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SANTA REPARATA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF ART
Academic Year 2015/2016
Spring Term 2016
History of Italian Mafia
Prof. Lorenzo Pubblici Ph.D.
Study Guide
The origin of Sicilian Mafia: 1815-1870: protomafia
Historical characters of Sicily
• Ancien Regime, The European Society before the French Revolution (1789), based on a rigid
social scale and the predominance of aristocracy.
• The Spanish rule (since the 14th century) had created a system of personal ties that had
become more important than the official institutions
• 1860’s: The Unification of Italy brought about a harsh resentment against the Continent
• The Legge Pica (1863) introduced very hard measures against the Brigantaggio.
• The resentment against the Central Italian Government increases.
Democratization of violence
• Early 1800’s: end of the Ancien Regime (because of the Napoleonic conquest of Italy) and end
of feudalism.
• Democratization of violence: can be defined as the Right of using violence against the peasants
- i.e. day laborers - transferred from aristocracy to State.
• The new born Italian State introduced a professional magistracy and a professional police corp,
for the first time nationally wise.
• Birth of a perverse relationship between the new power (local institutions) and the old one
(aristocracy).
• This new situation had as one outcome the convergence of interests between landowners and
criminals.
• This can be called, in other words the mafia .
The Gabellotti
• Tenants, administrators of sulfur mines or of the latifondo
• Came from the village elites
• Maintained order and social control on the people also beyond the limit of the farm
• They replace the 1700’s feudal militia and the 1800’s communal militia
• They filled up the spaces that the State left empty, before and after the Unification
• Disintegration of the big noble patrimonies
• The Gabellotti were capable of intercept/grab the fluxes of this wealth
• With an increase of their resources, their capability of intimidating, through violence if
necessary grew as well
Social causes for the birth of the mafia
• Social unrest, criminal emergency, political opposition etc.
• 1815-1860: Political and social discontent; opposition to the official regime seen as a tyrant
• Political violence is the naturally the original environment for the birth of mafia
• The abigeato (rustling) was one very effective weapon used by the criminals to blackmail the
landlords.
• It created a need of protection, filled by new figures, the criminals/mafiosi: extra-legal methods
• The mafioso integrated himself between the peasants and the land owners
• Slowly the owners lose their rights, as they have been replaced by the newly formed
unitarian State
• The mafioso sells a good: protection, in a framework of distrust
• The mafia represents, in the young Italian Nation, a new institutional system, parallel to
the official State one
The first step: 1875
• Mafia becomes an extraordinary problem
• 1875: a new bill to allow the Govt. to issue exceptional measures against brigands is presented
to the parliament
• The word mafiosi appear for the first time in an official political document
• The bill was directed to Sicily, considered an primitive and anti-government region The Giunta Borsoni
• July 3rd 1875: a parliamentary Commission is created to investigate on the social and economic
conditions in Sicily
• It is an invaluable document to study the proto-mafia: three kinds of mafia appear in the
document:
1. blood crimes
2. theft in the country
3. associations of bandits Manutengolismo
• It’ another term to designate the early mafia. Let’s see what it was.
• Brigands cannot work alone
• Birth of illegal relations between the several criminals of the same area. This relations are
called manutengolismo
• A political debate arose in those years (late 1800’s):
• Traditionally, the Italian late 19th century politics is divided into two parts:
1.
The National right wing was against the land owners
2. the left wing was against the authorities
• It’s a very simplistic view, even if based on reality
• The landlords needed to defend themselves and their estates
• February 1st 1893, First important homicide by the mafia: the conservative Sicilian
banker Emanuele Notarbartolo di San Giovanni is assassinated. Was a tireless enemy
of the mafia. His battles against corruption are still today remembered in Sicily.
• For the first time the Mafia kills an aristocrat
1890’s: The land and the fasci
• What were the Fasci Siciliani?
• The Fasci Siciliani can be considered the first peasantry rebellion against the big landlords.
• We must explain the social situation first:
• Sicilian peasants were harshly exploited by the land owners
• Short-term contracts with the gabellotti, who exploited the peasants
• 1891: birth of the Fasci which were socialist agrarian trade unions
• But what did they want?
1. a more just distribution of land,
2. more fair/profitable contracts
• They cannot be considered as revolutionary movements as they did not want to subvert the
political order.
