|
|
Florence Newspaper Report: Governmental Floundering And The Survival Of The Mafia
Florence Newspaper publishes this excellent essay written by Dominica Tarica on the relationships between the Sicilian mafia and the Italian Governments since the Italian unity in 1861 until the landing of the Allies in Sicily during WWII.
Dominica– who has studied History of the Italian Mafia with Professor Lorenzo Picchi at the Richmond University in Florence – points out the many opportunities and favorable moments that the Italian Government has had throughout history to eradicate the mafia, without exploiting any. Without the support of the Governments, the mafia would just be an archaic bunch of shepherds destined to be wiped out from history. And if today the mafias – and not just Cosa Nostra – are still in such power in Italy, it is due to the political connections that it historically has, and also due to the lack of political will to defeat the mafia. Today the fight against the mafia is not included among the priorities of the Governments, regardless of their political color. Italy has always preferred to negotiate with the mafia, rather than fight it.
Governmental Floundering And The Survival Of The Mafia
Written by: Dominica Tarica
Since its inception in 1861 the Italian government has had ample opportunity to rid itself of the scourge that is the Sicilian mafia.
In the face of each of these situations, however, the mafia has prevailed over the government.
In the beginning, the government failed to understand the power, influence, and sheer breadth of the mafia and chose to ignore what little of it they did understand, preferring to superficially abuse the perceived control the mafia had to insert themselves as a ruling power over the Sicilian people. By the time the government realized the threat posed by the mafia, it was too late to properly dispose of the mafia.
A proper chronicle of the Italian government’s fumbling approach to the mafia must first give context; that is, attempt to explain the origins of the mafia. As there are no written records describing the early presence of the mafia, or Cosa Nostra, as they call themselves, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment of the birth of the mafia.
Rather, it is more pertinent to chart the mafia from the time of the Italian unity in 1861. It is generally accepted that the mafia has its origins in the veritable revolving door of foreign dominators that passed through Sicily prior to Giuseppe Garibaldi’s campaign in 1860. While foreign powers came and went, the Mafiosi, by way of the latifondo system, were a constant, exploiting the peasants regardless of who was officially in charge.
The feudal latifondo system was perfect for the Mafiosi and for the landowners who hired them as overseers but left something to be desired for the peasants whose cut of the production shrank with the involvement of the Mafiosi as gabelloti, or middlemen.
The forcibly developed dependence of the peasants on the mafia-supported gabelloti was the perfect introduction for the mafia in the newly-Italian society.
The first missed chance, then, that the Italian government had to dispose of the mafia, was in the first days of unification.
Had Giuseppe Garibaldi not relied on the mafia to take control of the Sicilian people in his haste to make his way to the mainland of Italy and instead put the power with the people, it is possible that the mafia could have been relegated to obscurity from the very beginning.
Alternatively, when the Italian government first came to power, they could have properly abolished the feudal system immediately, again granting power to the peasants, rendering the intermediary Mafiosi irrelevant instead of turning their backs on the situation and allowing the feudal method to continue to run in the background of Sicilian culture (Dickie 52).
As the mafia did not actually have influence within the government until 1876, this would have been the ideal point at which the government could have disposed of the mafia, were it not for their perpetual underestimation of the mafia (Davis 291).
The events in this period, or, more accurately, lack of events as the government never actually made any move against the mafia, would set the tone for the government’s approach to the mafia for the next century and beyond.
The first to actually declare to the world that the mafia was more than inflated sense of Sicilian pride was Turrisi Colonna, who wrote about the mafia in 1864 and claimed that an iron fist would not be a successful method of fighting the mafia (Dickie 39-42). As Colonna was the first to write publicly against the mafia, there was little response to his work. Several years later, however, two young Northerners, Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino, went to Sicily with the aim of uncovering the nature of the mafia-beast for themselves. With the report of Colonna, another by Dr. Galati that outlined his persecution by the mafia, as well as the use of the term in both a play and an opera, the idea of the Sicilian mafia had spread throughout Italy, though it was largely met with confusion as to its meaning.
