Salento beaches in the hands of violent vu cumprà: terrified tourists clash with clubs.

Mid-July on a beach in Salento, Ionian coast.

A man brandished a rusty iron bar, part of a disused umbrella, waving it at another man and shouting, a glass of beer in his hand. A scarecrow for the tourists who quickly fled. Between the two, a couple of carts full of colorful knick-knacks and a dispute erupted over the division of the illegal sales spaces and other unlawful dealings.

Looking at that image from a different perspective, postcards emerge that are halfway between nostalgic and romantic, dreamy photos of small, large, multicolored itinerant shops that, at dawn and dusk, stop between the water and the shoreline. Sometimes, in fact, even on the dunes that should instead be preserved from human impact.

Poetry vanishes at the speed of the click with which those images are immortalized and posted.

Which conceal different contours and flavors and substances if looked at with the eye of reason.

They are clear evidence of illegal practices now so widespread, ingrained, and ancestral that they've become normalized customs. And it matters little whether you're on the Adriatic or Ionian Sea, north or south of Puglia, on the Sirocco or Tramontana winds... it makes little or no difference.

Behind the inflatables and the trinkets and the flowing dresses and the sofa covers and the electronic gadgets and the shoes and everything else there is a vast universe of illegality with a thousand colours and shades just like those life jackets sold in front of the sea.

There's illegal trade, exploitation of labor, including child labor and illegal trafficking, tax evasion, receiving stolen goods, public nuisance, and even public order going haywire, pollution, counterfeiting, drug dealing—a whole host of blackmail schemes that intertwine in a dangerous domino effect.

And we could continue, slowly widening with the lens of reason the concentric circles of a sedimented and out-of-control situation.

The photos mentioned above need neither dates nor geographical coordinates, they do not describe seasons or places, they tell of a reality that does not change, if not for the worse.

Returning to that July image, as confirmed by law enforcement, two street vendors exempt from issuing invoices and receipts came to blows over the division of the free territory. Two factions, in that case: traders of Moroccan origin and traders of Tunisian origin.

Some civilians present first and the timely arrival of the State later averted the worst, but only for a few hours.

The situation, though consolidated over time and across the territory, has in fact taken on more worrying connotations in terms of public safety, due to the violence of some groups present who are dominating, even challenging the established order by skating past the safety buoys, among the swimmers, brandishing bottles of alcohol and defiantly flaming with the same ease with which they brandish clubs and God knows what else.

It's no coincidence that in the last few hours, along the same stretch of coast, an incident similar to the one in mid-July has been recorded: an argument, beatings, an injury, the intervention of the police, and fear among the people.

The same people who then split up, a few hours later, to the full advantage of the swindling of pity which is gaining ground.

That need to feel understanding and good at all costs, staying on the surface and remembering that there are people who come from faraway countries, who somehow have to make a living. Never mind if they sell goods that aren't up to standard, thus putting the buyer's health at risk, and if they do so illegally without paying a cent to the state, to the detriment of those who do. But it's not by poeticizing that those exploited people can truly be helped.

And if there are those who quickly press the buttons on the phone to call 911, there are also those who turn the other way because, after all, summer is short and then everything will pass.

While the blanket is short in terms of units and men in uniform present in territories where population density is growing exponentially, it can equally be extended by everyone's acceptance of responsibility, by civic duty, by the duty to report, by the duty to refrain from purchasing, by the duty to follow the rules ourselves first. Without delegating to third parties.

Because the problem exists, it's big, and it affects everyone, each in their own way.

Beyond the news, beyond the nighttime raids on the beach that lead to the seizure of hundreds and thousands of pieces and objects of all kinds that then no one knows where to deposit in the absence of adequate containers (this too, sir!), what else is there?

Then everything starts all over again, with indolence and habit that, if crystallized in thoughts, are frightening.

It is true that behind the people under the sun, coming and going on the beaches from dawn until dusk, who at the end of the day have very little left in their pockets, there is very often organized crime.

Who works hard and earns a lot, in the shadow of ducks and armrests and do-goodism.

And here too, encyclopedias could be written, starting with the merchandise on sale. The clothes, for example, many come from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and from the hands of workers exploited illegally to the bone, sometimes to the point of losing their lives. Much of the trinkets adorning tanned bodies come from Pakistani workshops based in Campania, and even the toys, Chinese goods sold en masse illegally.

And then there is the receiving of stolen goods, sometimes, just to remind you that one crime leads to another.

And so behind the street vendors, both the quarrelsome and the peaceful, there are those who charge a premium to let them sit there baking in the sun, or those who skim off their meager profits until their next step: drug dealing. Because, especially when evening falls, near those stalls parked on the beaches, quick hands, paper bags, and banknotes move. This is probably one of the reasons why relationships within the illegal vendors have long since deteriorated.

And it explains why, when the Carabinieri and the Port Authority intervened on the beaches a few days ago, thanks to a sudden raid that shuffled the cards on the aforementioned dangerous custom, someone with his mobile vendor ran into the sea, throwing "who knows what" into the water.

Of course they weren't inflatable, because those float.

And where do those street vendors with no face, no name, and almost no history live?

Lecce, for example, is the city from which Moroccans, Tunisians, Ghanaians, Senegalese, and Nigerians depart in the morning, sharing hovels by the dozen.

Some people live on the coast throughout the summer, so the dunes become homes and bathrooms as needed, with all that entails. Some even travel from other parts of Italy to the southern beaches throughout the summer and into October.

Mohammed, for example, lives in Lombardy. He tells us he sometimes moves to Salento and Campania during the summer. He sleeps as a caretaker at a beach resort, and for the rest of the year he's content to do manual labor. Whatever he earns, taken for granted as a form of exploitation, he uses to support his family back home. And yes, he confirms that very often, some foreigners become drug mules and dealers, depending on the situation.

Indifference and delegation remain the most powerful fuel in the engine of lawlessness and its tentacles. Civic sense and responsibility are the antidote to evil.

We turn our gaze a few degrees, and there's a chocolate-colored wren, somewhere between 7 and 10 years old. He's alone.

He approaches the umbrellas: "Charger? Screen saver? It's cheap."