Why the Mafia can't be defeated in Sicily? (part 1)

Category:

Mafia

The Sopranos

The Mafia is a sort of ghost, invisible to anyone visiting Sicily unless he does know how to look for it, for all other residents it's all an other matter... First, it's the kind of Mafia you won't find on American movies but the kind of Mafia you'll find in Sicily has nothing appealing. Those American movies based on the glamorous American Mafia are contrasting sharply with the reality of the Sicilian Mafia. The Sicilian Mafia is a revolting, treacherous, deceitful, viscid, threatening world that like a leech sustains itself by bloodsucking vital lymph from the sane tissues of the Sicilian society.

Why the Mafia can't be defeated in Sicily?

That's the one million dollar question which I wish, I could answer it! I'll take my years I lived in Sicily as an example while I'm trying to give an answer to this Sicilian eternal dilemma.

I remember from the experience that I had acquired while I was living in Palermo, that there was a stratified society similar to many other societies you'll find around the globe: there were the wealthy of an upper class, the middle-income people (as might be expected) from the middle-class, and last a lower class made up of the underprivileged such as: the poor, the helpless, the illiterates, the miserables, the misfortunate people, along with all the other kind of inadequates from a society (note: this last class sometimes has been rejected by the the rest of the upper-classes, but it has also been totally neglected by a failing Italian system for a very long time).

***

Now, from this lower class is where most of the times the Mafia refuels its ranks.




The people of this class, usually lives in unacceptable conditions inside run-down neighborhoods where crime is the norm, and where the kids of this lower class hardly get to finish the primary schools so that they can manage to speak a decent and acceptable Italian language. Those kids are usually been neglected by their own fathers (ordinarily these fathers are men with stone aged mentalities) and are spending the rest of their days hanging around the streets by doing nothing or almost nothing!




That nothingness is where takes those kids in looking toward detrimental activities. First of all, they start their petty crimes activities with broken-windows, small burglaries, doing small favors of doubtful nature to the next neighborhood's thug (like delivering packages of drugs, or delivering dubious messages to the local bosses, etc and etc...)




And soon, very soon escalating these activities with their first, "scippo". Scippo? What is this thing called scippo, you may ask! Ask a tourist that went to Sicily for a vacation, and maybe, he can answer you. The, "scippo" may sound like a beverage's name but it isn't. It's a violent motorcycle theft, and it is caused by the grabbing of an incautious's property with a violent pull by one or two kids while they are riding fast their motorcycle.




Consequentially to that violent pull, the poor tourist is left on the street floor badly bruised and sometimes even with broken bones (this form of stealing it is most of the times, practiced on unaware tourists and rarely on the locals because the locals know where to find them or to who to talk to get the stolen property returned). As soon these kids grown up and the local family Mafia have noticed them, they will be engaged in their ranks as, "picciotti" (literally it means youngsters but in the Sicilian culture it was also used for soldiers) to do their dirty jobs.

Mafia is an invisible and invincible force incapable of been defeated by traditional policing methods!

I believe we should still have a long time to confront ourselves with the organized crime of mafia origin. For a long time, not for the eternity: because the Mafia is a human phenomenon and like all the human phenomenons it has an its beginning, an its evolution and it will also have an its end.

Giovanni Falcone (assassinated Italian judge)

Now my next question is: why this malicious cycle can't be broken by removing the running water from the watermill?

Next: Why the Mafia can't be defeated in Sicily? (part 2)

Facing the Mafia - Between mafia's myths and realities (chapter III).

Category:

Mafia

Beati Paoli

The mafia in search of dignified lineages and perhaps of noble justifications, tries to retrace its origins back to medieval times. Exactly, to a legendary and secretive sect of incappucciati (incappucciati-men's heads covered with hoods) thought to have existed in the medieval Sicily.


The name of this sect was the, "Beati Paoli".

The Beati Paoli were represented in the Sicilian popular imagination as a sort of Robin hoods. They took from the rich to give to the poor. To be more exact, they fought against vary abuses of power from riches and nobles on oppressed and underprivileged. I heard a lot stories about these Beati Paoli when I was very young from many people. Those same people swore to me that those stories were all true and not legend.

