It exists. Today, it is a symptom of Sicily's endemic political corruption, a phenomenon which has only worsened in recent years, with the widespread theft of European Commission funding destined, in principle, for Sicilian economic development. Bribes, kickbacks and outright theft by politicians closely allied with (or actually members of) the Mafia is a fact of life in Sicily. Considering its profound influence on Sicilian life, no history of twentieth-century Sicily can be complete or accurate without mentioning the most famous Sicilian fraternity. Tragically, it is the single socio-economic factor that distinguishes Sicily's economic base from those of other European Mediterranean regions such as Spain, Portugal and Greece, placing Sicily at a clear disadvantage. It is one of the world's most enduring criminal organizations, and one of the most serious social problems confronting Sicily today. In recent years, it has deliberately murdered judges, priests and children. Its hierarchy and vernacular are a reflection of Sicilian society itself, complete with religious allusions: Its ruling council is the "Cupola," its longtime head, Michele Greco, was nicknamed "The Pope," a leader of "families" and "clans." But, like the nobility, the Mafia is invisible. You probably won't see it if you visit Sicily. You probably won't see many of its effects, either, unless you look very closely. Those who presume that today's Sicilians do not think about the Mafia are sorely mistaken. (We don't usually link to sites that don't have English text, but this topic is important enough to merit an exception. For more information on the Mafia in Sicily, we suggest the sites of Via Libera and Narco Mafie. A special site, L'Altra Sicilia deals with social issues and occasionally reports on things such as political corruption and misappropriation of EC funds. Best of Sicily commends the efforts of these citizens and their dedication to the people of Sicily.)

In the Beginning

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 Pantelleria, 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.

Politicians as Mafiosi

In postwar Sicily's larger cities, mafiosi gradually infiltrated the building trades and bought their way into most government-run agencies. Why are the newer districts of Palermo full of ugly buildings but lacking in green parks and efficient parking areas? Because the urban planning was undertaken by criminals. The Mafia, albeit often indirectly, built nearly half of the "new" city of Palermo, where the notoriously corrupt mayor Salvo Lima and his successor, Vito Ciancimino, literally sold building permits to Mafia front-men. (The Italian government has extensive investigative dossiers on the activities of both men, now deceased.) The Mafia even controlled the local beef market. And the Mafia built (and still operates) a few of Sicily's largest hotels.

The Catholic Church has not always helped matters. Some priests now speak out against the Mafia (though pastors of Corleone, traditionally a Mafia stronghold, have not usually been among them), and at least one cleric has been murdered for doing so. In the 1960s, however, a Cardinal Archbishop of Palermo issued a statement that the Mafia has never existed, and that author Giuseppe di Lampedusa and social activist Danilo Dolci had defamed Sicilians by implying that, among other things, most Sicilians were secretive by nature, and that the Mafia does indeed exist.

How does such an organization survive into the twenty-first century? Nobody knows for certain. It probably has a great deal to do with social factors --things like high unemployment, widespread lack of confidence in the competence of law enforcement authorities, distrust of the state. But the general secretiveness of the people is one of the main reasons organized crime is still so powerful in the Italian South, where common folk often seem suspicious of even the most ordinary social forces. The Italian ethos is based on the realities of everyday life: Italians presume that their elected leaders are thieves motivated by greed. Businessmen presume that associates will steal at the first opportunity. Labor unions presume that employers will seek to exploit employees whenever possible. Spouses presume that marital infidelity is simply a question of human nature, and even use a particular word, "cornuto," to describe betrayed husbands.

Entire economic sectors (hotels, transportation, banking, construction) are controlled by Mafiosi. In a land without a tangible industrial base, public monies are the Mafia's main target. Everything has its price. Most politicians (whether liberal or conservative) can be bought, and the same holds true for managers of most larger banks and utilities. In Sicily, many (if not most) public or semi-public jobs are sold for money or sex. (An attractive, smart but unemployed young woman is easy prey in a region with a perpetual 30% unemployment rate.) Public contracts are assigned (actually sold) in exchange for bribes and kickbacks. Everybody expects a substantial kickback, from the politician who gets you a public advertising or construction project to the event organizer who gets your musical group a gig in the local music festival. In business, money laundering is a way of life. It's all part of "The New Mafia." In such a climate, the pizzo (protection money) and narcotics trades are little more than a side show.

Buying the European Commission

Against such a backdrop, one easily understands that the Mafia is not always the primary cause of organised crime in Sicily. More often, it is a simple symptom of the corruption that permeates almost every aspect of public and professional life in Sicily. New corruption is born every day: In recent years, certain local politicians who have spoken against the Mafia have covertly purchased large sections of Palermo's historical district through front companies (there were no public auctions), and given well-paying "consulting" jobs to their friends and relations.

Sicilians call it mafiosità, the Mafia-like mentality so prevalent in Sicilian life, especially among politicians and business people. This doesn't always mean that somebody is a mafioso per se, just that he behaves like one. Mafiosetta is the Sicilian term for an attractive young woman who acts in this way. Clientelism, nepotism and the excessive use of "recommendations" to assign everything from public construction contracts to clerical jobs foster widespread corruption, and therefore organised crime. Bribery and kickbacks (the Italian word is bustarella for the envelope, busta, in which the money is paid) are normal in Sicily. Billions of dollars poured into the Sicilian economy by the World Bank, the United States, the European Commission and the central Italian government have ended up in the hands of corrupt politicians, consultants and others who, in most instances, were connected to the Mafia in some way. In many cases, the children or grandchildren of Mafiosi and Mafia-collaborators who stole money earmarked for Sicilian development under the Marshall Plan decades ago are now "respectable" citizens who one would not overtly associate with organised crime. In other words, the families have become legitimate. To many Sicilians, wealth is viewed as an end in itself; the methods employed to gain it are of little importance so long as misdeeds go unpunished. It's no secret that the criminal justice system does not function very well in Italy. And where there is no law, there is no sin.

