In the eleventh century Sicily was overrun by Norman invaders. They captured Sicilians and turned their farms into grand and glorious estates. The Sicilians were made slaves and put to work on these estates. Thousands escaped to the hills to were the mafia strongholds were.
In the fifteenth century Sicily was invaded once again. This time by the Spaniards. They brought with them the Iquisition with all of its adistic punishments and tortures. The Sicilian peasents again sought the protection of the mafia strongholds. There has been speculation that even another version of the beginning of the mafia began when the French invaded in 1282. Many of the patriotic Sicilians retaliated with their own motto; "Morte alla Francia Italia anela!!!" ("Death to the French is Italy's cry!!!")
Century after century the mafia was the symbol of patriotic society to Sicily. A group who battled time after time of foreigner envaders. This society created a heiarchy of dons (chiefs) who were the heads of different mafia families in their respective towns throughout Sicily, with the top don living in Palermo.
Taking of an oath a member swore under death that he would never reveal mafia secrets. Omerta("maniliness")moreover("silence"), was the key discipline that kept the whole operation of the mafia together. No other organization was to be more superior than the mafia, not the state, not even the church.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Sicily was totally controlled by the Mafia, which was now a completely criminal secret society. The lords of the land had been replaced by the corrupt dons of the Mafia. They basically controlled all of the island's government. The very young mafia members, usually before they were teenagers, were taught basic uses of sword, knife and rope in an attempt to teach them how to murder victims. Extracting information through torture was also taught by the Mafia dons. All authority was learned to be hated, except for the catholic church, which is still the only tolerated authority today. The secrecy of the Mafia was its hallmark. It would be a very violent death to anyone who became informant. Many of the natives of Sicily were held captive by this domination of intimidating and dictorial society.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, Sicily, following feudal state examples, established loosely organized mafia gangs in each province and in most towns and villages. This organization of gangs was in fact closely related to the structure of the Camorra, secret criminal society of southern Italy which had its roots in fifteenth century Bourbon Spain. All of Sicily and Italy the Mafia is known, but through different names. In one town it was known as the Birritti(the caps), another town would call them the ManoFranterna(Brotherly Hand). In Monreale, Si. it was known as Stuppaghieri and in Bagheria, it was called Cudi Chaiatti(Flat Heads).
In 1876 a mafia don named, Raffaele Palizzolo ran for political office in Caccamo and won by an overwhelming margin. Voters were forced to vote for Palizzolo because at the ballots they were checked at gunpoint for a check by Palizzolo's name. While ruling in the national government Palizzolo also simaltaniously conducted the rule of the Mafia. All of western Sicily was ruled by Palizzolo in under ten years. Francesco Crispi, who was also a Mafia don, ran for prime minister of Sicily in 1887 and won. His success in the election was greatly credited to his fellow Mafioso, Raffaele Palizzolo. While in office Francesco also conducted legitament government operations while on the other hand conducting Mafia operations. He used the national treasury to beef up on Mafia operations throughout Sicily.
Many men opposed to the Mafia dons, usually of the conservative party, spoke out against them. These brave men were either ruined financially or assassinated by the Mafia.
The Mafia secretly ruled Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century. They had expanded into local police, the Sicilian army, and all the branches of the government. The foolishly brave government officials were inevitably murdered. Benito Mussolini attempted to wipe out the Mafia of its intirety during the 1920s. He sent his top police official, Cesare Mori to destroy the Mafia, once and for all. With the scores of arrests Mori made few witnesses were willing to testify, fearful of their lives.
The Mafia attempted to expand into other countries bur ran into a brick wall on mainland Italy were the Camorra had been THE criminal power for quite some time. Operations in France and Spain along with other latin-language countries were limited to cooperations with with already established criminal gangs. The most lucrative oppertunities were in the U.S. In the 1890s thousands of Mafia gunman and theives swarmed to the U.S., with them joined hundreds of thousands of Italians and Sicilians who were seeking out a better life, in the land of oppertunity.
The greatest Mafia surge was to New Orleans in the late 1880s. With a successful transplantation, the Mafia wasted no establishing a stronghold on the considerable vegetable markets, the dockside shipping and was moving in on the local politics. Terrorizing the local Italian-Sicilian community through Black Hand operations was a given.
The police chief of New Orleans at that time was David Hennessy. He was a foolish man in openly criticizing Italians in general, stating that he absolutely no use for them at all. Hennessey was the first in the U.S. to learn of the "secret society" that operated in the city from some Italians that had very carefully told him. While Hennessey conducted an investigation on an earlier murder,were a mafioso was upset about not getting his share threatened to go public was killed ,Mafia dons found out about another soon to be informer named Guiseppe Mataino. He was later found by police with his throat slit. Guiseppe's killers had jammed his head into a stove and burned it beyond recognition.