• 1893: the Government harshly repress them
• Their leader, Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida is trailed and imprisoned
• The mafia participated in both sides: infiltrators in the fasci and allied of the gabellotti (or
gabellotti themselves) to repress the revolts.
The end of the fasci
• The repression moved the equilibrium in favor of the State
(and the landlords)
• The mafia (Onorata società or Fratellanza) understands
the tendency
• 1915: Bernardino Verro is assassinated in Corleone
• Verro was a unionist, active in pursuing the right of the
peasants to have a more just distribution of the land.
MAFIA AND POLITICS
The origin of a successful partnership: 1870-1880’s
Destra and Sinistra Storica
• In the late 1800’s, Italy was a politically divided country
1. Destra Storica: mostly land owners of Northern Italy
2. Sinistra Storica: mostly Southerners, who had strong ties to the local society • In the elections of 1874, the Destra wins, but by a whisker... (33% to 32%)
• Hard accusations against the Left, considered to be the political face of the mafia
• A highly repressive legislation soon after the elections
• A common thought was that the South, and Sicily in particular, were a dangerous place, polluted
by organized criminals
The Parliament’s turmoil
• The reaction of the Leftists to the Right’s accusations was harsh
• A crucial political confrontation
• On June 1875, while was delivering a speech on the mafia in the Parliament, Diego Tajani,
was interrupted many times
• He reported the connections between the police and the mafiosi in Sicily
• Tajani could finish his speech only the next day…
“The mafia in Sicily is not dangerous or invincible in itself. It is dangerous and invincible because it
is an instrument of local government.
• A parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up
• The results it got to, were banal and discouraging:
“What is this maffia then? First of all, there is a benign maffia. The benign maffia is a kind of spirit
of defiance... So I too could be a benign maffioso. I am not one, of course. But anyone who
respects themselves could be”
• The papers of the inquiry were never published
• Neither the Right nor the Left and much interest in understanding the Mafia
• The final report of the Commission was delivered in a almost empty Chamber
“Mafia is an instinctive, brutal, biased form of solidarity between those individuals and lower social
groups who prefer to live off violence rather than hard work. It unites them against the State, the
law and regular bodies”
• Again, a wrong, superficial view...
The Left (Sinistra Storica) in power
• March 1876: the Left coalition forms a new Government
• A neat win, new Minister of Interior was Giovanni Nicotera
• Another wave of harsh repression of crime in Sicily, but how did it happen for real?
• A“political”use of the police
• November 1877 Nicotera announced the “total defeat of the bandits who had terrorized the
countryside in Sicily since 1860
• Was it true?
• Nicotera’s bargain: political favor in exchange of favor to politics
• Many mafiosi were left untouched by the repression, if they had right political cover
• Mafiosi were gradually becoming part of a new political normality
• Political friendship become more important than ever to their survival Mafia and the Italian Culture
Inside and outside the organization
A new phenomenon for a new State
• Bandits:
• an intermediate phenomenon between the brigantaggio and the mafia poor peasants
• organized in mobs, moving from village to village
• occupied these villages with arms, imposed payments to maintain the mob had no political
aims
• All three phenomena: mafia, brigantaggio and banditismo had one common element:
• control over the territory in “substitution” of the State
• were three “subversive” phenomena
A double orientation
• Bandits in Sicily were oriented both
1. to the low
2. to the high of the social rank
• a very unique case in a very rigid society
• land owners, nobles, entrepreneurs, notaries had “friendly” relations with bandits friends of
bandits were often employed as guardians: campieri (which are the same of the gabellotti)
• were often well treated by the law But why?
The bandits and the “industry” of violence
• Bandits could boycott the higher classes of land owners and nobles general social insecurity
• friends of mafiosi, and then the mafiosi themselves, got the gabella, a rent of lands from the
owners in order to establish their agrarian activities
• That’s how the mafia becomes an industry
• organized and powerful economic activity
• the land owners were, in this way, victims and accomplices at the same time
• a defensive reaction in difficult conditions, but a decisive input to enforce the mafia
•
the mafia has thus two faces:
1. a criminal and predatory one: the bandits/brigands a protective
2. legal one: the campieri/gabellotti
An ambiguous system
• Personal utility and distrust in the Central Institutions
• The Manutengolismo (see above): complicity, a very vast phenomenon
• The use of violence became instrument of personal affirmation
• There existed, in fact:
•
a “popular” mafia: peasants, sulfur workers etc.
