What is the Cosa Nostra, the infamous mafia originating from a small Italian island?

This Monday the 16th the Italian police announced the capture of Matteo Messina Denaroconsidered the top boss of the sicilian mafiawho evaded justice for 30 years as a refugee on the small Italian island that saw the birth of this infamous type of criminal organization centuries ago.

The capture of Messina, which took place in a clinic in the Sicilian capital Palermo, is the latest blow to the mafia known as Cosa Nostra (which could be translated as Our Business in Spanish).

LOOK: Matteo Messina Denaro, the most wanted capo of the Italian mafia for 30 years, is arrested in Sicily

La Cosa Nostra, and in particular Messina, was responsible for a series of attacks committed in the 1990s in Italy, as well as leading a series of networks dedicated to extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.

While the Sicilian mafia is far from holding the power it amassed during the 20th century, the FBI warns that it still poses a threat primarily in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit.

Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy’s most wanted man, being arrested in Palermo, Sicily, by the ROS unit of the Carabinieri police. (EFE). (CARBINIERI HANDOUT/)

ACID ORIGIN

To understand the origins of Cosa Nostra, we must first know the particularities of Sicily, that Mediterranean island located between southern Italy and northern Africa.

For centuries, the region of Sicily was conquered by different foreign forces that gave it a heterogeneous and particular character compared to the rest of Italy.

By 1861, with the Italian unification, the island returned to form part of the nation but crime, violence and poverty continued to prevail without Rome being able to do much.

That same century, in addition, the island enjoyed an unexpected economic boom, thanks to the fact that its warm climate allowed the cultivation of lemons, fruits that had become a luxury item at that time, mainly due to its effects on the scurvy that afflicted sailors. .

According to an article in The Washington Post, some historians estimate that by the mid-19th century, it was 60 times more profitable to own a hectare of lemon trees than one of olive trees, vineyards or wheat fields. This led many aristocrats to lease Sicilian land to the Gabelloto, who in turn rented it to local farmers to produce the lemons.

In the 19th century it was discovered that the consumption of lemon prevented sailors from scurvy, thanks to its high levels of vitamin C, leading to this fruit becoming a luxury product.

The Gabelloto, however, not only rented the land but also small private armies that were in charge of guarding the plots and controlling the workers. This figure led to farmers being in constant debt to the Gabelloto.

These private guards, known in feudal times as campieris, were the first mobsters. At this point it should be noted that the origin of the word mafia is under constant debate, although some of the best accepted theories are that it comes from the Arabic mahya, which translated into Spanish would mean bully; while the renowned American writer and author of the famous work The Godfather, Mario Puzo, claimed that mafia means place of refuge in Sicilian.

The truth is that the term was coined on the island and its use spread rapidly. In 1862 a work written by Giuseppe Rizzoto and Gaetano Mosca contains the first literary evidence of its use, that work was “I mafiusi di la Vicaria di Palermo” (The Mafiosi of the Vicar of Palermo).

The mafiosi, however, were not only in charge of preventing robberies but also of persecuting those who had committed previous crimes to the detriment of their bosses and proposing reparations for their acts in exchange for their forgiveness.

The Gabelloto were in charge of renting the land and then subleasing it to Sicilian farmers, also offering a small private army that prevented robberies and looting. These armies were made up of the first gangsters.

According to an article in History, during the 1870s the Italian police themselves even asked the gangsters to help them fight crime in Sicily.

Over the years, the Gabelloto came to have greater power and influence than the original owners of the land, and they also made decisions such as who the daughter of one of their workers could marry or how a dispute between two should be resolved. neighbors. They held, in other words, the real power in Sicily.

The figure of the Gabelloto would later become known as the Don, the mafia bosses.

CROSSING THE OCEAN

With the growth of its operations, the mob began to recruit more and more members. Over time, new members were required to go through initiation ceremonies and abide by their own codes of ethics and honor.

On this last point, for example, omertá (silence), the law of laws, stands out, which dictated that a Sicilian should not go before any government authority in search of justice and, for no reason, collaborate in a government investigation. On the contrary, the Sicilians had to go before the Don who dominated the area and there they would seek a solution to their problem.

The punishment for those who broke the omerta was death.

