You Live in Mondragone (First Draft, first draft, first draft)
An “unrealistic” plea for courageous creative nonfiction… and action following a new paradigm….
by Richard Oxman

This piece is dedicated to young Matt Simpson… who knows that the Buenos Aires wall scrawl “Fight hunger and poverty! Eat poor people!” won’t work for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that one can die from eating toxic individuals. He is our future. Gorgeous, so alive!
“Virtue, honor, truth and the law have all vanished from our life.” (1) — Al Capone

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Roberto Saviano ( author of Gomorrah ): Italy has only 1/80th of Europe’s land mass, but it has nearly a third of its flora, and at least a fourth of its fauna. It also has half the continent’s documented, illegal dumping of toxic waste within its borders. But that’s going to change really soon.

Marcelle Cendrars: That’s good.

Roberto Saviano: I don’t mean that they’re going to be reducing their pollution or hazardous waste that’s unbeknownst to the public. Rather, other countries will be doing more of the same, simply reducing Italy’s relative contribution to the horror. (Pause) Your people, in America, don’t have a clue. Their travel agents won’t bring it up. And even on your home front… Silicon Valley boasts air quality which ranks in the 80th to 90th percentile for carcinogens in the U.S. No one’s going to bring that up, are they?

Marcelle Cendrars: Yah, I read the report from the Environmental Defense Fund.

Roberto Saviano: That’s not the half of it though. Not the tenth.

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The Camorra clans of Italy became the European leaders in waste disposal in the late 1990s. The bosses have had no qualms about saturating their towns with toxins and letting the lands that surround their own estates go bad… or contributing to the soaring rates of cancer in their home base, the Campania region… in and around Naples.

The life of a boss is short; the power of a clan, between vendettas, arrests, killings, and life sentences, cannot last for long. To flood an area with toxic waste and circle one’s city with poisonous mountain ranges is a problem only for someone with a sense of social responsibility and/or a long-term concept of power.

It is a huge problem, however, for me an Sylvie… as we try to navigate through the toxic muck and the hazardous mire… finding cancer-free locales for people who join us overseas (See www.cancerfreeitaly.com). And it’s an ever bigger problem for tourists who venture forth on their own, without the aid of someone like (presumptuous) me and Sylvie. Such as healthy, well-intentioned, well-educated — but totally uninformed/misinformed — backpackers trekking over land that travel agents and (so-called) environmentally-conscious travel guides*/literature will NEVER characterize as verboten. Land that looks very, very, very GREEN.

*Readers are invited to request the inefficacious, token gestures made by prestigious companies which actually make things worse… by compounding ignorance with ignorance. Hearts being in the right place means zero when you stand downwind of toxic muck (or step in it!), and green guides often simply don’t know ’cause they don’t want to know anything that’ll interfere with their… bottom-line. (2)

But the deeper problem for visitors to Italy is that The Problem doesn’t begin and end in Campania. Most of Italy’s greatest environmental villains are found in the industrial North, even though 43% of the country’s trash and toxic waste winds up in Naples’ environs. Biochemical plants just outside Venice are perennially plagued by dumping scandals or caught with illegal emissions. Residents of towns near the lagoon have been asked to tape their windows shut, after one such refinery went up in flames.

Milan and Turin have the worst air pollution problems imaginable. A friend of mine living thereabouts went to the doctor with her doubts about… problems with breathing. “Stop smoking two packs a day,” said Doctor Wise. She had never smoked a cig, but had lived in and around Milan for her entire life. Half my age, by the way!

Like everything else in Italy, environmentalism is an area of sharp contrasts. Leaded gasoline has been definitely banned, catalytic converters are obligatory, more and more land officially protected every year, and so on. And yet egregious anachronisms remain. Milan is the only major European city without a sewage treatment plant, for example, a problem which is supposed to be resolved immediately. For the moment, its waste still runs directly into the Lambro River, cuts across the width of Northern Italy, and comes to a swirling stop on the Adriatic coast among the eels and rice patties of the Po River Delta. Who would know, if you’re shopping?.