• a “middle class” mafia: bullying and violence as a means for social climbing
• The middle class mafia is the reason for the public opinion reaction to the mafia
considered to be a problem “internal” of criminal organizations
Mafia abroad
New Orleans, New York and Palermo
The American “virginity”
• 1890: capt. Hennessy, police of New Orleans, is assassinated
• It’s the beginning of the “stranger plot”
• A mysterious and subversive organization is considered to be behind it
• Head in Sicily and killers everywhere spread in the world
• The truth, is that in the USA, the Mafia loses its regional character and gets melted with other
mobs
• In other words, it is a new problematic, is a multiethnic organization
• The American public opinion is presented “the scandal for the non-integration “
“The innocent, harmless American people is victim of foreign criminals who, secretly, are steeling
its own moral virginity.
Joseph L. Albini, The American Mafia
• Also in the USA, the mafia is a link between the institutions and the illegal sub-world:
• Prostitution, gambling, smuggling etc.
• The pathogen germs are inside the American society (request of these goods)
• Here, just like in Sicily, the triangle is re-created: politics, police, criminality
From New Orleans to New York
• New Orleans was the second American port for the citrus commerce
• Fruit merchant are the Marino, Provenzano, Matranga etc. All famiglie mafiose
• 1901-1914: not less than 800,000 Sicilians arrive in the USA
• Many of them are criminals or, at least poor people
• The mafioso system spreads abroad
• 1908: city counselor Theodore Bingham moves a first step:
“the common Italian immigrant does not become a criminal once arrived in the USA”
• He believes that the American juridical system is inadequate, must be redrawn on the new
criminal scenario
• Bingham creates a “secret” operation. Secret, but not for too long…
• The Italian-American officer Joe Petrosino is sent in Sicily in order to discover the links
between the Sicilian mafia and the American one.
Joe Petrosino’s death
• Petrosino arrives in Sicily and refuses any collaboration
• He will end up into the lethal triangle
• March 12, 1909 is assassinated in Palermo, piazza Marina
• The investigations takes the police to arrest 15 men included the
boss Vito Cascio-Ferro
• Did not have a scary record…
•In 1903, Cascio-Ferro, was arrested by
Petrosino
•Cascio-Ferro was the son of a campiere
•Soon became uomo d’ordine and participated to the Fasci
•But, how come that a man like Cascio-Ferro participated an openly leftist
movement?
•It’s Only apparently a contradiction
“If the Government abandons it, it will serve the Clergy, if everybody
abandon it, it will become revolutionary”
“The mafia is faithful to its origin, born from the legitimate rebellion to every form of arrogance
L’Avanti! (Socialist newspaper)
WWI to Fascism
Mafia and its first “mutation”
Corleone
“The town is inhabited by pale, anaemic women, hollow-eyed men, ragged word children who
begged for bread, croaking in hoarse accents like weary old people tired of the world”
• This kind of poverty had simple causes:
• big landowners lived in the cities and leased out their estates (gabellotti)
• short leases, need of making money quickly and out of the peasants
• The gabellotti had to protect themselves, often in league with bandits
• The gabellotti were not necessarily mafiosi, but joining the Mafia helped them a lot
• The Mafia offered the military power needed to combat unruly peasants
• The town of Corleone was the focus of the nation’s attention
WWI
• May 1915, Italy gets into WWI
• more than 400,000 Sicilians were drafted
• many deserted, abandoned the cities and became clandestine
• lack of manpower, fields left uncultivated and used for herds
• cattle thefts, the owners called upon the mafiosi for help
• Because of this, the influence of the mafia increases quickly in Sicily
• The end of WWI, lead Italy to a deep economic crisis The rise of Fascism
In Sicily
• The issues that the Fasci had first tried to address in the 1890’s had not gone away
• Estates were occupied by force
• Landlords felt abandoned by Rome and began to resort to violence
• The mafia did the same towards the peasant cooperatives variously:
•
infiltrated, cajoled, corrupted, terrorized and if necessary, murdered
Fascism
• Took power in 1922, became a dictatorship in 1925
• In Sicily, Fascism was not a grass-roots movement:
• clienteles and cliques
• the mafia had already settled the strikes and revolts
• the mafiosi jumped on Mussolini’s victory chariot
• but Fascism lacked a strong base of popular support there
Towards the first “mutation”
• In the early 1920’s, Fascism was fully supported by the dominant Sicilian class
• Abolishment of the landlords limitation of raising the rents
• Open support, by the State, to the landlords against the mezzadri etc.