The Beati Paoli, when moving through the dark alleys and underground passages of Palermo, they were always dressing entirely in black tunics and were concealing their heads in long black hoods. In their punitive actions to rectify un-justices, they were dispensing crude punishments (meaning death by stabbing) through their secretive and unmerciful underground tribunal.

Now how much of all that was true? Because of the Beati Paoli secrecy's nature, it is possible that they had left behind very little of their real existence.

In fact, there are very little evidences today which could suggest us, that the sect of the Beati Paoli has ever existed in a Sicilian past history.

Another thing that has always struck me about the mafia is, its fervid religious devotion to God and saints. You can even see in mafia's movies when mafiosi are acting in their criminal behaviors, that sometimes they are referring to God, or some saint.

Some other times, you will see them with sacred images in their hands, and especially when these mafiosi are making some murdering decisions. Or when they are using some pseudo-religious formulas in their oaths of faithfulness to the family.

Since always, the religion supplies aliment to the Mafia. In a way, religion gives to the mafiosi a sense of normalcy. A sense that they are devoted believers, and hence still human beings to the eyes of God even with all their aberrant behaviors.

The symbols of the Mafia.

The mafia doesn't use symbolisms as sign of distinctions or to be recognized. The mafia at the contrary wants to be left unnoticed, to quietly carry its own criminal activities.

In fact, it prefers to use symbolisms for intimidations which goes beyond the actual material damage. Like when it wants to leave a warning message to its victims.

The Sicilian mafia in the 1800's and in the 1900's was using specific symbols to warn its adversaries, and sometimes even left threatening warnings towards the local population. Those warnings had particular meanings to the intended victims.

Often the corpse of a mafia's adversary, or of a mafioso that had sgarrato (sgarrato-disrespected) was found with determined signs on his body, so that all knew of the why he was killed and in the same time to warn others from making the same mistakes.

• One of these signs was: the hand cut of the victim, meaning that the dead man had stolen something, knowing that he couldn't steal in that area, or that he couldn't steal from a particular individual just because that individual was protected by the mafia.
• Another of these signs was: the extracted eyes of the victim put inside his fist, meant that man had killed someone affiliated to the mafia.
• Another one was: the pad of a ficodindia (ficodindia-prickly pear) on a dead man's chest meant that the man had stolen money which did not belong to him.
• And a handkerchief, or a pebble in mouth meant that man shouldn't have spoken.
• Genital organs around the neck meant that man had annoyed women of an arrested mafia member.
• Instead sponge letters, petroleum on the fruit, or a slaughtered animals were some pressing invitations to pay the pizzo (pizzo-money for the protection).
• The head of an animal, a metallic heart riddled with holes, an empty coffin, or a dead bird
found close to someone's home were instead warnings of a promise death.
• A cut face was instead, an indelible sign of infamy among mafiosi.

And finally another symbol, but in this case it's used by the Italians to define the Mafia. This symbol is the piovra (piovra-octopus). Figuratively speaking, the mafia is like a parasite octopus which has thousand tentacles and despite the fact that you cut one tentacle from it, another one is ready to grow up back.


And that's why the piovra/octopus is associated as symbol of the mafia.

I want to add one more at these list of symbologies: the mafia is also like a chameleon. A chameleon capable of camouflaging itself to get confused with the surrounding ambient.

In conclusion of this very long article: the mafia is wounded but still alive, ready to rise again from its hiding places.

Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II, part 2).

Category:

Mafia

Palermo's freeway after a major bomb attack from the Mafia.

In fact, in the following months more notable Italian figures were murdered in Palermo. The Mafia was, indeed, challenging the Italian State with its vicious war. Again and again, the Mafia kept murdering the servants of the Italian State sent in Sicily to fight the Mafia, and to many Italian citizens it looked as a losing war.

As the months went by I felt really afraid for the Sicilians as the the Mafia had once again killed an other great Sicilian man. This time the man to be murdered was Giovanni Falcone.



Giovanni Falcone (May 18, 1939 – May 23, 1992) was an Italian magistrate who specialized in prosecuting the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. He was killed by the Mafia, together with his wife and three of his bodyguards, by a 350 kg dynamite explosion placed beneath the freeway from Palermo Airport to Palermo near the town of Capaci.

