Gelato? Pizza? Pasta? Wine? Soccer? Fashion…. or perhaps the mafia?
Speaking of the mafia, do you remember what happened in Sicily? When I was a kid, I saw a mafia shooting incident in Sicily on the news. I remember trembling with fear and vowing that I’d never in my life go to a country so dangerous. Of course I ended up living in Italy, and my life occasionally takes me to Sicily as well.
When I first moved here, all I knew was that there was a criminal organization that we generally referred to as “the mafia.” But in fact, the term “mafia” originally referred specifically to the crime syndicate in Sicily, and the proper noun “Mafia” eventually came about once the mafia expanded into the US and became hugely influential there. In Italy, the different groups all have their own names. The criminal organization in Naples, for example, is called the Camorra. Some of you have probably heard of it before. A Neapolitan writer managed to infiltrate the Camorra organization and write an exposé of life on the inside. The book was called Gomorrah, and became a best-seller in Italy. The previously unknown author was catapulted into fame as a result of his work, but the Camorra had their eyes on him, so he had to keep changing addresses and stay with an escort from then on.
One crime organization that I only found out about recently is Sacra Corona Unita in the Apulia region. Speaking of Apulia, wholesalers at the seafood and produce markets and the produce sellers in Milan are all from Apulia. The fact that people from Apulia dominate the food market may be one result of the activities of the Sacra Corona Unita. At least, that’s what goes through my mind when I’m out buying fruits and vegetables these days.
So each region of Italy has a different crime syndicate, and the fourth one has a truly strange name. It’s called the ‘Ndrangheta.
`N?
It’s got kind of a nice ring to it, don’t you think? The organization is in Calabria, and it’s strange for a word in Italian to start with this ‘N sound. Apparently the word comes from the word for “heroism” in Greek, which is andragathía, and for some reason the “a” sound got truncated. The sound of the word alone has a playful feeling that calls to mind a children’s game, but I hear the name pretty often since apparently the organization itself is quite violent. There is another famous thing in Calabria whose name starts with ‘N, and it’s a specialty hot salami called ‘Nduja. This one also lost its initial “a” or “i” sound in the local dialect. I wondered if the Calabrian people just like dropping the first letter of words and if they even have a lot of words that start with ‘N. It just turns out that there are only two, and both are the most famous things from Calabria.
I started this post thinking I’d tell you about the ‘Nduja that I bought to try, but I guess I ended up on a tangent telling you about the four major crime syndicates in Italy instead.
