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Camorra

[kuh-mawr-uh, -mor-uh; It. kah-mawr-rah]

Camorra, Italian secret criminal association in Naples. Of controversial origin, it first came to light in 1830. Its activities spread by intimidation, blackmail, and bribery until Naples was controlled by it. The Camorra appears to have been used by the Bourbon rulers of Naples as a quasi-police network to crush opposition. Efforts to break the power of the Camorra, begun in the 1880s, culminated in the 1911 murder trial at which numerous members were convicted. The Camorra was suppressed and supplanted after Benito Mussolini's takeover in 1922.

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Camorra

Map highlighting the location of Campania in Italy

Camorra
Presumed Origin	the Spanish Garduna
Creation	XVI century
Actual Number	members
Principals Families	150 'clans'
Activities	Blackmail, Illegal gambling, Casino, Prostitution, Trafficking

The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organisation, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania and the city of Naples in Italy. It finances itself through drug trafficking, extortion, protection and racketeering and its activities have led to high levels of homicide in the areas in which it operates. It is the oldest organized criminal organization in Italy.

Background

The origins of the Camorra are not entirely clear. Some assert a history going back as far as the 16th century, claiming that it is a direct descendant of a Spanish secret society, the Garduna, founded in 1417. Officials of the Spanish Kingdom of Naples allegedly introduced the organisation in the area. However, a more probable explanation is that the Camorra gradually grew out of small criminal gangs among the poor operating in Neapolitan society. The first official use of the word dates from 1735, when a royal decree authorised the establishment of eight gaming-houses in Naples. The word is almost certainly a blend of capo (boss) and a Neapolitan street game, the morra. (In this game, two persons wave their hands simultaneously, while a crowd of surrounding gamblers guess, in chorus, at the total number of fingers exposed by the principal players.) This activity was prohibited by the local government and some people started making the players pay for being “protected” against the passing police. This etymology seems to represent better the real nature and origin of the Camorra.

The Camorra first emerged during the chaotic power vacuum in the years between 1799-1815, when a Neapolitan Republic was proclaimed on the wave of the French Revolution and the restoration of Bourbon dynasty. The first official mention of the Camorra as an organisation dates from 1820, when police records detail a disciplinary meeting of the Camorra. That year a first written stature was also discovered, indicating a stable organisational structure in the underworld. Another statute was discovered in 1842 including initiation rites and funds set aside for the families of those imprisoned.

The evolution into more organised formations indicated a qualitative change: the Camorra and camorristi were no longer local gangs living of theft and extortion; they now had a fixed structure and some kind of hierarchy. Another qualitative leap was the agreement of the liberal opposition and the Camorra following the defeat in the 1848 revolution. The liberals realised that they needed popular support to overthrow the King. They turned to the Camorra and paid them, the camorristi being the leaders of the city’s poor. The Camorra effectively had developed into power brokers in a few decades.

The Camorra was never a coherent whole, a centralized organization. Instead it has always been a loose confederation of different, independent groups or families. Each group was bound around kinship ties and controlled economic activities which took place in its particular territory. Each family clan took care of its own business, protected its territory, and sometimes tried to expand at another group’s expense. Although not centralized, there was some minimal co-ordination, to avoid mutual interference. The families competed to maintain a system of checks and balances between equal powers.

One of the Camorra’s strategies to gain social prestige is political patronage. The family clans became the preferred interlocutors of local politicians and public officials because of their grip on the community. In turn the family bosses used their political sway to assist and protect their clients against the local authorities. Through a mixture of brute force, political status, and social leadership, the Camorra family clans imposed themselves as middlemen between the local community and bureaucrats and politicians at the national level. They granted privileges and protection and intervened in favour of their clients in return for their silence and connivance against local authorities and the police. With their political connections, the heads of the major Neapolitan familes became power brokers in local and national political contexts, providing Neapolitan politicians with broad electoral support an in return receiving benefits for their constituency.

