Contesting space in Naples

"THE SHITBAGS HAVE TAKEN OVER THIS AREA"


In Naples, electric wires hang like old coat hangers from the bleached and peeling facades of five story apartment blocks. Mopeds tear through the traffic, mount the pavements, terrorise pedestrians. The oppressive orange din of street-lights and the stifling July air makes the whole place feel like a microwave.

Naples is dirt poor. The metro is unstaffed, dusty, humid. The police are nowhere to be seen, and the Camorra, the most resilient of Italian Mafiosi are – though equally elusive - a force to be reckoned with in the city.

Still, what strikes the tripper most about the region is neither the poverty nor the criminality, nor the uncollected garbage which made international headlines last year. Instead, it is a steely brand of class conflict - noticeable in the pedestrian piazzas, on the metro, even on the roads; a latent animosity between moneyed and struggling blended dangerously with a macho Italian culture of honour and respect.

I go to a concert in Piazza Gesù Nuovo in the heart of the city with hostel worker Bertrando - short suave and affable in three quarter Levis and matching tattooed feet. It has been arranged in response to the internment without charge of several known protestors prior to Berlusconi’s hosting of the G8. The square is thronged with rowdy locals slurring out lyrics to a hip-hop outfit Bertrando tells me are ‘prophets’ of the Italian music scene.

But there is an eerie tension in the piazza this evening too. In the narrow side-streets, on all four sides, skinheads in short sleeve shirts and Lacoste trainers are revving their mopeds provocatively. They rip in and out of parked cars. At about ten thirty - midway through the set of a lively Neapolitan reggae group – a glass bottle is thrown from the steps of a statue of the virgin Mary. It hits the floor first, sending shards into the crowd.

"These" says Bertrando nodding discretely, "are the shitbags. They come here in the afternoons and evenings on their bikes to keep other people away. They have driven most of the people in Naples out of this area."

The conflict is about space, presence, identity, incomers and outsiders. It is about keeping Naples as it is and preventing its gentrification

"Don’t take this wrong" – his English is clipped and slippery – "I have friends from poorer neighbourhoods, and I know many work hard and do not make trouble. But Naples is full of these people: Shitbags. They come and take over these areas. Ten years ago, this place would have been like this every Saturday evening: people drinking and laughing, beautiful women dancing outside the cafes. But then the Shitbags came and they", he looses his tongue, makes a ramming gesture with the back of his hand to fill the gap, "they clear us all out."

There is a culture of generosity towards beggars in Italy. On the metro, a young man with polio has his empty coffee cup splashed with coins as he staggers down the carriage. But this group of twenty-somethings feel threatened by the hard-up in their city.

As Betrando becomes more vehement, other revellers begin to jostle in with nods and Italian words I don’t understand.

Why the acrimony?

"It is not that they are jealous of the rich. They do not want what they have [or] to behave in the way they behave. For them being poor is not worse, but better. They feel a status and pride because they have to be smarter. They feel they are better because they live with less. And what they do have, they protect and guard."

Including, it would seem, municipal spaces. It is a peculiar phenomenon. Urban groupings are often territorial. Areas are ghettoised, worse-off families driven away from high-rise areas. But in Naples, even picturesque piazzas tucked away behind high-rise church steeples have become no-go areas.

Remarkably, given the political nature of the event and the size of the crowd, there is still not a single policeman in sight. But it would be too easy to say that Naples is lawless. Driving around the centre might give you that impression - cars jump red lights at crossroads; signs inform you that overtaking is forbidden, but that cars on the wrong side of the road have right of way.

In fact, at least on the surface, nothing unlawful is occurring here. The enmity is played out in angry glares, the blasting of horns, a man marching to the front of a kebab line. It’s unnerving. The whole square feels charged, like it’s on the brink of violence, and yet nothing has really happened.