Word: townes
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...think we know this about Italy's social topography: the north is efficient and prosperous, the south beset by poverty, mobsters and bad governance. But it was never that simple, as Amendolara demonstrates. This generally well-run coastal town is in the most troubled southern region of all: Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot, where the baleful influence of the crime syndicate 'Ndrangheta is pervasive, the infrastructure is dismal, and the unemployment rate is 13% - double the national average. Amendolara partakes of some of that woe - it's still underdeveloped and isolated...
Honorable Men Amendolara offers a tiny blip of hope on the otherwise bleak map of Calabria. Current local leaders have pushed to maximize the town's tourist potential and improve living conditions for residents. Beginning in 2001, Mayor Mario Melfi, a former union leader, implemented a municipal program under the grand slogan: "Amendolara wants to be in Italy, in Europe, in peace." Funded by $3 million a year in local property taxes and $630,000 in revenue from traffic tickets - plus additional grants from Rome and Brussels - the town has offered financial incentives and improved infrastructure to attract private businesses...
...strength of those initiatives, Melfi was re-elected in 2006 by a 15 percentage point margin over his closest rival. Talk to the locals and you hear the rare sound of southerners pleased with the direction in which their town is headed. One morning in March, Pasquale Salandria, taking a break from his work on a city clean-up crew, gestures toward two new seaside cafés and a disco. "Ten years ago there was almost nothing here," he says. Indeed, the town of 3,000 now seems to strike a nice balance between dynamism and coastal pleasantness, favoring...
Still, it would be a mistake to get seduced entirely by the mayor's efforts, or by the good-life charms of the town's refurbished 11th century chapel, homemade salami and Mediterranean breeze. For Amendolara's residents are still short on opportunities. Melfi himself says a lack of industry, large-scale agriculture and sufficient air and highway connections means that poverty and unemployment are bound to persist. "We're not some kind of 'happy island,'" he says. "We've got many of the same problems as the rest of Calabria. Too many young people are packing their bags, with...
...failure of the state is on stark display 180 miles (290 km) south of Amendolara in the town of San Luca. This is the heart of 'Ndrangheta country. The Calabrian mob - whose name derives from the Greek word for "honorable man" - controls wide swaths of territory through intimidation and extortion. The payoff has been great: it has grown into a world leader in cocaine trafficking, with an estimated $47 billion in annual revenue. But the toll has been heavy. The "Massacre of Ferragosto" - the gangland killing last Aug. 15 in Duisburg, Germany, of six young men from in and around...