Roberto Saviano’s explo­sive rev­e­la­tions about the Camorra of Naples– a racket he says is big­ger than Sicily’s Mafia — have led to death threats and, belat­edly, an armed guard.

Peter Popham

Roberto Saviano is in mor­tal dan­ger. Yes­ter­day he was — very belat­edly — granted an armed body­guard by the dis­trict of Naples where he lives. He is in grave dan­ger of being shot, stabbed, blown up, and done away with because he has had the courage and the reck­less­ness to spill a large num­ber of beans about the Camorra, the Mafia of Naples. This sprawl­ing net­work of crim­i­nal gangs, accord­ing to him, now dwarfs both the orig­i­nal Mafia of Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta and south­ern Italy’s other organ­ised gangs, in num­bers, in eco­nomic power and in ruth­less vio­lence.
The mafias of Italy have never hes­i­tated to kill, but for rea­sons of pru­dence, and to keep the police and the media off their backs as far as pos­si­ble, they usu­ally go to some lengths to keep the killing within the crim­i­nal under­world: there is noth­ing to be gained from col­lat­eral dam­age.
For those out­siders, whether mag­is­trates, politi­cians or jour­nal­ists, who med­dle in their affairs, who dis­hon­our them, spill their secrets or threaten to break their cosy arrange­ment with the courts, ret­ri­bu­tion is often swift and dras­tic. And this is what Roberto Saviano now fears.
His crime, in the eyes of the gangs, is to have pub­lished a book, Gomorra (a word play on Camorra, and a ref­er­ence to the dis­as­trously law­less sit­u­a­tion of Naples) that digs deep inside the gang­sters’ world, nam­ing names, spelling out crim­i­nal struc­tures and their ways of work­ing, draw­ing a detailed pic­ture of a city which, in his analy­sis, has largely sur­ren­dered to the crim­i­nals.
Gomorra was pub­lished by Mon­dadori, one of Italy’s top pub­lish­ers, six months ago and has been on the best-seller list for five months: sales now top 100,000. Saviano was also awarded a major prize, the Pre­mio Viareg­gio, for the book, his first, and it is soon to be pub­lished in Britain, Amer­ica, Ger­many and France. But the greater his book’s fame, the more irri­tat­ing it has become for his sub­jects. The threats began as a sub­tle mur­mur in the back­ground of daily life: the phone that went dead when he picked it up, wait­ers in local restau­rants who told him, “You’re not wel­come here,” shop­keep­ers who whis­pered in a plead­ing tone, “Must you really keep on buy­ing your bread at this shop?”.
Then there was the ges­ture of rejec­tion by the top elected offi­cial in the city. When Rosa Rossa Ier­volino, the Mayor of Naples, awarded him a prize for the book, she gave him a slap in the face with a barbed com­ment. “Saviano,” she said, “is a sym­bol of the Naples that he denounces.“
Clearly the tem­per­a­ture was ris­ing. But the moment that Saviano realised his life was at risk came as a weird coun­ter­point to his new fame and promi­nence.
On 23 Sep­tem­ber a cam­paign con­ducted by the Min­istry of Jus­tice against the Naples gangs was wrapped up with a pub­lic meet­ing in Casal di Principe, a tough sub­urb of Naples, addressed by Saviano. The author did not mince his words. “Iovine, Schi­avone, Zagaria,” he told the crowd, nam­ing the local Camorra bosses, “are worth noth­ing. Their power is founded on your fear, they must clear out of this land.” It was a moment of great courage — and reck­less­ness.
Noth­ing went amiss for Saviano that day. But the local news­pa­per, the Cor­riere di Caserta, put a strik­ing spin on the story. In their report they noted that none of the city’s MPs had shown up for the meet­ing. They also reported that a cousin of “San­dokan”, another of the gang lead­ers named by Saviona, “pinned one man to the wall with his fero­cious stare and made him say, one by one, who was applaud­ing too enthu­si­as­ti­cally.” The report went on to say that “not every­one was impressed by the invec­tive of Saviona”. The small change of local press report­ing, one might think — except for the fact that the newspaper’s edi­tor is soon to go on trial accused of black­mail.
