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Italian Mafia

Banditry and murder had been fairly commonplace since the Middle Ages. The Mafia has existed as a loose network of local criminals only since the early years of the nineteenth century. Like the nobility, its roots are feudal. From humble rustic origins not unlike those of Japan's Yakuza, and with its own equally fanciful rites and mythology, the Mafia developed largely as a result of Sicilian social conditions. Despite some charming stories of a medieval origin in secretive sects such as the legendary Beati Paoli, there is no evidence to suggest that the Mafia existed as a hierarchical organization until the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Even the origin of the word mafia is debated, but it certainly wasn't used to refer to organized crime until the nineteenth century.

Until the eighteenth century, many Sicilian nobles actually resided on their country estates. This had changed by the 1700s, with most of the more important titled aristocrats by then resident in Palermo, Catania and Messina. Under these circumstances, Sicily's aristocratic absentee landlords often entrusted administration of their rural estates to managers called gabelloti. Until 1812, the purchase of a feudal property made its holder the count or baron of that fief, and in this way numerous gabelloti themselves became barons, by purchasing feudal lands from the men they worked for. The gabelloti were not aristocrats in the true sense, but far worse than this fact were the methods they used to intimidate the poor peasants into working the estates for poor wages. This often entailed the use of local intermediaries who made it their own business to manage such matters. These intermediaries, who today might be considered local Mafia bosses, rarely murdered anybody; they delegated that job to their underlings. In this way the myth of the "benevolent" mafioso was born.

Some of the more corrupt gabelloti who did not become minor barons actually became important mafiosi.

With the abolition of feudalism, it became all the more necessary to control baronial interests through coercion, for with the abrogation of feudal taxes came higher rents, but by the 1850s it was clear that the mafiosi would also represent the interests of an ordinary farmer or tradesman who paid them well to settle a score or reconcile a perceived injustice. Hence the popular perception of mafiosi as "Robin Hoods" or even "knights." From being "friends of the friends," the more important mafiosi were soon known as "men of honor." In truth, the Mafia code is the antithesis of the code of chivalry, or at least a bizarre interpretation. Many Sicilians' clannish nature, and their instinctive dislike for inconsistent law enforcement and a repressive hereditary aristocracy, created a favorable climate for the mafiosi.

The nobility may not have actually created the Mafia, but it unwittingly permitted the development of social conditions that facilitated its macabre growth.

Omertà literally means "manhood," and refers to the idea of a man resolving his own problems, but the term has become synonomous with the Mafia's code of silence. The Mafia's arcane rituals, and much of the organization's structure, were based largely on those of the Catholic confraternities and even Freemasonry, colored by Sicilian familial traditions and even certain customs associated with military-religious orders of chivalry like the Order of Malta. The duel, for example, gave way to the vendetta, but both were known among Sicilian feuding families in times past.

Garibaldi certainly had the support of Mafia bands during his invasion of Sicily in 1860, though they were not a decisive factor in his victory. In the same year, it was suggested to King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies that the Camorra, a Neapolitan organization similar to the Mafia, kill Garibaldi and his officers upon their arrival in Naples. The King refused his subjects' offer.

The Modern Mafia

A famous play, I Mafiusi della Vicaria, first performed in 1863, described the Mafia as an organization complete with initiation rites, though folk historian Giuseppe Pitré's interpretation of Mafia history has been discounted as whimsical. By 1900, the "black hand" was identified with the "friends of the friends." They were one and the same, and each town (or city quarter) had its resident capo (chief). When the Fascists rose to power, Mussolini's "Iron Prefect," Cesare Mori, threw most of them in prison. In reality, the relationship between the Fascists and the Mafia was that of one group of criminals pitted against another --two wolves fighting over the same chicken coop.

The wartime collaboration of Sicilian-born Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano with the United States Navy may have made the Allied invasion of Sicily smoother than it otherwise would have been, but the Iron Prefect's enforcement of the Duce's laws had already made most mafiosi sympathetic to the American cause, or at least hostile to the Fascist one. The surrender, without even token resistance, of thousands of Italian troops at Lampedusa, shortly before the main attack on Sicily, made it clear that most Italian recruits were unwilling to risk their lives for a lost cause.

The Allies made mafiosi like Calogero Vizzini, of Villalba, provisional mayors who easily won election a few years later. It was easy for these men, imprisoned by Mussolini's regime without the benefit of a fair trial, to pose as anti-Fascists. Under any political system, Vizzini was a murderer, plain and simple, and he soon became supreme head ("capi di tutti i capi") of the Mafia in Sicily.

In the immediate postwar years, as the Mafia set about the task of re-organizing its activities, several freelance bandits roamed the countryside. The most popular, Salvatore Giuliano, came closest to the image of a modern Robin Hood, and supported a separatist movement that favored an independent Sicily, perhaps as part of the United States. Men like Giuliano were not mafiosi. Indeed, the mafiosi resented and feared them.

With the death of Calogero Vizzini in 1954, the Mafia slid into the realm of what Sicily's mafiosi later derided as "gangsterism," a more reckless American style of crime. In 1957, the Sicilian Mafia re-established ties with their brethren in the United States and Canada. It was Lucky Luciano, of all people, who orchestrated the alliance. Unlike Vizzini and his generation, the new Sicilian "men of honor" were cafoni (uncouth people) who made no pretension whatsoever to be gentlemen. Whereas, in public, Vizzini and people like him maintained at least a veneer of civility, and might even pass for dignified country squires, it was clear that newcomers like Genco Russo, Michele Greco and Luciano Leggio, though clever in certain respects, were essentially vulgar by nature. "Men of honor" and the "code of honor," if either had ever existed in fact, vanished in a flurry of murders. By the 1970s, even women and children were not spared in the carnage.

During the 1960s, the Sicilian "Cupola" and the American "Commission" began to seriously cooperate in the narcotics trade, despite their expressed sentiment that heroin and cocaine were somehow less "respectable" products than extortion and murder. The Sicilian faction was still more ruthless than its American counterpart, often resorting to the murder of judges and other public officials whose activities they considered inconvenient. Palermo's Falcone-Borsellino Airport is named after two such judges, and there is a monument in Piazza 13 Vittime (13 Victims), at the end of Palermo's Via Cavour, dedicated to the memory of people killed by the Mafia.

Crime and Punishment

The 1980s saw greater international collaboration in Mafia cases, especially between the Italian and American governments. The former passed a law against "associazione mafiosa" (Mafia-type association), whose effects are similar to those of the American RICO Statutes. Unlike Americans, Italians refer to "organized crime" not for the sake of euphemism but because there are so many independent criminal organizations in Italy (the Mafia in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples, etc.).

Mafiosi are occasionally (if not routinely) jailed, and sentences are fairly harsh. Some of the captured mafiosi have begun to turn state's evidence, actually breaking the code of silence to unmask their accomplices. The most famous of these pentiti is Tommaso Buscetta. Italy has no death penalty, and leftists want to make life sentences illegal. Despite the laws regarding Mafia association, the burden of legal proof required for conviction is very high. Unfortunately, the related matters of bribery and corruption in public life are difficult to address.

Many Sicilians have literally given their lives in the war against the Mafia. Some of Sicily's more prominent politicians would have us believe that the Mafia is nearly extinct. (Perhaps those who promote such a fantasy are themselves involved with bribes or kickbacks.) Reports of its early demise are greatly exaggerated.