Sicilian Mafia ver 0.6
Created | Updated Jul 16, 2012
Not a proper guide entry yet feel free to comment.
The Sicilian Mafia
In the broadest sense "mafia" refers to any form of criminal organization that ecxercises a degree of control over a certain territory.
In Sicily, however mafia describes a specific, if shifting, organization, deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the land and profoundly intertwined with the political and economic powers.
A Brief History Of The Sicilian Mafia
Since 600 B.C. Sicily has been ruled by pretty much any Mediterannean population you can name (Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, French, other Spaniards, , English and Americans). This succession of authoritarian and often cruel governments has led the Sicilians to regard rulers and governments in general as enemies and in general something to hide from.
The Mafia is also the criminal expression of this way of life.
From its roots which go back to the agricultural and semi-feudal power system the remnants of which where dismantled in Sicily only in this century, the mafia evolved several times to adapt itself to the evolving situations. Three main periods are clearly defineable:
First Period - Agricultural Mafia
Though as we have seen the mafia has its historic roots in the last two and a half milennia of Sicilian history it's "formal" birth dates to the period immediately subsequent to the unification of Italy (1860). From this date and up to WW2 the mafiosi (members of the mafia) where the middlemen between the landlords and the peasants, controlling the fields, the wells, and instilling fear in the empoverished land workers ensuring that the popular revolts that where extracting concessions from the land owners in other parts of the world would not be copied in Sicily.
Their profits came from the noblemen who paid for their services, and by various other means, such as forcing the peasants to buy water only at mafia-controlled wells, often at inflated prices or to sell their crops only to Mafia at below market level prices.
So as is plain to see, from it's outset the mafia managed to carve itself a niche by robbing from the population while at the same time presenting itself as a usefull form of population control for the rich class.
The second period - The Building Mafia
This came to an abrupt change in about 1943 when the Supreme Allied Headquarters decided that an invasion by sea was going to be needed to free Italy of Fascism and Nazism.
Confronted with the problem of ensuring the support, or at least the neutrality, of the local population the allies took contacts with the Sicilian mafia in the US, finally offering imprisoned New York boss Lucky Luciano his freedom if he would accept to broker a pact with the Sicilian mafia. Their support in the coming invasion in exchange for the promise to appoint mafia bosses as mayors in the liberated towns of Sicily. Wether the pact between the United States and the mafia was actually undersigned or not is still a matter open to debate. The following facts may be freely interpreted by the reader in order to form his own opinion:
1. Lucky Luciano was freed, and charges dropped, he returned to Sicily and became a prominent figure in the post-war mafia.
2. Top Sicilian mafia bosses where appointed as mayors of the liberated towns.
3. The Allies favoured the Sicilian Separatist Movement backed by the the mafia which aimed at separating Sicily from Italy.
In post-war Sicily the mafia, thanks to its control of the local administrations, where in a position to shepard Marshall Plan money in to the right pockets. The building of the highways, harbors and public housing projects where all carried out either by mafiosi, or by their friends who paid for the favor, and agreed to buy cement from certain companys emply certain people and so on.
If while travelling along the beautiful sicilian coastline, or in the cuntryside or in a historical center you come across some ugly, box shaped houses that look like they where designed by the same architect that gave us Ft.Leavenworth Naval Penitentiary chances are it dates to this period.
The Third Period - The Drug Mafia
Though the money flow connected to these construction pojects was fenomenal, the younger exponents of the mafia where starting to disaffectionate themselves with the system which costantly binded them to bank loans for their cash needs. Thanks to their political links (of which more will be said further on) they had a law through which passed the buisiness of tax collecting was given to private contractors, who were entitled to 10% of whatever they collected. The Salvo brothers where two such contractors who enriched themselves through this law. These schemes gave the mafia an increasingly large amount of liquid money. More money, in fact, than they could find uses for. When, because of his involvement in the Sindona case, Rosario Spatola, a major boss, was arrested, his buisiness card read "Industrialist". It was later found out that his major association with the industrial world was the purchase of unrefined drugs in industrial quntities.
