Christmas is not just a family ritual but becomes the moment in which need becomes more exposed, more vulnerable, more manipulable. Here, as in the rest of the South, the grip of illegal credit is intertwined with the economic fragility of a region that pays an increasingly higher price for the structural crisis of its productive fabric. While the ‘Ndrangheta demands taxes with the punctuality of a parallel tax system (with shopkeepers forced to “settle down”, street vendors who pay to work, entrepreneurs hit by warnings that speak louder than words) another network, more silent but no less dangerous, advances: that of usury.
Dear… credit
In recent weeks, the demand for credit is growing everywhere, but in Calabria it takes the form of social pressure that risks overwhelming self-employed workers, traders and artisans in particular. Small entrepreneurs who live on little. They move forward thinking exclusively about that work which for them is a passion, a constant thought and which today, however, has become an obsession. Income is irregular, accounts leave no margins, banks slow down, dose loans without ever exaggerating but without money flows the small economy risks disappearing. Not to mention that, as Confartigianato revealed in its annual report, the cost of money in Calabria for businesses is double that elsewhere.
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