U'Lup

This reportage takes place in the north of Puglia, home to the Quarta Mafia (Fourth Mafia), a complex network formed by multiple mafia groups that has grown rapidly in the past 30 years. They are incredibly dangerous; in fact, according to the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, they are considered the number one enemy of the state.
The development of criminal groups in Gargano, Tavoliere and Capitanata can be traced back to a combination of local feuds between different pastoral families and the rise of violent ambitions in the capital of the province of Foggia.
The Italian Mafia has a date of birth: January 5th, 1979. On that day, Raffaele Cutolo, the founder of the New Organised Camorra, brought together forty criminals of Foggia to form the Società Foggiana (the Foggiano Society). From that moment on, the Società Foggiana rampaged the city of Foggia, killing anyone in their way, especially entrepreneurs in the construction industry. Indeed, the second victim of the Mafia ever recorded in Italy was from there: Giovanni Panunzio, killed on November 6th, 1992. At the time Foggia was in the midst of developing an important economy, but the criminal organisation brought growth to a halt; it quickly became one of the poorest provinces in Italy, crippled by paper bombs, murders, extortion, threats and usury.
Meanwhile in the towns of Gargano, isolated between the jagged coastline and the mountainous forest, shepherds began to fight each other, killing for glory and then for business. In the 70s, they began to build connections with the Mafia groups of Montenegro and Albania, initially for cigarette smuggling and then for cocaine and marijuana.
The last group is the one that is growing the most rapidly, the Mafia of Cerignola. An important agricultural community, it has become the site of two important criminal activities: the distribution of cocaine, thanks to connections with Milan, and armoured car robberies, not only in Italy, but also in the rest of Europe.
The Quarta Mafia as a whole is the result of different criminal schools of thought. For example, Vincenzo Parisi brought with him the Marseilles methods, while the Gargano families trusted in the ways of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, rooted in the lasting ties with the Balkan Mafias and known for giving refuge to their fugitives.
This phenomenon is still highly underestimated, despite the fact that the antimafia prosecutor Cafiero De Raho continues to report that it is a national emergency, and the pandemic may make matters even worse.
According to the founder of the association The Good Samaritan, engineer Pippo Cavaliere, who works with victims of racketeering and usury, the consequences of covid-19 could be disastrous for Foggia. Many merchants have not received the aid they need, exposing them to the traps of the Società Foggiana who offer credit to the desperate, only to inevitably destroy their businesses.
There is only one town where anti-racket associations fight against the Mafia, Vieste, the tourist capital of the region. Here, there is a race to control profitable tourist activities, an issue which has been reported in the news since the early 2000s.
In 2017, the Luciani brothers, farmers unrelated to any illegal activity, were murdered on their way to work in the town of San Marco in Lamis. After the incident, the state decided to intervene against the Fourth Mafia. They sent the Carabinieri’s military team, known as the “Cacciatori di Puglia” (Puglia hunters) and the Financial Guard to patrol the coasts of Gargano on a daily basis, in an attempt to stop the smuggling of drugs from across the sea.
Since 2011, the Carabinieri, police and Financial Guard, have worked together to launch 12 operations against the Fourth Mafia, a number which hasn’t been seen since the days of the Mafia massacres. The number of mafia families is significant: around 30 who for years have consolidated their power using violence and extortion, crushing the hopes of a people romantically defined as a “population of ants,” for their remarkable attitude towards work in the fields.
The growing Fourth Mafia could become the strongest in Italy if not stopped and exposed as soon as possibile. Otherwise we risk to repeat what happened with the 'Ndrangheta: in the 90s it was highly underestimated, dismissed as just feuds between local criminal families, but the group developed important international and financial connections making it one of the richest and most powerful in Italy.

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