These drugs where then refined and shipped to the US via the mafia's american cousins. The exact figure is of course unknown but it is safe to say that an extroardinarily high percentage of the drugs consumed in the US had been refined in Sicily.
Several problems arised connected to the laundering of these incredible amounts of dirty cash, and this was when the mafia started leaving a paper trail...
The Falcone - Borsellino offensive
A well established system was in place in sicilian courthouses in which judges who where handed mafia cases where faced with two choices
A- swamp the case, find an excuse to stall it, get a promotion and a pay rise.
B- Take the case seriously, ask questions, face pretty bad chances of winning and worse chances still of not having the case taken away from them just when they where closing in on the culprits.
Now, of course, if you where anything but a true hero the first choice might have seemed a tad more attractive than the second.
Luckily, by a gross mistake of the corrupt powers that reigned in Italy at the time, a mafia case was handed, in absentia of the designated judge, to a young bankruptcy prosecutor, judge Giovanni Falcone, who translated his goods tracking methods on to the fight against the mafia. By following the paper trail for the first time, Falcone asked would-be constructors questions regarding checks issued to colombian nationals. Of course no answer was forthcoming. Through carefull and diligent investigative work, and at great risk for both himself and his family, Palermo born Falcone managed to stage the first maxi-trial, which featured 475 defendants, and when it ended in 1987 delivered a few thousand years of inprisonment and 19 life sentences. This was followed by an equally massive appeal trial. Sadly a Falcone was killed together with his wife and five bodyguards in 1992 by blowing up a stretch of highway upon which his to car convoy was driving. His tragic sacrifice was echoed only months later by that of his friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino, who was killed by a carbomb while visiting his mother. Their death caused a popular insurgency aginst the mafia which lasted for months with almost continuous street gatherings. This led to the "Palermitan Spring Time" a move gretaly favoured by Leoluca Orlando at the time mayor of Palermo. The Mafia bosses where tracked down one by one and sentenced to multiple life sentences ( Totò Riina, the Mafia No.1 received three consecutive life sentences, if this researcher was empowered to decide on such matters, he would have him buried in the prison yard, may he never again set foot on free ground, in life or in death).
Litte glossary
Omerta - The code of silence. Followed by most Sicilians until recntly and still widely respected by most. Engraved in many popular sayngs as "chi si fa i cazzi sui campa cent´anni": who minds his own buisiness lives to 100 years.
Uomini d´onore, coppola storta - Men of honor, crooked hats. Both ways of indicating a full-time member of the Mafia the latter one referring to their habit of waring the "coppola" a tipical sicilian hat slightly on the side.
Cosa Nostra - Our Thing. The real name of the mafia. Actual mafia members, when interrogated by police, showed surprise about being asked about the mafia, often answering "there is no such thing". Though this was partly due to omerta, it was at least partly true. Tommaso Buscetta, one of the first, and cetainly the most important pentito, explained that the term mafia, or mafioso, isn´t used inside the organization. If a men of honor wants to introduce another one to, for example, his superior, he will say something like "Quest´uomo e´ la stessa cosa" meaning "this man is the same thing". Anyone that strays in to mafia buisiness would be warned by sayng "Questa e´ cosa di cosa nostra" meaning "This is our thing´s thing".
Pentito - Repented. An ex-Uomo d´onore that has decided, usually upon being caught, to further information on the mafia in exchange for less prison time, protection and often, money. There is a big debate in Italy regarding the pentiti, mainly concerning who should be eligible, how much money should be spent on them, and how serious their testemony should be taken. However, while these are important concerns, it should be noted that the succes of the fight against mafia at heavily dependant on them, and if they don´t see a serious reason to risk their personal and their loved ones health (it should for example be noted that Tommaso Buscetta had at least 15 relatives killed as a result of his testemony), the fight against this cancer will be seriously hampered.