With regard to the Kyoto Accords, one can see, in retrospect, that Europe — not just Italy — will agree to everything and then do nothing in fact. A fact that contributed to America’s unwillingness to sign on. Which doesn’t “excuse” the U.S. for its abominable stance: “It is important to protect our rights, our business rights.” (A sentiment made on the ‘92 Rio Summit by Bush I, but ongoing, devastating to this day.)

America doesn’t escape this dilemma, the toxic syndrome which plagues the Italian peninsula, the European continent. The air in the heart of Silicon Valley where I live — as sweet as everything looks and smells on the surface — is a horror according to recent Environmental Defense Fund figures. And it’s slated to get much, much worse, a fact which I can definitively document upon request for brave travelers, whether stay-near-homers or venturers abroad.

The gangsters, the unfeeling, shortsighted culprits live not just in the overcrowded, impoverished Mezzogiorno, running from The Law. No, they also run The Machine here, and their machinations make for a very unhealthy environment, smiley teachers’ faces announcing progress on The Green Front, whilst encouraging meaningless* recycling in the academically-respectable public schools notwithstanding.

*As in insufficient without heavily underscoring the need for a drastic cut in CONSUMPTION! See George Monbiot’s “We Are All Killers” at http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/02/28/we-are-all-killers/ .

Permit me tell you a story that touches upon the deepest pulse of our paralysis.

When I was last in southern Italy, there was a local schoolteacher — gorgeous, so alive!– who agreed to testify about a murder she accidentally witnessed in a cafe. A murder which was committed to prevent the (truck driver) victim from exposing Camorra dumping.

There was a group of kids near the cafe counter there in Madragone. They all lay down, face to the ground, fearing to be seen by the killer as potential witnesses. Only one person didn’t look away. One person stared at the killer without lowering her eyes…. The 35-year-old schoolteacher…. Among the many reasons for keeping quiet, for pretending nothing happened…the schoolteacher found one motivation to speak: the truth. A truth that seems natural, like an everyday, habitual gesture, an obvious and necessary act, like breathing. She testified without asking anything in return. She didn’t expect a stipend or police protection, didn’t set a price on her word….

And yet her confession made her life difficult…. She had been engaged, but her fiance left her. She lost her job and was transferred to a protected location where she received a small state stipend, just enough to survive. Some family members took their distance from her, and a profound loneliness descended upon her…. What made the young teacher’s gesture scandalous is that she considered being able to testify something natural, instinctive, and vital.

In a land where lying is considered to be what gets you something and truth what makes you lose, living as if you actually believe truth can exist is incomprehensible.

So the people around you feel uncomfortable, undressed by the gaze of one who has renounced the rules of life itself, which they have fully accepted. And accepted without feeling ashamed, because in the end “that’s just how things are and have always been.”

But we have crossed a line that demands at least some of us — among the privileged few who can — step back to get a fresh perspective. In light of several facts, not the least of which is that we’re now debating whether or not gouging out someone’s eyes constitutes “illegal compulsion,” “physical and psychological pressure” or torture. (3) Not debating the shipment of what’s outlawed here to other countries… courtesy of Union Carbide, Dow Chemical et. al. The list is filthy and long.

For anyone interested, I can delineate at least ten environmental threats which far exceed the severity of any conceivable threat from “terrorism.”

Shortly after Sylvie and I discovered that the dangers in Campania had to be investigated… we had the good fortune of being invited to take part in a project in the highly-touted, healthy realm of Umbria ( See www.artmonastery.org ). And then –before we had a chance to uncork the champagne — the other foot dropped. We discovered that The Comorra had made inroads somewhere in the Umbrian countryside. Ah, more to investigate! Jeez!!!

In short order the sun broke through though, and I came across a lovely family (Matt’s family) which had relocated to a pristine part of Argentina part-time. Mmm, I thought, let me check out that realm. It might be soothing to hear tango music whilst tangling with the powers-that-be.

