← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Thurs May 29 2014: Spinning Myths
00:28:20
Insight, colour, analysis and description. In this edition the stories come from Rio...
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This is a download from the BBC.
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It's from our own correspondent. We make one version of the program for the BBC World Service, but this
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is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ad.
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Hello. Today the battle for the future of Ukraine reaches the tree lined boulevards of Odessa. The American economy is moving east from Wall street to California. But in the Sunshine State, the that money is not always welcome. The son of an Italian mafia boss explains how he turned his back on the family business. And as the far right was notching up huge election gains in France, why were thousands of gypsies making their way to a small seaside town in the Karmarg? The Ukrainian President elect, Petro Poroshenko has said the fight against separatist violence in the east of the country has now begun in earnest. He was speaking after the government operation to retake Donetsk airport that led to a major defeat for the militants. Another of the new president's priorities will be to reduce tension in his home city of Odessa. Last month more than 40 people died in a fire there, many of them pro Russians. Tim Whewell says this Black Sea port, home over the years to numerous poets and writers, seems an unlikely place to be playing a key role in Ukraine's future.
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In his story How It Was Done in Odessa, the Russian writer Isaac Barbiel, a Jew with glasses on his nose and autumn in his heart, describes with awed fascination a hero he could never be. The mafia boss Benya Creek, also known as the King Suavest, brashest, deadliest of all the mobsters of that legendary city by the sea. Benyor Creek or what a fist in your face kind of name. In his chocolate jacket, cream trousers and raspberry lace up boots, he was a tiger, a lion, a cat, A young Jewish hustler, Barbiel writes, who could spend the night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. Who could lay on a magnificent funeral for an accidental victim of his own gang, a character who personified Barbiel's cosmopolitan, seamy hometown in the dying days of Tsarism. The city, then more than a third Jewish, was so famous for its high living that the Yiddish equivalent of living in clover is Leben Vygot, in Odess, living like God in Edessa. Myths twine themselves around the town as tightly and luxuriantly as the trailing creepers that twine every sweaty summer round its wrought iron balconies. Drawn by the tales of easy living. I first came to Odessa 20 odd years ago for a romantic escape, like many other tourists to stay in its grand, crumbling hotel through the Soviet years, the great port had somehow kept its spirit. It kept it still through its first two decades in independent Ukraine. But now I'm back, because new, uglier myths are winding themselves around Odessa. And a new ghoulish tourist attraction disfigures its heart. The burnt out shell of the Trades Union headquarters, its blackened Stalinist columns surrounded by heaps of now withered flowers. One night in May, in and around this building, more than 40 people were killed in clashes between pro Ukrainian and pro Russian protesters. Part of the conflict that's dividing the country ever more deeply now. It's a place to be photographed. Young women in impossibly high heels totter over the charred timbers, through the paper strewn sooty corridors, past the mangled office furniture, groups of school children sucking Coke from giant polystyrene cups, or wander past bloody palm prints on the walls. So how did so many die in a city famed for its tolerance? They burned people alive. And those who jumped to save themselves were finished off with clubs. That's what I'm told. By mourners bringing bouquets by the gawpers, inside, by taxi driver after taxi driver. They're blaming the Ukrainian nationalists, supporters of their country's recent pro Western revolution, who, according to this version of events, drove their opponents, those who want closer links with Russia, into the Trades Union House and set light to it. And then from that other camp, nationalist, pro Western, I hear the exact opposite. The pro Russians barricaded themselves into the building and began to rain Molotov cocktails down on the crowd below. There's talk of how they were supported by a pro Moscow police chief, now fled, even by the abbot of a Russian Orthodox monastery seen shipping mysterious crates from his cloister during the bloodshed. In the absence of almost any agreed facts about what really happened, it feels as though both sides are spinning myths. But unlike the celebratory tales of Isaac Barbiel, these myths divide the city. Many locals are horrified. Issues like autonomy or federalism at the heart of the present conflict don't matter to a descends. I'm told they don't even care that much which country they're in. They just want to get on with life. Babiel's Benya Creek, himself an invention of course, wasn't much of a patriot either. Didn't God make an enormous mistake settling Jews in Russia, he asks, in how it was done in Odessa. Why didn't he put them in Switzerland, surrounded by first class lakes and mountain air? I'm reminded of him again As I attend one of the last funerals for a victim of the Odessa clashes. Shuffling through twisting lilac filled streets of wooden houses that can have changed little since Barbiel's time. At the centre of his story is the burial of a hapless cashier in the wrong place at the wrong time, when one gangster raided another. Today I'm following the coffin of another accidental victim, a real one, Evgeny Rossinsky, a gentleman by all accounts a passionate member of a historical reenactment society who joins the pro Russian protesters because he liked dressing up in medieval and Second World war costume. Who's to blame for his death? One of his friends says not all Odessans are as innocent as him. We let political passions boil over, he insists. We must draw back from the brink. But as the incense and singing waft out of the gold domed church, there's talk all around of dark outside forces trying to destroy a unique city. My head begins to swim. I wonder if I'll ever really know how it was done in Odessa, the city of legends.
