The History of the Mafia

179 Pages·2012·16.53 MB·English

by  Nigel Cawthorne

This edition printed in 2011 by Arcturus Publishing Limited
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Copyright © 2011 Arcturus Publishing Limited
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ISBN: 978-1-84837-858-2
AD001785EN
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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Corbis, Getty Images, Topfoto, ED Archives and New York Public Library. All
cover images are from Corbis, except for bottom left which is from Topfoto. For more information contact
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Sicilian Vespers
Chapter 2: The Black Hand
Chapter 3: Prohibition
Chapter 4: The Castellammarese War
Chapter 5: The Commission
Chapter 6: The Mafia versus Mussolini
Chapter 7: The Mafia Wars
Chapter 8: The Strip and the Boardwalk
Chapter 9: The French Connection
Chapter 10: The Pentiti
Epilogue
INTRODUCTION
T
he Italian criminal societies that are now collectively known as the Mafia gradually
evolved on the small island of Sicily. Gangs of bandits had probably roamed the island
for some centuries. They would perhaps have survived by rustling cattle or kidnapping
for ransom. By the 18th century the names of some of the gangs and their leaders began
to be recorded, but there was still little or no communication between them.
Then somewhere around the middle of the 19th century these isolated bands
discovered a common purpose when they began to unite against the island’s hated
Bourbon rulers. It was at about this time, also, that they began to be referred to as the
Mafia.
Valley of the Temples, Sicily, 1786 – travellers feared journeys at night, but daytime could be dangerous too
By the 1860s traditional banditry had given way to a gangster culture that permeated
the whole of Sicilian society. The Mafia took on roles such as tax collection or law
enforcement and it also began to control the island’s financial system. Anyone who
opposed the Mafia was dealt with in a swift and bloody fashion, so people began to fear
it. As a result, members of the Mafia became immune from prosecution and they were
able to ensure that politicians of their choice were elected. The Mafia became even
more resistant to authority when it began to collude with the Church. Finally, a savage
code of honour, the omèrta, ensured that all disciplinary matters were dealt with within
the society, rather than by the authorities. Members were also required to observe a
strict code of silence. Any infringement of these rules was punishable by death.
The influence of the Mafia soon spread far beyond the shores of Italy and Sicily. In
the early 20th century thousands of organized crime figures entered the United States,
often illegally. Soon the tentacles of the Mafia entwined themselves around every
aspect of American life. And because of its central role in the drug trafficking industry,
the Mafia quickly spread its web across Britain, Canada and Australia.
Even though many Mafia members might well be ruthless, antisocial criminals, their
arguably ‘glamorous’ lifestyle has captured the public imagination, both in real life and
fiction. Thousands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens have flocked to see gangster
movies such as The Godfather and Goodfellas and many well-known personalities have
been flattered by the attentions of prominent mobsters.
Many people have tried to stamp the Mafia out. They include Palermo police chief
Cesare Mori, Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, campaigning cop Joe Petrosino,
Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy, the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act) prosecutors and Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the
crusading judges. Some of them lost their lives in the struggle. However, the campaign
against the Mafia has recently been greatly assisted by the fact that the omertà – the
code of silence – has now been broken. The testimony of the pentiti – the ‘penitent
ones’ – has led to mass arrests in Sicily and the United States and people in Sicily are
now saying addiopizzo – ‘goodbye to the pizzo’ (Mafia protection money).
The traditional Mafia organization might now be in decline, but criminals will always
find a way. In the United States, the Russian Mafia and the Yakuza – the Japanese
Mafia – are moving in, while old Mafia families such as the Lucchese are making new
alliances with African-American gangs such as the Bloods.
While the story of the Mafia may not be over, it is a long and enthralling tale which is
drenched in blood and scored with betrayal. Ostensibly, mafiosi adhere to a strict code
of honour, yet they will stick a knife into anyone’s back for the purpose of
advancement. They are ruthless businessmen who eliminate the competition by killing –
they are soldiers who go to war on the streets.
Opposing the Mafia has always been a risky business. In May 1992, Judge Giovanni Falcone died in his car
after a roadside bomb exploded
A History of the Mafia is full of blood-chilling characters: Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the
