Historian
John Dickie stated that the genesis of
Cosa Nostra is hard to trace because mafiosi are very secretive and do not keep historical records of their own. He added that they have been known to spread deliberate lies about their past and sometimes to believe in their own myths.
Post-feudal Sicily The Mafia's genesis began in the 19th century as the product of Sicily's transition from
feudalism to
capitalism as well as its
unification with mainland Italy. Under feudalism, the
nobility owned most of the land and enforced the law through their
private armies and
manorial courts. After 1812, the
feudal barons steadily sold off or rented their lands to private citizens.
Primogeniture was abolished, land could no longer be seized to settle debts, and one fifth of the land became private property of the peasants. After Italy annexed Sicily in 1860, it redistributed a large share of public and church land to private citizens. The result was a huge increase in the number of
landowners – from 2,000 in 1812 to 20,000 by 1861. With this increase in property owners and commerce came more disputes that needed settling, contracts that needed enforcing, transactions that needed oversight, and properties that needed protecting. The barons released their private armies to let the state take over the job of enforcing the law, but the new authorities were not up to the task, largely due to clashes between official law and local customs. Lack of manpower was also a problem; there were often fewer than 350 active policemen for the entire island. Some towns did not have any permanent police force, and were only visited every few months by some troops to collect malcontents, leaving criminals to operate with impunity in the interim. Compounding these problems was banditry. Rising food prices, These companies-at-arms were often made up of former bandits and criminals, usually the most skilled and violent of them. Furthermore, the land in the east was generally divided into a smaller number of large estates so that there were fewer landowners, and their large estates often required its guardians to patrol it full-time. The owners of such estates needed to hire full-time guardians. By contrast, in the west, the estates tended to be smaller and thus did not require the total, round-the-clock attention of a guardian. It was cheaper for these estates to contract their protection to a mafioso rather than employing full-time guards. A mafioso in these regions could protect multiple small estates at once, which gave him great independence and leverage to charge high prices. The early Mafia was deeply involved with citrus growers and cattle ranchers, as these industries were particularly vulnerable to thieves and vandals and thus badly needed protection. Citrus plantations had a fragile production system that made them quite vulnerable to sabotage. Likewise, cattle are very easy to steal. The Mafia was often more effective than the police at recovering stolen cattle; in the 1920s, it was noted that the Mafia's success rate at recovering stolen cattle was 95%, whereas the police managed only 10%. In 1864,
Niccolò Turrisi Colonna, leader of the Palermo National Guard, wrote of a "sect of thieves" that operated throughout Sicily. This "sect" was mostly rural, composed of cattle thieves, smugglers, wealthy farmers, and their guards. The sect made "affiliates every day of the brightest young people coming from the rural class, of the guardians of the fields in the Palermitan countryside, and of the large number of smugglers; a sect which gives and receives protection to and from certain men who make a living on traffic and internal commerce. It is a sect with little or no fear of public bodies, because its members believe that they can easily elude this." It had special signals for members to recognize each other, offered protection services, scorned the law, and had a code of loyalty and non-interaction with the police known as
umirtà ("code of silence"). Colonna warned in his report that the Italian government's brutal and clumsy attempts to crush crime only made the problem worse by alienating the populace. An 1865 dispatch from the prefect of Palermo to
Rome first officially described the phenomenon as a "Mafia". An 1876 police report provides the earliest known description of the familiar
initiation ritual. Mafiosi meddled in politics early on, bullying voters into voting for candidates they favored. At this period in history, only a small fraction of the Sicilian population could vote, so a single mafia boss could control a sizable chunk of the electorate and thus wield considerable political leverage. Mafiosi used their allies in government to avoid prosecution as well as persecute less well-connected rivals. Given the highly fragmented and shaky Italian political system, cliques of Mafia-friendly politicians exerted a strong influence. The report mentioned initiation rituals and codes of conduct, as well as criminal activities that included counterfeiting, kidnappings for ransom, murder, robbery, and witness intimidation. The Mafia also maintained funds to support the families of imprisoned members and pay defense lawyers. In an attempt to annihilate the Mafia, Italian troops arrested 64 people of Palermo in February 1898. The trial began in May 1901, but after one month, only 32 defendants were found guilty of starting a criminal association and, taking into account the time already spent in prison, many were released the next day. A 2017 study in the
Journal of Economic History links the emergence of the Sicilian Mafia also to the surging demand for oranges and lemons following the late 18th-century discovery that citrus fruits cured
scurvy. A 2019 study in the
Review of Economic Studies linked Mafia activity to "the rise of
socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In an environment with weak state presence, this socialist threat triggered landowners, estate managers, and local politicians to turn to the Mafia to resist and combat peasant demands."
