Naples fights mafia - with first bookshop in 50 years
In the hinterlands of Naples a revolution is afoot: locals tired of drug lords are taking the fight to the mafia and their weapon of choice is the humble book. Tucked away between squats and roadside traders of broken toys rises the first bookshop in nearly 50 years. The concrete sprawl of Scampia, a bastion of the ruthless Camorra organized crime group, was immortalized in the 2006 bestselling book “Gomorrah” by Roberto Saviano and in a popular spin-off film and television series. Now one of the poorest areas in southern Italy is attempting to cast off the stereotype of Kalashnikov-wielding teens and get its young off the streets by flooding the turf with theatre, cinema and literature associations. The tower blocks, riddled with asbestos and divided by rubbish-strewn no-man’s lands, were thrown up in the 1970s. “There has never been a bookshop here. We had to travel 10 kilometers to buy a book,” Rosario Esposito La Rossa, whose shop “Scugnizzeria” opened a week ago, told AFP.
Widespread illiteracy
The idea for the small store, which also has a room for theatre and study groups, followed the death of La Rossa’s disabled relative Antonio, caught in the crossfire of a 2004 shootout and labelled a trafficker by the state. “He was hit by two bullets as he played table football, but police said he had links to the Cali cocaine cartel in Colombia. We fought for 10 years to clear his name and it became a cultural battle for our neighborhood,” he said.
When La Rossa inherited the Marotta&Cafiero publishing house in 2010 he moved it to Scampia to continue the fight. “There were those who said we would close within a few weeks because no-one reads in Scampia, it has the highest illiteracy rate in southern Italy. Seven years on and we have published 88 books,” he said. The 29-year old is just the tip of an iceberg of change slowly edging its way across the northern suburb of Naples. The government has pledged to demolish three of the four remaining Sails of Scampia, notorious tower blocks shaped like sails where staircases boast metal gates installed by traffickers to slow down police during raids. —AFP