Bridge over troubled water

The Italian government wants to span the 2-mile Messina Strait separating Sicily from Calabria with the world’s longest suspension bridge of its kind. Antonio Mazzeo explains why he opposes the project. 

WHO wants the Messina Strait Bridge? What social and economic agents have guided it through planning and are now preparing to cash in on its construction? What connected role has been assigned to organised crime? And what is the nature of the area’s socio-economic fabric, power-group system and public life? Will the new social unit founded on the Bridge’s cement prove a model of “non-development” for Italy in the third millennium? Are those who have already proclaimed their “coexistence with Cosa Nostra” now engaged in building the latest in a long line of strategic alliances with the mafia?

Debate over whether or not the Bridge project should go ahead often centres on technical engineering detail, ignoring key questions that require urgent answers. Criminal organisations, major financial holding groups and building companies have been focusing increasing attention on the Messina Strait Bridge project, especially since the project’s relaunch by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi and the minister for transport and infrastructures Pietro Lunardi. Here are some answers to three basic questions

How are the leading power groups in Calabria and Sicily preparing for D-day?

They have actually been “preparing” the terrain for the Bridge’s construction for quite a while thanks to a system of social alliances and mechanisms involving media, economy, sections of the judiciary and universities as well as organised crime and masonic lodges. An “integrated system for the Strait” already exists in terms of  an assembly of power groups. It leaves no room for political opposition, independent economic initiatives, democratic information or unaligned cultures. This “socially  integrated system” has for years concentrated all its energies on the construction of the Bridge for the qualitative leap that it would bring in terms of prestige and power, international attention and an immense flow of money to share out.

Will the allocation of contracts mean new political, economic and military pacts between mafia and middle class at local and national levels? 

There are two short answers here, neither of which would make much sense in the context of a country that is still commemorating Giovanni Falcone [the late Sicilian anti-mafia judge] and that holds strong beliefs in certain values. Both, however, make eminent if rather disturbing sense in the context of those savage 'cement people'  who appeared so moved at [former Italian premier] Bettino Craxi’s funeral. The first, celebrated answer is the one supplied by Lunardi: Mafia building construction involvement? You just have to learn to live with it. Let everyone resolve their own problems as they see fit. The mafia has always existed. The second answer, less well-known but just as significant, was given during an interview with journalists on the RAI [Italian national state television] programme ‘Sciuscià’. Ex-senator of Forza Italia Nino Calarco, acting as official representative of the company Stretto di Messina, which had been nominated to design the Bridge, went so far as to say: “If the mafia could build the Bridge then they would be more than welcome to do so.” In addition to  these short quips, there are dozens of official documents, more or less reserved reports and judicial acts that document not only “the criminal risk” but also the total control of the Strait already in course  by cosca clans, from mysterious arms trafficking to protection money on the ferrying. The point is that it’s not just a matter of cement, digging and everything else that goes with the purely building aspect: it actually involves the whole related set up – from railways, roads, interchanges and giant parking areas to “security services” and site protection.

Are there any real alternatives?

Were the Strait area not dominated by a single editorial group with a manufacturing of consent that is every bit as efficient at the local level as it is ramified and extended at the national level, there would probably have been fruitful debate on a whole range of projects. Such debate would no doubt have provided positive replies to local labour and development issues. The many possible alternatives would include: 

• the relaunching of building sites to support public ferrying in the Strait and the realisation of fast links between Reggio Calabria airport and the smaller islands in the Aeolian archipelago; 

• the activation of those public services whose inexistence accentuates the gap between the South and the urban areas of the North which produces such dramatic consequences on living conditions; 

• recovery of the historic and artistic heritage which was damaged by the 1908 earthquake and was  subsequently shelved and ignored by all post-reconstruction local administrations; 

• the upgrading of suburban areas distinguished by shanties and the total absence of green spaces and social areas; 

• the maintenance of private housing and public buildings in the historic centre where dilapidated buildings run a high risk of collapse; 

• the upgrading of hill areas that have been devastated by both illegal building and the bricking up of streams, rendering them the object of disastrous flooding; 

• tourist enhancement of the port and creation of urban parks for the recuperation of the ancient fortalice system; 

• the upgrading of a number of extraordinary panoramic locations that are currently in a state of complete abandon (the curved coastal area, Cape Peloro, the Peloritani mountains); 

• the development of new technologies could centre on the University, which has until now served as a  distribution point for cash and contracts; 

• investment in biological agriculture and the promotion of typical local products (citrus fruits, olive oil, vineyards); the enhancement of local crafts and the restoration of ancient artistic productions; 

• the exploitation of renewable energies (the Strait itself has immense energy potential such as Aeolian wind energy and sea currents); 

• direct finance and credit access facilities for the entire ‘third sector’ with the aim of providing incentives for social services, youth associations and co-operatives (finally freeing them of the clientelism and irregular opening hours and salaries that have characterised them to date). 

These are just a few of the real, credible alternatives to the obsolete and untenable model of a Scylla and Charybdis Bridge. We need to cater for an independent local economy that enhances local resources and answers people’s needs. We have to give prime importance to defending our existing local heritage against speculation, sackings and plundering by the Bridge people. We must think, create, dream and organise – place Life above a culture of Death and a return to our ancestral relation with our territory and environment above a mafia dominion made of steel and cement.

Read the full text in Italian on: www.terrelibere.it/mafiaponte.htm

See also “Speciale Terrelibere - No al Ponte” for full, in-depth coverage of the issue from various angles. www.terrelibere.it/noponte/

NOTE: This article was first published by JUST Response on July 21 2002.  

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