But just before I went to bed the other night, Eduardo Galeano spoke to me in a dream:

“Argentine law bans the entry of hazardous waste, but to solve that little problem all you need is a certficate of innocuousness issued in the country that wants to get rid of the waste. (4)”

Nowhere to hide, to get away?

Perhaps we need to ask someone. Maybe the dead schoolteacher in Mondragone.

Footnotes

(1) People like Al are a better indicator of what’s happening on the street than the statistics which we get from the most prestigious sources. A relatively recent internal police report leaked to Amnesty International shows that six out of every ten crimes in Mexico City are committed by the police. That that trend is increasing worldwide should surprise no one except those who get their info from mainstream sources. And, so, no surprise is in order for the horror attached to “incidents” like what happened to Sean Bell. In fact, since 1970 reported crimes have grown three times faster than the world’s population. Of every 100 crimes committed in Columbia, 97 are never solved. The proportion is similar to the barrios of Buenos Aires, where the police spend most of their time committing crimes and killing young people. In many countries people don’t report crimes because they don’t trust the police or they fear them. That syndrome is spreading all over the earth, and it’s fueled, in part, by the consequences of environmental racism, utterly inhumane exposure of the poor to the pollution/toxicity which is my focus in this article.

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(2) Jaws Syndrome. The authorities will rarely be honest about what’s in the water. Lonely Planet — to highlight only one nook in an almost endless array of disingenuousness or dumbness among guides — actually suggests that international travel (slated to grow from today’s 700 million annual holidays to 1 billion by 2010) can be “responsible” by embracing Carbon Offset Schemes and such. As a rule, one receives the politically correct stance with the reassuring notion that one can basically proceed with business as usual as long as a few tweaks are adopted here and there. Maybe Matt will get the world to embrace the radical change that’s required.

(3) http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn05062008.html notwithstanding, we all know — or should — what’s going on on the ground — and slated to go on — in the real world, in our name, with our $$$… contributing to The Downward Sprial.

(4) There are sins of omission in addition to the obvious sins of commission. To wit, in Argentina’s northeast province of Misiones, pesticide-laced drinking water –possibly fouled because of incursions of U.S. waste– produces babies with leprous lips and deformations of the spinal medulla. Or has. Perhaps it’s stopped… in that area. Countries of the North export their dangerous industrial waste to the South, and countries of the South treat the poorest of their poor as if they were toxic waste. Often through neglect. We bear a responsibility here. There. I am screaming to Deaf Heaven and the vast majority of Americans who benefit from the obscene ongoing abominations… which can only be addressed if our collective ignorance/indifference is acknowledged. When I was first dragged to Brazil in the 40s as a child — overhearing talk of upper class youth burning beggars for sport had scared me — my family found neither violence nor sadness. There was one favela in Rio at that time. Today there are well over 500 there. Many working people there slave for the rich, battle fear daily, intensely ( as they are doing in growing numbers here ), and death squads routinely murder the illiterate children of toxified illiterates, mostly black adolescents. Now, there is sadness. Which is nothing next to Chevron’s abominations in the Niger Delta (and many other U.S. horrors –that can be halted!– elsewhere). Which has murdered my sleep. How ’bout starting with the environmental racism in West Oakland… or a locale of your choice in our backyard? Be gorgeous, be alive. Please.

Just because 24 hours from the time that you read this the effect of losing the number of forests that we do daily in Brazil and Indonesia will equal the environmental impact of 8 million privileged people boarding airplanes in New York for Heathrow, it doesn’t mean that civilization’s precious aspects are destined to come to an end as they do in the yellow-brown fields of the Coen Brothers’ West Texas (in No Country for Old Men*). Not if you take the trouble to do something… by contacting the fellow who reads the mail at headburg@yahoo.com, and act as if you live in Mondragone.

See my No Country for Old Cows article?