If parents, siblings, uncles and cousins instead of being the family form the “family” with the quotation marks, it follows that considering certain children traitors or “traitors” depends only on the point of view: that of the so-called normality or, on the contrary, the other of the mafia and, in particular, of the Calabrese ‘ndrangheta.
An example of values in reverse in a world considered closed and impenetrable and which, little by little, has shown weaknesses that were unthinkable for a long time. One of the main reasons for this unexpected (by the bosses) “friability” is precisely that of the «Traitor Sons» (subtitle: «The Bosses’ Offspring on the Run from the ‘Ndrangheta»Pellegrini Editore), the new book by Arcangelo Badolatichief journalist of the Gazzetta in Cosenza, who our readers know well and who is one of the current leading experts on organised crime, author of over twenty publications on the subject.
The volume – with a preface by the writer and professor Antonio Nicaso and a contribution by the sociologist Ercole Giap Parini, director of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Calabria – traces a true and proper history, well documented and rich in details drawn from a very careful reading of judicial documents, of what is a recent phenomenon (with a few exceptions such as Pino Scriva in the 1980s), but what It already has at least twenty sensational cases.
At the same time Judge Roberto Di Bella’s great initiative is also continuing, with the “Free to choose” protocol It gave the opportunity to boys and girls, often supported by their mothers, to escape from a hereditary yoke, even before having to do so in the role of repentants, or collaborators of justice.
“They think of themselves, not giving a damn about others. You stuff yourself in prison and they get fat,” said the controversial Scriva about the clan leaders, and this truth has become even more unbearable today for a generation no longer accustomed to the “rustic” and uncomfortably comfortable life of those who were once rich bosses and who now live comfortably even far from their origins, thanks to the ramifications, among other places, in Lombardy and Piedmont. To young people whose motivations are already wavering and who, in the era of social media, find certain rites and certain hierarchies between “families” completely anachronistic, and for whom prison is unbearable. They find themselves having to deal with their broken life, without those “ideals”, false and imposed by traditions that can now also crumble, which imposed silence as an unbreakable rule of honor.
Badolati tells about twenty stories and, with his expertise, enriches them with a deep knowledge of the life of the clans and their evolution from the countryside to drugs, business and finance. But above all he captures the deep motivations of these repentances of the sons of bosses, that is, of members of families, where one becomes a mafioso “by hereditary right” and where even today “betrayal” is not expected.
The story of Domenico Agresta is strikinga member of the Platì clan in Piedmont and a repentant since 2016, who enrolled in school in the prison of Saluzzo and discovered culture, fell in love with Dante and the “Divine Comedy”, so much so that he learned entire parts of it by heart, and from them drew the strength to persist in his revelations to the magistrates. And there are stories of women, like the famous one of Giusy Pesce, who since 2010 in Rosarno, through ups and downs, managed to free herself from the “family” to rebuild her real one, with her daughters and a new love. Here Badolati explains very well what the role of women in the ‘ndrangheta was and is, destined to be “guardians of mafia disvalues”, but now also capable of constituting that new generation of mothers who discovered the protocol of Judge Di Bella.
In addition to Agresta, Badolati tells the intense story (with thriller moments) of «Giuseppe Giampà, son of Francesco known as “the professor”godfather of Lamezia Terme; Francis Faraoson of Giuseppe, chieftain of Cirò Marina; Dante Mannoloson of Alfonso, holy mother of San Leonardo di Cutro; Emanuel Mancusoson of Pantaleone, understood as “the engineer”, a leading member of the Limbadi clan of the same name; Celestine Abruzzeseson of Fioravante, charismatic leader of the nomadic crime of Cosenza; Gaetano Aloeson of Nick, the first true leader of the ‘ndrangheta of Cirò Marina; Anthony Accorintison of Nino, chieftain of Briatico».
These are the names of what the author defines the latest wave of repentance in Calabria. We follow their inner world, the discovery of their contradictions, the clash between the desire for truth and persistent family affections, the moments of weakness and those of strength, the very personal needs for “personal redemption and salvation”. Badolati rightly writes that it is a question of «a thread that leads us to define them rather than “traitors” of the redeemed children»It’s all there, the gap between worlds.