The Good Mothers
Page 23
The common thread that ran through the coverage was the heroism of Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta and the imperative for all Calabrians to follow their example. At heart, wrote Cosenza, this was a tale about three mothers who had understood their families were a curse on Calabria and who had defied centuries of violent misogyny – whether mafioso, Calabrian or Italian – to save their children and their homeland. This was about sacrifice and pain, abuse and terror, blood and acid – and a dream of a new future. And now, said Cosenza, it had to be about the millions of Calabrians, men and women, who would join the rebellion the women had started. Cosenza even set a date for Calabria’s revolt: 8 March, the Festa della Donna, International Women’s Day. On that day, he demanded that all true Calabrians celebrate Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta. By doing so, he wrote, they would finally reclaim their freedom.
By coincidence, 8 March 2012 was a date already looming large on Alessandra’s calendar.
That spring Thursday was sentencing day in the last of the maxi-trials resulting from the 2010 raids against the ’Ndrangheta. More than two hundred men and women from across Italy had already been convicted and sentenced to a total of several thousand years in jail. Hundreds of millions of euros in property and assets had been seized. Entire crime families had been taken down and whole criminal empires dismantled. Now, in a caged dock inside a bullet-proof and bomb-proof court in Reggio Calabria, a final 127 ’Ndranghetisti would be judged and sentenced, among them bosses from every significant ’ndrina as well as Domenico Oppedisano, the capo crimine.
Alessandra knew that whatever happened, the ’Ndrangheta would endure. Despite the convictions and confiscations, the organisation retained thousands of men in its employ and hundreds of billions of euros in assets. The bosses could still rule their businesses from jail, even commanding clan feuds and overseeing international expansion. Every prosecutor knew that however hard they worked to bring the ’Ndrangheta to account, tens of thousands of crimes, including hundreds of murders, would remain unsolved.
But there was no doubt that Calabria’s prosecutors had shaken the ’Ndrangheta in an historic manner. The organisation’s most precious weapon, its secrecy, had been shattered. The century-old myth about a band of southern Italian Robin Hoods was in pieces. No longer would anyone nurse the illusion that the Calabrian mafia was a bunch of brigands with blunderbusses and trousers held up by baling twine who rustled goats and kidnapped provincial grocers. At last, the ’Ndrangheta had been exposed for what it was: a violent, unified, modern criminal conspiracy based in Calabria that threatened every country in the world.
This day had been decades coming, since long before Falcone and Borsellino or The Godfather or the night in July 1973 that the sixteen-year-old grandson of a billionaire stayed out late in Rome. The investigation that led to the maxi-trials had taken years and involved tens of thousands of policemen, carabinieri, prosecutors and judges. It had necessitated the biggest surveillance operation ever mounted in Italy, amounting to a total of 25,000 hours of tapped phone calls and 83,000 hours of video and audio. The result of all this work was a prosecutors’ picture of the ’Ndrangheta that was comprehensive and, to most of Italy, Europe and the rest of the world, nothing less than dumbfounding. Whether measured by the hundreds of billions of euros it earned every year, or the grip it exerted over the illicit global markets for narcotics and weapons, or the political corruption it fomented from Melbourne to Montreal, or even the way it subverted financial markets and national sovereignty around the globe, Calabria’s prosecutors had exposed the ’Ndrangheta as the world’s most powerful and dangerous mafia.
What especially pleased Alessandra was that the greatest injury to the ’Ndrangheta had been performed by the investigations into Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta. Their cases revealed the organisation not as some fairy tale about wandering knights and righteous honour but a grotesque, illiterate, make-believe murder cult which practised merciless and bloody cruelty, twisted family in the service of greed and delighted in crushing freedom, love and hope. ‘More than just the arrests, it was the loss of image and the injury to their legend,’ said Alessandra. ‘It really wounded them.’
