ZeroZeroZero (17 page)

It’s at that point that Natalia discovers her own maternal instinct. She has to act; she can’t lose heart. Shortly before her world collapsed she had launched her own suntan lotion. Now she travels the country promoting it, signing autographs, making deals to get it on supermarket shelves. It’s the first step in her comeback. Little by little she reclaims her position, which she still holds to this day: an icon in Colombia and a sex symbol throughout Latin America. But starting with that moment, she also became her own person. A businesswoman who knows she must manage the passing of time. She has a fit if someone draws attention to her age, and the older she gets the younger she claims to be. Her body is her business, and she can’t risk obsolescence.

 • • • 

Julio Fierro’s body has never been found.

The mystery of his disappearance gave rise to a sea of inferences about who could have eliminated him. Suspicion fell primarily on the Norte del Valle cartel because it had a terrible reputation and because it was one of the United States’ main targets, with whom Julio was collaborating. Only very recently has the truth regarding his death surfaced.

According to the revelations of various AUC collaborators, once it was learned that Fierro was in Colombia, Carlos Castaño, El Mono, and a boss named Daniel Mejía, known as Danielito, decided to get together. At the end of their meeting Castaño gave orders to abduct the traitor from his hiding place near Medellín and take him by helicopter to somewhere in the department of Córdoba. There he was tortured, for various purposes, including to get him to hand over some of his property to his kidnappers. When he was finally killed (some say with a chain saw, after having been brought back to Medellín), Danielito had the job of dealing with the body. Danielito was not a casual choice.

Daniel Mejía belonged to the military bloc in the area. More important, however, he was also charged with putting into effect the Autodefensas’ new method of concealing the number of murders that could be ascribed to them. Despite the ceaseless killings, the AUCs still had a reputation as authentic Colombian patriots rather than simple criminals devoid of any scruples. The spokesman for the Autodefensas’ honor was Carlos Castaño. Every time someone branded his men narcos, he would fly into a rage and respond with indignant denials. Obviously he denied all the rest too. “We have never killed innocent people. We are only out to get the guerrillas, not people whose ideas are different than ours. We do not use chain saws.”

This was not just cynical hypocrisy. As often happens with authoritarian individuals, Carlos Castaño lived in a parallel universe manipulated to satisfy his whims, and he did his best to defend it from anything that contradicted it. What rankled him most was to be accused of conniving with narco-trafficking. That may seem strange, because his brothers had almost always rounded out their earnings with cocaine. But that was precisely what provided the foundation for his house of lies: Coke was merely the means, not the end—the same justification the insurgents used.

And yet the increasing force of his organization blew like a gale-force wind against that unrealistic construction. In some regions it was becoming impossible to distinguish between narcos and paramilitaries. The area around Medellín was one such region. Daniel Mejía was now the right-hand man of the bloodthirsty Don Berna, who, in grabbing up the remains of Escobar’s empire, had joined with the AUCs, to his clear advantage. Danielito was slotted to take over as boss of the new cartel Oficina de Envigado
,
or Office of Envigado. Together they killed, as in any drug war, in order to subjugate people by terror and to eliminate competition.

It was urgent that all be kept hidden, so a new method was devised. Danielito set to work building crematoriums. Up to twenty bodies a week would be burned in them. According to some former AUC
soldiers, even Julio Fierro was incinerated in one of those ovens. And, a fitting twist, Daniel Mejía himself ended up in one, after being killed by the other ex-paramilitary with whom he had assumed command of the Office of Envigado.

At any rate, it’s around the time of Julio’s abduction and murder that Carlos Castaño’s unease begins to wear away at him. Without ever attending any of the meetings Baruch Vega organized, those circlings of the wagons, he contacted the Miami lawyer involved in the DEA negotiations, the same lawyer who later will defend El Mono. He too now has a young wife and a baby girl, born with a rare genetic disease. The only hope for treatment is in the United States.