Murder after murder was starting to occur. Hennessey was getting pressure from the local newspapers and civic groups to solve all of these hanis crimes. Although the Mafia might not have had very many problems on the outside of it's "secret society", it was having a very big problem within itself. The Caomorra, the Italian counterpart to the Mafia, which was battling for control of the lucrative New Orleans shipyards and the port's endless amount of goods from cargo ships. The two deadly secretsocieties made war upon each other. On May 1, 1890, Anthony Matranga, one of the two heads of the Mafia with his brother Charles, was attacked while driving a horsedrawn wagon on Esplanade Avenue by Camorra gunman acting on orders from the Provenzo family who controled the Camorra. They wounded Anthony Matranga with their gunfire but were driven off by the returnfire of Anthony. Hennessey investigated the shooting and for the first time heard the word Mafia, along with it's neverending feud with the Camorra, an organization that had been identified long before. Hennessey decided that the lesser of the two eveils was the Camorra and talked with the Prevenzo family about making a pact with the leaders of the family. The Prevenzo family provided everything to the police cheif, detailed information on the Mafia, the origins, local structures, bosses of New Orleans, and the ties between the family in New Orleans to the Mafia dons back in Sicily. Hennessey wrote to the Palermo police and sent names and descriptions of suspected criminals in New Orleans. Polie authorities,many mafia members, cooperated by sending dossiers which would sacrific Mafia members to American law in order to teach the Matrangas a lesson. Later it was suspected that Mafia dons Crispi and Palizzolo ordered the cooperation with Hennessey. With the cooperation of the Palermo police Hennessey was over joyed. He declard war on the Mafia. Saying,"I will tear it out by the roots before I am finished!" Hennessey was killed a short time later on October 15, 1890. He was walking home unescorted when a little boy, Aspero Marchese, darted in front of him and began whisling loudly, skipping down the street heralding to Mafia members of Hennessey's approach. Just outside of his home, Hennessey was suddenly struck with several shotgun blasts. Hennessey turned to return fire on figures in the darkness. He staggered down the block a way being fired upon and returning fire with his revolver. He finally collapsed on the pavement after being hit a half dozen times. One of the gunman came from behind Hennessey and at point-blank range blasted him. Hennessey amazingly picked himself up and unloaded what was left in his revolver at his asssassins and then collapsed. He died a few hours later.
Many civic groups and vigilantes began forming on the street corner after it was all over. Demanding Italian blood. All the members of the Mafia in the city went into hiding. They had broken their own rule, never attacking a local authority. But as it came about, nineteen Mafia members were covicted including the little boy, Aspero Marchese.
The grand jury pored over Hennessey's files on the Mafia and then revealed the existence of the secret criminal society to a dumbfounded nation which had been following the murders through the press. Several situation began to cause major chaos in New Orleans. A few days after the murder of Hennessey a boatload of new Italian-Sicilian immigrants landed on the docks in New Orleans, the mayor, Joseph Shakesspeare, announced publicly that he believed that most of the newly landed immigrants were "known criminals" panic seized the city. Questions began to come up about the Italians who were on the police force, if they were members and or could they be trusted. When nine of the nineteen suspected murders were exonerated citizens took matters into their own hands. Posters were posted up all over the city for "all good citizens to come to Cly Statue to remedy the failure of Justice in the Hennessey case." Thousands of people showed up and listened to W.S. Parkerson, a New Orleans lawyer. He made such statements such as "The time has comefor teh people of New Orleans to say whether they are going to stand these outrages by organized band of assasins, for the people to say wherether they permit it to continue." He then asked if any man there would be follow him in vindicating the murder of Hennessey. The crowd responded with a deafening roar. They all made the trek to the jail were the Mafia members were being kept and started screaming outside the jail, "We want the dagoes!" They mob busted itself throught the ironclad gates of the old prison and searched for the Sicilians being held in cells there. Captain Lem Davis ordered the prisoners on all floors except the floor of where the Mafiosi prisoners, be set free amongst the courtyard, which the angry mob and infiltrated. He then opened the cells of all the mafiosi prisoners and told them to hide. It was to no avale. All of the nine Mafiosi were hung on a street corner lamppost.
