Camorra, the (end of!)
I have no profound sociological
insight to offer on the persistence of organized
crime, the camorra (the Neapolitan Mafia) in
Naples, but I offer this from The Galaxy, an
Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, a
journal published in New York from 1866 to 1878 by
Sheldon and Company. Among contributors to the very
first issue were heavyweights such as William Dean
Howells, Henry James, Bayard Taylor and Anthony
Trollope.
In May of 1868, the journal ran
an article by G.W. Appleton entitled "The Camorra
of Naples." The first paragraph was:
The name of Naples has for
many years been synonymous with all that was
evil. Mendacity and crime had attained here
to proportions which exceeded the aggregate
villainy of half a dozen other Italian
towns. Overt, fearless, defiant, all
dominant, these causes had earned for the
Neapolitans a sinister reputation, which, as
a people, they never merited. Aside from an
ungovernable rapacity, and a propensity for
imposing upon the ignorance and good nature
of strangers, which all possess in common,
the inhabitants of Naples are essentially as
little predisposed to criminal acts,
perhaps, as those of any other large city.
On the contrary, no people in the world,
probably, ever suffered with such patient
endurance the tyranny of organized crime as
themselves. The existence, until within a
few years, in their midst, of a secret
society, which…had for its object the
spoliation of the weak, and the
appropriation by violence of the results of
honest toil…not only paralyzed the very
energies of the people, but sapped the
foundation of their integrity, and infused
in them a spirit of retaliation and
reprisal… This society was known as the
“Camorra” of Naples, and it seems simply
incredible that an organization, which aimed
so successfully at the industry of a whole
city; thrusting its thousand hands into the
pockets of king and peasant alike, in total
disregard of the requirements of law and
order; scrupling not even at bloodshed, when
its purpose demanded it; guilty, in short,
of every enormity in the whole gamut of
crime, should so long have been permitted to
exist, unassailed and triumphant.
There follow long descriptions of the
origin of the camorra, descriptions of
involvement in smuggling and general leech-like
attachment to all affairs public and
private—what amounts to a shadow state, really.
The
article is glowingly in the past tense:
"…The existence until within a few
years…This society was known as the camorra…should
so
long have been permitted to exist…etc."
Written as it was, not long after the
unification of Italy in 1860, the article
is glowingly optimistic. It closes with
this:
To Victor Emanuel
[1820-78, the first king of united
Italy] is due the overthrow of this
monstrous iniquity…the most
notorious of the leaders were
apprehended and thrown into
prison…and, in a short period, five
or six thousand were lodged in
prison or banished [from] the
kingdom… and now, from Pozzuoli to
Portici not one of these miserable
creatures is to be seen, and Naples,
purified, redeemed, free from…the
terrors of the Camorra, has, for
once in its history, a legitimate
claim upon the good opinion and
respect of the world.
That, from the Ministry of "Hope
springs eternal…".
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