Franchetti and Sonnino traveled to Sicily to interview Turrisi Colonna only to discover that he had deep connections to the mafia himself which somewhat tarnished his credibility as a critic of the mafia. Franchetti’s report tells the story of the plight of the peasant under the latifondo system and the emergence of violence as the mafia’s primary weapon against outside interference in a perverted version of capitalism. In the end, his radical solutions for dispelling the mafia overshadowed the good his report might have done, and it joined the ranks of messages that fell on deaf ears.
Franchetti and Sonnino aptly placed responsibility for the wanton crime in Sicily at the hands of the ruling class, stating that “‘it would have required less than three days to put an end to the banditry had the Sicilian ruling class wished to do so’” (Davis 295).
The fact remains that the members of the so-called ‘ruling class’ of Sicily, if not Mafiosi themselves, directly benefited from the tactics of the mafia and would not have wanted to put a stop to the crime.
When the gabelloti were not only negotiating terms between the landowners and the peasants in the usual sense, they were negotiating said terms with hesitant landowners by means of violence to attain their eventual goals, such as in the case of Dr. Galati who was eventually pushed off his land so that a mafia-affiliated gabelloto could assume control of the land.
The date the Italian government first lost control of the fight against the mafia can be set as the elections of 1874, long before the government had any idea that the mafia existed as an organization that would need to be fought.
It was at this point that, under the suffrage laws of the time, the mafia was able to control the election and put their men, members of the Sinistra coalition of parties, into power in Parliament (Davis 292-3).
The beginning of some semblance of a fight on the part of the government, however, can be assigned to the first Parliamentary Inquiries that took place two years later, though the first true mafia triumph follows closely on the tail of the inquiries as they became the first in a long line of failed government attempts to discern the level of corruption in Sicilian government (Davis 293-4).
If nothing else, the fact that none of these inquiries turn up anything useful at all or are curtailed for one reason or another should be evidence enough of the height of corruption within the government.
The next notable outcry against the mafia was a report put together by Palermo’s Chief of Police, Ermanno Sangiorgi at the close of the 19th century (Dickie 100).
Sangiorgi’s tome included a precise outline of the power structure of the mafia families in and around Palermo as well as veritable dossiers on over two hundred men affiliated with the mafia, including landowners and simple workers.
In the words of Cosa Nostra author John Dickie, “there is no more riveting illustration of Italy’s long-standing failure to see the truth about the mafia” than the Sangiorgi report (101). The report was actually written in conjunction with a trial centered on the murders of four men in a village North of Palermo and through which Sangiorgi hoped to finally bring the problem of the mafia to the forefront of the Italian government’s political agenda (103).
It was during his investigation of these four murders that Sangiorgi began to better understand the greater enemy that was at work: the omnipresent and nearly impenetrable mafia (111). The mafia thwarted Sangiorgi at every turn, though they need hardly have bothered as the Ministry of Interior paid little attention to the periodic updates Sangiorgi sent them through the duration of his investigation (118, 100).
Sangiorgi had a breakthrough, however, when the powerful Mafiosi Francesco Siino was captured and turned pentito, or informant, against the mafia (119). Through Siino, Sangiorgi was able to fill the holes in his record and put his plan into action (123).
It is through the Sangiorgi report, too, that the extent to which the mafia had infiltrated the Italian government, particularly in Sicily became apparent.
Though Sangiorgi sent installments of his report to the Ministry of Interior in Sicily, he wanted to make sure the Government in Rome, especially General Pelloux who was acting Prime Minister, was aware of the situation (Dickie 123).
Sangiorgi understood that the Sicilian politicians, if not Mafiosi themselves, protected the Mafiosi and were protected by them in turn (124). Again, the mafia’s elaborately twisted system of security was rendered redundant by the Italian government: the King was assassinated and General Pelloux resigned, and Sangiorgi lost the potential for support from Rome (124).
By the time the trial finally started in 1901, after significant deliberation on the part of the prosecuting attorney to whom Sangiorgi’s updates had originally been addressed, and the strong case Sangiorgi had built on paper crumbled before him (125).
To begin, star witness Francesco Siino, predicting that the trial would come to nothing, changed his story and denied everything in order to appease his former colleagues (125).
