Gomorrah
by Roberto Saviano
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Book Reviews of Gomorrah
Book Review: Real organized crime as a pervasive cancer, stripped of Hollywood glamour
Summary: 4 Stars
Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System is an eye-opening account of just what organized crime really means in terms of the truly cancerous effects it has on society. And just how deep and how wide-spread those effects can be. In the case of the Camorra - the Naples-based equivalent of the more infamous but surprisingly less powerful Sicilian Mafia - their reach extends all over the world, from local monopolies on everything from cement and construction to milk and high fashion, to hooks in virtually every illegal enterprise in every part of Europe, to money-laundering operations in the UK and the US, to supplying massive illegal arms shipments to rebel groups in Peru and pariah states like Serbia.
The book is organized into chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of the Camorra's activities and influence:
'The Port' covers the role of the Camorra in making Naples the number one port in all of Europe... for avoiding inspections and import duties and for importing contraband:
"The port of Naples is an open wound... the hole in the earth out of which what's made in China comes.... Everything made in China is poured out here... The port of Naples handles 20 percent of the value of Italian textile imports from China, but more than 70 percent of the quantity.... According to the Italian Customs Agency, 60 percent of the goods arriving in Naples escape official customes inspection, 20 percent of the bills of entry go unchecked, and fifty thousand shipments are contraband, 99 percent of them from China -- all for an estimated 200 million euros in evaded taxes each semester. The containers that need to disappear before being inspected are in the first row. Every container is duly numbered, but the numbers on many of them are identical. So one inspected container baptizes all the illegal ones with the same number."
'Angelina Jolie' covers how the Camorra dominate the Italian fashion industry, using every tactic imagineable to minimize cost - and when necessary, to eliminate local competition - in effect creating third-worldesque work environments (one neighborhood is even nicknamed Terzo Mondo, Italian for 'third world') to produce the high-priced Italian high fashion goods known around the world.
'The System' refers to what the Camorra call themselves and deals with the organization and clans and how they've evolved over the last few decades.
"System -- a term everyone here understands, but that still needs decoding elsewhere, an obscure reference for anyone unfamiliar with the power dynamics of the criminal economy. _Camorra_ is a nonexistent word, a term of contempt used by narcs and judges, journalists and scriptwriters; it's a generic indication, a scholarly term, relegated to history -- a name that makes Camorristi smile. The word clan members use is _System_ -- 'I belong to the Secondigliano System' -- an eloquent term, a mechanism rather than a structure. The criminal organization coincides directly with the economy, and the dialectic of commerce is the framework of the clans."
'The Secondigliano War' covers a particularly nasty episode in 2004-2005 where a faction of mid-level Camorristi drug clans tried to break away from the overall hierarchy and set up their own System in the town of Secondigliano.
Women
Kalashnikov
Cement
Don Peppino Diana
Hollywood
Aberdeen, Mondragone
Land of Fires
Saviano does an effective job, serving as an intimate camera at the individual level, showing in a very personal way how the Camorra affects everything it touches, that the artificial line Hollywood tends to draw that seperates crime families from 'civilians' is an illusion. And while showing the individual and the personal, he also steps back to show the numbers that one needs to understand the sheer scope of the Camorra's operations in terms of money, reach and social cost.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the disturbing reality and reach of Italian organized crime as it exists today.
Book Review: 5 stars for Courage and Prose
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a worrisome portrait of the extra-legal underworld centered in and around Naples. It is run by "clans" that are much larger, more ruthless, more sophisticated and more international than the American style Mafia family. These clans compete with each other for market share in drugs, hazardous waste, high fashion, arms and anything else they choose.
The prose is absolutely wonderful. Well chosen words provide description of people, life and feelings in a way you ususally don't find in investigative journalism. Both the author and translator deserve credit because this high level of prose is maintained throughout. On pp. 214-5 there is a beautiful rumination on concrete. Phrases, "secrets in the bowels of the economy, sealed in a pancreas of silence" and "micro-criminal excrescence nourished in movies" demonstrate that the prose originates with Saviano.
Organizationally, the book is not 5 stars. It seems like these are loosely tied together articles. It is not clear how the opening part about fashion, shipping and the Chinese ties up with the rest of it. Even within the chapters there are a lot of unfinished vignettes and some come out of nowhere. For instance, Anna Vollero's minute of fame on p. 147, or the mention of local governments "dissolving" which is not explained. Does this mean the schools close? The police get laid off? There is an isolated but interesting piece on Mikhail Kalishnikov, who's invention has helped to make this all possible.
I feel like I received an education on the reach of organized crime in Italy. I knew nothing of the Aberdeen connection and little of the Sparticus trial. Some of the stories, for instance about the 14 year old recruits training with body armor are chilling.
Last year I read The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi which described how the government operates. Berlusconi inspired laws, enabling the accused to chose their own prosecutor and laws whereby a witness is not compelled to testify do not help in bringing an end to this scourge.
The dedicated police, prosecutors and press of Italy seem to labor in the shadows. Their lives and families are in danger, but they persist. This unheralded group deserves the respect and support of the world, if only in self interest as witness to the hazardous waste tsunami's can bring to their shores.
