In the Land of Fires, entire young generations have been struck down by cancer. “We have been abandoned.” But there are those who refuse to give up.
Every day a new fire. Every week news of a young life cut short. 7 months, 12 years, 8 years. An entire generation disappearing. Not because of a war, but because of the land beneath their feet, the air they breathe, the food they eat.
You only need to take the stretch of the Autostrada del Sole heading north from Naples towards Caserta: the moment you leave the busy city centre behind, the extraordinarily fertile Campanian countryside opens up — the land once known as Campania Felix. Through the car window, black smoke. A few kilometres further and another plume appears in the distance, then another. They might not necessarily be waste fires, but the dark, black colour leaves little room for doubt.
And you only need to listen to the voice of those who live in that countryside to dispel any remaining uncertainty. Such as that of Marzia Cacciopoli, one of the mothers of the Land of Fires, who lost her young son Antonio at the age of eight and a half, and one of the protagonists of the documentary "Il Segreto di Pulcinella – Viaggio nella Terra dei fuochi". "The smell is there at all hours, but above all at night, around two or three in the morning when people are asleep," she says. "There are many illegal operations that pay people next to nothing to burn industrial waste, textile off-cuts for example. There is no oversight of the territory whatsoever. If there were, things would never have got to this point."
But it is not only the fires in Casalnuovo di Napoli and the surrounding area. There are the tonnes of industrial, toxic waste and seas of asbestos buried across the region over the years. Since the 1990s, as Carmine Schiavone, a former camorrista turned state's witness, revealed.
According to the Legambiente report "Terra dei fuochi. A che punto siamo?" published in 2015, the figure stands at 10 million cubic metres buried across an area of 1,076 km² (the Land of Fires in the strict sense). This rises to 25 million cubic metres over an area of 3,839 km² when the quantities from landfills and contaminated sites across the two provinces of Naples and Caserta are included (data: Campania Region).
And it is in this land that Marzia lost her son. "It all began in 2013, after my son was struck by glioblastoma multiforme, a condition that can be linked to environmental damage," the young mother explains. "It is a condition that more commonly affects adults. Even the oncologist at the Casilini hospital in Genoa was astonished and asked me whether we lived in a compromised area."
From that moment, Marzia began to investigate, discovering the situation in which the area where her family lived found itself. It was not just the daily fires, but something buried too, hidden from sight and from smell.
Today, together with six other mothers and two fathers, Marzia runs an association that helps families cope with their children's illness: "We also help Campanian families deal with the journeys of hope. Today in Campania we are seeing a disparity in terms of the funds allocated to healthcare. But, more seriously, we have no home-based palliative care. Not only do we fall ill, but we are forced to emigrate in order to get treatment," she says.
Dozens of parents who have set aside their own grief. Or rather, from that grief they have drawn new strength, and have come together to express their dignity and courage in full. "This is a very painful time. We are following a 12-year-old girl, Sara, who has touched my soul. She is my child, who deserves the right to go to school, to be happy, to live. Then there is little Riccardo, 22 months old, who grew up and took his first steps in hospital, attached to a drip. Then there is Mesia, four and a half, and Francesco, 8 years old, ill with osteoblastoma." And then there are the tears that every day streak the faces of the mothers and the children. "Today I want to be a voice of hope. This is not just my pain — I am the mother of all the children of the Land of Fires," the mother concludes. "I dream of being able to stroke a child's cheek again, one not wet with tears of pain."