Carlos Castaño wants to save his family, but at what cost? On September 10, 2001, he bore the shame of being identified as the head of a terroristic organization by a country he had always greatly admired. Terrorist and drug trafficker. He must remove that unbearable blot, from himself and his Autodefensas. So, in early 2002, he summons a hundred or so commanders from every corner of the country. He prepares his remarks carefully and is counting on his prestige and charisma. After what happened in New York and Washington, the Yankees will hunt us down like rats. We can’t keep on killing. We can’t keep on trafficking cocaine. It’s the only way to safeguard our association’s honor and survival.

The silence that greets his words is not that of dumbstruck approval. The commander in chief realizes that many of them have no intention of following his path. A defeat so humiliating that he steps down from running the AUCs. Carlos Castaño is like a wounded jaguar in the Colombian jungle now. He lashes out left, right, and center; he resorts to the Internet to expose his former underlings, giving first and last names and declaring that they are “irresponsibly involved in drug-trafficking activities” and adding that “the penetration of drug trafficking in some self-defense groups is unbearable and is known to the U.S. and Colombian intelligence agencies.”

A time bomb, a deadly threat.

He declares that from now on he wants to dedicate himself to his family, but he’s lying. Or rather, he’s telling only half the truth, for the great Carlos Castaño does not stoop to lying. The Miami lawyer comes to see him more often. He’s negotiating his surrender, his betrayal.

In April 2004 Carlos Castaño disappears. Legends circulate regarding his whereabouts, the foreign destination where he took refuge in order to make a new life for himself, as well as speculations about who could have wanted to eliminate him. His remains weren’t found until two and a half years later, in the most banal of places. He was buried on the Las Tangas
finca
where he and his brother Fidel had launched the first paramilitary counterrevolutionary group. That
finca
was the beginning and the end for Carlos Castaño. His death warrant had been issued by none other than his brother Vicente.

Carlos Castaño’s exit favors the further rise of El Mono. Not only is he second in command of the Autodefensas, he’s also the most clearheaded, the most capable. He doesn’t seem rattled in the least by the extradition request that now hangs over his head too. He doesn’t let himself be infected by the poisonous rage with which, after their commander’s resignation, many other bosses spit on the name of Carlos Castaño. It’s important to stay cool headed, to remember the larger picture, the organization and his men. This means not hiding problems but resolving them in other ways.

El Mono is the one who opens negotiations with the Uribe administration. He sends his spiritual adviser, the bishop of Montería, who has known him since he was a boy, to initiate contact and to serve as ambassador. The first agreement is reached in July 2003. The AUCs will demobilize completely, cease all hostilities, and cooperate with investigations. In return, the Colombian government will offer huge legal concessions. Many pending cases are dismissed, most of the investigations of AUC members are dropped, and sentences for crimes such as drug trafficking and human rights violations, for which one normally risks life in jail, are reduced to a mere few years.

El Mono is also an excellent press officer. A few days after the
agreement is reached he grants
Semana
, Colombia’s most important weekly, an interview, during which he explains why the AUCs agreed to negotiate only now: “For the first time a government is trying to strengthen democracy and state institutions. We have always demanded the presence of the state, called it to responsibility. We have wielded guns because the state failed in its responsibility. It was up to us to step in, to take its place in the various regions we controlled and where we acted as the de facto authorities.”

He’s also astute in handling the delicate topic of drug trafficking. He doesn’t try to deny it but insists that his men do nothing more than collect protection money on cocaine, just like everyone else. In truth, even in this he’s a much more ambitious and able leader. His Italian origins, greatly looked down upon at first, turn out to be useful to him. Mancuso oversees negotiations with the Calabrians, the biggest and most trustworthy buyers on the Colombian market since the days of Don Pablo Escobar.