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And that was Tim Whewell. Police in Naples are reported to have made a breakthrough in their investigations into the local mafia, the Camorra. One of its senior figures who's serving a life sentence in prison, is said to have broken his silence and is giving investigators details of the organisation's extensive criminal activities. It's not unknown for the police to have victories in their endless battle with the crime syndicates, but still many young men are drawn into their ranks. Alan Johnston recently had an encounter with a figure who for a time at least, seemed destined for life in the underworld.
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Luigi di Chico remembers a day many years ago when he was coming home from school. He heard what he thought were fireworks. The sort of explosion set off in his small town near Naples when it marked the day of its patron saint. But this wasn't the saints day. Who's celebrating? The boy wondered. As he approached his house, everything became terribly clear. Two of his uncles were lying dead in pools of blood. They were both mafia men. The explosions had been gunshots, an ambush by a rival clan. Luigi was just 11 years old that day and growing up in a world consumed by organized crime. This was the mid-80s, a time of savage mafiosi feuding, years of war and the spilling of blood in the streets. Luigi says he was so traumatized by the killing of his uncles that that night the little boy wished he might be in some sort of accident, that he'd be in a coma and only wake up when everything was over. Now in his 40s a large, thick set man speaking with the accent of the South. Luigi said that he only had ugly memories of his childhood. The day he was born, his father, Giuseppe, was already in jail. He was a boss in the Camorra, as the mafiosi are known around Naples. Giuseppe de Chico's crimes were so serious that he spent all of his son's childhood in jail. The relationship could only develop during prison visiting times, and the continual absence of his father ate away at the boy. All through his adolescence, he was brought up by his mother and his gangster uncles in a home that was like a Mafia bunker. There were police raids. Doors would burst open in the dead of the night, and young Luigi would wake up amid the clamor of armed officers, with dogs pouring through the house, a helicopter clattering overhead. He remembers once being astonished to see the police leading his uncle out of a bathroom. He was sure his relative had been out of the house when the raid began. But then, going into the bathroom, he saw an open hatch beneath the tub with a ladder leading down to an underground chamber. His uncle had obviously been down there, and Luigi hadn't even known that the elaborate hiding place existed. There was one extraordinary day when Luigi's father was allowed to come back to their town, a place called Luciano. There'd been a death in the family, and Giuseppe had been given permission to visit the grave. Luigi remembers the huge police operation put in place as his dad was brought to the cemetery. A crowd had gathered for this homecoming of the local boss, a criminal celebrity in this small community in the heart of Camorra country. So many people wanted to greet and speak to his dad that Luigi says the police told them to form an orderly queue. But for a short time, the boss and his boy were left in peace to walk between the gravestones. It's hard to imagine a more warped environment for a teenager to grow up in. When I would go out in the streets, I was seen as the son of a boss, he said. A potential future criminal clan chief, he went on. People would shake your hand and look into your eyes with respect. He seemed destined to go into the family business. But whatever his father's many faults, he didn't want that for his son. A life of crime and violence, which for so many, leads to jail. During those bleak prison visits, Giuseppe used to impress on the boy that he must stay out of the Camorra. Luigi admits that the underworld offered him what he calls temptations that were difficult to ignore. But he didn't succumb to the dark forces around him. He dropped out of school and started selling jeans door to door. Later he did his military service. Afterwards, he found work in a kitchen in a place further north, away from his roots. He went on to get married and had a daughter. Today he runs a restaurant in the seaside town of Civitavecchia. Luigi says he's no hero, but that he did find the strength to avoid the trap that life put before him. He rejected what he calls evil. He chose a different path, one that's kept him out of prison. He's been able to watch his child grow up, something that his mafioso father was never able to do.