In 5 days:
The new Mafia: High finance and
Mafia, the church, and politics
The Sicilian Mafia
In the broadest sense "mafia" refers to any form of criminal organization that ecxercises a degree of control over a certain territory.
In Sicily, however mafia describes a specific, if shifting, organization, deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the land and profoundly intertwined with the political and economic powers.
A Brief History Of The Sicilian Mafia
Since 600 B.C. Sicily has been ruled by pretty much any Mediterannean population you can name (Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, French, other Spaniards, , English and Americans). This succession of authoritarian and often cruel governments has led the Sicilians to regard rulers and governments in general as enemies and in general something to hide from.
The Mafia is also the criminal expression of this way of life.
From its roots which go back to the agricultural and semi-feudal power system the remnants of which where dismantled in Sicily only in this century, the mafia evolved several times to adapt itself to the evolving situations. Three main periods are clearly defineable:
First Period - Agricultural Mafia
Though as we have seen the mafia has its historic roots in the last two and a half milennia of Sicilian history it's "formal" birth dates to the period immediately subsequent to the unification of Italy (1860). From this date and up to WW2 the mafiosi (members of the mafia) where the middlemen between the landlords and the peasants, controlling the fields, the wells, and instilling fear in the empoverished land workers ensuring that the popular revolts that where extracting concessions from the land owners in other parts of the world would not be copied in Sicily.
Their profits came from the noblemen who paid for their services, and by various other means, such as forcing the peasants to buy water only at mafia-controlled wells, often at inflated prices or to sell their crops only to Mafia at below market level prices.
So as is plain to see, from it's outset the mafia managed to carve itself a niche by robbing from the population while at the same time presenting itself as a usefull form of population control for the rich class.
The second period - The Building Mafia
This came to an abrupt change in about 1943 when the Supreme Allied Headquarters decided that an invasion by sea was going to be needed to free Italy of Fascism and Nazism.
Confronted with the problem of ensuring the support, or at least the neutrality, of the local population the allies took contacts with the Sicilian mafia in the US, finally offering imprisoned New York boss Lucky Luciano his freedom if he would accept to broker a pact with the Sicilian mafia. Their support in the coming invasion in exchange for the promise to appoint mafia bosses as mayors in the liberated towns of Sicily. Wether the pact between the United States and the mafia was actually undersigned or not is still a matter open to debate. The following facts may be freely interpreted by the reader in order to form his own opinion:
1. Lucky Luciano was freed, and charges dropped, he returned to Sicily and became a prominent figure in the post-war mafia.
2. Top Sicilian mafia bosses where appointed as mayors of the liberated towns.
3. The Allies favoured the Sicilian Separatist Movement backed by the the mafia which aimed at separating Sicily from Italy.
In post-war Sicily the mafia, thanks to its control of the local administrations, where in a position to shepard Marshall Plan money in to the right pockets. The building of the highways, harbors and public housing projects where all carried out either by mafiosi, or by their friends who paid for the favor, and agreed to buy cement from certain companys emply certain people and so on.
If while travelling along the beautiful sicilian coastline, or in the cuntryside or in a historical center you come across some ugly, box shaped houses that look like they where designed by the same architect that gave us Ft.Leavenworth Naval Penitentiary chances are it dates to this period.
The Third Period - The Drug Mafia
Though the money flow connected to these construction pojects was fenomenal, the younger exponents of the mafia where starting to disaffectionate themselves with the system which costantly binded them to bank loans for their cash needs. Thanks to their political links (of which more will be said further on) they had a law through which passed the buisiness of tax collecting was given to private contractors, who were entitled to 10% of whatever they collected. The Salvo brothers where two such contractors who enriched themselves through this law. These schemes gave the mafia an increasingly large amount of liquid money. More money, in fact, than they could find uses for. When, because of his involvement in the Sindona case, Rosario Spatola, a major boss, was arrested, his buisiness card read "Industrialist". It was later found out that his major association with the industrial world was the purchase of unrefined drugs in industrial quntities.