• In this situation, the mafia became useless. It was replaced by the Fascist State
“Fascism
aims to sweep away all the corruption poisoning the country’s politics and
administration. It aims to break the shady factions and maggoty cabals infesting the sacred body of
the nation. It cannot neglect this terrible centre of infection. If we want to save Sicily we must
destroy the mafia... Then we will be albe to set up our tents on the island; and they will be sounder
than the ones that we pitched in the north by doing away with socialism”
A senior Fascist militant to the Duce, April 1923
Mussolini and the mafia
• May 1924, Mussolini is in Palermo, Trapani and Girgenti
• In June, back to Rome, Mussolini nominates Cesare Mori as
prefect of Trapani
• Mori was a tough man, expert of organized crime and of Sicily
• he revoked all the licenses to carry and the licenses of
campiere
• Mussolini sends to Sicily the magistrate Luigi Gianpietro,
other rigid man
“I was able to penetrate the Sicilian mind. I found this mind,
beneath the painful scars with which centuries of tyranny and oppression had marked it, often
childlike, simple and kindly, apt to colour everything with generous feeling, ever inclined to deceive
itself, to hope and to believe, and ready to lay all its knowledge, its affection and its co-operation at
the feet of one who showed a desire to realize the people’s legitimate dream of justice and
redemption”
Cesare Mori
Mori and the repression
• 20 October 1925, Mori is moved to Palermo with extraordinary powers
• The repression is harsh
• torture, capture of civilians, blackmail
• In 1927, Mori arrested Vito Cascio Ferro for the assassination of Petrosino
• In 1928, the most influential man of Sicily, Alfredo Cucco was arrested
The decline of Mori
• The alta mafia became really scared of Mori’s repression
• A sneaky campaign against Mori started (secret letters to Mussolini, false news)
• Mori’s enemy inside the party came out again (Bologna 1921)
• Mori became “troublesome” for the regime
• July 1929, Mori was removed because of length of service
• Mori will die in 1942, Fascism the next year
Mori’s legacy
• After Mori’s retirement, the Ministry of Interior ordered the press to ignore the mafia
• The truth is that the mafia was “re-istitutionalizing" itself
• Small brigands and minor bandits were in prison
• Medium bosses moved to the USA or joined Fascism
• Mafia did not die, on the contrary, its final salvation came from overseas...
Mafia before and after WWII
Postwar again
• 1930’s: mafia is dead only on the press
• The Regime did hide the homicides, the fires, the extortions etc.
• The repression was going on, but without the intensity of the 1920’s
• In July 1943: the Anglo-Americans land in Sicily.
• The liberation starts and the Italian State is dissolved.
• What about the mafia?
How to govern?
• The temporary American government of Italy needed to govern, but how?
• Carabinieri and Police remain
• No other power or institution has survived the war, so?
• The reference model is the British colonial one: a native leader in power
• The mayors are chosen between pre-fascist notable men
• Social order is the first and most urgent necessity (fear of the black market)
• Mafia is acceptable, but it must be a centralized Mafia, that can be controlled and that is
capable to control the territory
• At the end of WWII Sicily is, in fact, detached from Italy
• Antifascist parties are weak here
• A Movement for Sicilian independence (MIS) is created
• Many mafiosi became members of the MIS
• The network broken by Mori, resurrect around the MIS
• For the first, and last time, the mafia seems to be looking for a political identity
• The mafiosi protest to be the real victims of Fascism, and they are credible
Destra o sinistra?
• Postwar Italy is a political rebus: new form of the State (Monarchi vs Republic), new Parliament,
new Govt.
• The Minister of Agriculture, Fausto Gullo, proposed a radical reform of the land question
• Peasants were to get a better share of the produce of land they worked and rented they
were given permission to form cooperatives and take over badly cultivated land
• Banishment of middlemen: this was a direct attack on the gabellotti
• Landowners feared the pre-war nightmare (Communism) to now come true
• They turned to the mafiosi to get a help in the question
• September 16th 1944: in Villalba (province of Caltanissetta) the
mayor and boss mafioso Calogero Vizzini organized an attack
against the Communists that were delivering a rally. 12 were the
victims.