Fascist suppression In 1925,
Benito Mussolini initiated a campaign to destroy the Mafia and assert Fascist control over Sicilian life. The Mafia threatened and undermined his power in Sicily, and a successful campaign would strengthen him as the new leader, legitimizing and empowering his rule. He believed that such suppression would be a great propaganda coup for
fascism, and it would also provide an excuse to suppress his political opponents on the island since many Sicilian politicians had Mafia links. As prime minister, Mussolini visited Sicily in May 1924 and passed through
Piana dei Greci, where he was received by mayor/Mafia boss
Francesco Cuccia. At some point, Cuccia expressed surprise at Mussolini's police escort and whispered in his ear: "You are with me, you are under my protection. What do you need all these cops for?" After Mussolini rejected Cuccia's offer of protection, the
sindaco felt that he had been slighted and instructed the townsfolk not to attend the
duces speech. Mussolini felt humiliated and outraged. Cuccia's careless remark has passed into history as the catalyst for Mussolini's war on the Mafia. Mussolini firmly established his power in January 1925; he appointed
Cesare Mori as the Prefect of Palermo in October 1925 and granted him special powers to fight the Mafia. By 1928, more than 11,000 suspects were arrested. Confessions were sometimes extracted through beatings and torture. Some mafiosi who had been on the losing end of Mafia feuds voluntarily cooperated with prosecutors, perhaps as a way of obtaining protection and revenge. Charges of Mafia association were typically leveled at poor peasants and
gabellotti (farm leaseholders), but were avoided when dealing with major landowners. Many were tried
en masse. More than 1,200 were convicted and imprisoned, and many others were internally exiled without trial. Mori's campaign ended in June 1929 when Mussolini recalled him to Rome. He did not permanently crush the Mafia as the Fascist press proclaimed, but his campaign was very successful at suppressing it. Sicily's murder rate sharply declined. Landowners were able to raise the legal rents on their lands, sometimes as much as ten-thousandfold.
Post-Fascist revival In 1943, nearly half a million
Allied troops invaded Sicily. Crime soared in the upheaval and chaos. Many inmates escaped from prisons, banditry returned, and the black market thrived. Most institutions were destroyed, with the exception of the police and carabinieri, and the American occupiers had to build a new order from scratch. As Fascist mayors were deposed, the
Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) simply appointed replacements. Many turned out to be mafiosi, such as
Calogero Vizzini and
Giuseppe Genco Russo. They could easily present themselves as political dissidents, and their
anti-communist position gave them additional credibility. Mafia bosses reformed their clans, absorbing some of the marauding bandits into their ranks. The changing economic landscape of Sicily shifted the Mafia's power base from rural to urban areas. The Minister of Agriculture – a
communist – pushed for reforms in which peasants were to get larger shares of produce, be allowed to form
cooperatives and take over badly used land, and remove the system by which leaseholders (known as "
gabellotti") could rent land from landowners for their own short-term use. Owners of especially large estates were to be forced to sell off some of their land. The Mafia had connections to many landowners and murdered many
socialist reformers. The most notorious attack was the
Portella della Ginestra massacre, when 11 people were killed and 33 wounded during
May Day celebrations on May 1, 1947. The bloodbath was perpetrated by bandit
Salvatore Giuliano, who was possibly backed by local Mafia bosses. In the end, though, they were unable to stop the process, and many landowners chose to sell their land to mafiosi, who offered more money than the government. In the 1950s, a crackdown in the United States on
drug trafficking led to the imprisonment of many American mafiosi.
