Abstract
“Italy’s Scourge: The Four Mafias” traces the evolution of the four major criminal organizations, the Mafia, Camorra, ’Ndrangheta, and Sacra Corona Unita. The discussion proceeds from the notion that organized crime took root where the State failed to establish its authority. In time, it grew in number and stature thanks in part to its collusion with powerful public officials. After World War II, the Mafia, in particular, transitioned from its mostly rural environment to the urban setting. The transition marked a drastic change: the old, “benevolent” mafiosi were replaced by violent gangsters eager to enter the lucrative drug market. But the newly found wealth, the author concludes, triggered their demise, as it led the authorities to mount an aggressive campaign aimed at confiscating their ill-gotten gains and sending them to prison.
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Notes
- 1.
Naples’s mayor took issue with Bindi’s statement. He insisted that Naples is in a revival upswing driven by a cultural redemption, a civic awakening, and a rebellion that will bring about the defeat of the Camorra: “Non si può dire che la camorra è elemento costitutivo quasi genetico della città. A Napoli, pur con tutti i problemi, è iniziato un riscatto culturale, un risveglio civile, una ribellione che porterà alla sconfitta della camorra” (Del Porto).
- 2.
In a speech celebrating the conversion of Riina’s confiscated residence into a police headquarters, Alfano pointed out that the State is stronger than the Mafia, and concluded: “I mafiosi non sono solo degli assassini, ma sono anche ladri di futuro, speranza e di bellissime parole del nostro vocabolario come onore, famiglia e rispetto” (“Caserma nell’ex covo di Riina”).
- 3.
With reference to the play I mafiusi di la Vicaria, Giuseppe Guido Loschiavo suggests that the term camorra is “anteriore alla onorata società calabrese e alla mafia siciliana” (in Onofri, 58).
- 4.
Liborio Romano wrote, “era mia intenzione tirare un velo sul loro passato, e chiamare i migliori fra essi a far parte della novella forza di polizia, la quale non sarebbe stata più composta di tristi sgherri, e di vili spie, ma di gente onesta” (20–21).
- 5.
Verse
Verse Chi ve po’ cchiù difennere? senz’isso che ffacite? a chi jate a rricorrere si quacche ttuorto avite? Isso, sul’isso, era àbbele a fa scuntà sti tuorte … . (in Ferrero and Sighele, 187)
- 6.
“il maggiore esponente delle camorre di Terra di Lavoro” (in Criscione, 42). On Romano’s criminal activities, see also Criscione, 231–63.
- 7.
Littlefield’s “Cuocolo Trial” appeared on March 5, 1911. In a subsequent article, “The Confession that May Be Camorra’s Death Knell,” he wrote, “fifty-odd members of the Camorra now on trial at Viterbo.” According to Barbagallo, 27, the actual number of defendants was 47. Soon after the trial, under a law authorizing a state of siege, 300 camorristi were arrested in Naples and 200 in Caserta.
- 8.
The speech, delivered on May 26, 1927, is also known as the “Discorso dell’Ascensione.”
- 9.
Norman Lewis was a British officer in World War II who was stationed in Naples during the Allied invasion of Italy. As a Field Security police officer he had ample opportunity to see crime at first hand and record it in detail. In his diary-format book, he describes the lawlessness reigning in the city of Naples. He emphasizes the role of the Camorra in smuggling one third of all the military supplies and equipment unloaded in the city’s port.
- 10.
A film adaptation entitled The Mayor was produced in 1996, starring Antony Quinn in the role of Antonio Barracano. The film was directed by Ugo Fabrizio Giordani and is set in the United States.
- 11.
Saviano’s book was an immediate sensation and went on to become a best-seller, selling over ten million copies worldwide. The movie, directed by Matteo Garrone, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival in 2008, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. The 2014 television series was based on the book and on the movie.
- 12.
A large swath of the territory is under the military and financial control “di gruppi criminali la cui presenza condiziona e inquina ogni attività economica e in gran parte politica, influendo sulle scelte più importanti e spesso controllando enti e amministrazioni pubbliche” (“L’allarme dei procuratori: criminalità in aumento”).
- 13.
“A Napoli, pur con tutti i problemi,” the mayor pointed out, “è iniziato un riscatto culturale, un risveglio civile, una ribellione che porterà alla sconfitta della camorra” (Del Porto).
- 14.
Writing around the turn of the twentieth century, Gaetano Mosca observed that the Bourbons often entrusted local clans with the city’s security, thus keeping “ordine per mezzo del disordine” (12).
- 15.
