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Culture and Conflict
No. 3, Fall 1991
Mafia, Drugs and Politics
Mafia is often seen as an underworld in struggle against the upperworld of politics. Is this really the case ? What kind of relations link Mafia to politicians ? It seems necessary to analyse the networks created by drug trafficking and understand the way in which they are part of the transnationalisation of the World, which does not imply the reigning of a global Mafia Worldwide. The real question raised by Mafia concerns our vision of the State as the only institution pretending to have the monopoly of legitimate violence.
Confronting, on the one hand, anthropologists theses, with a tendency to see in Mafia a plural and informal structure, spread out territorially, very dependant on local chiefs (cosche) and meeting for task-oriented reasons, to, on the other, the palermitan judges who have a certain tendency to consider Mafia as a Cosa Nostra centralised organisation type, the author shows that a dynamic analysis allows to go further than confrontation. So, by studying the adaptive capacities of the organisation and the different vectors in its use (violence, market), he displaces the debate's stakes, following a weberian problematic, rethinking the Mafia system in its relationship to government.
the Sicilian Mafia is not the only Mafia-type organisation model in Italy, the author centres her article on the Napolitan Camorra. Using a historical analysis that insists on the organisation's popular legitimacy and on its role as a substitute to government in the management of violence and in social control, the author shows how drug trafficking and money stemming from the 1980 earthquake modified traditional structures. Camorra, at first subordinated to Mafia, managed, through drug money, to conquer some independence from government and Mafia itself, even though this drug-trafficking caused a loss of its popular support and a separation into two different organisations. But, since the 1980s, Camorra has disengaged itself from the drug traffic investing itself in the management of local and help funds in the hands of the decentralised authorities. Acting forcefully on local companies or directly linked to local authorities, Camorra has evolved from a position of common interest with these authorities in the management of illegality to an osmosis that allows for it to act legally. The Taurianova decree whose aim is to dismiss local authorities suspected of having links with Mafia groups, can be interpreted as either an answer to these problems or, more likely, as an action of political groups linked to Sicilian Mafia to thwart Camorra's growing power. What, therefore, should be thought of the links between the Italian government and the Mezzogiorno and of the anti-Mafia policies to lead ?
Criminality has been a taboo subject in the USSR for a long time. Today, it constitutes the common denominator of all political speeches. Through the observation of social customs, called Mafia by the actors, the author shows its diversity : traditional criminality, illicit contractors, enrichment through political positions. His suggestion to the understanding of the development of political references to Mafia is that of putting it into parallel with the opening of the political game and the communist party's monopoly loss. The accusation of belonging to Mafia does not, therefore, refer to an homogeneous phenomenon even if some actors are " multipositioned ". Nevertheless, it is an effective force in the new political game for the main leaders as for institutional agencies : media, police, justice.
Analysing the networks of traffickers in south-east Asia, the author shows how drug-traffic is the job of ethnic guerrilla or gangster groups pretending to political legitimacy in Burma while in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Philippines and in Thailand, traffic is tolerated de facto, if not encouraged, by these governments. Legitimated by different actors, drug is now banalised : above all, it brings in hard currencies. Traffic organisation by service-men and/or politicians, agreements of all kind, fake repression for international use, all characterise the situation of many of the area's countries. The United States, defending their commercial or strategic interests in the area, content themselves with denunciations via the DEA even though the CIA has encouraged or encourages at present narco-trafficking groups. China, fearing the return of opium addiction, is the only country to be really worried by the situation. However, it is already crossed by numerous drug-routes.
Recent specialisation of Pakistan in the drug business has been provoked by the fortuitous meeting of different factors : a prohibitionist policy by general Zia, the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Opium production and its transformation into heroin are located in Pakistan's north-west tribal zones whose specificity is to be controlled by local tribal authorities rather than by the central government. However, one should not conclude from this that Mafia organisations exist only in these zones. In the government and the army, networks exist recycling drug money. It seems that a part of that money is secretly used to buy military equipment and to do nuclear research for the country. Moreover, the drug's role is not limited to the military complex. A narco middle-class is quickly expanding, entering the political power scene and starting to use intimidative methods on a Colombian scale.
Taking the facts implied by drug-trafficking as a starting point, three phenomenona can be emphasised : the absence of a specific environment ; the articulation of drug-trafficking with many other transactions on the limit between legality and illegality, thus making it impossible to distinguish, from a sociological point of view, between these two types of traffic ; the tacit, and sometimes explicit, acceptation of this way of getting rich by all Panamanians. In the light of the hypotheses expressed by Anderson concerning the Latin-American political system, one can raise the question of the consequences of this traffic on political policies.
Following an analysis of the economic aspect of the drug market, an informal economy among others, the author questions the reasons for the dramatic growth of socio-political violence associated to the drug traffic. From both sides, government as well as drug suppliers, this violence cannot be understood from a rational point of view. According to the author this increase is widely due to non-controlled interferences between the different actors.
The " religious comeback " is an act of faith incarnating the soul in gestures. When religions or sects become numerous, their practice turns conflictive and generates an appeal to secularity as a guardian of social cohesion.