• A new season of mafia attacks on political activists, trade
unionists and ordinary peasants In some towns and villages, the
peasant movement was terrorized into submission
• February 1944: the American Consulate is established in
Palermo
• It relied on the Office of Strategic Service for its intelligence
• The OSS in turn relied in part on the mafia, especially on don
Calogero Vizzini (see picture on the right)
The economic factor
• Fascism and war had made cattle and grain crucial for Sicily
• The province of Caltanissetta was the main producer of corn
• citrus export (Palermo) were, on the contrary, in a deep crisis because of the war
• Calogero Vizzini (aka don Calò) gets this chance and represents the move of the focus to the
countryside
• Don Calò is now, true or exaggerated, the most influential man in Sicily
Democrazia Cristiana
• When the American government in Sicily was dismantled, a new party got power in Italy:
Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in 1948
• DC promised the creation of a Regional Assembly in every Italian region
• Don Calò sees in the DC the best vehicle for his interests
• The DC was the party of family values, provate property, social peace, anticommunism
• Had the support of the Vatican
• 1947: Cold War starts. DC is the American political reference in Italy
• 1948: first political elections since Mussolini’s regime was established: it is a DC triumph
• The mafia doesn’t need separatism anymore. DC became its political reference both, nationally
and locally.
Another step in the transformation
of the mafia
SALVATORE GIULIANO
• The agrarian reform of minister Fausto Gullo (see above)
produced a harsh social crush
• Landlords, conservative and backed by gabellotti mafiosi
• Peasant movements, headed by unionists (Accursio
Miraglia, Placido Rizzotto and others)
• Spring 1945, the army of the MIS (see above), called EVIS,
recruited a bandit, Salvatore Giuliano
• The purpose of the MIS was to create the conditions for a
secession of Sicily
• But who was Salvatore Giuliano?
From the family farm to the mafia
• Giuliano was son of former migrant, went to school and worked hard in the family farm
• During the American occupation, he worked as a delivery man for the Public Energy Company
• His criminal career starts on Sept. 2nd, 1943: stopped at a checkpoint, reacted by shooting
• December 23rd, during a police search, he killed a carabiniere
• January 1944, Giuliano succeed in escaping from prison many of his relatives and friends
• It will be his first gang: robberies, kidnappings, extortions etc.
• In his whole activity, Giuliano killed not less than 430, with the support of Ignazio Miceli
• According to the depositions of his collaborators, Giuliano became a man of honor (mafioso) in
this period
Cornell of the EVIS
• Spring 1945, Giuliano became member of the EVIS as Cornell
• The guerrilla against the Italian police started
• Giuliano is presented, by the propaganda, as a sort of Robin Hood
• The Italian Government creates a General Inspectorate for the Police in Sicily: 1123 men
• January 1946, Giuliano’s gang attacked the Radio of Palermo, but something was about to
change...
The decline
• 1946, the MIS decides to go back to legality and participate
to the elections of June 2nd
• King Umberto II gives to Sicily a special status (17 days
before the referendum…)
• Same year, the Italian Government decides to give the
general amnesty for political crimes
• The MIS members leave the Giuliano’s gang
• The bandit is not anymore a Robin Hood, but just a vulgar
and violent criminal to eliminate
Portella della Ginestra
•Spring 1947, Giuliano gives an interview to the
American journalist Michael Stern
•Giuliano gives Stern a letter for President Truman,
asking for money and arms to make Sicily part of the
USA
•May 1st, circa 2,000 workers - mostly peasants - meet
nearby Portella della Ginestra (Palermo)
•Giuliano’s gang suddenly start shooting on the crowd 11
are killed, 27 seriously wounded
The end
• The homicides, attacks to police and carabinieri stations, fires etc. continues for months
• August 19th, 1949: the massacre of Bellolampo-Passo di Rigano 7 carabinieri were killed
• The Ministry of Interior suppress the General
Inspectorate and creates the CFRB
• The CFRB used all the means, legal and illegal to find
and defeat Giuliano’s gang
• July 5th 1950, Giuliano is found dead in the courtyard
of an attorney’s house in Castelvetrano
• Officially Giuliano was killed in a shooting with the
carabinieri, but things don’t match..