Palermo's highway after the bomb attack to the Sicilian magistrate Giovanni Falcon.

At this news, I cried. I wanted to kill one by one with my bare hands those responsible for this atrocious crime (I couldn't really express my anger by just writing it here). That murder was an other brutish way from the Mafia, to eliminate a resolute man of justice.

Capaci was the small town where I was used to go in summertime for fishing, and that freeway was the same freeway I took the last time to get to the Palermo's Airport, before I embarked into a flight that was bound for New York.


Now, my desolation was complete.

The mattanza keeps going on.

After two only months from the death of Giovanni Falcone, an other tragic assassination reaches me through the American's mass medias. This time, was the turn of Paolo Borsellino to be murdered by what seemed an unstoppable Mafia's arrogance.



Paolo Borsellino (January 19, 1940 - July 19, 1992) was an Italian anti-Mafia magistrate who was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Via D'Amelio, Palermo, less than two months after his friend and fellow anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone had been killed by the Mafia. The bomb attack also claimed the lives of five policemen: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Claudio Traina.

(Palermo)- Via D'Amelio after the bomb attack to the Sicilian magistrate Paolo Borsellino.

This new murder was extremely unpleasant and extremely serious, it added to the sum of more than a thousand of murders, the highest officials of the Italian State being murdered on the Sicilian streets in the space of few years: a mattanza! This freakish word, "mattanza" which I have learned in my youth, keeps coming back like a terrifying nightmare.

The turning point to the mattanza.

Going back in Palermo where the mattanza of highly Sicilian figures keeps going on, but slowly things starts to change even at the magistracy's level.

Thanks to the pentiti (collaborators with justice, or informants) of the Mafia that are testifying against their former associates.

Among the most famous Mafia pentiti (informants) is Tommaso Buscetta, the first important pentito (informant), who was very helpful to judge Giovanni Falcone in describing the Sicilian Mafia Commission or Cupola, the leadership of the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s, and identifying the main operational channels that the mafia used and uses for its business.

And with Tommaso Buscetta start talking even bosses of the caliber of Francesco Marino Mannoia, Salvatore Contorno e Antonino Calderone.

La mattanza finally reaches its end.

Together with the informants' revelations and the magistrates' investigations, also all the investigative work from a police squad led by De Gennaro with their phone's interceptions, their following of suspects, and all their paperworks, finally, all these hard work starts to pay off, with a series of incriminations toward the men of the Sicilian Mafia.

All the incriminations emanated by the Italian judicial system will bring to the police blitz of San Michele (that's how it was called) with hundred of arrests in a single day. At last, the result of all these arrests will take to the maxi trial.

The Ucciardone's penitentiary.

The maxi trial with its 474 arrests accused of Mafia associations, began in Palermo in the 1986 inside a bunker next to the penitentiary institution of the Ucciardone. Among all the accused there are names such as Luciano Liggio, and Pippo Calò said to be the Mafia's cashier. The trial ended on December 16, 1987, almost two years after it commenced.

Palermo 1986 - Mafia's maxi trial video.

Red's note: Unfortunately, this video is only in Italian. I really sorry that I couldn't find an English translation of it.



The dark years of the Sicilian mattanza are finally over. Until...

Next: Facing the Mafia - Between mafia's myths and realities.

Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II, part 1).

Category:

Mafia

The tuna fishes, "Mattanza".

The word, "mattanza" how is related to Mafia and what it meant to me? I have to go back to a couple years after I had immigrated in the U.S. to answer to this question.

First off, the term, "mattanza" is an heritage left after different centuries of Spanish dominations of the Sicilian island, and it originated from word matar, meaning to kill. There are two specific contexts where the word, " mattanza" has been used like expressions in every day Sicilian life.