Cuba, a major hub for drug smuggling, was taken over by
Fidel Castro and associated communists. In 1957 American mafia boss
Joseph Bonanno returned to Sicily to franchise his
heroin operations to the Sicilian clans. Anticipating rivalries for the lucrative American drug market, he negotiated the establishment of a
Sicilian Mafia Commission to mediate disputes.
Sack of Palermo The post-war period saw a huge building boom in Palermo. Allied bombing in
World War II had left more than 14,000 people homeless, and migrants were pouring in from the countryside, so there was a huge demand for new homes. Much of this construction was subsidized by public money. In 1956, two Mafia-connected officials,
Vito Ciancimino and
Salvatore Lima, took control of Palermo's Office of Public Works. Between 1959 and 1963, about 80 percent of building permits were given to just five people, none of whom represented major construction firms; they were likely Mafia frontmen. Construction companies unconnected with the Mafia were forced to pay
protection money. Many buildings were illegally constructed before the city's planning was finalized. Mafiosi scared off anyone who dared to question the illegal building. The result of this unregulated building was the demolition of many historic buildings and the erection of apartment blocks, many of which were not up to standard. During the 1950s, the Mafia continued its deep penetration of the construction and cement industries. The cement business was appealing because it allows high levels of local economic involvement and is a good front for illegitimate operations.
First Mafia War The First Mafia War was the first high-profile conflict between Mafia clans in post-war Italy (the Sicilian Mafia has a long history of violent rivalries). In 1962, mafia boss
Cesare Manzella organized a drug shipment to the United States with the help of two Sicilian clans, the Grecos and the La Barberas. Manzella entrusted another boss,
Calcedonio Di Pisa, to handle the heroin. When the shipment arrived in the United States, however, the American buyers claimed that some heroin was missing, and paid Di Pisa a commensurately lower sum. Di Pisa accused the Americans of defrauding him, while the La Barberas accused Di Pisa of embezzling the missing heroin. The Sicilian Mafia Commission sided with Di Pisa, and the La Barberas were outraged. The La Barberas murdered Di Pisa and Manzella, triggering a war. Many non-mafiosi were killed in the crossfire. In April 1963, several bystanders were wounded during a shootout in Palermo. In May,
Angelo La Barbera survived a murder attempt in
Milan. In June, six military officers and a policeman in
Ciaculli were killed while trying to dispose of a car bomb. These incidents provoked national outrage and a crackdown in which nearly 2,000 arrests were made. Mafia activity fell as clans disbanded and mafiosi went into hiding. The Sicilian Mafia Commission was dissolved; it did not re-form until 1969. A total of 117 suspects were tried in 1968, but most were acquitted or received light sentences. The inactivity, plus money lost to legal fees and so forth, reduced most mafiosi to poverty. The Mafia families in Palermo were particularly hit hard, and ceased activity altogether in that city for a few years until the conclusion of the trials in 1968 allowed them to reorganize.
Smuggling boom The 1950s and 1960s were difficult times for the mafia, but in the 1970s their rackets grew considerably more lucrative, particularly smuggling. The most lucrative racket of the 1970s was
cigarette smuggling. Sicilian and Neapolitan crime bosses negotiated a joint monopoly over the smuggling of cigarettes to
Naples.
Heroin refineries operated by
Corsican gangsters in
Marseilles were shut down by French authorities, and
morphine traffickers looked to
Sicily. Starting in 1975, Cosa Nostra set up heroin refineries around the island.
Cosa Nostra sought to control both the refining and distribution of heroin. Sicilian mafiosi moved to the United States to personally control distribution networks there, often at the expense of their U.S. counterparts. Heroin addiction in North America surged from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s. By 1982, the Sicilian Mafia controlled about 80 percent of the heroin trade in the northeastern United States. Heroin was often distributed to street dealers from Mafia-owned
pizzerias, and the revenues could be passed off as restaurant profits (the so-called
Pizza Connection).
