In Pictures: Inside Naples' Asbestos-Lined Ghetto

This story originally appeared in VICE News' Italian edition. 

Mario lives outside Naples, Italy, in a metal box that looks like an oversized shipping container — as he has for decades. But he is not homeless. He has, legally, a home: This one, which he got from the authorities after his was destroyed in the 1980 earthquake that rocked this region of southern Italy, killing 3,000 people and leaving 280,000 homeless.

Mario — who would only use his first name, like many residents of the slum where he lives — is one of the so-called invisibles, people whom authorities seem to have forgotten after dumping them in these asbestos-lined containers. He was moved initially to temporary housing in nearby Barra, but then he was sent to live in one of the containers set up for earthquake victims. It was meant to be a temporary solution. That was 18 years ago.

"They told me they would come get me after a few months," he said. "I'm still waiting."

Ponticelli, where Mario lives, is in the eastern outskirts of Naples, a social and economic wasteland left behind by the end of the local industrial economy. Italian companies like carmaker Fiat and the food conglomerate Cirio closed the factories that provided much of the employment in the area, and Ponticelli, like the rest of Naples's eastern suburbs, fell into a deep crisis.

Among the garbage-strewn roads, there are still 300 earthquake victims living in squalor in 18 aluminum containers, which people here call bibiann in the local dialect — freezing in winter, sweltering in summer, and originally meant in the1990s as holding places while the regional government built subsidized housing projects to relocate people.

But not everyone from Barra got lucky. Some got assigned to the new projects, while others like Mario got the asbestos-lined containers. Some where demolished between 2003 and 2011, but the section known as the "Via Fuortes ghetto" from the name of its main street was left standing. Today it has turned into a symbol of the decay brought about by an inept government, organized crime and economic crisis.

Photographer Paolo Manzo knows the place better than anyone. He's taken pictures of the ghetto and its residents for four years. He used to drive by the containers, and one day he decided to head inside the maze of tiny alleyways and crumbling buildings.

"I started meeting people, I began to understand how life really is in there," he told VICE News. "Initially, I was met with suspicion, but over time people started trusting me more."

We asked him to take us on a tour of the Fuortes slum.

It's surprising to think people were able to survive here for all these years.Health conditions are deplorable, with open-air sewers and broken drainage pipes.

A strong smell of smoke became stronger as we got closer to the heart of the neighborhood. The blackened electrical box was clearly overloaded, with hundreds of wires spreading out to every corner of the ghetto, criss-crossing several times.

Residents have tried hard to make their abodes more welcoming, filling them with television sets, furniture and ornamental rugs. But the walls were clearly eroded and covered in black damp rings.

The real danger in these metal cages, however, is the invisible one — asbestos. Before it was banned in the 1990s, asbestos was widely used because of its ability to retain heat. "Until now, the asbestos hasn't had any effect on us, but our time will come," Mario said. He has five children, one of whom is disabled.

People here say cancer is already the most common cause of death in the ghetto. The last victim was a woman who died last year, they said. But there are no official stats available, in a sign of the neglect by the authorities that adds to Ponticelli's woes.

"Via Fuortes is not just a social problem, it's also a significant environmental and public health issue," said Roberto Braibanti, a local officer of left-wing party SEL who has been pushing for years to have the containers dismantled and residents moved to safer homes.

The asbestos, he said, is currently in the most dangerous part of its life cycle: the crumbling. That makes the container homes dangerous not only for those who live in them, but also for the surrounding area, covered by an invisible cloud of asbestos dust carried by the wind.

But some don't mind living in a death trap.

According to the few Italian families left in the ghetto, immigrants have no problem living on Via Fuortes. Actually, for some, it's a great idea.

"Many of them are illegal, and a place like this allows them to remain invisible," Mario said.

Besides Mario's, there are only nine Italian families left — not even all earthquake victims.

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Today the neighborhood is a mosaic of cultures and ethnicities: Albanians, Kosovars, Serbs, Asians and Africans are all living in their own row of container homes, creating a miniature map of the world. While the grownups mostly ignore people from other nationalities, except for occasional help for a neighbor in need, the children are truly integrated, playing together without any cultural divisions.

There have been tensions between ethnic groups in the past, but they were mostly between Serbs and Kosovars, in a cluster of buildings demolished in 2003. "There were shootings, constant fighting. The situation was unbearable," said Andrea, a young Neapolitan man who's often in the neighbourhood visiting his girlfriend, who lives here.

She's not a legal resident, like the majority of people living in the slum. In fact, although the container homes were originally built to host those displaced by the earthquake, other people have moved in. As the original families started to leave, the containers should have been demolished. Instead, "a spiral of rents and sublets that piled up on top of each other sprung up," Braibanti said. "New desperate people keep showing up: they have nowhere to go and they pay very low rent to live in the containers."

It's unclear who manages this small real-estate business, but Braibanti thinks the camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, is likely involved. "This kind of activity is typically linked to organized crime," he said. "However, nobody can prove it."

But no one's making tons of money off the residents of Via Fuortes. Unemployment is rife and the rents extremely cheap. Some happily stay, asbestos or not, because of that.

"Some families got used to this," Manzo said. "They take advantage of it and stop fighting."

Rosaria, 47, has lived on Via Fuortes for the past 17 years. She got a suspended one-year sentence because she failed to pay her electric bills, and she fears the police might show up one day and take her to jail. But she also fears being transferred to a housing project: "I don't know if I'd be able to survive there, with the bills and all the other expenses. I'm unemployed and I don't have anything left."

Peple come up with makeshift ways to earn money: one man dismantles cars and then sells the parts, others sell drugs. Some people said they prostitute themselves to male residents, some of whom have actual jobs. Mario drives commercial vehicles, for example.

The only gathering place is a café, and according to Braibanti, this is exactly the problem with East Naples. "The container homes aren't the only social disaster in the area. Many other buildings built after the earthquake have similar problems," he said. "There aren't any opportunities for gathering in these new neighborhoods. There aren't any services or job opportunities."

Authorities show up only before an election. "Politicians, health inspectors, social workers only appear before elections, then they disappear until the next one," said a man who gave his name as Andrea and is one of the few people with a job, as pizza cook.

Last year, prime minister Matteo Renzi showed up in Ponticelli. He visited a helicopter factory, toured the new Ospedale del Mare hospital, which star architect Renzo Piano helped design, and then headed back to Rome.

"The prime minister didn't dare look at the real problems of the area, like the container homes," said Braibanti. "Bringing these problems to light would force the government to provide answers."