Strict family code of the Mafia was kept intact throughout the U.S., in the great metropolitan cities of New York, Chicago, Boston, PHiladelphia, Cleveland, New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, anywhere sizeable Italian-Sicilian population was present. The Mafia as it does today, preys on it's own people for money. In Sicily the Mafia survives on quite possibly it's biggest entity, the protection racket. The Sicilian government taxes but the Mafia also taxes. When paid to the Mafia by a farmer or merchant, this tax assures that if you are a farmer or merchant nothing will be stolen from you. This protection racket flourished in the U.S., practiced by the Black Hand, until more profitable rackets presented themselves. Black Hand extortionist Ignazio Saitta, known as Lupo the Wolf, headed the Mafia in New York in the first two decades of the twentieth century until he was sent to prison. The Black Hand was not an organization but a system employed by the Mafia. NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino found this out all too late. He traveled to Sicily to gather information from the files of the Palermo police in identifying fugitives who fled to New York to avoid imprisonment in Sicily. Petrosino was killed in 1909 while in a Palermo piazza(marketplace). Supposedly by Don Vito Cascioferro, who was the first Sicilian Capo de Tutti Capi. Don Vito fled to the United States in 1901 to escape arrest and formed a group of the Black Hand and introduced the protection racket to the U.S. Lieutenant Petrosino, committed to destroying the Black Hand, pursued Cascioferro until he was forced to flee the U.S. and return back to Sicily. After the murder of Petrosino, letters were sent from New York naming several New Yorkers as the murderers on assignment from Cascioferro. In 1926 Don Vito was arrested and sent to prison on Mussolini's orders, convicted of smuggling. He continued to give orders as boss of the Sicilian Mafia until he died in his cell.
Given all of the different origins of the U.S., the old time system of the Sicilian Mafia did not fare well within the U.S. cities where the Mafia had to control various vices and racket to survive. The gangs in many of the U.S. cities were dominated by Italian-Sicilian gangland cheifs and behind them were mafia chiefs, taking a cute out of the rackets for themselves, and for their bogus brotherhoods such as the Unione Siciliane.
In Kansas City, Mo., where politics was controlled by the Pedergast Machine, the rackets were directed by gangsters Johnny Lazia, Frank "Chee Chee" DeMayo, and later Vincenzo Carollo and Charles Binaggio. The power that came from those men was from the Mafia dons Joseph"Scarface" DiGiovanni and his brother, Pete"Sugarhouse"DiGiovanni. These guys not only ran the rackets but took a share of from the frontmen, Lazia and Carrollo.
John and Vito Giannola along with Alphonse Palizzola, who immigranted from rural Sicily and were called "The Green Ones", in reference to them being former farmers headed the early-day Mafia.
By the early 1930s,young gang bosses such as Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Thomas "Three Finger Brown" Lucchese, Albert Anastasia, and Vito Genovese purged themselves of such old fashion Mafia dons such as Joe "The Boss" Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Then just as they replaced the two older bosses they were replaced by much subtle men like Carlo Gambinoin New York, Carlos Marcello in New Orleans, Santo Trafficante in Florida, and Jack Dragna in California. The Siciian Mafia made inroads by establishing small chapters in Marseilles, in southern Italy, on Corsica, and in the coastal towns of Spain, but it reamained a small town society in Sicily, while in the U.S. loyalty to Sicilian authority disappeared following WWII.
During the prohibiton era in New York was dominated by non-Italian gangs led by Owney Madden, Dutch Shultz, Jack"Legs" Diamond, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Meyer Lansky. Lansky was the only one of all of them who survived and thrived in the post-war era as director of the board of the national crime synidicate that came to be dominated by Sicilians who followed the strict Mafia structure of the family.
By the 1980s, the U.S. Mafia had invested billions of its illegal earning from gambling, prostitution, and especially drug trafficking into legitimate businesses that produced even more profits. Today the Mafia in the U.S. is enormously rich and powerful and its tentacles reach into almost all areas of U.S. business. It works in cooperation with non-Sicilian criminals who are member of the same crime cartel known as the Syndicate.
At present day, John A. Gotti, is the capo dei capi in New York, with all of the five families from all the five boroughs, paying tribute and allegiance to him.
Most of the old Mafia traditions are still in effect today. Murder and other crimes are still viewed as "business". The oath of a member is still pretty much the same, it's a brief ceremony where the initiate is taken into a room surrounded by all other Mafia members. A piece of with the image of a saint is then placed in the initiate's outstretched hand and then middle finger of the right hand is pricked and a few drops of blood spread across the paper. The paper is crumpled in the hand and set on fire while the initiate repeats the words:"I swear to be loyal to my brothers, never to betray them, and if I fail, may I burn and be turned to ashes like the ashes of the image." The new Mafia member must learn and accept the five cardinal rules of the society: 1. Reciprocal assistance to any Mafia faction in need without question(unless the factions were warring), 2. Total obedience to the boss, 3. An attack on any Mafia member to be considered an attack on all members, to be avenged irrespective of circumstances, 4. No dealings with authorities in any circumstances, 5. The code of omerta(silence) to be maintained under penalty of death; the identities of Mafia members and the brotherhood's rites to be kept secret at all costs.
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