Word: calabrian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...failure of the state is on stark display 180 miles (290 km) south of Amendolara in the town of San Luca. This is the heart of 'Ndrangheta country. The Calabrian mob - whose name derives from the Greek word for "honorable man" - controls wide swaths of territory through intimidation and extortion. The payoff has been great: it has grown into a world leader in cocaine trafficking, with an estimated $47 billion in annual revenue. But the toll has been heavy. The "Massacre of Ferragosto" - the gangland killing last Aug. 15 in Duisburg, Germany, of six young men from in and around...
...down the hill where the road emptied into a village. We bounced slowly over the cobblestones of the street, beginning to get the feeling that cars weren’t big in town. Three older Italian men in suspenders, who were tanned the color of leather from the boiling Calabrian sun, sat playing chess under the awning of a caffé while sipping espresso and motioning with their hands. Every one of them was the spitting image of my grandfather, though he’s in Florida playing bridge and sipping scotch. Suddenly, one of the men leapt...
...nearly 25% of families live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the region's mob bosses are ruthlessly expanding their empire. Once considered less sophisticated and less organized than its nearby Sicilian cousins, 'Ndrangheta was notorious in the 1980s for brutal but not necessarily lucrative kidnappings for ransom. For decades, Calabrian gangsters were satisfied with taking a cut from the limited economic activity of the countryside. But after an intense government campaign forced the Sicilian Mafia to scale back its narcotics business, the coastal region of Calabria offered an ideal alternative as a drug-trading route. Over the past decade, officials...
...cathedral after Fortugno's funeral, Giuseppe Macri, 50, says he was skeptical that all the strong words spoken from the pulpit would be followed by action. "Calabria is the most neglected region in Italy," he says. "There's always someone else's emergency that comes before ours. We Calabrians have lost faith. We know next week, all the attention will be gone." Macri's only son will be finishing high school in the spring and the father, proud of his Calabrian roots, says he'd always hoped his boy would study at a local university, just like dad. After...
...Mourning After A chilly rain is falling in Rome the day after John Paul II was buried in the crypt below St. Peter?s Basilica. The world leaders have come and gone. Most of the masses of pilgrims are going home too, boarding trains and buses: south to the Calabrian countryside, north to Milan, farther north and east to Krakow and Wadowice, Poland where Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born nearly 85 years ago. The Eternal City, of course, carries on. But these next two or three days-before the speculation over succession begins to multiply-the forever take...