The Crime Book

140

T

he Mafia has its roots in

the 19th-century orange

and lemon groves of

western Sicily. Citrus fruits were

a particularly lucrative commodity

during this period, and if the yield

was good, the owner of a Sicilian

lemon grove could expect to turn

a substantial profit. Unfortunately,

lemon trees were vulnerable to

temporary water shortages –

something all too common in Sicily.

The potential to reap significant

profits combined with the fruit’s

precariousness gave rise to a

particularly Sicilian form of crime:

citrus fruit protection rackets.

THE SICILIAN MAFIA

Failed investigations

Dr Galati of Palermo – the

capital of Sicily and the Mafia’s

epicentre – was driven from his

citrus farm by this type of racket.

Although he complained to the

police, they did nothing about it.

This convinced the doctor that the

investigators were working in

tandem with his harassers. In 1874,

Dr Galati abandoned his business

and moved his family to Naples.

Galati had learned that an

influential gangster named Antonio

Giammona, who was based in the

village of Uditore, was running

protection rackets to extort money

from the owners of western Sicily’s

lemon groves. His goal was to

develop a monopoly on the fruit.

Giammona’s influence not only

extended to the police and local

politicians but also to the cart

drivers and dock workers who

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

Sicily, Italy

THEME

Crime families

BEFORE

c. 1800 The Camorra, a

confederation of criminal

families, emerges in the

Kingdom of Naples; eventually,

it controls the region’s milk,

coffee, and fish industries.

AFTER

1850s ’Ndràngheta forms in

Calabria, southern Italy. By the

late 1990s, it has become the

most powerful crime syndicate

in Italy. Its activities include

extortion, money laundering,

and drug trafficking.

Late 19th century The

American Mafia emerges

among Italian immigrant

families in New York’s East

Harlem, the Lower East Side,

and Brooklyn.

My name is Mori and I will

make people die! Crime must

vanish just as this dust carried

away by the wind vanishes!

Cesare Mori

19th-century mafiosi exchange fire

with the carabinieri in the town of Vita

in the province of Trapani in West

Sicily, one of the region’s six towns

with a strong Mafia presence.

transported the goods. A member

of the Italian parliament, Diego

Tajani, asserted that the Sicilian

Mafia was not intrinsically deadly

and invincible; rather, it was its

ability to collaborate with and

embed itself in local governments

that gave the Mafia great power.

In August 1875, Galati

submitted the first known report

of “Mafia” activities in Sicily to the

Minister of the Interior in Rome,

noting that although the population

of Uditore was 800, there had been

23 murders in 1874 alone. Although

nothing was done to help Galati,

his memorandum forced the

national government to look at

the growing problem in the south.

From the 1800s to the end of

World War I, government officials

and scholars conducted further

investigations into the Mafia, or

“Cosa Nostra”, often following a

high-profile murder or a spate of

killings. Although individual

mafiosi (members of the Mafia)

were indicted, the organization was

never successfully systematically

pursued or prosecuted. Meanwhile,

the Mafia continued to conspire

with municipal governments and

police to exercise a subtle,

profitable, and coercive influence

on Sicilian life.

138-145_Sicilian_Mafia.indd 140 02/12/2016 14:43

141

An Italian police handout of nine

suspected Mafia members accused of

drug trafficking in Sicily. The handout

was part of a 2008 international

operation codenamed “Old Bridge”,

which targeted 50 suspects in New

York and 30 in Sicily.

Fascist enforcers

The most successful efforts to

quash the Sicilian Mafia were

initiated in 1925 by Cesare Mori,

a prefect of Palermo operating

under the Fascist government of

Benito Mussolini. His tactics were

simple – the use of authoritarian

power in conjunction with strong-

arm tactics. Mori, who did not

believe that the Mafia was a

unified structure, set up an

“interprovincial” anti-Mafia police

force and arrested 11,000 Sicilians,

including many mafiosi and bandits

but also innocent civilians. He

processed them through mass

trials, which he concealed from

the press. Eventually, Mussolini

could proclaim to the nation that

organized crime had been crushed

in Italy. During this time,

approximately 500 mafiosi fled to

the US, where they established the

Sicilian mob in America.

The Allied invasion of Sicily in

1943 inadvertently restored the

Mafia to power. When the fascist

government was overthrown, a

power vacuum ensued, particularly

at municipal levels. This allowed

the Mafia to step back into the

positions they had occupied before

Mussolini’s rise.

Resolving disputes

During a 1957 trip to Sicily,

New York mobster Joe Bonanno

suggested that their European

counterparts establish a committee

to resolve disputes. Prominent

mafiosi Tommaso Buscetta,

Gaetano Badalamenti, and

Salvatore Greco began drafting the

rules, and the following year, the

first Sicilian Mafia Commission

was formed in Palermo. The

commission intended to resolve

disputes among families and

individuals, to determine

punishment for breaching the rules

of the Mafia, and to control the

use of violence against members

of government, lawyers, and ❯❯

See also: The Triads 146–49 ■ The Beer Wars 152–53 ■ The Yakuza 154–59

ORGANIZED CRIME

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