Blood Brotherhoods (48 page)

By the time the Fascist dictatorship had asserted itself in Rome, judges were beginning to hear new kinds of family stories among the hoodlums
of Calabria. In Vibo Valentia, to the north of the Plain of Gioia Tauro, a
Carabiniere
was murdered in 1927 for trying to stop a marriage alliance between two criminal kinship groups, one of which had colonised the local Fascist state.

Three years later, in Nicotera just to the south, one boy was initiated into the Honoured Society at only eleven years old.

Across the mountains to the south-east, in Grotteria in 1933, the local boss heard rumours that his fiancée was pregnant by another
picciotto
. So the gang met to discuss this smear on their
capo
’s honour, and decided to put a contract out. Contrary to what one might expect, the target was not the woman’s alleged lover, but the man thought to be spreading the rumours. Hearsay, after all, has always been the most dangerous of weapons in dynastic struggle. The chosen killer, a sixteen-year-old boy, took six goes before he managed to cut his victim’s throat properly.

Such stories are undoubtedly significant. Yet an even clearer way to trace the evolution of the early ’ndrangheta’s sexual politics is by following the changing role of women. Italy’s criminal organisations were from their inception overwhelmingly masculine and inherently sexist. Mafia honour has always been a men-only quality. Nevertheless, as we have already seen, women had important uses to
mafiosi
and
camorristi
, and there was significant variety in the ways they were used.

Whores were the women most frequently found in the company of the early
’ndranghetisti
. Whereas Sicilian
mafiosi
have never had anything to do with prostitution, the first Calabrian
picciotti
tended to be ponces. As ponces do, they partied with the girls whose earnings they creamed off. (They raped and sometimes even married them too—because the business relationship between a pimp and his girls is also, very often, an intimate one.) So unlike their contemporaries in the Sicilian mafia, and unlike
’ndranghetisti
of today, the Calabrian gangsters of the late 1800s and early 1900s did not view profiting from sex as dishonourable.

In this respect, the picciotteria was exactly like the Honoured Society of Naples had been in the nineteenth century. Neapolitan camorra slang bristled with derogatory synonyms for ‘prostitute’:
bagascia, bambuglia, bardascia, drusiana, risgraziata, schiavuttella
(‘little slave’),
vaiassa
and
zoccola
(‘sewer rat’). There was also a whole nomenclature for different kinds of streetwalkers. A new girl was a
colomba
(‘dove’); one from the provinces was a
cafona
(‘yokel’). A
gallinella
(‘young hen’) was a woman with kids; whereas a
pollanca
(‘young turkey’) was the term for a virgin set to be put on the market. In addition, there were several names for an old woman, like
carcassa
(‘carcass’) and
calascione
(‘a battered old mandolin’). This was the jargon of an exploitative industry central to the camorra economy. We know little
about the family lives of Neapolitan
camorristi
in the 1800s. But it seems unlikely that men so profoundly embroiled in the flesh trade could sire dynasties to compare with those of the Sicilian dons.

Like their Neapolitan peers, who had accorded
la Sangiovannara
exceptional honour in recognition of her vital role in the events of Italian unification, the
picciotti
of Calabria also sometimes hung around with strong women. A few women involved with the picciotteria in its early days directly participated in criminal actions. Female names leap out now and again from among the defendants listed in the trial documents. There were two ‘Lasses with Attitude’ found guilty in Palmi in 1892, for example: Concetta Muzzopapa, age 40, and Rosaria Testa, age 26. Both were from Rosarno, at the opposite end of the Plain of Gioia Tauro from Palmi. Both had taken the oath to become members of the Calabrian mafia ‘by making blood come out of the little finger of their right hand as they promised to maintain secrecy’, the judges explained. Both also dressed up in men’s clothing to take part in robberies and violent attacks. Rosaria Testa confessed her part in the organisation, and told prosecutors many of its secrets before she retracted after being threatened by the male members of the gang.

There were other oathed women too, such as in the King of Aspromonte’s home town of Santo Stefano: investigations into the picciotteria during the brigand Musolino’s rampage found that 12 of the 166 initiated members were women; they included Musolino’s lover, Angela Surace, and his three sisters, Ippolita, Vincenza and Anna (who, it is worth recalling, were also the boss’s daughters). ‘Safe in the criminal association’s moral and material support’, the police wrote, ‘women from the members’ families are also able to issue threats and impose their will’. The oldest of the Musolino sisters, Ippolita, was particularly feared and it seems that she even advised her brother on who his targets should be. These are all fascinating cases, and we would know a lot more about the early ’ndrangheta if we had more documents on which to base a study of them. There is nothing quite like these Calabrian
mafiose
in the history of the other criminal organisations.

Some of the Calabrian hoodlums that came to trial in the 1920s and 1930s still displayed the same taste in women as the
picciotti
of the 1880s and 1890s. Like Domenico Noto, the flying boss of Antonimina: his gang pimped, forced whores to take part in robberies and regularly held meetings and parties in a hooker’s house. But Noto was not content with ‘wandering Venuses’ (in the judge’s delicate phrase). He arm-twisted his way into other beds, including those of an emigrant’s wife, her fourteen-year-old daughter, and a vulnerable deaf-mute girl. But it was hard to keep the criminal brotherhood’s secrets when you carried on like this. In court, the emigrant’s wife gave crucial evidence against Domenico Noto and more than forty of
his comrades. Other Calabrian mafia cells were undone on the say-so of streetwalkers. For Calabrian judges showed no reluctance to believe evidence given by sex workers against the men who extorted money from them. As early as 1890, a judge in Reggio Calabria handed down severe sentences to a group of
picciotti
, and his ruling waved aside the defence’s attempts to discredit the testimonies of four prostitutes: ‘It is no use attacking what those unfortunate women have declared—for the reason that their repugnant trade cannot destroy their personality, which is the very substance of truth.’ The habit of making money from prostitution, like the technique of browbeating young boys into being initiated, was a structural weakness in the picciotteria: both were bound to generate witnesses for the prosecution.

