“We join in the cry of pain and anger of the entire Indian Latina community to say enough to the illegality that produces exploitation, violations of human rights and death. In a civilized country, there can be no room for self-styled agricultural entrepreneurs who profit from human life. We therefore appeal to all employers’ associations to take our side to jointly wage a battle of civilization, so that tragedies like the one in Latina never happen again.”
This was the statement that the three general secretaries of Fai, Flai and Uila, the agro-industry unions, Onofrio Rota, Giovanni Mininni and Enrica Mammucari released last week, a few hours after the news of the death of the Indian laborer Satnam Singh. At that juncture, the unions asked for a meeting with the government, which tried in the media to ward off an image blow also inflicted on the institutions. Was it possible that no one had noticed anything? Is it possible that the government of order and security does not have information on the direct links between local clans and national mafias, in the exploitation of immigrant labor??
After the tragedy, the theater: with the high-sounding declarations of the ministers Lollobrigida and Calderone, and with the help of the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, who admitted to being scandalized by what happened. But the media theater soon deflated, and the unions were dissatisfied with the meeting with the agriculture and labor ministers. From the pompous summit, in fact, only promises – more controls, more inspectors… – explained the trade unionists of Flai CGIL, who in recent days have launched the campaign of “labor brigades“, a widespread and on-the-ground mobilization, on the model of the “street union”: every morning, at dawn, the unionists meet at strategic points of agricultural work in the Latina area, and go around the fields to speak directly with the Italian and immigrant laborerstrying at the same time to raise awareness among the citizens of those places that live under the blackmail of organized crime, and also among Italian citizens as a whole, given that, as consumers, we all enjoy the products of the earth.
As demonstrated by recent reports from the Financial Police and the Dia, the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate, agricultural work, with the exploitation of labor through the gangmaster network, is one of the main businesses of the criminal economy along with drugs, weapons sales and money laundering. We talk about the “grey area”, that area with opaque borders, which unfolds between legal and illegalin which relationships of complicity, collusion and interpenetration between the productive fabric, the political-administrative system and mafia power take shape.
The phenomenon is local and national, given that, according to the Financial Police, there are almost sixty thousand people who work illegally or with irregular contracts. Data which, according to experts, would also be underestimated. According to the Placido Rizzotto Observatory of Flai-Cgil, which has been producing an annual report on gangmastering and agromafias for years (the 2024 edition is being published), in Italy there are 230 thousand workers in the fruit and vegetable sector who work under a gangmaster regime, without any type of contract or rights. And more generally it is now well established that it deals with human beings is the third largest and most important business of the mafias on a global level, after drug and arms trafficking.
At a local level, the many hypocrisies that we are hearing these days melt like snow in the sun, if we have the patience to go beyond the superficial declarations, digging into the official police reports. The management of fruit and vegetable markets has in fact received attention for years. The process started by the Sud Pontino operation, which reached the Court of Cassation, had already clarified how the infiltration of the mafias into the fruit and vegetable distribution sector was structured within the markets of Vittoria (Ragusa) and Fondi (Latina). The investigations and trials have brought this to light the agreement between the various mafia organizations active in the area (in particular Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra), in order to divide up the business through non-competition agreements, real “non-belligerence pacts”. In particular, the judiciary has focused, in recent years, on the economic activities relating to the Fondi fruit and vegetable market, which has already been under observation for some time, to which is added the Roman agri-food centre, based in Guidonia, which, in addition to suffer conditioning from criminal organisations, has also seen a round of exploitation of foreign child labour, linked to the realities involved in the Mafia Capitale investigation.
However, it is not just the big clans and the big international tours that are at stake. There are also the connections between national mafias and foreign criminal organizations (Indian, in the case of Latina) In a book edited by leading experts on the subject, Foreign mafias in Italy. How they operate, how they contrast each other (Franco Angeli editore, 2016), edited by Stefano Becucci and Francesco Carchedi, we find a chapter on the Latina system. The sociologists Carchedi and Marco Omizzolo explain that “to the system of labor exploitation of Indian migrants there are two other delinquent subsystems: on the one hand, that of the gangmasters of Punjabi origin, and, on the other, that of the corrupt employees and officials who deal to produce fictitious administrative documents at the request of a few (but powerful) dishonest local entrepreneurs”. The complaint is serious: “Some employees, freelancers and officials of the Pontine administrations are involved in corrupt practices to facilitate these entrepreneurs, advising them on the most suitable means to circumvent the rules on the employment of immigrant workers. Overall, Punjabi criminal organizations tend to position themselves both in that area that we can define as ‘grey’, definable in this way due to its ambiguous and opaque nature, and in that ‘black’ area, as it is completely criminal” . We are therefore in the presence of real human trafficking: “The victims of this atypical form of trafficking – write Carchedi and Omizzolo -, as the criminal group tends to activate relationships that benefit all parties without distinction, come from the Indian state of Punjab”, an immigration to the Agro Pontino that began in the 1980s.
