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15 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 14 DECEMBER 2022 NEWS "I never went to complain to my father or my brothers, not least because they would say: "At the end of the day, you wanted him." But at that age, how could I know? I wanted him as I couldn't get close to any other man after being with him." Many people imagine mafia women either to be male-like leaders or unimportant bystand- ers. Lucia and Teresa are neither of these caricatures. Their mar- riages and the families that grew out of them spawned love, trust and loyalty. They were in partner- ships against the common enemy, the Italian state. Family relation- ships were transformed into crim- inal ventures. It seemed to me that Lucia knew and accepted what she was getting into – and Teresa says the same: "Yes, I started to understand many things. I understood, but by now we were too involved. When you get into this thing, you can't get out afterwards – you don't leave." Invisible ghosts Italian mafias are always por- trayed as male-centred criminal organisations, whether in films and TV series, academic and newspaper articles, legal judg- ments or police reports. Women, if present at all, are purely repre- sentatives of the men, with no in- dependent agency. By failing to challenge this "mas- ter" narrative, women's criminal activities are overlooked and the fight against mafias is weakened. Women are an integral part of these groups with their own agen- cy and their own criminal knowl- edge and capacity for violence. My studies show that women often bear joint responsibility for the planning of criminal activities, but this remains hidden within the informal world of the household. In this private space, they partic- ipate, advise and organise. They are not coerced or forced; they are aware, knowledgeable and involved. Without these women, the criminal structures would find it difficult to survive. So why are the majority of them "invisible ghosts" to us? Judicial records and police reports tend not to pick up the involvement of women because it is often behind closed doors, discreet and unpaid and therefore invisible. While much of Italian civil society rein- forces patriarchal values that di- minish the role and value of wom- en, family life is a negotiated space where women can predominate. The same is true in Italian mafia families, where women – espe- cially mothers and wives – can become equals to their men in the criminal underworld. Over the course of our conversa- tions, Lucia and Teresa highlight how living in a criminal space is not a black-and-white affair, as described in fiction or academic books. They show me that behind every successful male mafioso, there is likely to be a strong wom- an. But this doesn't mean they are free of regrets. A family slain Lucia does not directly acknowl- edge the criminal activities of her husband or younger brother. She accepts that her husband did some loan sharking and that he went to prison for four years for his activi- ties. But she is vague about the de- tails because she was also part of this family business. Her husband put one of his companies under her name in order to hide their illegal profits, for which she went on the run and eventually spent time in prison in 1981. She never makes it clear why – she just did time for the family business. Lucia's son, who I have also in- terviewed and is not involved with the Camorra, acknowledges his mother's apparent duplicity – of knowing but not wanting to know, of being involved without wanting to. Lucia says she always had a sense of how things would play out – first when her father was shot (but not killed) in 1980, then when her younger brother and husband were assassinated a decade later. Her father was punished by her brother-in-law after he had supposedly "behaved improper- ly" towards Lucia's sister-in-law, exposing a deep internal rift in this Camorra clan. Lucia told her husband that she knew who had ordered her father's shooting but was not believed – probably be- cause she was a woman. While she maintains that her younger brother was "an honour- able man", to anti-mafia prosecu- tors he was a key member of the dominant Camorra alliance in the late 1980s, involved in drug trafficking and other criminal ac- tivities. He too was murdered, in 1991, apparently because his as- sociates suspected he was a police informer. Lucia recalls that her broth- er's killer was someone he knew, whom he had taken in and looked after. She likens this Camorra ex- ecution to "being kissed and then shot in the back" – and says it "crucified" her: "I raised him – and when he died it was my great pain. We cried to- gether when we were children be- cause daddy wasn't around, so he was like a son as well as a brother to me. That was my first big pain – my biggest pain." Almost unimaginably, two years later Lucia's husband was mur- dered because his brother, a top mafia boss, had decided to collab- orate with the state. Her husband was offered state protection (as all relatives of informers are) but he refused point-blank; it is believed he was murdered as a form of in- direct revenge. After her husband's murder, Lucia was also offered state protection but she too refused. There was simply nothing left for her to lose: "All the lives they've taken from me – they took my brother, they took my husband. I don't think there's anything