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Alan Johnston in Naples. With the World cup very nearly upon us, broadcasters around the world are trying to acquaint themselves with all there is to know about Brazil. Once, the cliches were one dimensional. Carmen Miranda in a hat piled high with tropical fruit, skimpily clad samba dancers shimmying in gloriously over the top. Carnival parades, baying crowds admiring the artistry of the world's best football players. Not many people outside Brazil knew or cared to ask much about its period of military dictatorship or the unequal society inherited from a history of slavery and exploitation. Today, there are different stories, some casting light on the teeming complex and violent world of the slums. But Miles Ward believes that when it comes to Brazil, it can be dangerous to believe the hype.
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There is, near Sao Paulo's Praso do Repubblica tube station, a wonderful piece of street art, graffiti, nine cartoon characters all lined up in a row. Some are sinister, some are smiling. One has his tongue out and looks like he's been sick. Another's clutching her head. And two who may be twins, have their arms around each other's shoulders, smiling toothy grins. Across the top is a slogan in yellow and black. No matter the differences, it says, todos somos y G. We are all equal. This is the great myth of Brazil. Open a so Paulo telephone directory and you'll find names from all around the world. Not just Portuguese, like Silva and Santos, but Schmidt from Germany, Malouf from Lebanon or Syria, Sokobashi from Japan. Everyone has landed in Brazil. The made their home here. Started again. And in the run up to the World cup, we're hearing plenty of slogans about the unity, the harmony of Brazil. The first time I came here, I found it kind of terrifying. The year was 1990, and Fernando Collo de Mello was running to become the first democratically elected president in almost 30 years. TV adverts showed the boyish candidate water skiing, having fun, living The Brazilian dream. Then, on the first day of his presidency, his finance minister froze all bank accounts containing more than 50,000 cruzeiros. A bit less than 1,000 pounds, or about $1,600. The country went into uproar. This move was designed to combat hyperinflation. But suddenly, no one had any cash. By coincidence, I was on a bus heading to Ipanema. I don't suppose these two events are related, but in my mind, they are definitely linked. Because after buying a ticket from the conductor seated at the back in a heavy metal cage, five kids jumped me, pinned me to the floor, shoved a fork in my backside to stop me bucking, and took off with my cash. I thought about this recently when I was back in Brazil recording for the BBC. The buses seem much safer. The conductor no longer sits in a cage, and nobody tried to rob me with a fork. I know it was a fork because I still have the four puncture holes. But as the World cup approaches, this country is still tense. People are angry that vast amounts are being spent on the football, while so many here have so little. This country longs to believe in unity and harmony. But the inequality, the violence, they haven't gone away. In Salvador de Bahia, first capital of Brazil, some thousand miles northeast of Sao Paulo. Some 1500 kilometers northeast of Sao Paulo and on the coast, I spoke to a man at the University Cajoin Hays about a hideous time in Brazil's past. More slaves, he said, were transported here than anywhere else this side of the Atlantic. More than the United States, more than anywhere. Brazil is the largest black country outside Africa. There were many Africans, he went on, who served as interpreters on the boats and could tell the slaves, you're not going to be eaten by those whites. Because that was the fear that they were being brought to an unknown world where they would be eaten. Slavery was finally abolished in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so. Soon after, ideas about Brazil's successful mixing began to emerge. Brazil was made in the bed is a very popular saying, because everyone sleeps with everyone in Brazil. And you can be rich and black, and you can be poor and white. Unity and harmony. Everyone joined together in their love of football, carnival and feijoada. Feijoada is the national dish and has its own particular story. The white of the rice represents the white people here. The black of the beans represents the Africans. The red pepper stands for the indigenous population. The yellow manioc is for the Chinese and Japanese immigrants. And the occasional green veg is for the Amazon. An anthropologist called Lilia Schwartz told me that. And she also told me about a survey she'd once helped conduct into racism. We asked three very simple questions. She said, Are you prejudiced? 97% said no. Do you know anyone who is? 99% said yes. Describe your relationship with this person. Now, usually they were friends, relatives, partners. So the conclusion. Every Brazilian believes himself to be an island of racial democracy set amid a sea, an ocean of racism. So much for the unity and harmony. And my conclusion, Beware what anyone tells you about Brazil.