Each morning from 10 February until 8 March, Il Quotidiano ran a front-page banner featuring pictures of Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta. Each day, it sent reporters to cover how ordinary Calabrians were joining the fight against the ’Ndrangheta. The prosecutors and women’s groups were among the first to pledge support. They were followed by companies and trade unions, school children and university students, political parties and town mayors. After that came youth groups and pensioners’ associations, trattoria owners and farmers’ cooperatives, the Rotary Club, the swimmers’ club, ferry operators, fishing captains, theatre companies, artists’ collectives, social workers, olive farmers, gelato sellers, wine makers, dock workers, folk singers and long-distance truckers. By the time 8 March arrived, even the northern-focused national press had begin to take notice of the scores of anti-’Ndrangheta marches involving tens of thousands of people taking place across Calabria.3 The story of Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta was becoming big news. A slogan had emerged: ‘La Calabria Non Ci Sta!!!’ (‘Calabria Won’t Take It Any More!!!’) And as the women’s stories were repeated over and over, their faces printed and reprinted on placards and posters, T-shirts and banners, and broadcast on television and in international magazines, Alessandra realised that, slowly but steadily, Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta were becoming the new legends of the ’Ndrangheta.
To the clans, this was catastrophic. Their invincibility was cracking. ‘These women had rebelled against the ’Ndrangheta’s machismo and that act, and the stories of what happened to them, had cost the ’Ndrangheta their control and their system of consensus,’ said Alessandra. ‘That was the ’Ndrangheta’s whole foundation and its whole essence. This was a huge crisis for them.’
On the morning of 8 March, it took a full hour in Reggio Calabria’s main court to assemble all 127 ’Ndranghetisti and their lawyers, as well as the prosecutors, officials, reporters and three judges. It took another two hours for the presiding judge to read the list of convictions. By the time he had finished, ninety-three ’Ndranghetisti had been convicted. Sentences ranged from eight months to fourteen years. Capo crimine Domenico Oppedisano got ten years, probably enough to ensure he would die in prison.
Most importantly to the prosecutors, in its judgment the court formally acknowledged the ’Ndrangheta as a cohesive global entity with a presence in 120 locations around the world. Once and for all, the true nature of the world’s biggest mafia had been established in irrefutable case law. ‘Today’s ruling recognises the accuracy of our reconstruction of the structure of the ’Ndrangheta as a unified organisation, arranged in a complex hierarchy, governed by a top council, rooted in Calabria with branches overseas,’ Pignatone told reporters. ‘This represents a crucial step in fighting the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria and wherever it has taken root.’
As Pignatone and his team congratulated each other quietly inside the Palace of Justice, Calabrians were dancing in the streets outside. As Il Quotidiano had demanded, almost every town in Calabria was holding an anti-mafia parade. In Reggio itself, there were conferences, plays, rallies, workshops, exhibitions and speeches. As a show of public defiance, it was unique in Calabrian history. The icons of this new movement were Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta, their faces almost ubiquitous.
None of the women could be present to see their triumph. That morning, however, Alessandra had arranged for a letter from the students of Mattia Preti girls’ high school in Reggio Calabria to be delivered to Giuseppina in prison. The girls’ words, thought Alessandra, would at least give Giuseppina a flavour of what was happening. ‘Dear Giusy,’ it began,
We wouldn’t have had the strength. We wouldn’t have had the strength and courage as women. We wouldn’t have had the strength and courage as daughters or sisters. We wouldn’t have had the strength and courage in this city and in this country, where so often everyt
hing is silenced by fear and shame. But when someone finds the strength and courage to speak, especially as a mother, that fear disappears, and we want to redeem ourselves and remain silent no more.
We listened to your story in silence. And these seemingly distant events suddenly became real. You opened our eyes. You opened the eyes of so many young men and women who will not forget your strength and courage. With everything you’ve gone through, and are still enduring, with these words we wanted to give you back a little of the strength you’ve given us. You’re a beacon for women’s emancipation. Your freedom makes possible our own. Your freedom makes possible the freedom of this land.4
Giuseppina was overjoyed. Once, she had dreamed she and Concetta might be the start of something. Now it was happening. Everywhere, it seemed, people were hailing Lea and Giuseppina and Concetta and coming out against the ’Ndrangheta.