else … I experi- enced great pain, great fear and great suffering." Breaking from the Camorra As capo zona, the boss of their local neighbourhood, Teresa's husband Giuseppe was much re- spected and admired by his local community. She explains "they loved him" because he brought calm and was a "reference point" people could turn to in times of hardship: "From the beginning, I realised my husband was with these peo- ple … I would ask him: 'But what are you doing? What kind of peo- ple are they?' And he would say to me: 'Teresa, let's say it's a life …' By then he had it in his blood. The truth is they make you per- sist because they show you the money … They even bought my husband a car. He was start- ing to dress smartly – and I had everything." Teresa was fully aware of her husband's activities and support- ed and helped him. He would explain everything to her and they usually agreed. She never pretended not to know. But she admits: "We got ourselves into a mess, me and him. Not a small one. There was no turning back then. I spent my nights in bed waiting for him to come back home, with the fear that they would kill or arrest him. Those were terrible nights." In 1990, Teresa's husband was arrested and sentenced to life im- prisonment for being the leader of a violent group of camorristi. Teresa went from being a "Lady Camorra", living the good life, to a Camorra widow, visiting her husband in different prisons across Italy while dealing with his lawyer. Her husband chose not to nego- tiate with the state, which would have given him a leaner sentence. He frequently told Teresa not to wait for him, saying: "Leave me because I wasn't a good husband." But Teresa swore she would stick by him, as did the clan. She ex- plains how the Camorra tried to buy their loyalty and silence: "[The clan] came in and hired a lawyer, and they gave me 100,000-150,000 Italian lira [then about £400-£600] a week. This is the way the clan keeps members loyal … It is very difficult to say no when they offer this financial help – but in time we did." Two years into her husband's prison sentence, Teresa decided to break free from the Camorra, its control and its power. She recalls how one day they came to her door and she said she no longer wanted their money. She would look after herself and her five children alone because she "didn't want them to go down the same path". She got a job working in a local market where, she says: "People were scared of me because I was the local boss's wife." "Life got even more difficult – I had to scrape together money so that my husband had money in prison, and to raise my children and for house expenses. My life was bad – you don't know what it was like. You can't even imagine." Teresa grew very depressed, lost a lot of weight and turned to the local nuns for help. They looked after her and gave her a job. Over the 30 years of Giuseppe's impris- onment, she slowly rebuilt her life, waiting for the day her husband would be released. Eventually he was allowed to take a job outside the prison three days a week. But, says Teresa, life remained "com- plicated". A wasted life? Teresa acknowledges that the clan system in Naples entraps people. Since breaking free of the Camorra's grip, she has had to work hard to ensure her children did not get sucked in – but she has been successful. Her five kids all have regular jobs: one works in a bakery, one owns a small res- taurant, two are looking for work after COVID made them redun- dant, and another has moved to the north of Italy to work in a hos- pital. Above all, she says, they are happy people. Lucia, now a widow for almost 30 years, has also focused on get- ting her children as far as possible away from a life of crime. Accord- ing to her son, even though they are now out of the clan system, the local bosses still treat Lucia and the rest of her family with respect and admiration – her surname alone still produces reverence in others. Being born into the Camorra has probably made it more difficult for Lucia to question and fully escape its grip. On top of all the killings, she has survived cancer too. After we speak for some time, she ad- mits to feeling enormous pain and sadness as she reflects on her life, then says: "But this is my whole life – I have lived everything." Teresa, in contrast, says she re- grets "everything", having wasted her life on the wrong man and his choices. After 30 years in prison, he came out two years ago. Teresa had to sign the paperwork to be his guarantor on the outside, but her dream of living a comfortable old age with the man of her life has not quite worked out. Giuseppe is still under licence – he has limited freedoms and must spend most of his time at home, with the police doing house vis- its to check on him at antisocial hours. Prison has had a huge im- pact: he is depressed and trau- matised, and this in turn affects everyone around him. Teresa describes him as "a mon- ster living in her house". She wor- ries that Giuseppe is destroying everything she has built with her five children while he was in pris- on – in particular, a loving family atmosphere. She does not know what the future looks like, but is seriously considering her options as her love and soul have been de- stroyed. Felia Allum is Professor of comparative organised crime and corruption., University of Bath Protesters demonstrate in Naples in memory of victims of the mafia, March 2022