Following Siino’s example, each of the subsequent witnesses recanted their stories, except for the three women who had lost their loved ones (two husbands and a daughter) in the mafia war that encompassed the four murders at the heart of the trial (126).
Once again, and more prominently this time, the lack of support from the central government dealt a crippling blow to the fight against the mafia.
While success on the part of Sangiorgi would not have completely eradicated the mafia, it would have made a significant dent in their prime defense: that the mafia does not exist as a body of organized crime.
The hesitance of the Italian government meant that the world at large was still in the dark in regards to the true nature of the mafia.
Additionally, because of the public nature of the trial, the Italian government became a sort of a joke, and Sangiorgi’s reputation certainly took a hit in the face of the mafia’s power, even over those they had previously exploited or harmed.
The simple fact of the matter is that, with the lack of a strong governmental force in Sicily to which the peasants could turn for support and safety, they were left with the enemy they knew: the mafia.
As mentioned previously, the mafia was the only constant in the Sicilian culture and, because of that, its place was at the very heart of Sicilian culture.
In some ways those who said that the mafia was nothing more than the pride of being Sicilian were right – where they erred was in saying that the mafia was not more than that.
The idea of the mafia is so ingrained in the Sicilian culture that it is certainly a point of pride, if somewhat misplaced, but, beyond that, it is the criminal organization responsible for innumerable deaths and immeasurable suffering.
The next important chapter in the story of the struggle between mafia and the Italian government is actually twofold: the first took place during the early years of Benito Mussolini’s reign in the 1920’s, and the second after the Allies freed Italy at the end of World War II. The first half of the story chronicles the first successful attempt to destroy the mafia, while the second follows the reversal of the fascist work and the reemergence of the mafia, possibly stronger that it was before.
As the story goes, Mussolini’s particular agenda against the mafia is due to an official visit he made to Sicily in 1923 during which he was insulted by a particularly proud Mafioso seeking to exercise his power: while escorted by this Mafioso Mussolini was not accompanied by a police escort because the mere presence of that Mafioso would protect him (Dickie 182).
The sources, however, suggest that the reason is more political rather than personal: the mafia threatened and undermined his power in Sicily, and working against them would be a bold move for him as a new leader that, if successful, would legitimize and empower his reign (Duggan 119).
Regardless of the reason, in 1925 Mussolini made Cesare Mori prefect of Palermo and set him loose on the resident Mafiosi (124).
Within the first two months of his appointment, Mori had arrested over five hundred men, a number that would only continue to grow (131).
In order to battle the mafia, Cesare Mori established a method of shock tactics in which he rounded up as many Mafiosi and suspected-Mafiosi as he could find.
In some ways, Mori’s methods were similar to those of the mafia: particularly in the Siege of Gangi, Mori did not just arrest the bandits, but sought to humiliate them as well, thus using each arrested man as a symbol to the others that, if they continue their lawless behavior, they will be arrested.
The primary difference between Mori and the mafia, then, is that while Mori only arrested men to use them as examples, the mafia killed them to serve the same purpose (Duggan 136).
To continue the comparison, part of Mori’s goal was, in fact, to replace the mafia for the people of Sicily (147). If he could exhibit a strong central authority to rival the mafia, the people would see that the mafia was not their only option for protection.
Theoretically, Mori and his veritable regime over Palermo should have in incorruptible as well, presenting an impenetrable wall of safety to which the people of Palermo and, by extension, the whole of Sicily could turn instead of relying on the Mafia (147).
In March of 1926 and after Mori’s success in Gangi and Corleone, Mussolini saw fit to extend the prefect’s power in Palermo and the surrounding areas, effectually granting him the right to conduct his precinct under martial law (165).
Later in 1926, the records show that Mori had made nearly five thousand arrests in the Palermo region, making for immense amounts of paperwork and interviews in order to prepare for the trials for each suspected Mafiosi or accomplice (225).
All in all, over 11,000 arrests are attributed to Mori’s reign in Palermo, which may have been partially responsible for his dismissal in 1929 (Duggan 245).