In Reggio, Alessandra was equally touched by Il Quotidiano’s front page. Above a child’s drawing of the three women, the paper had printed a headline that encapsulated what, for more years than Alessandra cared to remember, had been her personal creed: ‘With women, we will all break free.’ Below it, editor Matteo Cosenza had written an open letter to Denise Cosco:
Dear Denise,
I do not know you but you should know the affection and admiration I have for you. I don’t know if you’ll be able to read these thoughts in the secret place where, at this time of liberty and warmth and celebration, you are forced to live. Your choice, to testify twice against your father about the death of your mother, Lea Garofalo, reflects how your mother lived. You had to choose between your living father and your dead mother and you chose the triumph of truth, legality and justice. You’ve even had to testify against a man who was your partner.
You should know that your mother is proud. She made her sacrifice for your future, which she dared to imagine as one of dignity and free of the oppression she was born into. It would be so easy to give in to hatred. But nothing can be built on hate. Nobody, either, is born a criminal. These people are part of our family, our neighbourhoods, our schools, our traditions and our homeland. Many ’Ndrangheta men did not decide to be as they are. They never had a choice. Our collective action, if it is serious and profound, can prick their consciences. It can make new men of them.
My dear Denise, this disease has spread so wide that as long as the fever doesn’t heal, it will continue to infect us. We must remember the example of the women who broke this so-called code of honour to proclaim their own right to freedom, respect and dignity. The road ahead is long and hard. We know this struggle will take more than a little festival. But we have your example. Your testimony gives us confidence that even in the darkest night, even amid the torment that you, your mother and the other women have experienced, there is light ahead. We must build a different future. Nothing about the present suffering and violence is either natural or inevitable. This task will take all our commitment. We will have won when you are once again free to stroll the streets of Calabria, enjoying the sun and the sea breeze in peace. It is your right. It will be our failure if you are denied it.5
XXIII
The maxi-trials, the marches, Il Quotidiano – something was stirring in Calabria. Alessandra and the other prosecutors sensed a moment of possibility, even hope. It was exhilarating, but also disquieting. The state had fought for generations to change Sicily and that war still wasn’t won. The campaign against the Calabrian mafia now had its first convictions but, really, had just begun. Even the cases against the Coscos, the Cacciolas and the Pesces had years to run through the various appeals and procedural tiers of the Italian justice system. Lea, Giuseppina and Concetta might be the icons of this new movement, but if Carlo Cosco or the Pesces or the Cacciolas somehow walked free, then the spring of 2012 would be remembered as a brief, bright instant which vanished as quickly as it appeared.
By now, Alessandra knew that the best way to ensure a result in the Pesce case was to end all contact between the family and Giuseppina. Roberto di Bella’s juvenile court had already taken care of the children, Angela, Gaetano and Elisea. Now Alessandra had Giuseppina moved to Paliano prison outside Rome, a penitentiary set aside for mafia collaborators.
Housed in an old fifteenth-century palace on a natural rock fortress with idyllic views of the town and the Apennine mountains, Paliano housed around fifty pentiti, men and women. Prison facilities included a library, a theatre, a church, a sports field, three workshops, four kitchens, four laboratories, five gyms and a playroom for children. Inmates were taught primary and secondary education in its five classrooms. For the better educated, there were courses in accounting and business studies as well as vocational training. All the inmates were encouraged to work: in the prison pizzeria, growing tomatoes and cherries and cavolo nero in the organic garden, making clothes or embroidering cushions. There was a choir. There was internet. There were private bathrooms with bidets.
The idea, said Paliano’s head warden Nadia Cersosimo, was to show how life in the mafia was a pale, negative image of reality. Inside a clan, respect was synonymous with fear, and family with crime. Paliano taught its prisoners that true respect was about voluntary admiration, not involuntary deference, and true family was about love, not mutual defence. Mafia families coached their children to despise the law and hate the state. Cersosimo said her own parents had taught her respect for the law and loyalty to the state – and at Paliano, she attempted to raise her inmates afresh as she herself had been brought up. It didn’t always work. But when it did, it could change lives. One prisoner gained a degree in economics. Two inmates, a man and a woman, married in the prison chapel. ‘We all share in these new paths,’ said Cersosimo. ‘It’s a family.’ Alessandra was among many prosecutors who were impressed. ‘She runs that prison as if it were her home,’ she said.