In first context, the word mattanza is used for the killing of tuna fishes in the Mediterranean Sea. For hundreds of years, fishermen in Sicily and Sardinia have used dense nets to capture the Mediterranean blue fin tuna (thunnus thinnus) in a quasi-spiritual procedure known as the mattanza (if you like to read more about it, here is the link for: Mattanza

In the second context, the word mattanza has been used for a different Sicilian expression. Even though, it still meant to kill something, this time the killing wasn't a tuna fish but a human being. And to be more exact, it meant to kill a lot of people with methods of ferocious assassinations, like the same ferocious methods used to kill a large number of tuna fishes in the Sicilian seas.

Now, going back to a couple years after I had immigrated in the U.S. and I learned a bad news by watching the TV. The bad news was that a man was brutally murdered by a Mafia's reprisal, and this man wasn't just a common man but he was also the embodiment of an ideal, a hope to finally defeat the Mafia. That man was, " Il generale Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa".

I cento giorni a Palermo di Dalla Chiesa.
( The one hundred days of Dalla Chiesa in Palermo.)

The general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, was the new prefect of Palermo which was sent in Sicily by the Italian government after the premature death of Pio La Torre (of course, a premature death inflicted by the Mafia), to fight the Mafia.

Pio La Torre (Palermo, December 24, 1927 – Palermo, April 30, 1982) was a leader of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI). He was killed by the Mafia after he initiated a law that introduced a new crime in the Italian legal system, mafia conspiracy, and the possibility for the courts to seize and to confiscate the assets of the persons belonging to the mafia conspiracy.

Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was the man that had defeated the Italian terrorism, "the red brigades" and because of this success he was sent in Sicily with full powers granted to him, in the hope to defeat the Mafia. Unfortunately, in the paper was given to him full powers, but in reality was given to him none.

In fact, the Italian government was accused by many Italian citizens to have betrayed Dalla Chiesa's trust in the Italian institutions by leaving him alone to fight the Mafia. Consequently to this betrayal, he was left very vulnerable to the attacks of the Mafia that already had marked him as a dead man.

Before he was brutally slaughtered in his car together with his young wife Emanuela Setti Carraro by a Mafia's ambush on September 1982, had just passed one hundred days of his takeover of the Palermo's prefecture. Also I wanted to remember here, in the same attack died, "Domenico Russo" who was a police agent in escort with his armored car to Dalla Chiesa. On the place of the massacre, an anonymous citizen had left to the wall a paperboard with written on it a few bitter words:

Here died the hope of the honest Sicilians.

I was tremendously shocked and angered by those few words because were accurately telling a truth. The truth that the Mafia had killed the only man capable that could have given back to the Sicilian people, a hope of rebirth from the miseries and the abuses of a Mafia's historical impositions.

Even though I was living in the U.S., I felt at the moment defeated because the Mafia had won once more, first by enforcing me to leave my Sicily and now by making me feel like I had betrayed my land because I fled from it without a real fight.


When the TV's news was parading in front of my eyes those cruel images of the Dalla Chiesa's assassination, I couldn't believe it! Those streets were so familiar to me. Indeed, those streets were the same streets from where I grew up. The same streets, where I used to play soccer in my adolescence. And now, those images were broadcasted around the world. I felt an increasing desperation as the news went on. At some point, I started to hit the wall with a couple fists to calm down my rage.

What I didn't realized that time was, the Mafia's killing spree had just started. In other words, the Mafia's mattanza hadn't finished its job but it was just beginning.

Continue...

Next: Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II, part 2).

Facing the Mafia - Mafia's American style (chapter I).

Category:

Mafia

Preface:

I been thinking for quite some time to post this new Mafia's article, but I have been delaying it for some time. The reason of this delay was that it could have endangered the safety of my life and the safety of my own family. Or worst, end up in some protection program for the rest of my remaining life.

That's why I'll be removing any potential references (such as: personal names, or location's names, and besides I don't know if I'll be writing the all story) which they could essentially lead to my true identity. Even though, in same particular case I'll be forced to keep them, because of their historical nature (meaning: facts that are worldwide well known).

Mafia's American style.

After I came to live in the U.S., I worked in different places. After some time, I started to work in a place (sorry but I can't tell what place it was) where a lot people came to do their usual business. They were people of every backgrounds: businessmen, politicians of every sorts, very rich men, affiliated to some kind of association, common people, and some, "Mafioso".