These drugs where then refined and shipped to the US via the mafia's american cousins. The exact figure is of course unknown but it is safe to say that an extroardinarily high percentage of the drugs consumed in the US had been refined in Sicily.
Several problems arised connected to the laundering of these incredible amounts of dirty cash, and this was when the mafia started leaving a paper trail...
The Falcone - Borsellino offensive
A well established system was in place in sicilian courthouses in which judges who where handed mafia cases where faced with two choices
A- swamp the case, find an excuse to stall it, get a promotion and a pay rise.
B- Take the case seriously, ask questions, face pretty bad chances of winning and worse chances still of not having the case taken away from them just when they where closing in on the culprits.
Now, of course, if you where anything but a true hero the first choice might have seemed a tad more attractive than the second.
Luckily, by a gross mistake of the corrupt powers that reigned in Italy at the time, a mafia case was handed, in absentia of the designated judge, to a young bankruptcy prosecutor, judge Giovanni Falcone, who translated his goods tracking methods on to the fight against the mafia. By following the paper trail for the first time, Falcone asked would-be constructors questions regarding checks issued to colombian nationals. Of course no answer was forthcoming. Through carefull and diligent investigative work, and at great risk for both himself and his family, Palermo born Falcone managed to stage the first maxi-trial, which featured 475 defendants, and when it ended in 1987 delivered a few thousand years of inprisonment and 19 life sentences. This was followed by an equally massive appeal trial. Sadly a Falcone was killed together with his wife and five bodyguards in 1992 by blowing up a stretch of highway upon which his to car convoy was driving. His tragic sacrifice was echoed only months later by that of his friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino, who was killed by a carbomb while visiting his mother. Their death caused a popular insurgency aginst the mafia which lasted for months with almost continuous street gatherings. This led to the "Palermitan Spring Time" a move gretaly favoured by Leoluca Orlando at the time mayor of Palermo. The Mafia bosses where tracked down one by one and sentenced to multiple life sentences ( Totò Riina, the Mafia No.1 received three consecutive life sentences, if this researcher was empowered to decide on such matters, he would have him buried in the prison yard, may he never again set foot on free ground, in life or in death).
Litte glossary
Omerta - The code of silence. Followed by most Sicilians until recntly and still widely respected by most. Engraved in many popular sayngs as "chi si fa i cazzi sui campa cent´anni": who minds his own buisiness lives to 100 years.
Uomini d´onore, coppola storta - Men of honor, crooked hats. Both ways of indicating a full-time member of the Mafia the latter one referring to their habit of waring the "coppola" a tipical sicilian hat slightly on the side.
Cosa Nostra - Our Thing. The real name of the mafia. Actual mafia members, when interrogated by police, showed surprise about being asked about the mafia, often answering "there is no such thing". Though this was partly due to omerta, it was at least partly true. Tommaso Buscetta, one of the first, and cetainly the most important pentito, explained that the term mafia, or mafioso, isn´t used inside the organization. If a men of honor wants to introduce another one to, for example, his superior, he will say something like "Quest´uomo e´ la stessa cosa" meaning "this man is the same thing". Anyone that strays in to mafia buisiness would be warned by sayng "Questa e´ cosa di cosa nostra" meaning "This is our thing´s thing".
Pentito - Repented. An ex-Uomo d´onore that has decided, usually upon being caught, to further information on the mafia in exchange for less prison time, protection and often, money. There is a big debate in Italy regarding the pentiti, mainly concerning who should be eligible, how much money should be spent on them, and how serious their testemony should be taken. However, while these are important concerns, it should be noted that the succes of the fight against mafia at heavily dependant on them, and if they don´t see a serious reason to risk their personal and their loved ones health (it should for example be noted that Tommaso Buscetta had at least 15 relatives killed as a result of his testemony), the fight against this cancer will be seriously hampered.
In 5 days:
The new Mafia: High finance and
Mafia, the church, and politics
