Freedom Scholar  Michael A. Ledeen

For many weeks now, the garbage has been piling up in the streets of Naples, my favorite city. This is an annual occurrence, invariably just before the tourist season, and as usual none of the Italian authorities has been able to do anything effective. Indeed, there is an open fight between various leading center-left politicians. At first "the government"--which had appointed a special commissioner for the emergency--announced it had found a solution--a new dump site--only to have it blocked by a Green-party minister. The much-celebrated Antonio Bassolino, once the populist mayor of Naples and now the president of the entire region, has proven impotent. And so the mountains of refuse grow taller, and the stench grows more intense, and the people do what you'd expect: They set fire to the mountains. The "authorities" then do what you'd expect: They warn the citizens that they are violating the country's environmental regulations.

Just outside the city limits, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, the locals demonstrate, warning of an imminent cholera epidemic. They are right to sound this warning; Naples has seen many outbreaks of cholera, and the information about some of them--notably an early 20th-century epidemic--was so effectively suppressed that news about it was only uncovered decades later by an American medical doctor performing research in the city archives.

Good journalists have been quick to point out that there is a criminal connection at work, as there is in almost every major event in Naples. The camorra--the local mafia--has made a fortune in the garbage business (it is not an accident that Tony Soprano, a Neapolitan-American hard at work in northern New Jersey, is in the same business). It's a classic extortion racket: Camorristas sabotage existing incinerators and landfills, and when the smell gets intolerable they shake down the local governments to handle the garbage. Any Neapolitan will tell you--whether true or not, I do not know--that the camorra no doubt engineered the governmental stalemate in order to maximize their profits. Once the garbage is removed, the politicians lose interest, even though a lot of that garbage is toxic, and there are now very dangerous landfills all over Italy (and perhaps beyond).

Politicians do not challenge the camorra for several good reasons, ranging from fear of reprisal to a loss of funds, for election campaigns or more personal pursuits. The best newspaper in Italy, Il Foglio, has called for the irresponsible officials to resign, which is certainly appropriate. But their replacements would have to demonstrate real courage in order to improve the lot of the Neapolitans. They would have to declare war on the camorra, real war, and wage it for a generation. The only time in recent history when Naples was free of the scourge was during fascism, and no Italian politician is going to risk his or her reputation by emulating Mussolini.

It's truly heartbreaking. Naples is the last creative city in Europe. No other place has the constant high energy, the magnificent fashions, the marvelous food, the legendary music, the remarkable literary renaissance, the charm and wit of the population and the sheer physical beauty of Naples. It may be dying, the victim of criminals who do not care about Naples or the Neapolitans, and of politicians who lack the spine to enforce the laws. Ironically, the "leaders" of Italy care more about a new European constitution than about the survival of this wonderful city.

Michael A. Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at AEI.