In Apulia: The Slavers’ Dirty Hands
tags:
per Avvenire
Nardò (Apulia / ITALY) - The church bell of St. Tryphon in Salandra square rings every half hour.
The tolls tonight accompany the steps of a child while she illuminates dozens of candles that form the name 'Mohamed'. About a hundred people came to remember the Sudanese who collapsed 5 days earlier, on July 20th, in a field of tomatoes a few kilometres away from here. It was 1pm and the temperature was over 40 degrees. Mohamed Abdullah was 47 years old. Married, father of two children, he arrived from Sicily the day before to work until September without a contract. According to the first autopsy, it was a heart attack. But the authorities have yet to shed light on this tragedy and possibly punish those responsible.
"Those who speculate on the lives of people are Mafiosi” says a participant on the night vigil. Mafia is the one that uses people as if they were beasts of burden, is the one that makes a mockery of any law, and that operates in broad daylight in the city council boycotting our initiatives." Among those present there were representatives of Caritas, Flai-CGIL (Trade Union), Libera and other associations who have fought for years against 'modern slavery' in the region. To contrast them, however, there is a well-branched, and often ruthless system involving different forms of illegal hiring; an unidentified number of farmers; the research for profit by horticultural consortiums, associations or individual companies; and the very high pressure from multinational companies involved in transport, processing and distribution. Between the cracks of this massive pyramid structure, mafia groups, more or less organized, infiltrate, exploiting the weaknesses of local politics. "Illegal hiring has now become huge” says Concetta Notarangelo, a member of the 'Presidio' Caritas in Foggia, a project born with the aim of offering legal and medical aid to migrants who work in the countryside. "In the known 'ghetto' of Rignano there are caporali or capi neri: migrants of African origins who speak good Italian and ferry labourers between the ghetto and the fields; then there are many Romanians who make agreements between the Caporali and the employers; and finally - Notarangelo says - we are seeing an increase of Italians coming to the ghetto to transport immigrants directly to their fields."
But according to the different areas, the reality changes and evolves. "Here we don’t have any more Africans, but mostly people from Eastern Europe - said an Albanian caporale in Orta Nova -. We had too many problems with the Africans: they wanted to be paid daily and in cash." Although in the province of Foggia tomatoes have been harvested for 15 years with automatic machinery, across the region the labourers’ hours depend on the climate or the mood of the employer. The work is from 8 to 12 hours a day. In the worst scenario, when the machines are jammed or it rains, there is no break. Companies that pay the least, give 2.5 euro per hour or for a container of 300 kg. But even here the figures are very subjective. Sometimes, however, the pay is postponed continuously without ever being distributed.
In the small town of Stornarella, about 20 km from Foggia, a short, stout Nigerian called July tells us of how some years ago it was enough to be in the square at 4 am to get in a van and go to the countryside. "Now there are mainly Romanians to give directions to us Africans for housing and transport - continues July -. The square is empty because the caporali don’t want to get noticed."
Even in Nardo, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Salento area, the labourer now tends to hide in the countryside, avoiding the town centers once he’s finished for the day. "We are confident that the night vigil for Mohamed has also represented a threat to the work of Sudanese and Tunisians caporali working in the region," says Antonella Cazzato, CGIL in Lecce. Some members of the different associations fighting against exploitation have been in fact subjects to intimidations: punctured tyres or guns brandished in their faces.
But these threats are directed also against the farmers who are often victims of a vicious competition caused by very low prices auctions. "We know that it is unethical to pay labourers 2.5 euro per hour – protests a trader - but it is also unethical that large companies underpay our tomatoes forcing our companies into bankruptcy! ». The chain of production (filiera), which starts from the work in the fields and brings the product to the supermarket shelves, has no mercy. The only goal is profit, so any attempt to make this process more ethical is ignored or ridiculed. "The dramatic phenomenon of modern slavery in the countryside is the symptom of an equally serious disease", explains Antonio Fortarezza, a filmmaker from Foggia who is doing a documentary on the subject. "The extreme weakness of the contractual migrant situation is exploited by illegal hiring. Added to this there is the national and international distribution phase, which - concludes Fortarezza - has the enormous power to impose, for profit, the purchase price of the products. "
© riproduzione riservata