Second Mafia War In the early 1970s,
Luciano Leggio was boss of the
Corleonesi clan and a member of the
Sicilian Mafia Commission, and he forged a coalition of mafia clans known as the Corleonesi with himself as its leader. He initiated a campaign to dominate
Cosa Nostra and its narcotics trade. Leggio was imprisoned in 1974, so he acted through his deputy
Salvatore Riina, to whom he eventually handed over control. The Corleonesi bribed cash-strapped Palermo clans into the fold, subverted members of other clans, and secretly recruited new members. In 1977, the Corleonesi had
Gaetano Badalamenti expelled from the commission on trumped-up charges of hiding drug revenues. In April 1981, the Corleonesi murdered a rival member of the Commission
Stefano Bontade, and the
Second Mafia War began in earnest. Hundreds of enemy mafiosi and their relatives were murdered, sometimes by traitors in their own clans. By manipulating the Mafia's rules and eliminating rivals, the Corleonesi came to completely dominate the commission. Riina used his power over the commission to replace the bosses of certain clans with hand-picked regents. In the end, the Corleonesi faction won and Riina effectively became the "boss of bosses" of the Sicilian Mafia. At the same time that the Corleonesi waged their campaign to dominate
Cosa Nostra, they also waged a campaign of murder against journalists, officials, and policemen who dared to cross them. The police were frustrated with the lack of help that they were receiving from witnesses and politicians. At the funeral of a policeman murdered by mafiosi in 1985, policemen insulted and spat at two attending politicians, and a fight broke out between them and military police. , seven-time
Prime Minister of Italy, had proven links to the Mafia. Prime Minister
Giulio Andreotti and High Court judge
Corrado Carnevale were long been suspected of having ties to the Mafia, in addition to the Sicilian politician
Salvatore Lima. In 1999, the Italian court of appeal held that Andreotti "had, not without personal advantages, knowingly and deliberately nurtured a stable relationship with the criminal organization, contributing to its strength by manifesting his availability to favor its members"; It is considered to be the most significant trial ever against the Sicilian Mafia, as well as the biggest trial in world history.
War against the state and Riina's downfall The Mafia retaliated violently. In 1988, they murdered a Palermo judge and his son; three years later, a prosecutor and an anti-mafia businessman were also murdered.
Salvatore Lima, a close political ally of the Mafia, was murdered for failing to reverse the convictions as promised. Falcone was
killed on May 23, 1992, with of
TNT positioned under the
highway near
Capaci, Sicily. Borsellino was also
killed by a car bomb on July 19, 1992. This led to a public outcry and a massive government crackdown, resulting in the arrest of
Salvatore Riina in January 1993. More and more informants emerged. Many paid a high price for their cooperation, usually through the murder of relatives. For example,
Francesco Marino Mannoia's mother, aunt, and sister were murdered. Tourist spots were attacked, such as the
Via dei Georgofili in
Florence,
Via Palestro in
Milan, and the Piazza
San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in
Rome, leaving 10 dead and 93 injured and causing severe damage to cultural heritage such as the
Uffizi Gallery. The Catholic Church openly condemned the Mafia, two churches were bombed and an anti-Mafia priest was shot dead in Rome. The choice to hit cultural and church targets was partly to destabilize the
government, but also because the Mafia felt that the
Roman Catholic Church had abrogated an unwritten hands-off policy toward traditional
organized crime in
Southern Italy. in Milan in 1993 After Riina's capture, the leadership of the Mafia was briefly held by
Leoluca Bagarella, then passed to
Bernardo Provenzano when Bagarella was captured in 1995. Provenzano halted the campaign of violence and replaced it with a campaign of quietness known as
Pax Mafiosa.
Provenzano years Under Bernardo Provenzano's leadership, murders of state officials were halted. He also halted the policy of murdering informants and their families, with a view instead to getting them to retract their testimonies and return to the fold. He also restored the common support fund for imprisoned mafiosi. By the late 1990s, the weakened Cosa Nostra had to yield most of the illegal drug trade to the
'Ndrangheta crime organization from
Calabria. In 2006, the 'Ndrangheta was estimated to control 80 percent of the
cocaine imported to Europe. The tide of defectors was greatly stemmed. The Mafia preferred to initiate relatives of existing mafiosi, believing them to be less prone to defection. Provenzano was arrested in 2006, after 43 years on the run. His successor as
boss was
Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested only in 2023.
