A city devoured by the Camorra

Marano was so small then that the town's heroes and villains could have the same last name and meet on either side of the sidewalk in a brawl.

Exactly 40 years ago, the

Salvatore Nuvoletta was assassinated at the hands of a Camorra hitman. It was ordered by Antonio Bardellino, head of a family from Casal di Principe who wanted to avenge the death of a relative. But to consummate it, they needed the permission of the clan that ran the businesses in Marano, the Nuvolettas, whose last name was the same as the young agent. From then on, the town was filled with new surnames that arrived from Naples in search of a cheaper house in a quiet place and grew exponentially on the back of real estate corruption, drug trafficking and fraudulent infrastructure management. Today it is a shapeless urban mass of 60,000 inhabitants whose City Hall has been dissolved four times by mafia infiltrations —the Italian record, surpassing Corleone— and its services have collapsed dramatically.Without light in the streets or water in many houses, Marano is the paradigm of the corrosive power of the mafia in Italy.

Blood and family are the Rosetta Stone of organized crime. And the Nuvolettas, the clan that dominated Marano for years, nine kilometers northwest of Naples, are the only family that could sit at two different tables of organized crime: that of the Neapolitan Camorra System and that of the Cosa leadership. Our Sicilian They were not troupes. They did so linked to the Corleone clan and were even consulted when Totó Riina decided to sow Italy with bombs to declare war on the State. The Nuvolettas, scandalized, flatly rejected the idea. It wasn't his way of doing business. Marano, a town on one of the slopes of the Camaldoli hill, grew at full speed in the nineties and they controlled all the businesses of a hormonal construction. Always with cheap materials, scams and unfulfilled contracts.The result can be seen today taking a walk.

A woman, in one of the streets of Marano. Paolo Manzo (Paolo Manzo)

The mobile flashlight has become one of the most useful tools for getting around the city after dark.

The street maintenance contract has not been renewed since last July, when the City Council was intervened again and three public administrators took control of the city.

There is hardly any light.

And some streets have holes like craters that you have to drive around.

"When night falls it is as if we were in Baghdad," says Mimmo Rosiello, a resident of the city and historical investigative journalist who has denounced the situation for years.

Marano was in the eighties the favorite destination of Neapolitans looking for a better house at a lower price. A quiet place, a few kilometers from the capital of Campania. Today, in fact, 80% of its residents are of Neapolitan origin. The parish priest Don Ciro Russo was one of those children who moved with his family and grew up here in the eighties. In the parish office, with a photo of the Pope and another of Maradona behind him, he describes the city's downward spiral. “The decline has been total, we are now at the lowest point. The problem is that Marano grew out of control. They built without order or any plan, breaking the law. There has been a great absence of the State”, he criticizes. A large part of those homes were built without a license and without the legal rigor of an urban plan.

The City Hall of Marano is closed and several banners denounce the situation in the city. Paolo Manzo (Paolo Manzo)

The City Hall is today closed to lime and song. And almost none of its mayors is saved from the moral burning of history. The last great alderman, Mauro Bertini, is today under house arrest accused of favoring the clans to build the failed industrial area at the beginning of this century. Several banners hang on its facade: “Enough of degradation. We do not want indifferent administrators. We want a livable city”, he says in reference to the commissioners who provisionally manage it (none of them has wanted to answer the questions of this newspaper). The bankruptcy, caused in part by mafia looting, has generated a gradual loss of personnel, reduced to a third of the 300 employees it should have. The city had a staff of 105 municipal police officers, but today it only has 23.The classrooms of the schools are not heated, the stadium has been closed for a long time, as well as the municipal theater. Not even running water is guaranteed all year round in all houses.

Popular ownership for cocaine

The State disregarded Marano for years and the Nuvolettas, later replaced by the Polverino and Orlando families, were the only authority in force.

His system was all encompassing.

They came to create a popular shareholding for the purchase of cocaine.

The DDA (anti-mafia body attached to the Prosecutor's Office) of Naples, in a 2004 investigation, showed that the clan, through intermediaries, allowed almost everyone to participate in the purchase of drug shipments.

Retirees, employees, small businessmen handed over their savings and part of their pension to alleged agents who then invested it again in cocaine.

Gambling a pension of 600 euros on coca meant receiving twice as much after a month.

And it was almost always a good investment, especially compared to interest from a bank.

Don Ciro Russo, one of the parish priests of Marano who helps the disadvantaged. Paolo Manzo

The city was his.

And the Nuvoletta-Polverinos (the evolution of the clan with another family) turned hair salons and tanning parlors into fabulous cocaine retailers.

The profits from that business were later used, through straw men, to purchase real estate, hotels or fees for service companies or schools.

The deputy of the 5 Star Movement Andrea Caso is a resident of Marano and a member of the anti-mafia commission.

For him, “the problem was always social”.

“The unique investments were made by the Camorra, and the moment the State arrived to dismantle the system, the city was impoverished.

And it happened because politics was also connected to those families.

The relatives were in the City Hall machine”.

The clans, whose last exponent today are the Orlando and the Simeoli, also made use of European funds, so necessary in the south to bridge the savage breach caused by the southern bleeding of Italy. A destroyed road, cut and full of holes is the old testament of the industrial pole that was attempted to be built 16 years ago. No administration was able to create a modern sewage system: 60% of houses discharge into cesspools or old pipes that end up in rivers. Public transport no longer covers the needs of citizens (the 30 million euros for an ambitious tram project disappeared).

In Marano, surnames say a lot and, at the same time, nothing.

Today the

barracks bears the name of Salvatore Nuvoletta, a healthy branch of the same family tree that devoured the city.

But Don Ciro, who works hard helping those in need, assures his parish that he does not understand names when he goes to jail and meets members of the clans.

"Many times the strongest form of denunciation is giving love to those who do not deserve it."

Although, all things considered, the problem may have been that for many years.

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