1. Mafia: Beyond the Stereotypes
“Italians have a little joke that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to
look after him, and that's why they have godfathers,” said Vito Corleone to his listeners. As
usual, he was wearing his immaculate tuxedo and the perfectly aligned black papillon. “The
Godfather”is a masterpiece of film history, but it is out of date. Nowadays, mafia affiliates
wear jeans and t-shirts, although the fancier ones might still wear bow ties. But most
important, no one calls them “Don”.
The day of his arrest, Francesco Schiavone wore an unbuttoned yellowish shirt and
black pants, perhaps because it was a summer day –the 11th
of July. The only sign of his
getaway from the policewas his long beard. The boss –not Don- of the Neapolitan camorra
had been hiding in a bunker for years, ruling his empire from the basement. His first arrest
dated back to 1972, when he was only eighteen and a wannabe criminal. His final arrest
dates back to 1998, when he was forty four and the most undisputed leader of camorra. He
has been in jail since then and he never repented. Few affiliates repent and collaborate with
justice; pride and honor are core values for any shade of mafia, together with religion. The
Saints, the Madonna, and Jesus hang on the walls of the dens, not as a warning but as a
protection. As the prosecuting attorney of Rome Giuseppe Pignatone told the Italian
newspaper Avvenire“To mafia bosses, religion is a tool for the domination they would like
to exercise, especially given the importance religion has in Southern Italy.”
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2. The Meridione–as Southern Italy is called- is where mafia was born and where its
different branches developed: camorra in region Campania, Cosa Nostra in region Sicilia,
and ‘ndrangheta in Calabria. The ‘ndranheta is both the oldest –it formed in 1600- and the
most ambitious, to the point of being compared to Al-Qaida in its structure by the
Anti-mafia Parliamentary Committee. Blood ties and weddings define the affiliation, while
hierarchy defines everyone’s role and status. Every clan is a tribe that responds to the big
family of the Calabrese mafia and this tie makes it difficult for the investigators to open a
breach in the system. Respect, affection, and power compose the structure of ‘ndrangheta,
while the so called battesimo –baptism- composes the net of silence. The novices swear in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to protect their family and never betray it, so the
‘ndrangheta repentant who collaborate with the law enforcements are rare.
On the other hand, Cosa Nostra was recently hit by a wave of arrests that mined its
power on the territory. The Sicilian mafia is hierarchical and composed by clans, but the
small local tribes don’t know the regional leaders. There is a code of honor, but
collaboration with the anti-mafia forces is easier for the affiliates who don’t have blood and
affection ties with the leaders. Locally, Cosa Nostra controls politicians and officials and it
insures the citizen’s silence through threats and money extortions. Internationally, its main
business is drug and the Sicilians branches spread all over the globe, from Mexico to China.
However, the joint work of global law forces brought to a series of imprisonments and Cosa
Nostra is now looking for a way to recover. On the contrary, the Neapolitan camorra is
destroying itself without any outside help. In fact, the mafia branch of Campania has always
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3. been characterized by internal feuds and fights, which often led to confusion and lack of
guidance. The leaders of the small clans don’t either accept or obey the orders of the main
bosses; they act following their own ideas and will. On the territory, this criminal mess
translates into violence.
However, the three Italian mafia organizations have something in common: they all
evolved, adjusting to the times. In the first episode of “The Godfather”, Santino Corleone
dies in a bloody ambush. His enemies empty the gun loaders and then drive away, leaving
Vito Corleone’s son alone in his blood. Nowadays, mafia affiliates don’t shot at each other
on the streets and they don’t risk the chaos created by an ambush. The lupara bianca
–untranslatable term- gets rid of the undesired person without noise: one moment the
condemned is sipping an espresso in his favorite bar and suddenly he is dead. The gun has
a silencer and the body disappears without any red blotch on the floor of the café. Murder
isn’t even the first and only option anymore: before, the antagonists try mediating. While
Michael Corleone didn’t give to his brother Fredo any chance of explaining himself and he
simply killed him, nowadays mafia affiliates talk in the attempt of smoothing the
differences. Everything has to seem calm.
“There is a more civil mafia and a more mafia society. Mafia is more and more in suit
and tie and society changes its clothes too many times a day, choosing the camouflage,” said
the ex-magistrate of Palermo (Sicily) Antonio Ingroia to the Italian newspaper L’Unitá in
2006.Camorra, Cosa Nostra, and ‘ndrangheta have become the agents of white collars and
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4. the affiliates shake hands with politicians and officials. Mafia organizations get billionaire
building contracts, launder money in waste dumps, and they invest illegal profits into
banks. They are not crazy criminals who sniff cocaine: they are entrepreneurs. The clans
support a candidate and in exchange they receive benefits that widen from uncollected
receivables to the management of the urban sector, as the municipality of Sedriano (region
Lombardia) demonstrates. In October 2013 the Northern municipality shut down for mafia
infiltrations: the first case in the rich and upper class Lombardia.
Lombardia is closer to Souther Austria than to Northern Tunisia: mafia is not about
the Meridione, not any more. It isn’t even about Italy: mafia is a globalized societal
phenomenon. Mafia doesn’t have any borders and it is constantly evolving, like we are. “If
we want to effectively fight mafia, we can’t transform it into a monster or into a cancer. We
have to recognize it resembles us,” said the magistrate Giovanni Falcone in 1991. He was
killed with 400kg on TNT the 23rd
of March 1992 by Cosa Nostra.
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