Modern Mafia in Italy The incarcerated bosses are subject to strict controls on their contact with the outside world, limiting their ability to run their operations from behind bars under the
article 41-bis prison regime.
Antonino Giuffrè is a close confidant of Provenzano who turned informant shortly after his capture in 2002. He alleges that
Cosa Nostra had direct contact in 1993 with representatives of
Silvio Berlusconi who was then planning the birth of
Forza Italia. The alleged deal included a repeal of 41-bis, among other anti-Mafia laws, in return for electoral support in Sicily. Nevertheless, Giuffrè's declarations have not yet been confirmed. The Italian Parliament reinforced the provisions of the 41-bis, with the full support of Forza Italia. When the bill was set to expire in 2002, it was made into a permanent fixture in the penal code and extended to other crimes such as terrorism. However, according to one of Italy's leading magazines ''
L'Espresso'', 119 mafiosi have been released on an individual basis – one-fifth of those incarcerated under the 41-bis regime. The human rights group
Amnesty International expressed concern that the 41-bis regime could, in some circumstances, amount to "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" for prisoners. In 2015, the
Mafia Capitale investigation revealed that the Mafia profits from the
European migrant crisis and exploits refugees. In October 2017, members of the Renzvillo crime family and 2
Carabinieri military police officers were arrested for involvement in the drug trade and large-scale extortion. Altogether 37 people were arrested and over 600 officers were deployed. €11 million ($12 million) in real estate and goods were seized by police. A business owner was forced to pay €180,000 ($212,000). The Renzvillo mafia family has allegedly set up alliances with the 'Ndrangheta and Camorra. The leader is suspected of previously sending members of his organization to Karlsruhe and Cologne in Germany. On 22 January 2018, 58 people connected to 16 mafia families were arrested by Carabinieri police in Caltanissetta,
Palermo, Enna, Ragusa, Agrigento and
Catania. Some of the most common charges were mafia association, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, and vote buying. The mayor of
San Biagio Platani, Santino Sabella, was among the arrested and accused of agreeing on candidates for the 2014 local elections with the Sicilian Mafia and exerting pressure on the allocation of council contracts. Two companies running
migrant reception centers in Sicily were targeted as protection rackets, overall 27 businesses were targeted and extorted. On 1 February 2018, 31 people with ties to a crime family based in Palermo were arrested and charged with money laundering, fraud and drug trafficking, as part of Operation "Game Over". Benedetto Bacchi, reportedly controlled over 700 betting shops across Italy and was earning roughly €1 million per month, using an online gambling operator licensed in Malta; his license was suspended. According to investigators, Bacchi bought a construction company, and a villa formerly owned by footballer
Giovanni Tedesco for €500,000; the next day Bacchi listed the house for sale at the price of €1.3 million. He also allegedly considered taking over a news publication with his criminal proceeds. Investigators also alleged that the
American Mafia in New York had set up a profitable food export company with the Sicilian mafia. The Cosa Nostra has traditionally been the most powerful group in Palermo. After the arrest of the alleged new mafia boss in July 2019, a
CNN article in July 2019 indicated that Sicilian Mafia activity in Palermo was particularly notorious in one area: the Sicilian town of Passo di Rigano with involvement "in business such as wholesale food supplies, online betting and gambling". News articles also confirmed links between the Cosa Nostra and New York's
Gambino crime family. According to Italian newspaper
La Repubblica, "Off they go, through the streets of Passo di Rigano, Boccadifalco, Torretta and at the same time, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey. Because from Sicily to the US, the old mafia has returned." Murders, particularly ones connected to Mafia activity, have decreased considerably since the 1990s. In 1991, there were 481 murders in Sicily of which 253 were connected to Mafia activity. In 2020, there were only 33 murders of which 4 were Mafia murders. ==Structure and composition==