Musolino’s sister Ippolita. According to the police, she had also been oathed into the Calabrian mafia.

But elsewhere during the Fascist era there are clear signs of change in women’s role. There are fewer prostitutes, and the gun-toting girl gangsters disappear. Instead, a cannier brand of gender politics begins to emerge. And with it, a new type of Calabrian mafia woman. Not a harlot. Or a cross-dressing brigandess. Instead a mother and wife whose nurturing energies are single-mindedly bent to building the honour of her menfolk, young and old.

It is often assumed that the ’ndrangheta’s heavy reliance on family bonds grows from the culture of ‘familism’ in Calabrian society. The available evidence suggests this is wrong. The ’ndrangheta had to
learn
to base itself on kinship ties. The apparently traditional function of ’ndrangheta women—as the cult of honour’s domestic priestesses—is actually a modern invention.

But even when this new model
mafiosa
first appears in the trial records during Fascism, she could wield real power and influence behind the scenes of picciotteria life. Maria Marvelli was one such woman. She was, to use a judge’s words once again, a ‘clever, forceful and wary woman’, one well used to the ways of the Honoured Society. Not even these qualities stopped her husband meeting his gory end. But they did allow her to have her revenge. The following story comes from beneath Fascism’s media blackout, and it draws heavily on Maria Marvelli’s own evidence to dramatise the role women were playing in the evolution of the picciotteria.
As it happens, Maria Marvelli’s story also exposes the most savage face of Fascism’s countermeasures.

Just south west of Antonimina, home of the flying boss, lies Cirella, yet another tiny settlement clinging to the flanks of Aspromonte. Cirella was isolated in an inhospitable terrain; without roads fit for wheels, it was a village prey to the forces of nature and all but ignored by the forces of order.

The men of Cirella’s Honoured Society did all of the things that might be expected of them: they robbed, vandalised, raped, mutilated and murdered. But they were also developing softer forms of power. Remarkably, they had elbowed the local priest aside: crooks, and not the cleric, ran Cirella’s religious festivals. Anyone who wanted to do business with the local
picciotti
or marry one of their womenfolk had to join their ranks as a precondition.

Paolo Agostino was among the most influential men in Cirella’s Honoured Society. Even among their number his ferocity stood out, as a judge would later note:

He was one of those men who combines a robust and vigorous body with an audacious mind, a rare propensity for bullying, a strong tendency to commit all kinds of abuses, and the courage needed to make all these qualities count.

Paolo Agostino also had another quality that the judge did not identify, a quality that was becoming increasingly important for successful Calabrian bosses: he had a sharp eye for a smart woman. Those who went through the mafia initiation ritual in Cirella, as elsewhere in Calabria, had to swear to ‘renounce family affections, putting the interests of the Society before their parents, siblings and children’. But Calabrian gangsters were also beginning to learn that families have advantages. Paolo Agostino made a particularly good choice of wife: the ‘clever, forceful and wary’ Maria Marvelli.

La Marvelli had been married before; she was a widow. Her son from her first marriage, Francesco Polito, joined her as part of the new family she made with the ‘robust and vigorous’ Paolo Agostino. If the judge is to be believed, the marriage was not an equal one, at least within the walls of the Agostino home. Maria apparently ‘exercised a commanding authority over her husband and son. And she was obeyed without debate.’ Paolo Agostino’s return on the union was a new heir, and a wealthy one too: Maria’s son, Francesco Polito, had already inherited property worth one hundred thousand lire from his late father.

The marriage seems to have been happy, and Maria had more children. Moreover her older boy, Francesco Polito, was initiated into the Honoured Society when he came of age, as befitted the stepson of a senior gangster.
However his mother, smart and suspicious woman that she was, would not allow him to handle any money. So he had to steal twenty-four bottles of olive oil from his grandfather by way of a membership fee.

Francesco Polito, with his money and his powerful stepfather, was clearly a catch in the mafia marriage market. Before long, no less a felon than the boss of the Honoured Society in Cirella offered young Francesco his daughter’s hand, along with a promotion from
picciotto
to
camorrista
. A marriage to the
capo
’s daughter and a promotion seemed like a very respectable offer. But young Francesco’s stepfather, Paolo Agostino, put a stop to the alliance. It is not clear why, or whether Maria Marvelli had anything to do with the decision. The best guess is that he preferred to bind himself to another criminal lineage. But refusing such an offer would inevitably seem like a snub. If there were no divisions within the ranks of the Cirella Honoured Society before, they certainly appeared now.

At this point in the story, Mussolini intervened. The dire state of public order in Cirella came to the attention of the authorities in 1933. The local boss—and everyone knew he was the boss, for what need would he have had to be coy about his power?—was sent to enforced residence. His destination was the tiny island penal colony of Ustica, which lies some 80 kilometres north of Palermo. But as so often, this measure proved inadequate to stem the tide of violence. So the following year Paolo Agostino was also sent to Ustica to join his
capo
-—the very man whose generous offer of a marriage alliance he had spurned. Rumours filtered back to Cirella that when the two had met, Paolo Agostino had smashed a bottle over the boss’s head. Although the rumours were probably false, they were also a very real symptom of a potentially explosive power struggle: the issue of who Maria Marvelli’s son was going to marry was an open sore in Cirella.