Multiple Mafia Groups In Italy Provide Food To Struggling Residents
Per The Guardian, multiple Mafia groups in Italy are buying and distributing food to struggling residents during the coronavirus quarantine.
For families who’ve run out of food and cash, the organized crime groups have been seen delivering essential gods across the poorest southern regions of Campania, Calabria, Sicily and Puglia; and now some officials are fearful of takeovers.
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Antimafia investigator and Catanzaro’s Head Prosecutor, Nicola Gratteri says, “For over a month, shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs have been closed. Millions of people work in the grey economy, which means that they haven’t received any income in more than a month and have no idea when they might return to work. The government is issuing so-called shopping vouchers to support people. If the state doesn’t step in soon to help these families, the mafia will provide its services, imposing their control over people’s lives.”
Gratteri adds, “Mafia bosses consider their cities as their own fiefdom. The bosses know very well that in order to govern, they need to take care of the people in their territory. And they do it by exploiting the situation to their advantage. In the people’s eyes, a boss who knocks on the door offering free food is a hero. And the boss knows that he can then count on the support of these families when necessary, when, for example, the mafia sponsors a politician for election who will further their criminal interests.”
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Frederico Varese, professor of criminology at the University of Oxford, says, “Mafias are not just criminal organizations. They are organizations that aspire to govern territories and markets. Commentators often focus on the financial aspect of mafias but they tend to forget that their strength comes from having a local base from which to operate.”
Furthermore, Italy, who’s faced the brunt of the pandemic, with the most deaths, totaling 18,279, shows over 3.3 million people out of work, and more than 1 million of them live in the poorest regions in the south.
Verese adds, “These handouts by the mafias are not gifts. The mafia does not do anything out of its kind heart. They are favours that everyone will have to pay back in some form or another, by aiding and abetting a fugitive, holding a gun, dealing drugs and the like.”