CLAUDIO MENNA
CLAUDIO MENNA
CLAUDIO MENNA
"LOBOS"
In the last years beheading of several criminal families related to Camorra System brought kids – as sons or grandchildren – taking power to control their business. Hungry to show their value and potential they created small and big group of "soldiers" known by media as "Baby gangs". With no rules and no mercy they always move in packs, often they rob and attack with the only sadistic taste to do it. In the last years in Naples there have been dozens of attacks against teenagers with a ferociy and brutality too similar to that of Roberto Saviano’s TV show “Gomorra”. First of them were sons - or related - to criminal leaders detained for life sentences or decades in prison; in a short while their attitude made a strange trend where kids and teens from difficult areas of the city turned themselves in baby gangsters following those behaviors of violence and anger, although they did not belong to criminal traditions.
On september 2015 during a "stesa" - a criminal attack made by young members of baby gangs which shoot with automatic weapons on air, forcing people to throw spread on ground (litterally "stesi al suolo") the young Gennaro Cesarano - a 16 yo teen from Rione Sanità - was accidentally killed. His death brought between the youngest of neighborhood, his closed friends, a wave of haterd difficult to be curbed. Associations, Ngo's and volunteers started an hard work to avoid a new kind of war, different from those made by Camorra leaders in '80s. A war without any kind of rules, and ethical limits.
Rione Sanità is a popular and historical district of Naples located inside the city belly, known by most for the every day news about criminal organizations, drugs dealing, murders and baby gangs, as almost every popular districts in Naples. Despite its recent emancipation where cultural aggregation points and associations are working hard to take away kids from streets and from a marked path, it’s always an unresolved issue. Total absence of government’s authorities creates for decades inside “Rione Sanità” a parallel world where survival entrusted to common sense often trampled by crime and their way to promise easy money for all neighborhood’s kids, for them indispensable as dealers or sentinels.
After the tv show “Gomorra”, crime and criminals have been projected in common imaginary as “Guest Stars”, stereotypes and model to follow for all those kids without any family support.
"Lobos" is a report started several years ago about last generation of kids and teens born after 2000's inside Rione Sanità, my mother's neighborhood; the main actors of this story are all connected directly or indirectly to what happened few years ago to Gennaro Cesarano, a 16yo teen accidentally mourdered during a criminal attack made by teens of a rival district.
"Lobos" is an anthropological report about the main cause which lead youngest who live in a popular neighborhood as Rione Sanità to take criminal paths. I tried to investigate - diving myself in this reality - how the absence of Government and Municipality affect their lives, made mostly, by family issues, school dropout, bad habits, traditions, religion and paganism, fake myths, smoke sellers and dealers of illusions. (Photo and text © Claudio Menna)
From Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino:
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
CLAUDIO MENNA
Roma families Refugees.
After almost 4 months, several families from the Roma camp of Cupa Perillo (Scampia, Naples) which lost their homes in the arson of August 27th - caused, attending judiciary by local criminal groups related to Camorra organization - are still living inside the Scampia's Auditorium, but without any kind of aid anymore. They told me there's no hot water there and Municipality turns on the central heating only for 6 hours, since 6,30 pm to midnight.
"Money is gone" just told them Municipality.
What's really happened ?
Slavic community of Cupa Perillo (Scampia, Naples) live in an huge suburban area close to a motorway junction, and persists there since several decades living peacefully with local citizens of Secondigliano.
When authorities fixed several times orders of forced eviction the entire community lost their every day life balance, threatened from a side by Police forces and their systematic abuses to move them away before the eviction, and from the other side by local criminal groups - related with Camorra organization - which took opportunity (moved from racism and intolerance) to get rid of them.
On August 27th an huge fire inside the camp - made by local criminal groups - became a real arson which in few hours - without any instant operation by fire fighters - destroyed almost the entire Roma settlement leaving approximately 100 people without an home.
Municipality stopped immediately all the forced eviction operations (fixed at first moment for September 11th) and moved the Roma refugees inside an Auditorium in Scampia.
The mayor Luigi de Magistris and his councilor for social policies Roberta Gaeta promised to resolve the issue in few days, and telling the Roma community that for Christmas there would have been a housing solution.
Today, after 4 months the almost 100 Roma refugee without an home lost during the arson of August are still living inside the Scampia's Auditorium, and since 2 months they are without any kind of aid by Municipality: there's no hot water and despite the cold of December, authorities turns on the central heating only for 6 hours, since 6,30 pm to midnight.
Text and photos © Claudio Menna
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