At Paliano, Giuseppina was allowed regular visits from her children. She watched the Lea Garofalo trial and the Cacciola arrests on television. She followed the proceedings against her own family in Palmi by video link from an underground security bunker set up for the purpose at Rebibbia prison in Rome. When she turned thirty-two on 24 September 2011, she was allowed a small party.
As Giuseppina and Alessandra resumed their collaboration, they also revived their friendship. Between trial days during late 2011 and early 2012, Alessandra would fly up to meet Giuseppina at Rebibbia and finesse her testimony. Sometimes during the hour-long drive from Paliano, Giuseppina’s protection officers would report being shadowed by cars with blacked-out windows. But Alessandra had insisted on a new team of bodyguards for Giuseppina and their evident professionalism convinced Giuseppina she was in no danger. Alessandra was pleased to note the tight bond of trust that was quickly developing between Giuseppina and her protection squad. When, in December 2011, Giuseppina began giving detailed evidence for the first time against her father and brother – the two ’Ndrangheta men to whom she was most loyal – Alessandra credited the confidence she now felt able to place in the state.
Giuseppina’s main concern remained the happiness of her children. A year earlier, it had been Angela’s despondency that had derailed Giuseppina’s cooperation. Now Angela seemed resolved to support her mother. Gaetano and Elisea, too, appeared happy in the care of Roberto di Bella’s youth programme. Still, abandoning family and everything you’d been taught from birth was never going to be easy.
In December 2011, realising that the three children would be apart from Giuseppina for Christmas, Alessandra decided to make sure all three received presents. Out shopping, she spotted a cuddly toy that inspired her to try an experiment with the youngest, six-year-old Elisea. ‘When these children think of carabinieri, they think of hooded people in black balaclavas who seize their father or uncle in the middle of the night,’ said Alessandra. Alessandra decided to give Elisea a bear dressed in a carabinieri uniform. ‘I thought she could see this bear as a more friendly figure and, through my gift, the girl could get used to the idea of the state.’
‘Yes, yes, she liked it,’ replied Giuseppina. But Alessandra could see she was embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid she took the carabinieri uniform off,’ said Giuseppina eventually.
Alessandra told Giuseppina not to worry. ‘Slowly, slowly,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if things change.’
And slowly, slowly, they did. Each time they met, Alessandra would ask Giuseppina for an update on the bear. In February, Giuseppina smiled and said the bear was now wearing its shoes. ‘Then she told me it was wearing its trousers,’ said Alessandra. ‘Then it was wearing its hat. Very gradually the bear began to wear more and more of its uniform. It took from January to September. But, finally, the bear was completely dressed and Elisea placed it right by the front door. She told her mother it was “so that the carabinieri can protect us”.’
Alessandra saw the bear’s transformation as an extraordinary metaphor for how, with their mother’s encouragement, Giuseppina’s children were altering their outlook on the world. ‘It was something amazing, what Giuseppina was managing to do,’ she said. ‘Slowly and progressively, she was setting out with her very fragile young children on a new path to something else. It was small steps on a long path. But slowly and surely, she was making them understand that the state can help them.’
All Alessandra’s efforts with Giuseppina were to prepare her for the trial ahead. The first hurdle came on New Year’s Eve 2011, when a new 180-day deadline for Giuseppina to sign her witness statements fell due. The day before, Alessandra flew in to see Giuseppina, bringing with her several thousand pages of documentation. Eight months earlier, Giuseppina had refused to sign. Now, even on the phone, Alessandra could tell she was nervous again. The prosecutor arrived at Rebibbia fearing a repeat performance. She relaxed when she realised that what she had understood as anxiety was actually excitement. Giuseppina signed then slumped in her chair. She had now officially replaced her family with the state.