I'll pause for a brief moment and deviate from this part of the story, but I'm promising that I'll come back later to finish it. Now, I wanted to write of when I knew the first American goodfella.

When I knew the first American goodfella, I couldn't help but notice the way he was dressing. Unlike his Sicilian counterpart's fellows (which were dressing most of the times rather poorly), that wise guy was wearing a fashionable dress with nice shining shoes on his feet, gold rings on his fingers, and pomaded hair all combed towards the rear of his head. And strangely enough, he was acting to me very friendly. Maybe, because he knew I was Sicilian (That encounter, was for sure a real weird one. In truth, if he could been able to know back then how much I despised him and what he really represented to me, frankly, I don't believe he would have been that friendly to me).



And yet, I can't quite figure out if this guy was copying the bad style of some Mafia's American movies (see: Godfather, Goodfellas, the Sopranos, or many other American old movies) or it was the other way around. Those movies had really succeeded, in the capturing the real nature of the American Mafia's gangsters.

Anyway going back to when I started my first job in New York. This same place where I knew a lot people, and where I even knew some politicians from the New York metropolitan area, including guess who? The former mayor of New York City, Rudolph W. Giuliani (but this is an other story). As I said, I new from that place a lot of different people. One in particular which I wasn't too eager to know, just because, his only presence was enough to give me bad cramps to my stomach. He was a wise guy, and he looked exactly as one of those badly portrayed from some very bad Mafia's American movies.

The difference now was that he was for real. His attitude and his talk, were real too (the attitudes and the talks of a wise s..h...). I tried to avoid him the most I could, but because of my job I couldn't avoid him as much as I wished.

The first thing that struck me the first time I noticed him was, the golden rings he was wearing on his fingers.

He had a golden ring on his left hand's ring finger (I guess that indicated that he was married), and on his right hand, he was showing off two more golden rings. The one on his pinky finger was a gold ring with an embedded stone at the top of it. The other one, the one that had struck me was on his middle finger, and it was a big gold ring with some strange engravings on it.

I thought, that wasn't nothing special in it at the first glance (probably many people are wearing gold rings that big, and for sure they aren't gangsters), but when I paid a more attentive look at it, my mind quickly recalled back a couple of events from when I was still living in Sicily. In fact, I remembered to have seen that same ring with those same strange engravings on it, already twice.

The first occasion happened because of my business. It was in Palermo, I was talking to a Mafia's boss from the neighborhood, for the reason that I was trying to convince him to cut me some slack by giving me some more time to hand over, " u pizzu' " (The pizzu' is the protection money paid to the Mafia).

The second time happened in a different Sicilian location, and it was in a small town between Palermo and Corleone. That time I was also speaking to a local boss, but for a different reason. This time, I was pleading to the local Mafia boss to give back what he had stolen from my father. In fact after my father died, that piece of s... had the courage to steal (with the help of some corrupted local administrator) the land that my father had bought with the savings of a lifetime hard work.

I could have forced him to give back what didn't belonged to him, but I knew that I was playing with my life. In fact, the @#%$&@ was guarded by a pair of armed scum bags. At some point of our animated discussion, the two lowlifes that were guarding the boss motioned in a threatening manner their guns toward me. What else, I could have done? I left! When I left, I left with a heart full of bitterness and insane ideas in my head, for the revenge... Fortunately as the time went by, my head started to cool off and began to think that was better to give up the lost, rather than getting myself entangled in something much, but much worst.

In both of those two occasions the two, "gentlemen" were wearing (as I was mentioning before) that same gold ring with those strange engravings on it.



Just a pure causality, or there was more? I can't still figure it out. Exactly, what that meant? Maybe, that meant nothing! Or maybe, that meant a lot!

For sure, there must have been some sort of correlation among those facts. We already know, that the American Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia have (or have had) tight links. Is that ring a Mafia thing? Like an oath of loyalty and belongings to a certain clan, or just it is a simple way to recognize each other even in faraway lands?!?
............

Continue: Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II).

Mafia, Coppole, and Lupare. (part II) Mafia's war.

Category:
Mafia

Mafia's war.