Regardless of the direct cause, Mori was relieved of his position as prefect of Palermo via telegram from Mussolini on June 23, 1929 (Dickie 190). The story later was that Mori was dismissed because he had succeeded in his task of ridding Sicily of the mafia, and it was claimed that this extermination was permanent (191).
With the prisons of Sicily veritably overflowing, the crime rate could do naught but drop, but simply imprisoning eleven thousand men suspected of mafia ties of one form or another does not completely eradicate the mafia in perpetuity.
While many members of the mafia were in jail, some escaped and moved abroad (especially to the United States) and other simply remained in Sicily and either turned their fellow Mafiosi (or low-level bandits) over to the police or simply went quiet until the end of the Fascist regime in Italy (189).
Also, as the concepts of the mafia and its violence as an answer to social problems were so deeply ingrained in the culture of Sicily, mafia-like acts of violence broke out during World War II when “German soldiers were being ‘picked off at the rate of almost one a day’” (Duggan 271).
The mafia was present in Sicily even without an abundance of active members directly organizing illegal actions.
Although it is arguable that only imprisoning Mafiosi and suspected mafia accomplices is not the perfect solution, Mori’s campaign against the mafia remains the most successful attempt to suppress the mafia in the history of the Italian government.
It was at this point that the government had the greatest chance to free Sicily from the grips of the mafia in name and then allow the island to start afresh with a zero-tolerance policy for organized crime of any sort and free the island from the mafia in reality as well.
Unfortunately, Mussolini’s fervor for tyranny and the advent of World War II followed by the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 destroyed that opportunity.
Just as Garibaldi did in 1860, the Allies turned to the mafia to quickly gain control of Sicily in their haste to continue on to liberate the rest of Italy, though whether they did so knowingly or not is unknown (Dickie 240).
Those Mafiosi who had neither been arrested nor emigrated were still considered to be elite members of society – not enough time had passed to erase the reputations of the past, and, once again, the Mafiosi, active or not, were familiar to the people of Sicily while the Fascist leaders were foreign – and it was easy for the Allied troops to plant these men as mayors of the towns through which they traveled (240).
It only makes sense that, in the chaotic aftermath of World War II, the Mafiosi, with their decades of experience in governing Sicily in the background would step forward as the obvious nominees to govern Sicily in the foreground.
In many ways, the Allies were left with little choice: they could look at the bigger picture for their present, which was to hand rule of Sicily over to the Mafiosi who were prepared to take it and then continue on to the rest of Italy and Europe quickly, or they could look at the long-term picture for Italy and Sicily, which would involve wasting precious time in Sicily trying to sift through the Men of Honor and the honorable men.
The choice was clear, though lamentable, and the mafia jumped at the chance to be at the forefront of the post-war battle for political control in Italy (243-4).
It was during the tumult surrounding the future government of Italy that the next opportunity for Italy to dispose of the mafia arose. The mafia, wary of any new governmental body, initiated a movement for Sicily’s independence.
Here is the chance to entertain a fanciful idea for the destruction of the mafia: give Sicily its independence and give the mafia complete control.
If the mafia was born out of resistance to foreign rulers and thrived while working against the Italian government, they would have no role to play if they were the government themselves – they would have no body against which to fight.
It should follow, then, that if the mafia was given power in Sicily they would either kill each other and therefore self-destruct, or be forced to create their own legitimate government.
Alternatively, it is possible that they would simply rule Sicily in a similar manner to Castro’s Cuba. Regardless, the problem would no longer be Italy’s responsibility and the new Italian Republic could start fresh without the parasitic mafia at its core. Unfortunately, the Italian forces came out ahead of the mafia and a new democratic government was put in place in Italy, including Sicily, and the mafia lived to exploit another day.
Works Cited
Davis, John A. Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy. Macmillan Education: London, 1988.
Dickie, John. Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia. Hodder and Stoughton: London, 2007.
Duggan, Christopher. Fascism and the Mafia. Yale UP: New Haven, 1989.
Jamieson, Alison. The Antimafia: Italy’s Fight Against Organized Crime. Macmillan P: London, 2000.
Lifestyle, Arts and Entertainment - a8.01.04.05.07
Further information
Web links
|