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And that's Myles Ward. This morning's news that Apple will buy the headphones company Beats Electronics is further evidence of the huge business it does around the world. Much of its continuing success is due to its iPhone selling well in China, but also in developing countries. Apple's is the most celebrated startup story in Silicon Valley. That swathe of central California, home to a host of high tech operations. It grew from humble beginnings in a garage in the 1970s to become the world's richest company. Oren Gordon's been spending time with another valley business, hoping it can follow in Apple's footsteps.
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Come on over, Mr. BBC, said Sean, one of the company's executives. I was at Zuora, a software firm, and it was Mexican night. In the central meeting area that doubled as a canteen, there were tacos, guacamole, a large quantity and variety of Mexican fast food. I hesitated. The previous night had been pizza night in fitness conscious California. I was beginning to worry about my weight. There had been four successive nights like this. The tacos were celebrating the climax of a big sales drive at Zuora, a fast growing business that creates and manages for other companies everyday activities that we think little about, such as credit card transactions. Enterprise software, they call it. Their big bet is that these functions can be outsourced via the web. They no longer need to employ hundreds of people themselves or spend millions of dollars operating these key functions. Earlier, the atmosphere had become festive. When someone closed a sale, a rep banged a gong and to the sound of much whooping and mild good natured heckling, he'd given a short speech. Some of the sales team broke off now and again to toss a football, an American football, to each other. At the end of the workday, there's a small bar with beer on tap. It's all open plan here. Not even the CEO Tin Zuo has his own office. There are lounging and breakout spaces. The Silicon Valley giant Google is credited with doing much to take the stuffiness out of office culture. This is one part home, one part office, and One part cool, chill out space. And it's now the norm in the Valley. This canteen open space is also a general staff meeting area. I'd watch the CEO address his staff there, half pep talk, half quiz. They'd given me, an outsider, the freedom to talk to anyone. But what they wouldn't tell me was how many millions in sales they'd achieved, nor their profit position. They were following the well worn path of successful startups that migrate from private ownership to public ownership through stock exchange shares. California has seen it before. In the early 19th century, gold was discovered in the hills of the north central part of the state. Tens of thousands came from all over the world to take part in the great gold rush of 1849. They were called Forty Niners, a name later adopted by San Francisco's American football team. Today, the money is to be found in the Valley rather than the hills, in technology rather than gold. Figures show that the financial heart of the world's biggest economy, the United States, is shifting slowly from the East Wall street in New York to the west, particularly Silicon Valley. But not everyone welcomes the influx of money. It's driven the prices of property beyond the means of many people. In San Francisco, where lots of Silicon Valley workers live, the city has become the second most expensive place to live in the US after Manhattan. The Valley's success is in contrast to the rest of estate that has fallen on economic hard times. Unemployment in California is up. So is poverty and the number of homeless people. Amid the passenger seat of the CEO's car, he's driving us to Palo Alto, the university town not far from the Valley. Lean, fit, younger looking than his years, with jacket removed and sporting sunglasses to counter the late afternoon sun, Misasso is quintessentially Californian, although Taiwan born and largely raised in New York, A Silicon Valley veteran of more than 20 years, he launched a startup with two other partners seven years ago. You could say that he's a living, breathing incarnation of a successful 49er. On the highway, he excuses himself to take a call, hands free. Over the next 15 minutes, he does a background check with a man who has been named as a referee for an engineer applying for a job. Afterwards, I ask him if he personally has a hand in every recruitment. Not every single one, he tells me. As the company has grown, it's become harder to do that. The size of his workforce is three times what it was three years ago. a meeting earlier in the day, he'd struggled to recall the name of an employee and it bugged him. It's his baby, the company. The day he stopped remembering everyone's name, he told me, was a day he'd rather not see.