Book Review: A first-person account of the activities of the Camorra
Summary: 4 Stars
Gomorrah is a horrific first-person account of the activities of the Camorra, the Naples based organized crime system. This book would not have been written quite this way in America. Absent are formal interviews and investigations. The prose is florid and overwrought. The operation of the port of Naples is described: `... the anus of the sea were opening out, causing great pain to the sphincter muscles' [page 6]. I do not know if this has something to do with the original Italian style. Saviano writes with indignation palpable in each sentence. Once the reader gets used to the style, the picture of life in the depressed Naples hinterland is horrific. It appears that there is no legitimate way to earn a living either at the subsistence level as a laborer or at the other extreme as an entrepreneur, without breaking the law. The criminalization of day to day economic activity explains the ubiquity of the Camorra. The root of the problem appears to be political. In the presence of stifling regulation and in the absence of good governance crime families rule in a feudal fashion, making profits that could have gone to legitimate businessmen. Saviano does not fully come out and say this. One senses his disapproval of market forces and capitalism.
Readers familiar with the garbage collection woes of Naples from the international sections of newspapers will learn the underlying cause of the problem. While there is no legitimate place to dispose Naples' garbage, refuse from as far away as Milan is illegally dumped in the environs generating enormous profits for organized crime.
The primary emotion of shooting victims is not pain or anger but humiliation. Victims of mob hits are allowed to die in the streets without help, for fear that the killers will punish anyone who comes to their aid. Saviano describes an episode from his own father's life. His father was a doctor who accompanied an ambulance to the scene of a mob hit. The victim was still alive. He was advised by his nurse to wait till he died, before taking him to the hospital. Saviano's father failed to heed the advice and was beaten up in his home.
The book is somewhat haphazardly put together without a clear time-line. It contains a Homeric compendium of characters, the killed and the killers, most of who are of interest only to those who actually knew them. Perhaps that is how this book should be seen. Not as the result of a sober investigation, but as an epic account of a raging war. One with no end in sight.
Book Review: From Tiberio's Leap
Summary: 5 Stars
Behold here an unfashionable and stirring book. The pages drip with the residue of disfiguring communications left by hitmen on the lifeless bodies of their victims. I do not go in for glamorized violence and I do not watch movies with guns. Still, I turned pages of this grisly book because its message is both fascinating and urgent. The scores of deaths described are countable but only a partial number. What waste. The mafia clans of Campania, whose fractions divide business by terror, account for the fear they inspire with their omnipresent success. It is bizarre to read of this smothering and ultimately corrupting system that renovates, enriches and destroys as it spreads.
A marginal insider, Savinio here unloads the weight of his learning and the roar of his disillusionment. His book puts to pasture the works that would try to rival it as discourses or discoveries on the nature of power in society. Fans of Foucault have no idea what power is about until they have read this book. The same goes for the armchair aficionado of corporate monopoly. Much of the information Savinio relates he has gathered as an inhabitant or curious, casual employee of the clans that run Italy from the graced and volatile realm of Campania.
The first chapter on the port of Naples is likely to unsettle anyone who lives near a port of entry by sea, as it shows how illegal goods make it from sea to secrecy and to the market. The chapter called "Cement" demonstrates the relationship between contractors, bids, bias and regional economy. These two chapters alone seem to be stunning achievements. The final chapter treats the horrifying management and crippling dispersion of toxins through land, sea and air for the sake of immediate profit. There are chapters that address the subjects of women, religion, fashion, film and clan supremacy.
Saviano sheds light not on numbers and accounts but on names and traces. In the face of such an overwhelming and entrenched corruption the only power a writer or citizen can exercise in behalf of the common good is to name the names. Those who speak the truth run mortal risk but only the brave who take up that risk protect the multitude from fear, abuse, and destruction. I commend the inspiring bravery of this author and the skill with which he unwinds the horrors of our twisted realm.
Book Review: The only thing you learn in the black hole of Naples is how to die
Summary: 4 Stars
In going undercover, R. Saviano experienced at first hand the Mafia at work in the Naples region.
It is a story of savage infighting, bid-rigging, trafficking and relentless slaughtering of competition.
Economics
Mafia business is one of the most aggressive forms of neoliberalism. It is a naked struggle among clans in order to create monopolies and to maximize profits. Their activities cover as different sectors as real estate, construction, cement, garment, farming, sugar and trafficking of drugs, cigarettes, arms and waste. A clan cartel could generate as much as 30 billion euros of revenues per year.
The author also clearly explains the bidding contest for contracts in the garment industry, where small `illegal' factories with harsh working conditions are tailoring even unique pieces for the top names in the industry.
Ethics and creed
For the Mafia, ethics equal protection of the defeated. Justice and injustice have only significance as victory or defeat. The only thing that counts is the law of the strongest, are the means to rule.
Its members don't consider their activities as contradictory to the Christian message as long as those activities are good for the clan and its affiliates. Killing of enemies and traitors is seen as a legitimate transgression of the fifth commandment.
Lifestyle
Once in a commanding position, most bosses are confronted with the long arm of the law. They are always on the run and are not capable of enjoying their wealth. They become prisoners of their own business empire.
A big part of the book unravels a secession war between Mafia families and the killing of a priest. The relentless bestial slaughterings become rather boring and can only be fully appreciated by insiders.
Roberto Saviano wrote a courageous book exposing business empires built on monopolies, extortion and brutal power struggles. It is a picture of a lawless society.
Highly recommended.