Now, I remember when all those three words (Mafia, Coppole, and Lupare) were combined together and led an entire city (Palermo) and my personal memories of it, to a long a nightmarish year of violences and deaths.

There are still vivid in my mind, the memories of a six years old boy, of when his loved city plunged into a bloody Mafia's war (The first Mafia War in 1962-63). I well remember that, for an entire year wasn't there a day in which my city woke up at the news that a dead body was found in some city's corner. At that time, it looked like the Mafia was gone totally insane and couldn't be stopped in its trail of blood and violence throughout the city.


The violent deaths were reported by the newspapers, like they were game's scorings, and I remember every afternoon myself with some young friends of mine, when we went together to a newsstand to buy the newspaper and read it, like we were reading a soccer match reporting, "September, 19, Mafia's death tolls has reached today the record of 234 "morti ammazzati" (deads by assassination). All the newspapers' reports of the Mafia assassinations, kept going till the end of that year.


Unfortunately as in any war, even innocent people succumbed to the madness of the Mafia's cycle revenges. I can even recall from my memories, the un-mentioned fears I could read all over the faces of the everyday guy that was thinking could be him, the next one to die mistakenly at the hand of the Mafia's rage.



First Mafia War.

• The first Mafia War took place in the 1962-63. The conflicted erupted over an underweight shipment of heroin. The La Barbera brothers were the protagonists in a bloody conflict between rival clans in Palermo in the early 1960s.

Second Mafia War.

• The Second Mafia War mostly taking place in the early 1980s, which is sometimes referred to as The Great Mafia War or the Mattanza, involved the entire Mafia and radically altered the power balance within the organization.

Of course, there were many other wars of Mafia such these ones, but especially the first Mafia's war, it was one of the two mostly bloody and violent Mafia's wars, in which the city of Palermo had to deal with.

Criminal capital of the world.

It one point, my Palermo was named, "the capital of crime" due to its death-roll, and it was compared to New York City, of when New York itself was named criminal capital of the world, for its crime rates. That record by itself wasn't for sure a boast of confidence and image, for any proud city.

Nowadays, Palermo has ceased to be the city of the hundreds violent deaths per year.

Thank God for that, but...there's still a but. The Mafia hasn't been defeated, despite all the battles already won by the police forces, this monster hasn't yet exhaled its last breath. The Mafia is wounded and now it's hiding from the spotlights, waiting for the right moment to re-emerge again from its dark hideouts.

I don't know, if the Sicilian society is ready to reckon again with the intimidations of a next Mafia's reappearances!!! Only time will tell us, how Sicilians will handle with a new Mafia occurrences.

Meanwhile, I wish that my city will get stronger and better prepared, in the event that this cancer will spread once again inside its social and economic tissues.

*****

I end here with a homage to my loved Sicily, with the hope of a better future without a Mafia, Coppole, or Lupare.

Sicilia Bedda.



My loved Sicily.

A wishful...Red.eVolution

Related links:

Mafia, Coppole, and Lupare. (part I)

Sicily, a land of lost opportunities.

Sicily "mafia land". (part one)

Sicily "mafia land". (part due)

Mafia

Sicily, a land of lost opportunities.

Category:
Mafia

Sometimes I think, about my loved land. When I think about it, I feel a sense of lost opportunities. Opportunities, which I will never get back. I had many dreams in my native land, dreams about a life which I couldn't never realize. I left those dreams behind me. In that land of lost chances and hopes, I left a peace of myself too.

My land, my Sicily.

Sicily, a land of sunny days, a land of smelling pine trees, an island embedded in the turquoise, warm and clear waters of the Mediterranean sea. Sometime, I feel to cry when I'm thinking about it.

What motivated me, to leave it?

There was little hope left for me, and many other honest working people in Sicily, as well. In fact, Sicily hasn't much to offer to it's own people for a decent and better life. For the mere fact, not just Sicily but the all south of Italy has very little to offer to his honest working people. At least, not until the gangrene that is killing hopes of a better future, will be exterminated. South Italy is run by inert and some time corrupted politicians, who don't really give a damn about their citizens, but their real interest by running the public affair is, to make a personal profit from it! Citizens hopes (besides, the local corrupted political system) are also subdued, by local crime organizations such as Ndraghetta, Camorra, Mafia or whatever organized crime runs, a particular area. They are also, a part of the social scums plaguing entire cities and towns, which by their intimidations perpetreted on the honest citizens, impedes a city to function or, work properly. It's very hard to fight them and dangerous too, because most of the time the system which are suppose to defend a citizen are latitante (in hiding), leaving himself most of the times all alone and vulnerable to fight lost battles against these criminal organizations.

