The fate of Saint Luke it’s always the same: the commissionership. Double this time. The news emerged on Thursday morning at the end of the hearings organized by the anti-mafia parliamentary commission in the small town of Aspromonte, in the heart of Locride. She was the president Chiara Colosimo to announce the imminent dispatch of the anti-mafia access commission to San Luca after the green light from the Interior Ministry: “Given that it is now confirmed news”.
Triangle of kidnappings in the 1980s, always the cradle of the ‘Ndrangheta and still today a crossroads of international drug trafficking, the village was the protagonist of one of the most ferocious mafia wars, the one between the Nirta-Strangius hey Vottari leather who, in 2007, with the Duisburg massacre, they managed to export the feud to Europe until then insensitive to the alarms raised by Calabrian magistrates such as the prosecutor Nicola Gratteri. That year, in fact, on August 15th Germany woke up with six murdered people. It was revenge for the Christmas massacre where Maria Strangio, the wife of the boss Giovanni Luca Nirta, was killed. Stories of a recent past, yet to be metabolised, which are intertwined with a present in which yet another possible dissolution due to the mafia now looms. Stories that remain there to remind us how the ‘Ndrangheta, in these latitudes, controls everything, even people’s breathing.
But let’s go in order: in San Luca the mayor hasn’t been here for a few weeks. In fact, the outgoing councilor is over Bruno Bartolo, after five years at the helm of the administration, did not want to run again, denouncing the isolation suffered by the State after his election. Dissolved due to mafia infiltration in 2013, the municipal administration was placed under commissionership until 2019. The 18 months became six years because no one wanted to run for fear of being dissolved. The situation was resolved with the victory in the municipal elections Bruno Bartolo who prevailed against his rival, the mass mediaologist Klaus Davi.
Five years later, history repeats itself. The words used by Mayor Bartolo in the press conference with which he announced that he wanted to renounce his second mandate are a finger pointed at the State: “No conditioning or pressure from the ‘Ndrangheta,” he stated. but the institutions have abandoned us. They abandoned me. Here in this room of the city council five years ago there was the then prefect of Reggio Calabria, Michele Di Bari, told us ‘apply’ because we won’t abandon you but that wasn’t the case. In addition to the warnings that I received and which were a punch in the stomach, I am not running again because I have been abandoned by the State. I had applied because the institutions had encouraged me to do so, telling me they would help me. It was not so”.
Bartolo, essentially, felt betrayed: “Realities like San Luca must be supported and not neglected by the institutions.” Not just words. The mayor cited facts and circumstances such as the visit, in recent months, of Minister Crosetto: “he came to San Luca to pay homage to a fallen carabiniere without passing through the Municipality, neither me nor the mayor of Platì, by protocol, were allowed to get close. I was not allowed to bring the greetings of the honest people of San Luca”. So far the “political” history of the Municipality which, once Mayor Bartolo expired due to the expiry of his mandate, brought yet another commissioner Rosario Fusaro to San Luca, appointed by the prefect Clara Vaccaro.
What, until today, was not known is that in recent months an information activity from the Carabinieri on the Municipality of San Luca arrived on the prefect’s desk. A report with which not only the situations linked to the four warnings notified to Mayor Bartolo by the Locri Prosecutor’s Office, which is ordinary and does not deal with mafia crimes, were monitored. It is, in fact, a broader monitoring of the whole administrative activity which pushed the prefect Vaccaro to ask the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi the delegation to exercise the power of access. In other words: to be able to appoint a prefectural commission (which will happen in the next few days) with the task of verifying whether the Municipality of San Luca has, in the last five years, been infiltrated by the ‘Ndrangheta. And here the declarations of the president of the anti-mafia commission Chiara Colosimo, after the hearings of the magistrates and the heads of the police forces, are useful for understanding the context of “a territory, such as this country, which is terribly infiltrated”: “It emerged – He says – a total inertia in all the salient and important facts of public administration, from the sewerage network to the water system, arriving at lighting up to quite surreal stories concerning the market area in front of the sanctuary of the Madonna di Polsi. I can’t believe that no one noticed anything or that this was okay. So, certainly, there is a need to develop the so-called civil sense.”
“We are here in San Luca – states Colosimo – to support the hope of those who do not want to subject themselves to the mandate of this territory, of those who do not want to simply say I turn the other way. This is a message that must arrive clearly and that comes with a single voice from the people who are here. We know the names of the ‘ndrine, of the families. We know that when we talk about San Luca we are certainly talking about Pelle, Nirta, Strangio, Vottari, Mammoliti, Giorgi, Giampaolo, Romeo but we know that these families almost always work in coordination with the Barbaro, the Trimboli, the Morabito, the Palamara and the Bruzzanti of Africo and we could expand our circle even further. We are here because we know that out of approximately 3,500 inhabitants, 200 are currently detained for crimes linked to organized crime and an average of between 50 and 60 are in any case subjected to precautionary measures. But we cannot just say this to these people. We have the task of telling the women and children of this area that change can and must be done”.
“If this territory – concludes the president of the Commission – has remained and is poor, sad, closed as we have seen it, because I have not met any citizen coming here it is because someone takes advantage of the work and dignity of some families to make money and take them elsewhere. Here there is a need for welfare, for work, there is a need to tell these people that this is not the way to revive their land. We need free men and women and I am sure that, hidden behind the shutters, they are there. And if they aren’t there, the State will come and take them where they belong.” Hopes that clash with the chronic resignation of the citizens of San Luca to whom only time and facts will demonstrate whether the State will keep its promises in the cradle of the ‘Ndrangheta, following the words of President Colosimo.