Activities

Compared to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra's pyramidal structure, the Camorra is made up of many clans that often fight each other. In the 1970s and 1980s Raffaele Cutolo made an attempt to unify the Camorra families in the manner of the Sicilian Mafia, by forming the New Organized Camorra (Nuova Camorra Organizzata or NCO), but this proved unsuccessful. Drive-by shootings by camorristi often result in casualties among the local population, but such episodes are often difficult to investigate because of widespread Omertà (code of silence). According to a report from Confesercenti, the second-largest Italian Trade Organisation, published on 22 October 2007 in the Corriere della Sera, the Camorra control the milk and fish industries, the coffee trade, and over 2,500 bakeries in the city.

In 1983, Italian law enforcement estimated that there were only about a dozen Camorra clans. By 1987, the number had risen to 26, and in the following year, a report from the Naples flying squad reported their number as 32. Currently it is estimated there are about 111 Camorra clans and over 6,700 members in Naples and surroundings.

In 2004 and 2005 two parts of the Di Lauro Clan and so-called "Scissionisti" fought a bloody feud which came to be known in the Italian press as the Scampia feud. The result was over 100 street-killings. At the end of October 2006 a new series of murders took place in Naples between 20 competing clans, that cost 12 killed in 10 days. The Interior Minister Giuliano Amato decided to send more than 1,000 extra police and Carabinieri to Naples to fight crime and protect tourists. It didn't help much--in the following year there were over 120 murders.

In recent years, various Camorra clans have been forming alliances with Nigerian drug gangs and the Albanian Mafia, even going so far as to intermarry. For instance, Agusto La Torre, the former La Torre clan boss who became a pentito, is married to an Albanian woman. It should also be noted that the first foreign pentito, a Tunisian, admitted to being involved with the feared Casalesi clan of Casal di Principe. The first town that the Camorra gave over to be completely governed by a foreign clan was Castel Volturno, which was given to the Rapaces, clans from Lagos and Benin City in Nigeria. This allowed them to traffick cocaine and prostitutes before sending them across the whole of Europe.

The Garbage Crisis

Since the mid-1990s, the Camorra has taken over the handling of garbage disposal in the region of Campania, with disastrous results for the environment and the health of the general population. Heavy metals, industrial waste and chemicals and household garbage are frequently mixed together, dumped near roads and burnt to avoid detection, leading to a severe soil and air pollution. As of June 2007, the region has no serviceable dumping sites and no alternatives have been found. Together with corrupt local officials and unscrupulous industrialists from all over Italy, the Camorra has created a cartel that has so far proved very difficult to combat for officials.

Recent Arrests

Italian police arrested three members of the Camorra crime syndicate on September 30, 2008. According to Gianfrancesco Siazzu, commander of the Carabinieri police, the three were captured in small villas on the coast of Naples. All three had been on Italy’s 100 top most wanted list. Police seized assets valued at over 100 million euros and also weapons, including two AK-47 assault rifles that may have been used in the shooting of six Africans on September 18, 2008. Police found pistols, Carabinieri uniforms and other outfits that were used to disguise members of the operation.

During the same week, a separate operation netted 26 additional suspects in Caserta. All were believed to belong to the powerful Camorra crime syndicate that operates in and around Naples. The suspects were charged with extortion, weapons possession. In some cases, the charges included murder and robbery. Giuseppina Nappa, the 48-year old wife of a jailed crime boss was also among those arrested. She is believed to be the Camorra's local paymaster.

Presence Outside Italy

The Camorra in the United States

The Camorra existed in USA between the mid-1800s and early 1900s. They rivaled the Morello crime family for power in New York. Eventually, they melded with the early American Mafia groups.

Many Camorra members and associates fled the internecine gang warfare and Italian Justice and immigrated to the United States in the 1980's. In 1993, the FBI estimated that there were 200 Camorristi in the United States. Although there appears to be no clan structure in the United States, Camorra members have established a presence in Cleveland, Los Angeles, Albany and Springfield, Massachusetts. The Camorra is the least active of all the organized crime groups in the United States. Inspite of this, the US law enforcement considers the Camorra to be a rising criminal enterprise, especially dangerous because of its ability to adapt to new trends and forge new alliances with other criminal organizations.

