Naples, Italy — A decade after the celebrated maxi-trials of mafia mobsters put many of southern Italy’s leading gangsters behind bars, organised crime in the country is taking on a feminine face.

On 26 May, three women were killed and five wounded in an all-woman mafia shootout in the mountain village of Lauro, east of Naples, indicating that women are showing the same penchant for violence and vendettas as their menfolk in the Italian badlands.

Those gunned down were: Michelina Cava, 51, sister of Biagio Cava, head of the Cava clan of the Camorra, the feared Neapolitan mafia; Michelina’s 53 year-old sister-in-law Maria Schibelli; and Clarissa Cava, just 16, the boss’s daughter. The killers were members of the arch-rival Graziano clan.

The gun battle erupted a day after a fight had broken out in a local beauty parlour.

“The code of honour of the mafia as a male, protective thing has always been a bit of a myth,” says Umberto Santino, president of the Palermo-based Giuseppe Impastato mafia research centre. “Women and children have always been victims of their violence. These are criminal organisations and they don’t discriminate.”

The Graziano and Cava families have been at war for 50 years and this was the latest in a series of vendettas that have spawned dozens of killings. The dead Cava women were themselves armed with knives and scissors and the young Clarissa was said by police to have been carrying an acid phial.

Those wounded include the Graziano clan’s 67 year-old leader Luigi Graziano, who was travelling in a car with the Graziano women. Nine members of the Graziano clan have been arrested for the murders, including Antonio Mazzochi, a policeman married to a clan member, and four women – among them a 62 year-old grandmother.

What has been dubbed the Lauro massacre has caused tremors in Italy. It is seen as heralding the return of the bloody vendettas between rival gangsters, once commonplace in the south.

More worryingly, it has also placed women firmly on the map of mafia killings – both as instigators of the violence and as targets of vendettas.

When it comes to breaking the glass ceiling in organised crime syndicates, the Camorra of Naples – whose roots go back 200 years, making it older than the Sicilian Cosa Nostra – are well ahead of their southern cousins.

According to the Camorra Observatory, a Naples-based wing of the local state security services, 59 per cent of women affiliated with the Camorra clans are directly involved in their activities.

“Investigators have always underestimated the role of women in the Camorra,” said Observatory president, sociologist Amato Lamberti. “We shouldn’t wonder at the sight of women holding the shot gun and firing. For at least 30 years women have been taking power inside these criminal organisations.”

Indeed, the Camorra spawned one of Italy’s most notorious female criminals, Pupetta Moresca, who became famous in 1955 after she personally avenged the murder of her husband. Her life was turned into a film in 1988 with the starring role played by Alessandra Mussolini, the daughter of the wartime Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who himself was an arch foe of the mafia.

There were other isolated cases of famous female Camorra such as Celeste Giuliano, better known as Celeste di Forcella, after the district in Naples where she controlled the heroin trade and other gangster activities following the death of her brothers. After her arrest in 2000 at the age of 45, the bottle-bleached Celeste made a notorious last request to police – she wanted to go to the hairdressers and be allowed to put on a leopard skin outfit.

Women have been able to move up the ranks in the Camorra faster than the Sicilian Cosa Nostra because it is more of an urban organisation, which started life in gambling and gaming before moving into the world of drugs and public building contracts.

In rural Sicily, where Catholic traditions are stronger, women are more hidebound by traditional mores regarding the sexes.

According to the Camorra Observatory, the role played by 75 per cent of the women in Sicilian mafia families is passive, supporting their sons, brothers and husbands rather than actively participating in the crimes.

But even in Sicily women have always been more than the glamorous wives, moralistic mothers or amorous mistresses of mafia bosses as portrayed in Hollywood films like The Godfather.

And as such, they have also been vulnerable to vendetta violence.

With the growing number of spectacular mafia arrests and maxi-trials, including the 1993 trial of the boss of all bosses – Sicilian Salvatore Riina, who was responsible for turning the Cosa Nostra into a sophisticated multinational corporation — trusted women have been increasingly taking control of their imprisoned husband’s businesses.

Riina’s wife Ninetta Bagarella is generally seen as the brain behind her husband’s organisation.

Women’s ‘clean’ names are also used to open bank accounts for money laundering and other white-collar crimes. But as the position of women improves in society, so will their careers within the family’s criminal network.

Clarissa Clava, the 16 year-old killed in Naples last month, was studying to be a lawyer. The police have no doubt that she would later be able to provide legal services for family members.

“Hate and greed don’t discriminate,” one local taxi driver said. “And that is what the mafia is all about.”

— Gemini News

About the Author: HILARY CLARKE is a British freelance journalist who was formerly with The Independent newspaper.