When new acquaintances hear of my heritage (a son of Sicilian immigrants to America),  I am often stung by remarks such as “Ah, the Mafia, eh?”   These rude comments are usually accompanied by a wink and a smirk.  I try to show equanimity, but having never had a relative who ever had the slightest connection with 'the Mafia', I resent the implication.  I also disdain the glorification of this evil organization by modern American culture, and am disappointed that much of the glory is supplied by Sicilian-Americans.

          You won't find jovial stories about "wise guys" here, nor photos of decent folks dressed as mobsters for Hallowe'en, nor "goombah" speech so demeaning to my heritage, nor anything but my contempt for 'the thing' and what it really is: a group of thugs and murderers whose only code is to better themselves.

          Cesare Terranova, an Italian Magistrate murdered in 1979, said “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.”

          The above quote is from an on-line article about the Mafia at www.bestofsicily.com/mafia.htm.  Some of the thoughts expressed here are paraphrased from that and other published reports, but they mainly reflect my own analysis and conclusions. I’ll attempt to give a history of mafia, the word; and of Mafia, the thing, as it applies in Sicily.  The gangsterism and racketeering of the American version is addressed briefly.

          The most difficult part of researching ‘mafia’ is that those who know the most about it do not speak of it.  The cited article from the excellent site bestofsicily.com, for example, appears to be the only article at the site that does not give the name of its author, for reasons that should not have to be explained.

          To understand the evolution of the beast, sometimes called la piovra (the octopus), knowledge of the history of Sicily is essential. The following is a brief explanation.  For more detail, see www.conigliofamily.com/LaBeddaSicilia.htm.

          Since the dawn of history (about 1,400 BC, the time of Moses), the peoples who became known as ‘Sicilians’ began to be invaded, captured, disenfranchised, subjugated and displaced to the interior of the island of Sicily, by one oppressor after another.  These included, among others, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, barbarians, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans (Vikings, via France), Germans, French, the disastrous eight-century yoke of the Aragonese and the Spaniards, and ultimately the Italians of the mainland just to the north of Sicily.  Many of these invaders assimilated the native Sicilians into their own cultures.  For example, there were at one time more ‘Greeks’ in Sicily than there were in Greece!  Then another wave of conquerors would arrive and impose their way for a period, until the next rulers came along.  These conquerors sometimes destroyed entire cities, wiping out not only their  their populations, but their entire cultures.

           The effect of these conquests developed in the Sicilian natives a dislike of ‘outsiders’, a distrust of authority of any kind, and a tendency towards secrecy, since one never knew “which neighbors are the Baron’s spies”.

           The 250-year reign of the Arabs, around 900 AD, brought many agricultural and technical improvements to Sicily, as well as the introduction of products and words like esbinakh, (spinaci, spinach); laimun, (limone, lemon) and giulgiulan (giugiulena, sesame seed).  It also brought the Arabic word mahias, interpreted as ‘bold man’.  This pronunciation eventually evolved into ‘mafia’ and was even applied to women, if they were suspected of witchcraft, because of the boldness, ambition and arrogance of such women.  These qualities were considered improper for a woman, and the word then took on its first negative connotation.  However, it was almost 800 years, not until 1668, that the written word ‘mafia’ was first recorded as representing a group, in a church list of heretics. 

          When the great Conte Ruggieró (Count Roger), a Norman, conquered the Sicilian Arabs, he kept much of their culture and language, and even their administrators, scientists and scholars. This was called the golden age of Sicily, because of Roger’s religious tolerance and support of the arts.  Roger also brought something else to Sicily: the feudal system. The great Count parceled the island and gave fiefdoms to his vassals: knights who had supported his conquest.  The native Sicilians, unless they were rich, or landowners, or skilled artisans, either became the labor force for the Barons created by Roger, or they fled into the interior of the island, where many became brigands and bandits. The feudal system lasted officially from Roger’s time (1100 AD) until 1812.  But in practical terms feudalism survived into the late 1880s and early 1900s, when, to escape its evils, many of our ancestors emigrated to America.