The sale of jobs is not limited to banks, national companies (telecommunications, energy, airlines) and public administration. Until the 1990s, military promotions in Italy (in the Carabinieri and Army) to colonel or general were often based on bribes equal to around $20,000, linked to a "recommendation," of course. Hence the lack of prestige attached to such ranks.

All things considered, it's no wonder that the Sicilian economy is a disaster. It's rather embarrassing when the first large-scale organ transplant unit in Sicily (ISMETT) is established only in the late 1990s, and then with the help of an American hospital. It makes Sicily seem like an under-developed country.

Were it not so ironic, it would be amusing to see the deceptive manner in which officials often disguise their efforts to exploit the status quo by overtly supporting pointless "anti-Mafia" public awareness campaigns while robbing public monies.

Sadly, the European Commission and the central Italian government support many so-called "development" projects in Sicily, few of which result in little more than untaxed wealth for the projects' managers. Indeed, the phenomenon has spawned an entire industry as politicians and their friends scramble to propose projects with grossly inflated budgets. In the 1980s, a new profession, that of the progettista, was born. The term refers to the "project consultant" who seeks European Commission funds on behalf of a town or governmental agency (presumably one lacking personnel competent to know how to manage public money efficiently, as though that were an esoteric art), and then spends these monies, taking a large commission for himself and his cohorts. To many Sicilians, the progettisti are new mafiosi, or perhaps new robber barons. Considering the vast investments involved, the tangible results are precious few, apart from expensive vacation homes for the project administrators themselves. One can only conclude that Sicilian progettisti, Mafia proponents or Sicilian politicians have in some way infiltrated or corrupted elements of the European Commission in Brussels. It's a long way from stealing cattle in Corleone.

The Discovery of America

Our discussion concentrates on the Mafia in Sicily. It is worth mentioning, however, that outside Italy, the Mafia and its progeny have been the object of every form of fame that modern society carries in its sophisticated cinematic arsenal. The first films to depict the Mafia in an appealing light were made not in Italy, but in the United States, where authors like the late Mario Puzo presented American mafiosi as pseudo-aristocrats. It is an image still bolstered by television and film portrayals despite the fact that the American Mafia, if indeed it ever conformed very closely to such stereotypes, has been overshadowed in its own country by criminal organizations from South America, the Far East and Russia.

In Italy, films such as I Grimaldi ("The Grimaldis") present the glossy cinematic portrayal of the homegrown version of the Mafia based on the American model, complete with lavish homes, luxury cars and attractive, well-dressed people (its use of the name of the ruling dynasty of Monaco implicitly associating mafiosi with royalty). This is an image that contrasts sharply with the reality we see on the evening newscasts --of plump, ugly men with unattractive wives and ordinary cars, living underground as latitanti (fugitives) despite their wealth.

On the other side of the ocean, several Italian-American cultural organisations decry the persistent cinematic image as nothing less than bigotry, citing the (accurate) statistic that fewer than one percent of Italo-Americans or, for that matter, Italians, are in the Mafia. (Perhaps understandably, the same folks identify with more positive aspects of Italian society, such as the Renaissance, which, like organised crime, actually involved very few Italians.) A few of these organisations, echoing the official position held by the FBI until the 1970s, denied the very existence of the Mafia until it was mentioned in criminal cases in federal courts in the 1980s. Until then, anti-defamation lobbying garnered some isolated and unexpected results; it was strange, for instance, to hear references to "the syndicate" in American telefilms when everybody knew from context that the teleplays' characters were referring to the Mafia, which American mafiosi usually referred to as "our thing" or "our business." Sicilians laugh at the charming Italo-American myth that "the Mafia doesn't exist."

Unfortunately, cultural factors have sometimes added to the confusion; to outsiders, New Yorkers Rudolph Giuliani and John Gotti seemed to represent opposite sides of the same ethnic coin, and the negative side of that coin still appeals to some of America's Italian descendants in search of an easily-acquired cultural identity. Renting The Godfather trilogy at the video store is easier than reading Dante's Divine Comedy. But, one wonders, have the same "Mafia fans" ever seen The Leopard, In the Name of the Rose or Cinema Paradiso? (Do they know that the real Mafia murders innocent people, even women and children?) The Freshman and Married to the Mob were successful parodies, while The Untouchables and Goodfellas presented a slightly more accurate, and less varnished, view of the Mafia in America. The Sopranos, a popular American television series (also aired in Italy), portrays American-bred mafiosi as everybody's ordinary suburban (and white collar) neighbors, complete with barbecues, golf, psychotherapy and stock options. At least some sociologists criticize it as a ridiculous depiction of something that hardly even exists but millions of viewers find it entertaining.

In Italy, the cultural element creates fewer complexities. Italians recognise that today's mafiosi are drawn from the lowest social stratum, and nobody outside that social class would ever aspire to be a mafioso. Collaborating with the Mafia, however, is another story. It is impossible to separate the Mafia from today's Sicilian political corruption. Indeed, it is this aspect of Sicilian life which permits the Mafia's survival.

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.

The most authoritative book published in English on the Sicilian Mafia is the late Claire Sterling's Octopus - The Long Reach of the International Sicilian Mafia (New York and London 1990). Its extensive bibliography provides a wealth of material for anybody interested in reading further on this topic.