As Saviona’s book makes clear, to live in these bad­lands and not come to terms with the gangs who rule them is to put one’s life at risk. And Saviona has not only made it very clear that he is deeply opposed to the gangs; his work has already had an effect.
Accord­ing to L’Espresso, the mag­a­zine that has pub­lished much of his work, “Gomorra … has forced the state to act. The Inte­rior Min­istry is putting in place a plan to restore pub­lic order in Cam­pa­nia, and there is a reawak­en­ing of resis­tance among the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. While every­body has been look­ing at Naples and the out­skirts, the book has put under the eyes of every­one the eco­nomic and mil­i­tary power of the clans of Caserta,” the area at the heart of Gomorra.
When Italy’s crim­i­nal gangs, which are always in league with pow­ers deep inside the bureau­cracy and the gov­ern­ment, decide to elim­i­nate an enemy, they do not strike with­out due prepa­ra­tion. The prepa­ra­tion con­sists of ren­der­ing their vic­tim weak, friend­less and alone. It was the strat­egy fol­lowed in the assas­si­na­tion of the Sicil­ian mag­is­trates Fal­cone and Borsellino, and many oth­ers. Saviano’s ene­mies seem to have been fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar script them­selves.
Now Saviano’s friends have started to declare them­selves. The first was the cel­e­brated writer Enzo Sicil­iano, who just before he died said: “Let’s remem­ber that this is not just a good book; this lad’s life is at risk, too.“
As word of the threats spread, a sup­port­ive blog was launched. On Sun­day the great Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, went on national TV news to appeal for Saviona’s pro­tec­tion. “We must not leave Saviano alone like Fal­cone and Borsellino,” he said. “In this case, appeals to writ­ers for sol­i­dar­ity are of no use… We know where the threats are com­ing from, we know the Chris­t­ian and sur­names of those who are mak­ing them. What’s required is a pub­lic inter­ven­tion by the state.“
Yes­ter­day the Pre­fect of Caserta answered that appeal by grant­ing Saviano a body­guard. The writer him­self is cur­rently tak­ing “a break” away from the Naples region. “Only a stay of a few weeks,” reports L’Espresso, “to relieve the pres­sure and con­cen­trate on new projects.“
But how long it will be before Saviano can breathe easy again is anybody’s guess.
A Vespa ride through ‘the pusher’s piazza’
From “The War of Sec­ondigliano”, chap­ter three of Gomorra: “I had been hang­ing out in Sec­ondigliano for some time. Since he gave up work­ing as a tai­lor, Pasquale (a friend) kept me up to date with the buzz in the area, a place that was chang­ing at blind­ing speed…
I used to cruise around the area north of Naples on my Vespa. I liked the light in Sec­ondigliano and Scampia. The streets were huge and wide, airy com­pared to the tan­gle in the cen­tre of Naples… it was like being in the open coun­try… Scampia was the rot­ten sym­bol of the archi­tec­tural delir­ium (of the Six­ties), or per­haps more sim­ply a utopia of cement which was able to put noth­ing in the way of con­struc­tion of the machine of the drug trade that wore down the social fab­ric of this part of the earth.
Chronic unem­ploy­ment and a total absence of plans for social growth turned this into a place capa­ble of stor­ing tons of drugs, and a lab­o­ra­tory for laun­der­ing dirty money into legal com­mer­cial activ­ity… In 1989, it was reported that the north of Naples had one of the high­est inci­dences of drug deal­ers per head of pop­u­la­tion in Italy. Fif­teen years later it had become the high­est in Europe and among the top five in the world.
My face had become known for some time to the look­outs of the gangs, the “pali”, and I was regarded as neu­tral. In an area rid­dled with look­outs like this one, at every sec­ond there are peo­ple who have a neg­a­tive value — police, cara­binieri, peo­ple work­ing for enemy clans — and a pos­i­tive value, namely the cus­tomers. Every­thing that is nei­ther neg­a­tive nor pos­i­tive is neu­tral and use­less. To enter into this cat­e­gory sig­ni­fies not to exist.