The debate
• Suspects fall immediately on Giuliano’s lieutenant, Gaspare Pisciotta
• During the trial for the massacre of Portella della Ginestra, Pisciotta confessed and accused…
Pisciotta was not believed, but things seemed to confirm his version: Pisciotta was an informer of
the CFRB, had false documents too well done
1954, Pisciotta died in the prison of Palermo, poisoned with a coffee
After Giuliano
• 1950: a new agrarian reform is launched:
• land property was limited to circa 494 acres (200 Ettari)
• Landlords were compelled to keep the land (improve, recovery, reclamation etc.)
• Many new companies were created to realize this plan
• Most of them were soon given to well-known mafiosi: don Calò, Giuseppe Genco Russo etc.
• Estates were dismembered, agriculture became cheaper compared to commerce and
services Public companies started hiring people
• And the country was about to change... radically
The first turning point
Cosa nostra and the Italian economic miracle (1950’s-1960’s)
The sack of Palermo
The agrarian reform of 1950 originated the dismemberment of the bit estates (latifondo)
•
The ERAS (Ente per la Riforma Agraria in Sicilia/Organization for the Agrarian Reform in
Siciliy) was established
•
The mafiosi started selling the feuds to the ERAS (increased prices, big earnings)
•
The reform caused the reduction of agriculture economic weight
•
Public Administration becomes the largest economic sector:
•
In 1950 800 there are in Sicily 800 public employees, in 1953 they became 1350 just in
Palermo
•
In this years, young politicians rise to power: the young Turkish
•
They are all Christian Democrats: the most prominent are Giovanni Gioia, Salvo Lima and Vito
Ciancimino, all bound to the mafia
•
The new town plan must be approved, these guys are all in the town council.
•
A huge speculation on construction is about to start…
1956-1959: numerous private liberty style residences are torn down to build big popular
condominiums
•
1959-1964: 4,000 licenses to build are given: 1,600 were given to “frontmen”
•
•
•
They are all tied to notorious construction companies mafiose: Vassallo, Moncada etc.
Furthermore, after WWII many American mafiosi went back to Sicily:
•
Lucky Luciano, Joe Adonis, Frank Coppola, Nick Gentile, Frank Garofalo etc.
•
They established strong links with Sicilian mafiosi: La Barbera, Greco, Buscetta etc.
October 1957: meeting in the Grand Hotel et des Palmes in Palermo
•
American and Italian mafiosi must rearrange their plans after the Cuban revolution
•
Joseph Bonanno proposes to create a Commissione
•
The pyramidal structure is created
The first war of Mafia
•
December 26th 1962: boss Calcedonio di Pisa is assassinated, the truce is broken
•
Michele Cavataio, boss of the Acquasanta family, was the killer
•
The murder should pour the responsibility on the La Barbera family: the war starts
•
The plan works: La Barbera is assassinated by the order of the Commissione
•
Cavataio got rid of his enemies and secured an alliance with Torretta and Matranga
•
June 30th 1963, massacre of Ciaculli: a car bomb explodes and 7 are killed
•
Harsh reaction of the public opinion, more than 2,000 were arrested
•
A Parliamentary Commission is created to investigate on the mafia
•
The trials ended with very few condemnations, most of which very light: an actual type of
offense for mafia did not exist yet.
•
December 10th 1969: Michele Cavataio is killed,
massacre of viale Lazio
•
1970: several meetings in Zurich, Milan, Catania in
order to settle the situation
•
A triumvirate is created: Stefano Bontade,
Gaetano Badalamenti e Luciano Leggio
•
September 16th 1970, journalist Mauro De
Mauro disappears (Lupara Bianca)
•
Investigations are conducted by District Attorney Pietro Scaglione
•
May 5th 1971, Pietro Scaglione and his chauffeur are killed
•
A new season, new strategies are about to begin
COSA NOSTRA IN THE 1960-70’S
The season of the new traffics
THE TRIUMVIRATE
•
After the assassination of Michele Cavataio, a reconstruction of the Commissione was
discussed
•
In the early 1970’s the Sicilian mafia is involved in big political issues: i.e. the golpe borghese
•
A temporary triumvirate is established in order to resolve the disputes in Palermo
•
Stefano Bontate, Gaetano Badalamenti and Luciano Leggio (Liggio)
THE RISE OF THE CORLEONESI
•
1974: a new Commissione is created and the boss is Gaetano Badalamenti
•
1975: the Commissione Regionale (Regione) is created, proposed by Giuseppe Calderone
•
Representatives of the provinces of Palermo, Trapani, Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Enna and
Catania
•
In Messina, Siracusa and Ragusa the Famiglie didn’t exist the way they existed elsewhere in
Sicily
•
The boss of the Regione is Giuseppe Calderone:
•
No more kidnapping in Sicily, but why?