That's why I've always thought, that all South of Italy needed a radical change of the entire political system. A more strong and resolute system, capable to fight these criminal organizations and altogether those corrupted politicians that are running our misfortuned but, so much loved land...


I remember a couple of episodes of political corruptions and crimes, both happened when I was living in Sicily. The first episode, I was too young to really do something about it, (even though I don't think I could had done much about it). I was working in a place named "******'s Library" (this library was part of a chain of libraries), it was a place where people came to buy school's books for their children. Who owned these libraries, also owned a very big villa (and who knows, what else he owned) located in the center of Palermo city. He was indeed, a very rich man. One day, all the libraries got a big commission, we the employees had to work with thousands and thousands of books which we had to put in big envelops, write addresses and put stamps on them, and later ship them out. This was a commission given from the Sicilian Parliament. Now, how the hell the owner of this library's chain, gets from the Sicilian Parliament such a big commission. By corruptions, corruption, and more corruption, that's how. Who owned these libraries, was Councilman and City council member to the Province of Palermo (also, he was a former Deputy Mayor) and a member of the Sicilian republican party. The name of this "honorable" Sicilian Parliamentarian was "******** *******". By the way, he paid me and other employees miserable wages, to work in his chain of libraries. I learned much later, that he was denounced by one of his trusted people, to the competent authorities for tax evasion. I hope, by now he's in that place where he really belongs... to jail. This story, tells you how much you can entrust the future of a city, to some Sicilian politicians. Of course, this one is just one of the many corruption stories that are plaguing even today, most of the south of Italy.


The second episode, I don't really know if, it's a good idea to talk about it. I still have relatives in Sicily so that, I won't mention names or places and besides, some of these people I'm going to talk about, have relatives or connections here in the States with some New Yorker criminals family. I worked in a restaurant for about a year, and in this restaurant many things happened. The only thing I'm going to tell you is, who owned this place was a "Cosa Nostra" Boss. This guy, went for a couple years in North Italy before getting this restaurant, and thanks to many illegal traffics, he got rich, very rich. Do you think when he came back, he bought the restaurant he owned then with his bloody money. Wrong, he extorted it from the previous owner without paying a cent. The second episode related to this restaurant, happened when one night the last customer had left the premisis and we the employees were getting ready to leave. A bunch of youngsters (I believe, they were about a dozen), all of a sudden got in the premises by force. One of them, a very young guy (practically he was a boy) who was holding a gun intimated us to give them the restaurant's cash, plus our own money. Some of us tried to react but, one of the boss' relative told us to let them do it, so we let them go with all the money. The boss, had already left the place when all this was happening, the boss' relative had to call him by phone, as soon those youngsters had left the place, to report him about the robbery. The boss told his relative to tell us, not to move from the place and to wait for him to come back. An hour passed by before the boss came back, followed by some ugly faces and trailing behind them, there were those youngsters that we had the pleasure to meet before. I could tell from their faces, that they were scared like hell, some of them had even some scars on their faces. In the end, they were forced to give the money back and plead for forgiveness from us. "Thanks boss , we got our money back, now you can let them go, please. They won't do the same mistake twice". Me and all the restaurant staff, were asking our boss to be merciful towards those young guys. Luckily for them, the boss that night was of a good mood and decided finally to let them go. Those young guys, were very but very lucky bastards, they came close to a severe beating (or who knows, some of them even lose their lives). We, the employees were really afraid that something bad, could have happend that night. That's why, we were imploring our boss to let them go unharmed. We were honest people, that needed to work even with a bastard such as our boss, but we weren't criminals. In the following days, none of us had the courage to go to the police and denounce the all matter.