Napoleone Colajanni endorsed Franchetti and Sonnino’s definition of the Mafia as the “medieval sentiment” of those who believe that a man of honor should avenge a wrong without relying on the law. Given the total absence of law and justice, wrote Franchetti and Sonnino, violence is the only means to demand respect, “il modo più efficace per farsi rispettare” (La Sicilia, §23). Also, Mosca made a distinction between the “spirito mafioso,” peculiar to all Sicilians, and the organization of criminals (3–25). Virgilio Titone argues that the Mafia, far from being something accidental, must be seen as the very soul of Sicily, “deve considerarsi da un lato come espressione dell’anima dell’isola” (158). The one-time Prime Minister of Italy Vittorio Emanuele Orlando shared the notion of the Mafia as the expression of the island’s cultural trait. In a 1925 speech at the Diana movie theater in Palermo, Orlando called himself a proud mafioso if by such a term was meant a man with a high sense of honor and intolerance of abuse, “Se per mafia, infatti, si intende il senso dell’onore portato fino all’esagerazione, l’insofferenza contro ogni prepotenza e sopraffazione” (Giannò).
- 16.
Sciascia writes that the ranks of local police squads or compagnie d’armi included thieves and assassins who were in league with the scores of outlaws who roamed the countryside, “ladri e assassini che trovavano convenienza a star dalla parte della legge [e che facevano] ottima lega coi briganti che infestavano le contrade” (Gli zii di Sicilia, 289).
- 17.
In his 1898 report to Prime Minister Luigi Gerolamo Pelloux, buried in state archives and discovered only in 1980, Sangiorgi asked for government help in his fight against Mafia bosses, who were “sotto la salvaguardia di Senatori, Deputati ed altri influenti personaggi che li proteggono e li difendono per essere poi, alla lor volta, da essi protetti e difesi” (68).
- 18.
On Palizzolo’s lengthy trials, see Dickie, Mafia, 228–44.
- 19.
The 1993 film Il giorno di San Sebastiano, directed by Pasquale Scimeca, is a masterful dramatization of the massacre. In 1994, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best First Feature.
- 20.
In 1914, the Socialist militants Mariano Barbato and Giorgio Pecoraro were also murdered.
- 21.
The technical term was “confino di polizia,” but most people referred to it as “all’isola.” Regarding the number of arrests and convictions during Mori’s reign of terror, see Dickie, Mafia, 297, and Cosa nostra, 156–57.
- 22.
Although there is no question that these individuals played a role in advising the Americans, their influence has been overestimated.
- 23.
Camilleri includes a long list of labor and political leaders murdered by the Mafia between 1945 and 1966 (Come la penso, 93–94).
- 24.
Benito Li Vigni argues that the massacre was part of a sustained terrorist strategy meant to influence the upcoming elections: “Che Portella rientrasse in una strategia terroristica in vista delle elezioni politiche del 18 aprile 1948, lo dimostrano i successivi attacchi sferrati da Giuliano alle sedi del PCI e del PSI e delle Camere del Lavoro in numerosi comuni del palermitano nel corso dei quali furono assassinati o feriti numerosi lavoratori” (Sicilia, 28).
- 25.
The May 27 attack was followed by a series of car bombs in Rome and Milan. The bombings claimed ten lives and more than 20 wounded, besides structural damage to several important buildings. As for the assassinations of public officials, the mob murdered: Sicily’s governor Piersanti Mattarella (1980); the regional secretary of the Communist Party Pio La Torre (1982); the prefect General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (1982); Judge Rocco Chinnici (1983); the former mayor of Palermo Giuseppe Insalaco (1988); Judge Antonino Saetta (1988); Judge Antonino Scopelliti (1991); the prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino (1992); the former mayor of Palermo Salvo Lima (1992); Father Pino Puglisi (1993); and the journalists Cosimo Cristina (1960), Mauro De Mauro (1970), Giovanni Spampinato (1972), Mario Francese (1979), Giuseppe Fava (1984), and Mauro Rostagno (1988).
- 26.
Michael Day, in his 2014 article “Italian Police,” reported that in April 2013 the courts seized assets worth €1.3 billion from Vito Nicastri, a likely front man for Matteo Denaro Messina—a true pittance for a criminal industry which, according to estimates by the distinguished anti-racket association Sos Impresa (2014), brings in annual revenues in excess of €100 billion.
- 27.
In 2015, the journalists Giuseppe Baldessarro, Fabio Tonacci, and Francesco Viviano reported that the Italian police and the FBI had identified “la ‘centrale operativa’ della ’ndrangheta che da New York, attraverso suoi ‘corrispondenti’ in Colombia, Costarica, Olanda, Spagna e Italia, ha gestito fino a oggi il traffico”).
- 28.
“Vendicarsi! Sì, sì … vendicarsi! Quando la giustizia degli uomini diventa una beffa, non resta altro sulla terra!” (Montalto, Kindle at 97%).
- 29.
Suffice it to recall the 2010 bombings of the courthouse in Reggio Calabria and the house of the prosecutor Salvatore Di Landro.
- 30.
More specifically, Lawrence wrote, “Italian investigators estimate that 80% of Europe’s cocaine arrives from Colombia via Gioia Tauro’s docks, along with regular consignments of Kalashnikov and Uzi guns. The trade, and most of the area, is controlled by the 100–200 families of the ’Ndrangheta.”
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DiMaria, S. (2018). Italy’s Scourge: The Four Mafias. In: Towards a Unified Italy. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90766-6_6
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