In 1995, the Camorra cooperated with the Russian Mafia in a scheme in which the Camorra would bleach out US $1.00 dollar bills and reprint them as $100's. These bills would then be transported to the Russian Mafia for distribution in 29 Eastern Bloc and former Soviet republics. In return, the Russian Mafia paid the Camorra with property (including a Russian bank) and firearms, smuggled into Eastern Europe and Italy.

The Camorra in the United Kingdom

Scotland has had its brush with the Camorra. Antonio La Torre of Aberdeen, Scotland was the local "Don" of the Camorra. He is the brother of Camorra boss, Augusto La Torre of the La Torre clan which had its base in Mondragone, Caserta. The La Torre Clan's empire was worth hundreds of millions of euros. Antonio had several legitimate businesses in Aberdeen, whereas his brother Augusto had several illegal businesses there. He was convicted in Scotland and is awaiting extradition to Italy. Augusto would eventually become a pentito in January 2003, confessing to over 40 murders and his example would be followed by many of his men.

Two Aberdeen restaurateurs, Ciro Schiattarella and Michele Siciliano were extradited to Italy for their part in the "Aberdeen Camorra". A fourth Scottish associate named Brandon Queen who made history by becoming the first foreign member of the Camorra is currently serving a jail sentence in the UK. It has been reported that he also receives a monthly salary, legal assistance and protection, something only members of the Clans receive. Neapolitan writer and expert on the Camorra, Roberto Saviano, states that the Camorra has created a branch in Aberdeen the size of the city and that it is the focus of the La Torre clan's British operations.

Saviano alleges that from the 1980s, Italian gangsters ran a network of lucrative businesses in the city as well as many illegal rackets. Saviano said Scotland's third city, with no history of organised crime, was seen as an attractive safe haven away from the violent inter-gang blood-letting that had engulfed their Neapolitan stronghold of Mondragone. Saviano claims that before the Italian clans arrived, Aberdeen didn't know how to exploit its resources for recreation and tourism. He further states that the Italians infused the city with economic energy, revitalised the tourist industry, inspired new import-export activities and injected new vigour in the real-estate sector. It thereby turned Aberdeen into a chic, an elegant address for fine dining and important dealings.

The hub of La Torre's UK empire, Pavarotti's restaurant, now under different ownership, was even feted at Italissima, a prestigious gastronomic fair held in Paris. Saviano furher claims to have gone to Aberdeen and worked in a restaurant run by Antonio La Torre. The Camorristas operated a system known as "scratch" where they used to step up illegal activities if their legitimate ventures were struggling. If cash was short they had counterfeit notes printed; if capital was needed in a hurry, they sold bogus treasury bonds. They annihilated the competition through extortions and imported merchandise tax-free. The Camorra were able to run all sort of deals because the local police had virtually no experience in dealing with organised crime. Although they broke the law, there was never any guns or serious violence, due to lack of rivals.

However, the suggestion that the city remains in the grip of mobsters has been strongly denied by leaders of the 300 strong Italian community in Aberdeen. Moreover, Giuseppe Baldini, the Italian government's vice-consul in Aberdeen denies that the Camorra still maintains its presence in Aberdeen.

In popular Culture

Camorra is a 1972 movie, directed by Pasquale Squitieri, starring Fabio Testi and Jean Seberg.
Il Camorrista (1986), directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Vaguely inspired to the real story of NCO boss, Raffaele Cutolo. Cutolo is played by Ben Gazzara, with the Italian voiceover done by Italian actor Mariano Rigillo.
The story of Raffaele Cutolo also inspired one of the most famous songs of Fabrizio De André, entitled Don Raffaé (Clouds of 1990).
The 2006 book by Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, investigates the activities of the Camorra in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Scotland. The book has also been adapted to film with the title Gomorra by Matteo Garrone in 2008.

References

Behan, Tom (1996). The Camorra, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-09987-0
Jacquemet, Marco (1996). Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials, Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521552516
"Politics & Racket. To train in earth of boss"