Maria Teresa Morano: “My Fight Against Extortion and the ’Ndrangheta Clans”

If you were born in the South, you know. There is a “before,” torn between fears and hopes, and an “after,” made of a few victories and many disappointments, all revolving around a single date: the summer of 1992. That summer marked the bombings against judges Falcone and Borsellino and their security details. It was the time when many abruptly became adults, as happened to Maria Teresa Morano: today, she’s an architect attentive to ethics, a fulfilled wife and mother, a 50-year-old woman on the front lines in the fight against the mafias; back then, she was little more than a girl helping her father in the family metalworking business. We are in Cittanova, a difficult place set in an even more difficult land, Calabria. The scene Maria Teresa witnessed that August in 1992 is one she will never forget:
“The Facchineri, the most powerful clan in the area, came to the factory and demanded 50 million lire so we could work in peace,” she recalls. “It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but until then Dad had always tried to shield my brother and me.”** After that raid, the family discussed what to do. “We didn’t have the money,” she admits. “But that wasn’t the point: we realized that by paying, we would have crossed over to the other side. Maybe we would have spared ourselves bombs and threats, but only at the price of becoming financiers of the very bombs and threats directed at others.” After a sleepless night, Maria Teresa convinced her father to report the extortionists and brought together other entrepreneurs in Cittanova, urging them to join the fight.

No one expected their reaction. “Even though everyone had been harassed, only a third had the courage to join us,” she concedes. “It may seem like a small number, but at that time it was almost a miracle. The greatest satisfaction—and the lesson to remember—is that those 12 companies are the only ones still surviving today. Handing yourself over to the ’Ndrangheta might seem like a short-term survival choice, but it never is. Giving in to crime means drying up and then dying.” Today we know all about the racket, a scourge that in the South—and not only there—destroys healthy businesses and inflates the illicit liquidity of organized crime, increasing its hold on the territory. But 30 years ago, almost everyone paid the “pizzo” in silence: the number of complaints could be counted on one hand. “Libero Grassi, the first Sicilian entrepreneur to publicly stand up to his extortionists, had been murdered just a few months earlier when we knocked on the Carabinieri’s door,” Maria Teresa continues. “The officers nearly fell off their chairs: it was new for them as well.” A novelty that would change the course of events throughout Calabria. At that time, in the nearby town of Palmi, there was a determined prosecutor, Agostino Cordova. Understanding the significance of that report, he immediately sent a deputy prosecutor to Cittanova to take statements. The first detentions, arrests, and trials for the ’ndranghetisti followed. When she first entered the courtroom, Maria Teresa hadn’t yet turned 24, the same age as Maria Concetta Chiaro, daughter of another local entrepreneur. Two young women, former elementary school classmates, refusing to accept a secondary role. “In Cittanova, part of the population was clearly unprepared to accept such a change, which was above all cultural.”

The revolution started with women. Maria Teresa received threatening notes; things were even worse for Maria Concetta: the clan’s men broke into her home and held a gun to her forehead. And that’s not all: “We had to endure the disapproving looks of our own fellow citizens, as if we were the ones guilty of something unspeakable, as if they wanted to tell us to stay in our place.” Yet those same women—wives, daughters, sisters—who had been subjugated by their husbands for years, managed to take matters into their own hands and became pioneers of the change that followed. They guided their partners and fathers, stood up to the mafiosi during investigations and trials, and later formed the front line of the anti-racket associations in Calabria. A revolution within the revolution.

The “sowing” of those days has borne excellent fruit. Twenty-seven years have passed, and after the convictions against the clan that extorted Maria Teresa’s family, many more have followed. The situation in Calabria remains challenging, but the seeds planted in those days have yielded excellent results. “Our company has grown; under my brother’s leadership, it has become one of the top European suppliers of banking security components,” she says with satisfaction. And then there’s volunteering: after founding the first trade association in Calabria, Maria Teresa served as regional coordinator and later national president of the Italian Anti-Racket Federation, as a consultant to the Ministry of the Interior, and as a member of the solidarity committee for victims of extortion and usury. She’s one of the driving forces behind Trame, the anti-mafia festival in Lamezia Terme, and every week she visits schools to pass on the values she has fought for her entire life. “There’s nothing more rewarding than being among the young,” she concludes. “Helping an entrepreneur report extortion is wonderful, but convincing a high school student that a future without extortion is possible is even more important.”

By Gianluca Ferraris

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