Last week, a car bomb exploded on the outskirts of Rome. A white car blew up alongside the gray car next to it. Both belonged to Sigfrido Ranucci, the journalist behind Report, Italy’s leading investigative television program. (Ranucci was not in the vehicle at the time of the bombing.) Though no conclusive evidence has been found regarding the perpetrator, the last attempt on his life, in August 2021, was attributed to the ’Ndrangheta, the criminal network based in Calabria.
The rise of the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta to global prominence stands in sharp contrast to the Sicilian Mafia’s decline.The feared Cosa Nostra has dwindled into a local force since Francis Ford Coppola filmed The Godfather—its international reach now the stuff of the Corleones and penne alla vodka. Amid the assassination of Italian judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino by car bombings, in 1992, an anti-Mafia war began, and the Cosa Nostra’s power waned. Now its 3,000 or so operators work mostly locally, extorting farmers and businessmen in the South.
