Sibaritide is a kind of paradise on earth, with golden sands and countryside full of gifts all year round. But from its lush bowels the poisoned fruit of a rancorous ‘Ndrangheta has also blossomed. The gypsy bosses of “Timpone Rosso” represent the criminal power in this gigantic furnace that vomits miasma and poisons the air. Next to them are their former enemies, the Forastefanos. The once rival families. They formed a confederacy, allying themselves with some of the old “barons” of the mafia aristocracy, and today they command together. No more wars in the name of dirty business, no more massacres.
Now, they make deals to fill the common safe. And they traffic in drugs. There gnugna that floods the Cosentino comes largely from there, because Cassano has always been one of the main markets for heroin and cocaine. The historic commander of the Carabinieri station, Salvatore Perrone, told it thirty years ago during the trials. Nothing has changed since then. Everyone keeps buying it there. They even come from Puglia and Basilicata to stock up. Drugs, therefore, can create problems for those who try to get rid of them independently, as happened to Maurizio Scorza four years ago and, yesterday morning, to his son Giuseppe. Here they kill and kill each other for stuff. They shoot themselves in the streets, in the countryside, in front of houses, to control the territory and the drug market. It is a war for money, because this land is the granary of the gypsies.
The new ‘ndrangheta that governs on the coast and in the innermost area of the Pollino is made up of members of this confederation of groups. Fathers, mothers, children, husbands, brothers-in-law, nephews, wives, sisters: there is always some relative in the midst of trafficking, someone who manages that crime in which the Cosenza plain risks drowning. And since they have been here, in this hostile casbah, only one law has reigned.
A middle earth besieged by flames and black smoke. A land without life anymore, more and more similar to hell, with the many fires that flare up at night, in the middle of the streets and bring destruction. Cars, activities, future. The fire swells the plain with anguish and pain, creating bruised panoramas that seem endless. Here, the only language allowed seems to be that of violence.
The State exists but struggles to be recognized as a mirror of justice because, in the name of statistics and business, over the years, it has retreated with scissors. From Rome they have cut jobs, beds in the few hospitals that survived the return plans, canceled courts and made trains and railway stations disappear. A policy of abandonment that ended up handing over territory and manpower to the ‘Ndrangheta, which has a strong tradition here.
The potential of the Sibaritide was sensed more than half a century ago by Don “Peppino” Cirillo, the man who built the first mafia establishment here. He was from Salerno, a loyalist of Raffaele Cutolo, the father of the New Organized Camorra. One day he spoke to the boss about his big projects, the ones he intended to carry out in Calabria, and obtained permission to go. And with his “severance payment” he laid the foundations for his new empire in Sibari. Thus the ‘Ndrangheta was born in this corner of Cosentino. A kingdom of evil that has been structured over time. A place where scores are also settled with blood. And behind every murdered person there are dirty interests and a lot of money. Easy money that can pull the trigger even against innocent people.
In the endless countryside that unites the two plains, that of Sibaritide and that of Cammarata, the mafia also killed a child twelve years ago. “Cocò” was called Nicolas Campilongo and was a child of just four years old, with big, lively black eyes. In 2014 he was shot dead together with his grandfather, Peppe Iannicelli, who was under special surveillance, and his Moroccan partner, “Aunt Betty”. Cocò’s little body was trapped behind the front seats, torn apart by the fire that consumed his grandfather’s Fiat Punto. In recent years, the ‘Ndrangheta has not stopped. He shot more times. And he killed. Sometimes he even killed the wrong people.
But in the Sibaritide, this year, death also knocked with different hands, but imbued with the same evil. Hands that, according to the prosecution, led two Pakistani corporals in the massacre of laborers in Amendolara, where four were burned alive in a van. And then the ferocious hands of an Albanian man, Elvis Bisho, accused of killing Ornella Forastefano, again in Amendolara. While other male hands massacred Carmela Bifano with stones, in her citrus grove in Torre Voluta, in Corigliano Rossano. Deaths, many deaths in the casbah. And fear.