The push­ers’ piazza has always fas­ci­nated me because of its per­fect organ­i­sa­tion, which con­tra­dicts its rep­u­ta­tion as a place of pure degra­da­tion. The mech­a­nism of push­ing is as reg­u­lar as clock­work. It’s as if the indi­vid­u­als move exactly like the machin­ery that keeps the time tick­ing.
Nobody moves with­out caus­ing the move­ment of some­body else. Every time I see it I find it enchant­ing. The wages are paid out weekly, €100 for the look­outs, €500 for the co-ordinator and the man who col­lects the money from the deal­ers in a piazza, €800 to the indi­vid­ual push­ers and €1,000 to those who take charge of the ware­houses and hide the drugs at home.
The shifts run from 3pm to mid­night and from mid­night to four in the morn­ing. In the morn­ing it’s dif­fi­cult to deal because there are too many police around. Every­one has one day off per week, and any­one who comes to the piazza late loses €50 from his wages for every hour missed…“
But the calm of the piazza was exploded by a feud between the Camorra clans, with dozens of deaths:
“I drove back and forth on my Vespa through this blan­ket of ten­sion. Every time I went to Sec­ondigliano dur­ing the con­flict, I was stopped and searched dozens of times a day. If I had had as much as a Swiss army knife on me I would have been done for. The police stopped me, the cara­binieri, the look­outs of the Di Lauro clan and of the Spag­noli. All with the same lit­tle author­ity, mechan­i­cal ges­tures, iden­ti­cal words. The forces of order took my ID papers and scru­ti­nised them, the guards of the clans bom­barded me with ques­tions, check­ing for an accent, on the look­out for lies…“
From ‘Gomorra’ by Roberto Saviano, pub­lished and copy­right 2006 Arnoldo Mon­dadori Edi­tore. Extracted with per­mis­sion
They knew too much
* The most cel­e­brated and widely mourned vic­tims of the Mafia in recent times were Gio­vanni Fal­cone and Paolo Borsellino, both assas­si­nated by car bombs in Palermo in 1992 in ret­ri­bu­tion for their suc­cess in bring­ing hun­dreds of high-ranking mafiosi to trial.
As seems to be the case with Roberto Saviano, it was not only the gang­sters but their secret allies within the insti­tu­tions of state that first iso­lated the two inves­ti­ga­tors, then plot­ted their deaths. The mur­ders pro­voked the first ever mass demon­stra­tions against the Mafia by ordi­nary Sicil­ians, and prompted a res­olute attempt by the state to clamp down on the mob which resulted in the break­ing of the lead­er­ship. The life and death of Fal­cone was recently made into a hugely pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion drama series.
* A cel­e­brated inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, Mauro de Mauro, dis­ap­peared sud­denly in Palermo in 1970 while in the mid­dle of inves­ti­gat­ing Mafia crimes. His body was never found and his fate remained a mys­tery until last week, when a Mafia super­grass claimed that the jour­nal­ist had been stran­gled and his body dis­solved in acid.
* Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, a gen­eral in the cara­binieri, scored heroic suc­cesses in the fight against ultra-left ter­ror­ism in the 1970s, but was assas­si­nated by the Mafia in Palermo in 1982 when he tried to repeat the per­for­mance.
* Francesco For­tugno, politi­cian and vice-president of the regional coun­cil of Cal­abria, was shot dead by gang­sters at a polling sta­tion in Locri, Cal­abria, one year ago. The mur­der­ers have yet to be arrested and the crime remains a mys­tery.
* Don Giuseppe Diana, a priest in Naples, was shot dead in his church while cel­e­brat­ing Mass on 19 March 1994. A pop­u­lar scout leader, he had showed a defi­ant atti­tude to the Camorra and paid with his life.