          To control the share-cropping serfs (contadini) and the bandits (briganti), the Barons engaged mercenary gabelloti or estate overseers. These padroni in turn hired armed range guards (campieri).  Their private armies used force and extortion to bend the poor commoners to their will.  In the December 2017 issue of The Journal of Economic History, Volume 77, Issue 4, Arcangelo Dimico, Alessia Isopi and Ola Osson give a more detailed description of these origins.  Click HERE to see the article.  While campieri were the 'arms' of many corrupt gabellotti or padroni, "campiere" was a valid, honest occupation for many who guarded the ranges of honest landowners to protect them from dishonest elements of the society.

         Under Sicilian feudalism, each Baron owned his land and its serfs under the terms of mero e misto imperio (jurisdiction over life and death). In practical terms it meant that the law in each fiefdom was whatever its Baron wanted it to be.  This was probably the beginning of some of the ‘nobler’ characteristics mistakenly associated with ‘mafia’ ~ the poor kept their own counsel.  They settled disagreements between themselves for fear that the padrone would punish the innocent along with the guilty.  Perversely, some characteristics of the ‘thing’ also developed among the padroni. They had power.  They could do ‘favors’.  They could reward loyalty.  They could instill a false sense of honor in the masses, with the concept of omertà, which contrary to accepted belief, does not mean ‘silence’, but rather ‘manhood’.　

          Sicily was ruled by Aragon and its successor, Spain, from 1282 until 1860, when the idealistic adventurer Garibaldi invaded Sicily with his Camise Russi (Redshirts), or i mille (the thousand).  With promises of freedom from the Spanish Bourbons and unification with the mainland in an ‘Italian Republic’ which would give rights, including land ownership, to the common man, he recruited dissident Sicilians to his cause, and captured the island.  On the coast of the Marsala region of Sicily were a number of caves called the mafie.  The origin of that name is unknown, but some citizens of Palermo took refuge from Garibaldi’s invasion in those caves, and he began calling the fugitives ‘mafiosi’.

          The term coined by Garibaldi was used in the title of an Italian play, 'I Mafiosi della Vicaria', written in 1862.  The play became very popular in Sicily, as well as on mainland Italy.  The plot involved a group of imprisoned men and their interactions with each other while in jail.  Those portrayed are not delinquent criminals, but rather those who plan crimes, and use their power to influence the actions of others.  The word ‘mafia’ is not used in the play, but because a form of it is in the title, that type of organized crime came to be called 'Mafia'.  The play's popularity led to the proliferation of this concept of organized crime across Italy, and soon throughout Europe.

          An unfortunate (for Sicily) result of Garibaldi’s efforts was that Italy was in fact unified, not as a republic as he and the Sicilians had hoped, but as a monarchy.  Thus, instead of being ruled by the Spanish king, Sicilians became subjects of yet another king, Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Savoy, who became ruler of the Kingdom of Italy. This led to an influx to Sicily of northern Italian carabinieri (state police), officials, and functionaries who continued the ‘outsider’ domination of the island and reinforced the centuries-old Sicilian dislike for authority.

          The ‘unification’ further restricted the supposedly disbanded feudal system, but those with power and wealth, the former Barons, as well as their gabelloti who had themselves become powerful, moved into the void, and the common man found himself a virtual slave to the new opportunists instead of to the old nobility.