Over the years, the mafia gained more and more power in Sicily. Not only among the population, but also occupying political and business positions and even affiliated with the Catholic Church.

The mobsters, however, encountered one of their biggest obstacles during the 1920s, when fascism came to power at the hands of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini undertook a radical campaign to combat the Sicilian mafia, appointing special authorities to persecute them and unleashing a frontal war against them.

Mussolini undertook a radical campaign to combat the Sicilian mafia.

Another famous figure emerged at this time, that of the Prefect of Steel, Cesare Mori, who was commissioned by Mussolini to put an end to the mafia by any means he deems necessary.

But the 1920s was not only marked by the victory of the State over the gangsters, but also by the great migration to the United States. With dozens of their bosses behind bars, many gangsters took advantage of the wave of immigration heading to North America to evade justice and expand their operations to the country of stars and stripes.

Settled in the United States, several mafia bosses who were wanted in Italy have restarted their crime empires now in cities like New York or Boston.

During World War II, even, the American Intelligence services would have resorted to the heads of the Sicilian mafia settled in their country to collaborate in the fall of Mussolini through an entry through Sicily.

Lucky Luciano became the top leader of Cosa Nostra and ended up collaborating with the United States and the Allies during World War II. / AFP (-/)

By 1950, Cosa Nostra had not only become the leading criminal organization in the United States, but had also seen its operations restarted in its native Sicily by taking charge of rebuilding the island after the war.

In the United States, Cosa Nostra was organized under the figure of families. Five of them were the most powerful and later known – largely thanks to literary works or cinematographic successes – these being the Bonnano, Columbo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese families.

THE OUR THING TODAY

September 27, 1963 was an unforgettable day for Cosa Nostra. That day would not only break the law of omertá on national television and radio, but it would also mark the beginning of the end for the wide influence it had in the United States.

Joe Valachi, a low-ranking “soldier” of the Genovese family, appeared before the committee on organized crime of the United States Congress to tell the previously unknown details about the history, methods and scope that Cosa Nostra had in that country. .

Valachi’s testimony not only deprived the mafia of its ability to operate in the shadows, but also encouraged US authorities to undertake lengthy campaigns aimed at eradicating them.

Valachi himself later recounted that he had received the “kiss of death” from Vito Genovese, who even offered $100,000 to anyone who could kill him in prison. The attempts were unsuccessful and Valachi himself attempted to hang himself in his cell in 1966 but was rescued by guards.

The mobster who put the light on Cosa Nostra finally died in 1971 inside the Federal Correctional Institution of La Tuna due to a heart attack.

While Valachi’s testimony sentenced Cosa Nostra in the United States, in Italy the organization was not totally rejected until 1992. The murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino caused such an impact on Italian society that they are still considered a ” cultural trauma”.

“It was a radical change. For the first time in the history of Italy, the mafia becomes a bad public at a general level, an enemy that must be fought ”, explained to the BBC in 2021 the professor of sociology at the University of Turin, Rocco Sciarrone.

“Before this, the mafia was either not fought or was fought only by some sectors of society,” adds the expert.

The remains of the vehicle in which the anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone was traveling, when he was assassinated in May 1992, are on display in Piazza Citta di Lombardia in Milan. (MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP /)

Over the years, Cosa Nostra went from being the largest criminal organization in the United States to controlling small territories in a handful of cities and engaging primarily in merchandise theft, extortion and smuggling primarily in the New York Harbor.

In Italy, meanwhile, Sicily tries to shake off the prejudice created by the mafia. Since 1992, more than 2,000 people related to Cosa Nostra have been arrested in Sicily and, until 2016, assets valued at more than 4 billion dollars linked to the criminal group had been confiscated.

“Now, the Sicilian mafia buys drugs to resell them locally, but it is not an international player. That role has been taken over by the Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia”, explains Federico Varese, author of the book “Mafia Lives” to the BBC.

Messina’s arrest is a clear sign of the weakening of this organization. The fall of the godfather who spent 30 years on the run joins the list of other infamous mafia leaders such as Totó Riina, Bernardo Provenzano, Domenico Raccuglia, Settimio Mineo, Rocco Morabito or Gioacchino Gammino.

Source: Elcomercio