Claudia Mann

Qui la Camorra ha perso

(Here the Camorra lost)

  In Italy, when members of the Mafia are arrested, the government seizes their properties and gives them to NGOs and social cooperatives to manage. In the summer of 2017, I traveled to the region of Campania to photograph the communities that care for these properties and fight the oppression of the Camorra.  

 In Italy, Mafia organizations such as Cosa Nostra (Sicily), Camorra (Campania), ‘Ndrangheta (Calabria) and Sacra Corona Unita (Apulia), are deeply rooted in the South with their own distinct set of rules and hierarchies and they afflict the population with recurring acts of violence and intimidation. After Sicily, Campania is the region with the most confiscated properties (over 3000) and where the Camorra is still very active and imposing in its presence on the territory and in people's everyday life. However, it is also a region where there is a persistent, engaged and dedicated fight by local citizens.  

The Mafia has been a steady negative phenomenon throughout the history of my country: it has tainted our politics, polluted our environment, suffocated our economy and harmed our people. This project shows the civilians who band together in solidarity to retake control of their land.

Maiano di Sessa Aurunca 

Confiscated Property "Alberto Varone"

Social Cooperative " Al di là dei sogni"

    On July 24th 1991, Alberto Varone murdered by the Camorra clan of the Esposito family. Alberto was a hardworking man. He collected newspapers and distributed them to newsstands in Roccamorfina and other fractions of Sessa Aurunca and owned a furniture store with his wife. Alessandro never gave into the attempted racketeering of the Esposito clan, who had dominated the area of Sessa Aurunca since the late ‘80s. After his death, his children continued their father’s fight maintaining the newspaper business and the furniture store. Retaliations form the clan persisted and became so suffocating that Alessandro’s entire family was put in the witness protection program and since then, as it usually goes, we know nothing about them.

    This cooperative dedicated to Alessandro was established in 2004. Their main focus is cultivating the confiscated land and selling the products from of the crops to fund the cooperative’s two missions: provide educational services to volunteers who come to work in the fields and learn about the realities of the fight against the Camorra and provide training and employment to former drug users and those who come from judicial psychiatric hospitals.

Castel Volturno

Social cooperative “Jerry Masslo”

    Jerry Essan Masslo was a South African refugee who came to Italy to escape the persecutions in his home country. He found work collecting tomatoes in the fields of Villa Literno under harsh conditions. He lived with other twenty seven refugees. On October 24th 1991, a gang of criminals with weapons broke into the house and demand all the money the refugees had. The situation escalated and one of the robbers fired three shots that wounded one refugee and killed Jerry.

    The organization "Jerry Masslo" is dedicated to him and focuses on  giving jobs to immigrants. The organization collaborates with “Casa di Alice” a dressmaking business that employs immigrant women and that has an after school program for kids from Castel Volturno and nearby towns. "Jerry Masslo" also works with other local organization for the waste clean up of the city and the nearby beaches as the waste management crisis of 2008 persists in Naples and in its neighboring towns. This small organization is a local resource to overcome prejudice and racism and promote legal business activities.