Mafia

Category:
Mafia

Bernardo Provenzano.
Provenzano on the day of his arrest,
capo di tutti i capi (boss of the bosses)
of the entire Sicilian Mafia untill his arrest
in 2006 after more than four decades on the run.



In my guest for ideas for my blog, I encountered a few sites which were showing topics related to the mafia, than I thought " who's better than myself which is more entitle to talk about it ", I can fill books regarding The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra meaning "our thing") topic.
Thanks to the so called uomini d'onore (men of honor), which enforced me to immigrate to the States.
In fact I came from a Sicily town over twenty years ago.
When I was living in Sicily, I was working in my father shop together with my brothers, almost in all Sicily to own and run any shop, or business still today you need to pay u pizzu'("beak" payment for protection).
to avoid one day, find your shop destroyed by a fire, or worst!
The man who was protecting my father shop and also all the neighbour, you could find him peacefully seated outside of his house, in front of my father shop.
This was an old man wearing a black coppola "hat" propping himself on his cane, overlooking the all surrounding.
At first look he was quite harmless, but that assumption was totally an underestimation, he was the capo (head) of a crime family, under him were many mafiusi ready to act at one of his order.
He was friendly to everyone, and respected by everyone in the same time, but the respect was more due his position as a mafia boss than other.

In the origin the mafia with all probability was born for a need to fight the so many invaders who were angering the populations, and than in the followings centuries transformed in what we know today.
The mafia it's more feared in reality that many Sicilians would ever admit, the "I don't know, I don't see, I don't ear" of the Sicilians omerta' "code of silence"" stereotype,
depicted in so many movies, it's not showing the real extent of the mafia effect in the Sicilian minds.
The code of silence of a man of honor, in the common Sicilian it's more enforced by the fear of reprisals than to keep hes honor.
Since I started to understand the real extend of the mafia effects in all the day to day activity in the Sicilian city's, I started to hate it so much , that I decide one day to join the police to fight this war, (unfortunately that time my application was rejected due to my eyesight).

From centuries mafia has so rooted in any level of the society, that have corrupted, rotten, infected, decayed the entire culture, and left little hope for the Sicilians of a better future.
The damage has been so extended to impoverished most of the Sicilian populations, as well most part of the south of Italy, which has been enforced from this gangrene to immigrate in hope to find a better future.


When I moved in United States,a good friend of mine ( to be exact he's background was Irish), one day asked me if I knew someone with mafia connections, I answered him, why he wanted to know if I knew anyone affiliated to a crime family, hes answer was, so that he could be part of a mafia family, in doing so he could get respect, a lots money and women.
I blustered angrily at him, telling him if was out of his mind, for asking me something like that.
Afterward he won't ask me that anymore.
I came out from that accident with a conclusion, thanks to those movies which portrait sometime these gangsters, like they have some kind of distorted appeal, influencing so many young minds even here in the United States.
"see the godfather, and more recently the Sopranos drama series on the American TVs".
when in reality they worst than common criminals.


Mafia was known in the beginning of this century, in the United States as the black hand and later become known as mafia.
Nowadays mafia has lost many battle with justice, but still has not been defeated.




The mafia.

"The Mafia is oppression, arrogance, greed, self-enrichment, power and hegemony above and against all others.
It is not an abstract concept, or a state of mind, or a literary term...
It is a criminal organization regulated by unwritten but iron and inexorable rules...
The myth of a courageous and generous 'man of honor' must be destroyed, because a mafioso is just the opposite."

-- Cesare Terranova, Italian Magistrate murdered in 1979

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