So for the moment everything seems the same as before. Better, in fact. After years of living in hiding Salvatore can now return to Martha and his children, the youngest of whom don’t even recognize him. But Salvatore has trouble recognizing Gianluigi, who is all grown up and soon to make him a grandfather. He’s even received in parliament, where, dressed in a dark suit and red tie with diagonal white stripes—the picture of Italian elegance—he pleads the historic role of the Autodefensas.

El Mono chooses a place under his control on the border of Venezuela for himself and the men under his direct command to turn over their weapons. It is a solemn, moving moment and sets the tone for his speech: “My soul awash with humility, I ask forgiveness of the people of Colombia, I ask forgiveness of the countries of this world, including the United States, if I have offended them by my actions or omissions. I ask forgiveness of every mother and of all those whom I have made suffer. I take responsibility for my role as leader, for what I could have done better, for what I could have done and did not do, errors surely
caused by my limitations as a human being and by my lack of a calling for war.”

Then, nearly two years later, he has his bodyguards accompany him to the police station in Montería, to turn himself in. In the meantime, some of the legal benefits of negotiating with the government are declared unconstitutional, but El Mono is not afraid of Colombia’s law or its prisons. In fact, he still leads his troops and manages his affairs from within the maximum security prison in Itagüí, almost on a par with Escobar during his years of imprisonment.

Even so, the AUCs officially disband. Some—including mere narcos who pass themselves off as military bosses—turn themselves in, still hoping to benefit from the agreements. The others, the paramilitaries and narcos feeling orphaned by the big cartel, regroup into different organizations: Águilas Negras
,
or Black Eagles, headed by the fratricidal Vicente Castaño; Oficina de Envigado; Ejército Revolucionario Popular Antiterrorista de Colombia (ERPAC); Rastrojos; Urabeños; Paisas. They join forces and they break apart—the only element unifying them is cocaine. A new Colombia is being born, the ferocious land of Lilliput. The days of El Mono are coming to an end.

 • • • 

The defendant Salvatore Mancuso Gómez shows up clean-shaven and wearing a pinstripe suit fit for a wedding or business meeting. It’s January 15, 2007. Sitting in front of a prosecutor, with a microphone and tape recorder in front of him, he takes out a laptop, places it on the table, and turns it on. He starts to read. The room fills with names, rattled off one after another, with professional detachment. When he is done, he has listed at least three hundred names, in strict chronological order: the homicides for which he takes personal responsibility, either as killer or commander, some of which he’d already been absolved for.

Bewilderment in the courtroom. Why did he do it?

Why, after getting away with so much, reveal the massacres he ordered or helped plan?

La Granja: July 1996

Pichilín: December 1996

Mapiripán: July 1997

El Aro: October 1997

La Gabarra: three raids, May–August 1999

El Salado: February 2000

Tibú: April 2000

In all these attacks, the defendant Mancuso Gómez declares, we were not alone. High-ranking members of the military provided logistical support and entire units of soldiers. And there were political representatives—such as Senator Mario Uribe Escobar—whose support never wavered.

Why is he doing this? Why him, a man of his intelligence, with his leadership skills? That’s what many of the people he named are wondering. Then he is extradited to the United States, a move that weakens his voice in Colombia but that does not silence it completely.

From now on, no one is spared.

Colombia’s high circles did business and collaborated with the paramilitary organizations. Lawyers, politicians, police officers, army generals: some to profit from the cocaine market, some to insure votes and support. And that’s not all. According to Mancuso’s deposition, the oil business, the drinks industry, the wood industry, transportation companies, and multinational banana corporations also had ties to the Autodefensas. All—with no exceptions—paid huge sums of money to the paramilitaries in exchange for protection and the possibility of continuing to work in the area. For years the AUCs had a hand in every step of the process.

Mancuso appears on
60 Minutes
. Then the spotlights are turned off and the prisoner is led back to his cell inside the maximum security prison in Warsaw, Virginia. Colombian as well as U.S. justice awaits him. It is highly likely that he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

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 gathered 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.