Sicilian Mafia
Sicilian Mafia, hierarchically structured organization of criminals in Sicily, Italy. The Sicilian Mafia is made up of a coalition of criminal organizations—called “families” or “clans” in English and cosche (singular, cosca) in Italian—which engage in extortion, smuggling, gambling, and the mediation of disagreements between other criminals. The term Mafia has become synonymous in English with organized crime, but technically Mafia refers only to the Sicilian organization and its Sicilian American counterpart in the United States.
In 1984 former Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta became a government witness and revealed to authorities the organization and governance of the Mafia, information that previously could only be guessed. According to Buscetta, each cosca possesses the exclusive right to operate in a specific area, which is respected by the other cosche. The territory is usually a village, town, or borough of a city. Although each cosca varies in form from its fellows depending on its size and needs, all of them are led by a boss (or don) who is elected by his fellow members (mafiosi) for a one-year term. He runs the clan with the assistance of a lieutenant called an underboss (capo bastone or sotto capo). The boss also has a counselor (consigliere), who is elected to provide a neutral perspective on the clan’s activities, as well as to keep an eye on the leadership.
The body of the organization is composed of members alternately referred to as mafiosi, soldiers, laborers, or simply “young men” (membership is restricted to men). If a family is large enough, rank-and-file mafiosi might be divided into separate units (decina), each led by a capodecina. Most families, however, are usually too small for this extra bureaucracy. Augmenting this core organization are the family’s many “associates,” people who work with the clan but are not members (e.g., bribed or coerced officials).
Above the bosses of individual families, Mafia clans have set up commissions that must approve any action by one clan which might affect another (e.g., killing in another clan’s territory). Each committee oversees Mafia activity within one province, which is divided into districts composed of four or five clans each. Every district has one representative on the committee.
Most scholars agree that the Mafia arose in the 19th century during Italy’s unification, though others suggest the organization existed long before then. The Mafia owes its origins to and drew its members from the many small private armies, or mafie, that were hired by absentee landlords to protect their estates from bandits in the lawless conditions that prevailed over much of Sicily through the centuries. The energetic ruffians in these private armies organized themselves and grew so powerful that they turned against the landowners and became the sole law on many of the estates, extorting money from the landowners in return for protecting the latter’s crops. Services expanded to include arbitration, oversight, and enforcement of agreements, and different groups of mafie met with each other to settle disputes. By the 20th century the mafie had evolved from enforcers of feudal law into the administrators of an alternative legal system for most of the region’s economy. And just as in any legal system, the most important law was that a person could never seek justice outside the system—a code of silence known as omertà.
The Mafia, as the informal alliance of mafie came to be called, has been repeatedly challenged by the Italian state in the years since its formation. The first time was in 1925, when Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini appointed Cesare Mori, a retired member of the police force, as the new prefect of Palermo. From October 1925 to June 1929, Mori’s forces terrorized the towns in which the Mafia held sway. By 1929 the Fascists had arrested over 11,000 people, and many mafiosi had fled to the United States.
Mori’s campaign succeeded in suppressing the Mafia, but the criminal society found new life when Allied forces invaded Sicily in 1943. The Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories released many mafiosi from prison, categorizing them as victims of the Fascist regime. Some of the community leaders with whom the new government replaced Fascist mayors were also mafiosi or associates of mafiosi.
The revived Mafia adapted to the island’s changing economy by shifting its attention from agriculture to business and industry—particularly the building sector, which the Mafia came to almost completely control. The Mafia also started smuggling cigarettes and other goods. These new endeavors enriched the families to a previously unheard-of degree, but the resulting competition over profit led to violence. In 1962 and 1963 Palermo regularly suffered shootouts and bombings during the so-called First Mafia War (a misnomer, as comparable conflicts between Mafia families had previously occurred). The war ended when a car bomb killed seven officers of the law. Public outrage led the Italian government to form the first Antimafia Commission, which again drove the Mafia into near dormancy. However, few mafiosi were ultimately imprisoned.
In the 1970s Corleone family boss Luciano Leggio began an unprecedented campaign to take control of the mafia. The resulting Second Mafia War led to hundreds of deaths and Leggio’s imprisonment, but Leggio’s successor, Salvatore (“the Beast”) Riina, brought the conflict to a successful conclusion, becoming the Mafia’s first “boss of bosses.” Once again, though, the violence led to a government response, and Riina retaliated by bombing officials and purportedly kidnapping and murdering the son of an informant. In 1987 the state convicted 338 mafiosi in a Mafia “maxi-trial,” and Riina was finally captured on January 15, 1993.
Riina’s designated successor, Bernardo Provenzano, consolidated control of the Mafia by 1995 and ran the organization until his own arrest in 2006. Matteo Messina (“Diabolik”) Denaro, who was a fugitive from the law from 1993 until January 2023, was believed to be the boss of bosses until his death in September 2023. The Mafia continues to operate throughout Sicily, but it is consistently harried by Italian law enforcement. Many believe that the ’Ndrangheta from Calabria, the tip of Italy’s peninsula, has surpassed the Mafia as the most powerful criminal society in Italy, and indeed, the world.