That's some of the many reasons why, I was forced to leave Sicily. I had few choices, became a criminal or live a miserable life as an unemployed. Between corrupted politicians and organized crime, many Sicilians have very little chances of a decent and honest life that's why sometime, they just decide to leave.

Don't get me wrong, Sicily and the entire South of Italy is more than just Mafia and corruptions! If you will one day visit it, you will find a lots of honest and decent people, and you will be surprised by the people warmness, by its past history, by its food, and by the enchanting views which this land has to offer to it's visitors.

edit:

This article has been edited by removing some name and locations to avoid any trouble for my private life. You can read more in the comment area for, the reasons that made me take this decision.

Sicily "mafia land". (part one)

Category:
Mafia

Today, I will start writing about a part of my past life. As I said in a prior post "Mafia", I came from Sicily some twenty years ago. It's hard for me to talk about it, not that I do not love my land, but because the nomea "reputation" it has acquired thanks to the so called, "onorata societa" (honored society) which has prevented me from doing it. Today, in an attempt to restore a good image of the Sicilian culture and remove those stereotypes of Sicilian families, I decided finally to write about it.


To write about this malignant tumor profusely from my prospective, while in the same time trying to approach every aspect of its effects on the Sicilian society is very hard, because of its complexity.
As I said, I'm from Sicily, but what I didn't mentioned in the previous post was, exactly from which city. Well, today I'm going to tell you that I'm from Palermo the Sicilian capital of province.



I don't really know, where I'll go from here. Explaining it, while trying to get a grasp of this phenomenon in few words , it's a real hardship because of its nature, a handful of posts wouldn't suffice it. I start here, by telling a bit of Palermo and Sicily's history. Palermo has been a real capital, many times under different rulers in its history. Indeed, Palermo and the all Sicily, because of its strategical location, in its tormented history has been invaded and colonized countless time. Starting from the Romans, and in succession: the Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Swedish , Angioinis, Spanish, Austrians, Bourbons and so on, until the Sicilian annexation in the "1860" to the kingdom of Italy.

The ancient geographical location probably generated its name [Panormos] from the Greek meaning all Harbour. Palermo also known as, "the conca d'oro" meaning gold valley because of all its lemon cultivations which gave to the city, a gold reflective glimpse when, looking at its view from faraway. Today unfortunately You won't see it anymore, because of its frenetic urbanization, but till today I remember the time when it was.

Even though, in Sicily the organized crime has a big impact in this region, and any improvement attempts in the Sicilian cities, has been frustrated by the Mafia "stronghold".
Nowadays, Sicily which is, one of the major island in the Mediterranean Sea [Sicily, was also named Trinachia by its ancient inhabitants because of its shape, in fact Trinachia means three tips], thanks to the richness of its artistic patrimonial presence in its territory, and to its mild climate, the all Sicily has a big continuous flow of tourists.

As I said before the honored society, or better known as "Mafia", when portrayed in so many American mafia movies, appears like it has, some kind of contort, fascinating appeal, when in reality has none of that. To cohabit daily with it, and all its brutality you won't find anything appealing. All these Hollywood type movies, really anger me because give a false image of the Sicilians, and the Sicilian families, in particular when TV movies like the "Sopranos drama" are shown in the TV's screens.



Sicily isn't only the land of Mafia.


A big part of Sicilian are hard working people, they support their own families, by getting up every morning to go to work, and they are not associeted with any crime families whatsoever. The mafia by itself is a small irrelevant part of the entire Sicilian population, but unfortunately it is capable to influence every part of it, in its social tissues. Many courageous men, especially Sicilians, had tried to defeat it, and unfortunately in their attempt they perished. Today thanks to their own sacrifices, Sicilians have find a renovate hope.

In fact in the last years, the battle against Cosa Nostra "this is the real name the mafiusu' gives to the mafia" has been defeated repetitively,
and as result reducing their ranks considerably.
That doesn't means, the mafia has been finally defeated, but it's the beginning of its end.
There was a time, when even the national institutions denied the existence of it, and dismissed it, saying that was all a popular imaginative myth.

In the next part, I'll write some real mafia story which, will explain my contempt to it.

Next: Sicily "mafia land". (part two)