•
A new struggle is close to come: Corleonesi vs Badalamenti/Bontate
•
Kidnapping was the means to make money and to weaken rivals
•
The system was used especially by Leggio and his tighter collaborator: Salvatore Riina
•
The Leggio-Riina clan grew immensely in the 1970’s and acquired the name of Corleonesi
•
A lot of bosses from the province of Palermo joined the Corleonesi
HEROIN
•
1973-74: Trafficking of foreign sigarette (centre in Naples): relations with the camorra
•
1974: some bosses of the camorra are affiliated into Cosa Nostra: Michele Zaza, brothers
Nuvoletta, Antonio Bardellino and others
•
Mid 1970’s: many cosche became active in drug trafficking, but how?
•
purchasing morphine from Turkey and Thailand and refined it into heroin
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the labs in which the drug was refined were the same for all the families, around Palermo
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Badalamenti, Salvatore Inzerillo, Bontate etc. exported the heroin into America
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the Sicilian mafiosi controlled circa the 30% of all the heroin consumed in the USA
Towards the second war of mafia
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1977: Totò Riina and his partner Bernardo Provenzano order another assassination: the
Cornell of the Carabinieri Giuseppe Russo
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The Commissione didn't know it, as it had already disagreed on the operation
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1978: Francesco Madonia is assassinated by the order of G. Di Cristina and Calderone. Why
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Madonia was the head of the mandamento Vallelunga Pratameno, province of Caltanissetta
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Riina and Provenzano kill Di Cristina in Palermo, a few months later Calderone is
assassinated
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Early 1979, Riina expels Badalamenti from the Commissione
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Badalamenti escapes in Brazil
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Michele Greco (head of the mandamento Brancaccio-Ciaculli) replaces Badalamenti
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Riina opens the season of the “excellent homicides”, an impressive sequence of
assassinations:
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Jan 26 1979: Mario Francese, journalist
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March 9: Michele Reina, CD politician
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July 21: Boris Giuliano, police commissioner
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September 25: Cesare Terranova, judge
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In 1980, Jan 6: Piersanti Mattarella, CD, governor of Sicily
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May 4: Emanuele Basile, captain of the Carabinieri
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August 6: Gaetano Costa, District Attorney
These are just the most famous ones.
THE SECOND WAR OF THE MAFIA
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March 1981: the Corleonesi kill Giuseppe Panno, head of the Casteldaccia gang (Bontate)
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At this point, Bontate organized the assassination of Riina, but he fails
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April 23: Bontate is assassinated and few days later also Salvatore Inzerillo is killed
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In a few months the Corleonesi eliminate the rivals:
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The area between Bagheria, Casteldaccia an Altavilla Milicia was called the Triangolo della
morte (triangle of death)
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200 homicides in the year 1981
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November 1982: during a barbecue, 12 mafiosi are killed
A NEVER ENDING MASSACRE
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The massacre spread in the USA too:
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Paul Castellano sends Rosario Naimo and John Gambino to negotiate with the
Commissione
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The agreement is that those who had survived form the Inzerillo family would have been
spared at the condition that they should never go back to Sicily
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Also, Naimo and Gambino should find and kill Antonino and Pietro Inzerillo (uncle and
brother) Antonino desappeared in Brooklyn; Pietro’s cadaver was found in the trunk of a car
in NJ (Jan 1982)
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1981-1983: 35 relatives of Salvatore Contorno (man of Bontate) were killed
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If the target of Riina was unfindable, then the relatives were
killed: vendetta trasversale
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Father, uncle and father in law of G. Greco were assassinated
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Sons of Tommaso Buscetta, his brother, son in law, brother in
law and 4 nephews were killed too
Totò Riina
The 1980’s: Riina and the new strategy
The supremacy of the Corleonesi
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Riina and Provenzano eliminate all the rivals
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The Commissione is now (1982) in the hands of Riina and the
“excellent” homicides increase
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April 30, 1982: Pio La Torre is assassinated with his
chauffeur Rosario di Salvo
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The Government decides to react:
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Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini and MIA Virginio Rognoni
Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini
nominate C. A. Dalla Chiesa prefect of
Palermo
•Dalla Chiesa was promised
extraordinary powers. He never got
them
General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
•3 Sept. 1982, General Dalla Chiesa is
brutali killed with his wife and a police
officer
