Maria Chindamo victim of mafia and femicide, the brother: “The patriarchal and violent culture that killed Maria wanted to create walls, but the opposite is happening”

«The patriarchal and violent culture, ‘Ndranghetista, would have liked to kill Mary to create separations and walls and put the territory in difficulty, but the exact opposite is happening. We are showing that that culture, that violence and the ‘Ndrangheta are completely a failure. More and more associations, schools and various organizations come together and network ». For Vincenzo Chindamo Remembering the sister is a duty, seeing a community growing around her memory is the way to go on in a territory too often told for its tragic and negative sides.

Maria Chindamo was seized and killed, on May 6, 2016, and her body given to the pigs. Organized crime accused him of causing the suicide of the ex -husband, left for another man, and of having administered his lands on his own who throat the ‘Ndrangheta.

Nine years after his murder, the story of this free woman, Calabrian mother and entrepreneur who paid with her life the choice not to bend to the culture of violence, continues to raise a profound reflection on the difficulty of affirming the independence of women in contexts dominated by organized crime.

In Limbadi, in the province of Vibo Valentia, the appearance of a legality garrison the gate of his farm takes more and morewhere, on May 6, 2016, it was seized. In the place where Maria Chindamo’s car was found, every year, on this date, a commemorative event is organized by its family members and by the Committee we check the lands of Mary, to which different organizations adhere, including the Community Center Agape, Libera, Goel Group Cooperative Group, Community Project South, Penelope Italia, CCO crisis as an opportunity, a Foundation a one hundred thousand and the center of Women’s Studies Villa Villa of the University of Calabria, with the patronage of the Municipalities of Limbadi and Rombiolo.

This year a garden space designed by the students of the ITG institute of ITG, ITI and ITE of Vibo Valentia and a commemorative sculpture by the artist Luigi Camarilla, created by Officine Paolo Sverbo and illuminated thanks to the support of the Artemide company in collaboration with the CCO – Crisis association as an opportunity, are inaugurated this year.

Daily is the commitment to transform a place marked by violence into a space of light, memory and rebirth. Giulia Minoli, founder and vice -president of crisis as an opportunityhe explains: «From 2018, we are present in the Calabrian territory with paths dedicated to legality, gender education and child justice, in collaboration with local partners. We promote the positive culture and realities of redemption. We turn on the spotlight on new reference models, just like Maria Chindamo, thanks to the support of Intesa Sanpaolo, Foundation with the South, Haiku Foundation, IP API group and Acea ».

In the garden, an extract from the theatrical show will also be held If we said the truth by Giulia Minoli and Emanuela Giordano, who tells the story of Mary. Lighting on May 6 is not only a symbolic gesture, it is a political, cultural, human act. It is an action that combines memory and future, transforming a place marked by violence into a space of light, justice, memory and rebirth.

“This commemorative event represents the expression of citizens who resist and oppose the patriarchal and violent ‘ndrangheta that can never arrest feelings, growth and redemption paths” says Vincenzo Chindamo. «This year we joined the crisis projects as an opportunity that offers us right here in front of the gate the show that is turning around for Italy To give Mary voice by telling the redemption in the area. He teaches not to be terrified of what happened, but to create a living memory and militant and to counter the culture of violence ».

For Vincenzo the memory is always difficult and painful. “I transform my anger and my pain into anything else And from this point of view it is a release of something that would have crushed me instead. I come out massacred because talking in continuation of this is heavy, but when you suffer something of this, it is your duty, it is a duty of testimony: a territory, a family, a woman so massacred by events with a monstrous epilogue, a woman given to the pigs to keep silent, this silence must not exist. An old gate that had witnessed the horror of the attack on Mary, instead it becomes penetrated in its old fibers by a new rebirth and a circular rebirth that embraces hope ».

The key word is hope. «The biggest experience was to find hope. The hope that with a capital S, the hope that comes from the desire to tell these facts, to follow the activities, to revive from this very sad event so much courage and so much redemption in a difficult territory in which to find this hope is so difficult ».

«There was anger immediately and anger that did not go away. It is anger that I don’t think it will go away. The morning when I found Mary’s car still on and smeared with blood with the bag next to and clear evidence of what had happened, then I had so much fear, so much fear for myself, and so much anger and these are the two forces that a little logo to me and a little accompany me. The wonderful thing is that I thought I was alone, because I arrived here that morning, there was only one worker, there was Mary’s car and I found myself alone, not even the carabinieri had yet arrived, but now I don’t feel alone. I look around and instead of that enemy fire that I thought I had around, I really see so many people who have solidarized, who took charge of this pain, made themselves against this story into a story of rebirth, as it deserves ».