Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her country was shocked by the horrific murder of four migrant farm workers.
In Amendolara, a small town in Calabria, the migrants were burned alive inside a van at a gas station after reportedly demanding wages they were owed. Three were Afghans, one was Pakistani.
A fifth man survived. Italian police later arrested two Pakistani nationals. The case pushed Italy’s farm-labor exploitation back into focus and showed how much the old system has changed.
For decades, Italy has had a word for this system: caporalato.
It describes the gangmaster economy that supplies cheap labor to farms and warehouses through criminal intermediaries. The caporale recruits workers, controls transportation and decides who gets paid. He can decide where men sleep and whether they are allowed to leave. In the old telling, this belonged to the familiar world of Italian organized crime, from the Camorra to the ’Ndrangheta.
The Calabria case points to a newer arrangement inside that system. Experts quoted by Euractiv describe a division of labor rather than a simple replacement of the Italian mafia. The old clans can still hold territory and money. Foreign criminal groups can take over the direct control of workers because they are closer to the new migrant labor force and understand its weak points better.
Mass migration has changed the labor market in much of Europe. In Italy’s fields, many workers now come from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and other countries far from southern Europe. Some arrive with debts from the journey. Many do not know the language, have no local protection and depend on men who arrange work, transportation and housing. That dependence gives criminal networks room to operate.
Those networks can reach back into the country of origin. A threat made in Italy may land on a relative in Pakistan or Afghanistan. A worker who speaks no Italian, owes money for his trip and has no real protection becomes easy to trap. The result is not the disappearance of the old mafia. It is an old system adapting to a new workforce.
Federal prosecutors in the United States have brought comparable cases. In Florida, Alexander Villatoro Moreno, known as “Quichi,” pleaded guilty in federal court in Tampa to a RICO conspiracy.
On June 9, he was sentenced to 70 months in prison. Prosecutors said he and his co-defendants operated Los Villatoros Harvesting, a farm-labor contracting company that brought Mexican workers into the United States on H-2A agricultural visas and compelled them to work in Florida and several other states.
According to the Justice Department, the workers were promised fair wages and decent conditions. After arriving, they were charged excessive recruitment fees and placed into debt. Prosecutors said they were kept in crowded and unsanitary housing, isolated from outsiders, verbally humiliated and threatened with arrest, jail or deportation. The conspirators also threatened to harm workers’ family members in Mexico if the workers did not comply. That kind of leverage is also central to the Calabria case, where criminal control can reach back into countries of origin.
Another recent case reached Florida.
In February, the Justice Department announced charges against Martha Zeferino Jose, her partner and her son in a 35-count indictment involving Las Princesas Corp., a farm-labor contracting company based in North Carolina. According to the indictment, the company recruited Mexican H-2A workers for farms and plant nurseries in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. Prosecutors allege the defendants confiscated documents, imposed debts, housed workers in degrading conditions, denied proper pay and threatened them with deportation.
Italy’s caporalato grew inside its own agricultural economy, with its own history and its own mafias. America’s H-2A system is a legal guest-worker program. Farmers use it because they need labor, and workers use it because they need money. Many employers obey the rules. But a worker can still arrive with papers and have almost no power. He may depend on one employer for his job, one contractor for transportation and one document for his right to stay.
If that chain turns criminal, the legal route becomes part of the trap.
Governments are not blind to the problem. Italy has announced more inspections after the killings. In the United States, federal prosecutors have used forced-labor and racketeering laws against farm-labor contractors. The harder question is timing. The Florida case ended with prison sentences years after the workers had been brought into the fields.
By then, the system had already worked on them.
Italy’s horror in Calabria may look distant to American readers: a burned van in southern Italian fields, Pakistani suspects and Afghan victims.
The Florida cases make it harder to keep that distance.
