them. Santo Scipione is in regular contact with Natale Scali, but his supply channel does not cover all of Scali’s demand. He has settled in Montería, appealing because of its sizable Italian community, and because Salvatore Mancuso, El Mono, is there. Even though Mancuso is now officially a commander in hiding, he is becoming more and more crucial for Italo-Colombian relations. For every fugitive, home is home: the place where your family is; your people; the place you belong to and that belongs to you. The Calabrians have worked with the AUC since they were founded. So their decision to settle their representative right in the middle of AUC territory is a much appreciated gesture of respect, and good for business.
When he returns from Bogotá Bruno discovers that Scali has charged him 600 million lire in interest, to be paid with another trip, and then another. It’s no longer a matter of calling on people on Scali’s behalf. Now Bruno has to contact new suppliers. The deals he helps launch result in tons of cocaine being shipped to Calabria. Natale Scali had been right about Bruno. So when he offers to put an end to Bruno’s debt problems by taking over his company and gets a “no, thank you” in response, each serenely goes his own way. It’s not a problem for Scali, but it is for Bruno. This boss from Marina di Gioiosa Jonica has now joined the Mancuso family orbit of usurers, and has taken a personal interest.
Towns in Calabria are small, and the ’ndrangheta’s branches are intertwined. There’s a small branch on the big tree that needs to be tended to. Mancuso narco Vincenzo Barbieri has just been released from prison and has to serve the rest of his time under house arrest. In order to leave the house he needs to find a job that the police will find credible. The solution is so simple, and so near at hand. Diego Mancuso, a Vibo Valentia ’ndrina boss, steps in. He merely asks a favor, that Barbieri be given a job—to help with his rehabilitation—at Fuduli’s company Lavormarmi. Maybe Bruno fools himself into thinking that he can keep up the facade with Barbieri and his partner, Fra
ncesco Ventrici, a guy with a clean record whom Barbieri brought along. Perhaps Bruno believes them when they insist they’d prefer not to have anything to do with the Mancuso family. Everything unfolds from there: Bruno ends up being outmaneuvered, and his companies, increasingly in the red, fall into the hands of the ’ndrangheta.
They make a strange couple, Vincenzo Barbieri and Francesco Ventrici, not exactly blood brothers loyal to the Onorata Società or ’ndrangheta, but something akin to that, anyway. Ventrici, the younger of the two, may not even be ritually affiliated with the organization but merely close to it, in part because he’s always close—very close—to Barbieri. They’re like one of those inseparable couples that sometimes form in small villages in southern Italy. Villages like San Calogero, buried in boredom, where all the men hang out at the bars, and where permission to enter them is already a rite of passage of sorts. Where certain kids cling to the most admired character, so that when they grow up, their untiring reverence and emulation is cemented into a real bond. Ventrici marries one of Barbieri’s cousins, and then they become family for real—they’re godfathers to each other’s children. Which is how Fuduli’s unrequested partners introduce themselves when they’re in San Calogero. Barbieri is the official owner of a company that makes living room furniture, and his well-kept, bourgeois look earns him the nickname U Ragioniere or Accountant. Ventrici is a big kid with narrow eyes and a double chin, whose usual nickname, El Gordo—Fatty—must have been pinned on him by one of Barbieri’s Colombian friends. The trafficking they engage in through Fuduli’s companies and the service their owner provides make theirs a most productive friendship.