          The site bestofsicily.com states: “With the abolition of feudalism, it became all the more necessary to control baronial interests through coercion, for with the abrogation of feudal taxes came higher rents, but by the 1850s it was clear that the mafiosi would also represent the interests of an ordinary farmer or tradesman who paid them well to settle a score or reconcile a perceived injustice.  Hence the popular perception of mafiosi as ‘Robin Hoods’ or even ‘knights.’  From being ‘friends of the friends’, the more important mafiosi were soon known as ‘men of honor.’   In truth, the Mafia code is the antithesis of the code of chivalry, or at least a bizarre interpretation.  Many Sicilians' clannish nature, and their instinctive dislike for inconsistent law enforcement and a repressive hereditary aristocracy, created a favorable climate for the mafiosi.  The nobility may not have actually created the Mafia, but it unwittingly permitted the development of social conditions that facilitated its macabre growth.”

          The loose organization did not, and reportedly does not, call itself ‘Mafia’.  By 1900, it was the ‘black hand’ or the ‘friends of friends.’  Later it was simply the ‘thing’.  Every village or neighborhood had its capo (head), that is, chief hoodlum.  In the 1920’s Fascist Mussolini's agent Cesare Mori threw most of them in prison, popularizing the dictator in some quarters, but in reality, the relationship between the Fascists and the ‘Mafia’ was that of one group of thugs pitted against another -- two foxes fighting over the same chicken coop.

          During World War II, Allied forces engaged Sicilian-American gangsters including Salvatore Lucania (Lucky Luciano) to help in the effort to capture Sicily.  Two factors enhanced this support: the hoodlums’ knowledge of the local language, and their connections with the ‘Mafia’ power base that Mussolini had supplanted.  The Allies won the war, and made ‘mafiosi’ like Calogero Vizzini of Villalba provisional mayors, who easily won election a few years later.  It was easy for these men, imprisoned by Mussolini's regime without the benefit of a fair trial, to pose as anti-Fascists.  Under any political system, Vizzini was a murderer, plain and simple, and he soon became supreme head (‘capo di tutti i capi’) of the ‘thing’ in Sicily. Sicily thus was liberated from the wrongs of one set of oppressors, Mussolini and the Axis, only to be delivered into the hands of others, the so-called ‘Mafia’.

          When Vizzini died in 1957, the ‘thing’ became more strongly bonded to its American counterparts, and devolved from the traditional ‘protection’ role into viler forms of gangsterism.  It infiltrated virtually every segment of Sicilian life, from the police to the judiciary to the pulpit.  During the West’s struggle with communism, the ‘Mafia’ opposed that philosophy, which it perceived as another threat to its domination.  The Church so vehemently opposed the godless communists that in effect, wittingly or not, it enabled the ‘Mafia’.  There have followed decades of corruption, diversion of public grants, shoddy and dangerous construction, and delays in civil works, all because the ‘thing’ must have its slice of the pizza.  Reforms have been attempted, with some success in limited areas, but murders have been common: of judges, civil servants, and even clergymen who spoke out against the mob.  You may ask: “How deep are the tentacles of the octopus today?”   I answer, “Only the ‘thing’ knows.

          An interesting point is that although the web of criminals does exist, use of the Sicilian term ‘mafiusi’ doesn’t necessarily refer to the ‘thing’.  Just as the look of stylish, hip American youth may be called 'killer'; Sicilians, especially young men or young women who have no criminal tendencies whatsoever but display pride and arrogance, may be called ‘mafiusi’  because of their personalities.

          As for the American version of the ‘thing’, I leave a final quote from bestofsicily.com: “Sicilians laugh at the charming Italo-American myth that ‘the Mafia doesn't exist.’  Unfortunately, cultural factors have sometimes added to the confusion; to outsiders, New Yorkers Rudolph Giuliani and John Gotti seemed to represent opposite sides of the same ethnic coin, and the negative side of that coin still appeals to some of America's Italian descendants in search of an easily-acquired cultural identity.  Renting The Godfather trilogy at the video store is easier than reading Dante's Divine Comedy.  But, one wonders, have the same ‘Mafia fans’ ever seen The Leopard, The Name of the Rose or Cinema Paradiso?  (Do they know that the real Mafia murders innocent people, even women and children?)”