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Orrin Gordon in California. More than a shock, it was an earthquake. That was the reaction from the French Prime Minister, Manuel Vals, to the success of the right wing Front national in the European elections. Marine Le Pen's party topped a nationwide poll for the first time in history, winning some 25% of the overall vote. The FN's heartland is in the south of France, and it was there, at a small seaside town in the Camargue, that a huge Gypsy festival took place the day before those election results were announced. Last weekend, Tessa Dunlop was there.
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When Monsieur Roland Chassin ambles up the stairs a nonchalant half hour late, I'm surprised by the diminutive, crumpled figure who greets me. After all, if you believe what you read on the Internet, this man, the mayor of Sainte Marie de la Mer, is the nemesis of his town's most famous festival, the Gypsy Pilgrimage in honour of Sara Lacali, or Black Sara, the enigmatic saint of Europe's traveling community. Gitan Tigua. Gypsies, call them what you will. This is the one day a year when in the remote marshlands of the Camargue, they shed their minority status and become the majority. I'm not anti gypsy protests mere Roland, but their young are not disciplined. It has changed. It was different 40 years ago. Certainly things have changed 40 years ago. Roland did not have his own fiefdom in the Camargue, nor was he a friend of the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Oh yes, Sarkozy loves to ride. Roland's blue eyes light up. I've spotted a picture of his political charm on the wall. Fresh faced and lithe, the ex president cuts quite a dash atop one of the Kemag's famous white horses. I count another five pictures of Mr. Sarkozy sprinkled around the office in a couple. Roland shares the limelight with his hero. So how does this political friendship tally with Roland's remit as mayor of a town where the gypsies prey and party hard? Mr. Sarkozy may not be as hardline as Marine Le Pen, but his attitude towards the Gypsies certainly attracted criticism. The EU spoke out against his targeted expulsion of Romanian Roma. But the mayor is indignant. He leans forward. There is a lot of eye contact, he tells me. That was about immigration. Mr. Sarkozy isn't anti Roma. He likes gypsy music. Phew. So we've cleared that up and what about St. Sarah's Festival? I will be there, Roland assures me. I never miss one of my town's pilgrimages. Outside, a storm is brewing. There's a tension in the air. It might be about terrain. And in the cafes, waiters aren't taking any risks. Visiting gypsy families are being asked to finish their drinks. Tables and chairs are dragged inside. Bars are closing early and there is more to it than the weather. One owner refuses to be drawn. If I say something, it will be vulgar. But the message is clear. Not all the locals welcome their annual visitors. They argue. The Gitane come to settle scores. They drink too much, they make a noise. It feels like a pretty mean riposte to a group of people whose legendary celebration of St. Sarah has helped put Sainte Marie de la Mer on the contemporary map. Her statue's procession from the crypt down to the sea has gained the full backing of the Catholic Church. And tourists on a quest to find their inner gypsy line the route in their thousands. They're not disappointed with an extraordinary resilience that has defined their disparate community for years. Thousands of predominantly French gypsies come here to worship their dark skinned saint. The spectacle, both spiritual and visual, is overwhelming. Many are in tears. Then I spy Mayor Roland walking alone down the aisle of the church. As good as his word. He sees me in the crowd and eagerly leans across to plant a kiss on both my cheeks. Well, I am a gadji, the Roma expression for a non gypsy. And all good politicians need allies. The moment passes. Sara moves onwards and out towards the rim of the sea. Wobbling slightly on an elevated base, she is given her annual dunk in the Mediterranean, flanked by white horses and singing gypsies. Then it's homewards back to her underground crypt and let the parties start. It's impromptu. Bands that have crossed countries don't need formal venues. They sit down and play guitars, violins, double bass, even drums. I meet George Gutta, whose instrument is the accordion. I'm a musician in Paris, but for Saint Sara. My father has joined me from Romania with his violin and my brothers. He says, we are good gypsies, but we're lucky we can perform music. It's harder for the others. He looks up and smiles. Then the Goethe family begins to play. The effect is mesmerising. The crowds are silenced. Encore. I buy one of their CDs. No one can live off the goodwill of St. Sara alone. And I think, what a shame Mr. Sarkozy isn't here. I'm told he likes gypsy music and
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I'm sure he'd have had a fine time down there in Sainte Marie de la Mer. Tessa Dunlop certainly did. And that's it. Back with more stories from around the world on Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.