How women became essential to the mafia’s survival

The Calabrian mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, were once something of a side-show compared with the more famous Sicilian mafia. Now they are the largest criminal organisation in Europe. Last month, European police arrested more than 130 ’Ndrangheta members in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Spain in a coordinated swoop codenamed ‘Eureka’. Almost all have been charged with drug-dealing, money-laundering or crimes of violence.

The ’Ndrangheta traditionally specialised in kidnapping, operating in the inaccessible region of Aspromonte, the toe of Italy, for centuries out of reach of the forces of law and order. In the 1990s, the Italian government decided to build a steel plant and a port in Calabria. The steel plant never opened and the port, at Gioia Tauro, looked like another white elephant. But it was able to receive the largest container ships in the world, and the ’Ndrangheta saw their opportunity. Two million containers a year now pass through Gioia Tauro – and it is estimated that 80 per cent of Europe’s cocaine does too.   

Like other mafia organisations, the ’Ndrangheta is intensely conservative; it hates the state and loves private enterprise, it reveres the family unit and the extended clan structure. While a man gets rich and gains a reputation for himself, his wife stays at home, looks after the children, spends his money and goes to church. Often the only confidant beyond the women of the family is the village priest. 

Women are the silent but essential collaborators of the mafia. The men are united by the ties of kinship. In a profession where it is hard to trust anyone, one trusts one’s sister’s son and one’s wife’s brother; nephews and brothers-in-law abound in mafia history. The connection between the men is provided by the women.