Over the course of a generation, Italy has made remarkable progress out of Europe`s economic backwaters and into the forefront among the world`s most modern, prosperous nations.
Unfortunately, these strides into modern times have been matched by one of the nation`s feudal legacies-the Mafia-which, with a wholesale move into international drug trafficking, has gained the means and motive to expand its reach with unprecedented sophistication and terror.
At a time when Italy`s continued progress and partnership in a closer-knit European Community are already jeopardized by financial instability, the Mafia has stepped up its counterattack on a weak government that has been trying desperately to rein it in.
In the past two months, three anti-Mafia crusaders have been murdered in Sicily. The most recent assassination came as officials met to determine how to deploy 7,000 federal troops dispatched to the island to reinforce the government`s side.
The Mafia was long tolerated and often romanticized as a traditional part of life in Italy, particularly in the south. Operations of the crime syndicate, aptly nicknamed the ”Octopus” for the reach of its many tentacles, are deeply intertwined in business and government. But as the Mafia moved more blatantly and viciously into new territories and rackets, the government finally launched a large-scale offensive.
As unsettling and tragic as the Mafia battles have been, more threatening to most Italians is the possible erosion of the good life much of the peninsula has enjoyed.
Bloated government spending on benefits, bureaucracy and contracts bought a degree of political peace for some years. But the now-mammoth deficit (by far the largest in Europe and 50 percent higher per capita than that of the U.S.) and the lira`s consequent palpitations threaten Italy`s full
participation in the EC`s planned economic and monetary union. The wave of Mafia assaults only rocks this wobbly vessel.
Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, in office barely a month, lamented this week: ”We are going through a phase when everything seems to be stacked against us: the economy, finances, the foreign exchange market, the Mafia, the crisis of our political parties.”
Italians typically give a shrug to their government`s perennial financial and political crises. Now, however, they see more steps backward than forward and worry that their futures might be at stake.
In a country that has rarely acted as a unified people in its 131 years as one nation, a somehow united, redoubled effort will be needed to keep moving ahead, an effort that will carry some of the pain and sacrifice many Italians thought they`d left behind.