New York mobster who lured Joe Petrosino to his death in Palermo; Al Capone, who
ran Chicago during the Prohibition era; Lucky Luciano, who escaped death and then life
imprisonment by lending Mafia support to the war effort; Don Calogero Vizzini, who
eliminated the enemy when the Allies invaded Sicily; Vito Genovese, who made money
from both sides during the war; Meyer Lansky, the racketeer who never spent a day in
jail; hitmen Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter and Albert Anastasia, who ran Murder, Inc.;
Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, who turned Las Vegas into the home of gambling; Giuseppe
‘Joe Bananas’ Bonanno, who crossed the Five Families and walked away with his life;
Tommaso Buscetta, the ‘Don of the Two Worlds’; Salvatore ‘Totò’ Riina, ‘boss of
bosses’; John Gotti, ‘The Teflon Don’; Bernardo ‘The Tractor’ Provenzano, who hid
out in a farmhouse for 43 years. The list goes on.
These were extraordinary men who lived through extraordinary times, times that are
rapidly disappearing. A History of the Mafia tells the story of their lives, their families,
their codes, their crimes and their cold-blooded murders.
Nigel Cawthorne
1
THE SICILIAN VESPERS
The Sicilian Vespers, 1282
G
iuseppe Bonanno grew up in the Mafia stronghold of Castellammare del Golfo. He
went on to become the head of one of New York’s Five Families, where he was known
as ‘Joe Bananas’. As a child he was told the story of the Sicilian Vespers.
Joseph ‘Joe Bananas’ Bonanno walks through a group of reporters, New York City, 1966
In the 13th century, Sicily was under French domination. As the people of
Palermo made their way to evening worship – vespers – during Easter week of
1282, there were tax collectors waiting outside the churches. Their job was to
arrest those who were in arrears. They handcuffed debtors and dragged them
away to jail, publicly shaming them by slapping their faces – an intolerable
insult to a Sicilian.
A young lady of rare beauty, who was soon to be married, was going to church
with her mother when a French soldier named Droetto grabbed hold of her,
under the pretext of helping the tax collectors. He then dragged the girl behind
the church and raped her. Her distraught mother ran through the streets, crying:
‘Ma fia, ma fia!’ (‘My daughter, my daughter’, in the Sicilian dialect). The girl’s
fiancé found Droetto and stabbed him to death. Meanwhile, the mother’s cry,
‘Ma fia’, raced through the streets of Palermo and onwards throughout Sicily.
According to Bonanno, ‘Ma fia’ became the rallying cry of the resistance
movement, who declared that it was an acronym for ‘Morte alla Francia, Italia
anela’ (‘Death to France, Italy cries out’).
This story is based on historical truth. There was indeed an insurrection called the
Sicilian Vespers that began on Easter Monday 1282, with French soldiers being killed at
vespers in the church of Santo Spirito in Sicily. However, scholars have dismissed the
notion that the incident represented the beginning of the Mafia. But that did not worry
Bonanno, who was less concerned by the veracity of the story than the Sicilian spirit it
exemplified.
Bonanno also told the story of another insurrection that was supposedly related to the
origins of the Mafia, but this time his account might have been closer to the truth. In his
grandfather’s time Italy had yet to be unified, because it was still a patchwork of rival
states. At that time, Sicily and Naples – then jointly known as the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies – were under the control of the Bourbon dynasty, a royal family that also ruled
in France and Spain. Then in 1860 the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and 1,000 of
his followers, wearing their distinctive red shirts, landed in Sicily. Although the Red
Shirts were vastly outnumbered by the Bourbon army, the men of Sicily rallied to
Garibaldi – not because they wanted a united Italy, but because they wanted to get rid of
the Bourbons. With Garibaldi’s aid, Sicily was liberated. Garibaldi and his Red Shirts
then crossed the Strait of Messina and went on to unite Italy under King Victor
Emmanuel of Savoy. But the people of Sicily soon discovered that they had merely
swapped one external ruler for another. Nothing else had changed.
According to Bonanno, the concept of Italian nationhood never stirred Sicilians
deeply.
‘It was a vague concept that required men to give their highest loyalty to an abstract
entity, the nation, rather than to their families, which were flesh and blood. It would
require young men to fight foreign wars on behalf of the national state, to fight
strangers from whom one had never received a personal affront or injury, to fight people
one didn’t even know… Sicilians are among the most idealistic people on earth, but
they are not abstract. They like things on a human scale. Even in the smallest business
transactions, they like to deal with each other man to man, eyeball to eyeball. It is no
different when they fight. They take fighting very personally. They believe in personal,
not abstract, honour.’