Minister of Internal Affair Virginio Rognoni
The first legislative measures and the counteroffensive of Riina
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The assassination of General Dalla Chiesa provoked a huge wave of indignation in the Country
The Government pass a law, nr. 646 and called Rognoni-La Torre, which introduced the article
416bis
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New offense is introduced in the Italian Criminal Law, Associazione di tipo mafioso:
confiscation of all illegal patrimonies
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The reaction of Riina was furious: the magistrates who applied the new law became the
target
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26 January 1983: judge Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto is assassinated
29 July 1983: judge Rocco Chinnici is killed with a bomb-car parked downstairs
The Pool Antimafia
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Chinnici was replaced by a Tuscan judge: Antonino Caponnetto
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Caponnetto has a brand new idea: the creation of an anti-mafia squad, the Pool Antimafia
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A team of magistrates who professionally worked only on mafia crimes
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Caponnetto called a bunch of young and talented lawmen
The pool antimafia
Antonino Caponnetto
Giovanni Falcone - Paolo Borsellino - Giuseppe Di Lello - Leonardo Guarnotta
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The pool focused on two elements:
1. Financial investigation
2. Extensive use of the pentiti (turncoats)
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The most important pentito were Tommaso (Masino) Buscetta and Salvatore Contorno
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29 Sept. 1984, Buscetta and Contorno’s testimonies produced a
total of 493 arrests
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The Commissione orders the boss Pippo Calò to organize the
strage of Rapido 904,
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23 Dec. 1984 17 died and 267 wounded
Buscetta the day of his arrival in Italy
The Maxiprocesso
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8 Nov. 1985, Falcone registered a 8,000 pages injunction for 476
mafiosi
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It’s the beginning of the Maxiprocesso
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A bunker court was specifically build for the trial in the Palermo jail
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The trial started on Feb. 10th 1986
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It ended on Dec. 16th 1987 with 342 condemnations: 19 lifesentences, Riina included (fugitive)
Salvatore Contorno
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25 Sept. 1988, judge Antonino Saetta is killed, with his son
Stefano: a favor to Riina...
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Saetta was in charge of preside over the appeal
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December 10th 1990, the appeal ends: the condemnations are drastically reduced
Falcone’s thesis is only partially accepted.
COSA NOSTRA IN THE 1990’S
The season of the bombs
THE STRATEGY
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Sept. 1991: the Commissione interprovinciale decides for the “new season”
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All the enemies of Cosa Nostra must be eliminated
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All the unreliable “friends” must be eliminated
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January 30th, 1992: the Supreme Court confirmed all the sentences of the Maxi Processo
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Feb-March: the Commissione Provinciale of the mafia established how to proceed
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Same months: a group of killers moves to Rome, the target are:
•
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Judge Giovanni Falcone
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Attorney General Claudio Martelli
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Journalist Maurizio Costanzo
Riina changes his mind at the last moment, the killers
are called back to Sicily
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March 12, 1992: Salvo Lima is assassinated at the eve
of the elections
The cadaver of Salvo Lima
1992: annus horribilis
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Tangentopoli
•
began on February 17, 1992
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Judge Antonio Di Pietro had Mario Chiesa, a member of the PSI arrested
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It was the start of his Mani pulite (clean hands) investigation.
An actual political earthquake that swept away a whole political class:
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CD and the Socialist Party were cancelled from the Italian political scenario
THE “STRAGE DI CAPACI”
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May 23rd: a commando put a bomb on the highway A29
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Judge Falcone, his wife and three agents of the escort died
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June 8th, the Govt. approves a harder legislation against the mafia
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The next day a phone call to the ANSA menaced the State if the laws had passed
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The Parliament elected the new President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro
VIA D’AMELIO
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Riina decides to eliminate Falcone’s partner: Paolo Borsellino
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July 19th, a commando puts a bomb in Via d’Amelio, where Borsellino’s mother lived
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Paolo Borsellino and 5 agents of the escort died
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That same day a phone call claimed back the attacks
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Harsh reaction by the State: the Army is sent to Sicily and the 41bis became a law