The peculiarity of Punjabi organizations is to be able to ensure, even before the migrant leaves his country, employment in the countryside of the Pontine Marshes.. While other criminal organizations lure potential migrants with false promises of work, Punjabi traffickers have the ability to form structured relationships with segments of Italian business for the supply of manpower. The entrepreneur addresses the international labor market through these organizations specialized in satisfying his labor needs. “There is an interdependent and strictly functional relationship between the managers of the route and some Pontine entrepreneurs – we read again in Becucci and Carchedi’s publication – both with regards to the international recruitment of labor and the subsequent on-site labor exploitation. It is an alliance that allows us to satisfy a specific demand coming from dishonest entrepreneurs, in such a way that all the partners involved obtain substantial profits”.
According to investigators, Punjabi criminal organizations are not many. In the Pontine area, there are an estimated ten. These criminal associations are able to guarantee discretion and silence. In the interviews carried out by sociologists, and collected in their publication, one emerges great discretion and a reverential relationshipby immigrants, towards their sponsors, i.e. those figures who act as a bridge between India and Italy.
But what is hidden behind this service function of the sponsors and corporals? We understand this from an interview by Francesco Carchedi with a leader of the Punjabi community in Latina, who obviously remains anonymous. “How much does a Punjabi worker pay to come to Latina?” Answer: “It depends on whether you are rich or poor. If relative or friend of relatives of the sponsor or one of his collaborators. First rich and non-relative also pays 10,000, 12,000 euros. Second poor person or relative or close friend pays less: 5,000 or even 4,000”. How do they arrive? Alone? Answer: “No. The rich sponsor brings workers and families. He goes there to get them or sends a trusted man and brings them here. I’m traveling for a week, maybe more. Two days by plane.” Question: “Generally the workers who are employed in agriculture are already in Latina, or not? Or do they come directly from India?”. Answer: “A very large Indian community lives here. Relatives and friends come. And when they are here (in Latina) they ask if they can work and apply for seasonal work when the seasonal flows decree opens every six-nine months. The employer says yes, and calls the sponsor to do everything. Then the workers leave with a job request and return here, when the flow decree is open. But when they come here, they pay a lot of money to the employer. A lot of money, I mean 5,000, 8,000, 9,000 and even more.” Question: “Who do they pay this money to and why?”. “3,000 or 4,000, up to 4,500 they pay to the employer. The employer takes them. Another 3,000 or 4,000 or more are taken by the sponsor. The sponsor takes more for travel expenses than he does.” “Do you mean that the employer here in Latina takes 4,000 euros from these workers? To be taken to work? – Carchedi rightly asks. Answer: “Yes, yes. To apply for seasonal residence provided for by the agricultural flows decree. For six to nine months.” But how much salary will this worker get per month? “It does not exceed 600-700 euros per month for 10-12 hours a day”. At this point, the question is obligatory: “But sorry: if the worker pays the employer 4,000-4,500 euros to be hired seasonally and the employer, by employing him, gives him 600-700 euros a month, in practice the worker gets back the his money. If the worker is employed for six months, he gets back the money that he advanced to the employer to get him employed. And if he works nine, at 600 euros a month, he earns around 1,000 euros, while if he takes 700 he doesn’t reach 2,000. Exact?”. “Yes exactly. That’s right. In the end all the workers are desperate. And abandoned without money. It’s a big scam. Nobody defends us. Only the union.”
Do only sociologists who have done field research and law enforcement agencies who draw up reports on fruit and vegetable crime know all these things? It is doubtful, given that these are not new phenomena at all. “The fight against gangmasters – says Angelo Leo, a trade unionist and activist who has always been committed against the exploitation of workers – began in the 1960s when we realised, in Puglia, that the entire labor market was in the hands of gangmasters. A phenomenon that started almost by chance, with the return home of groups of emigrants who had been working in Germany. Before then, laborers found work in their areas, then the movements from Basilicata to Puglia began. And those who had returned from abroad with a van began to make it available to transport laborers from their homes to the work camps.”
However, the transport service has transformed over time into something very different, as Leo recounts in a 1997 book, Lives burned to the ground. Those were stories of Italians, perhaps former emigrants. Today gangmastering and the exploitation of work in the fields mainly involve immigrants. “But it is a mistake to focus only on the exploitation of migrants” – warns Leo. The phenomenon still involves many Italiansmen and especially women who go to work in the fields because they have no other alternatives. We are in the presence of an ancient and very modern phenomenon, in which forms of para-slavery and slavery coexist with extreme forms of exploitation of poor labor. It will not be enough, therefore, to find some isolated scapegoat. There are many monsters here. Even if well disguised.
