A Brief History of the Mafia

The word “Mafia” is an informal term that is used to describe a network of organised crime organisations in both America and Italy. Until the mid-19th century Sicily was ruled by foreign invaders such as the Romans, Arabs and Spanish causing the island residents to form protection groups. These groups eventually became known as families with their own secretive justice systems and they further developed into small private armies known as “mafie” who took the opportunity with all the chaos to start extorting money from landowners. This grew into the Sicilian Mafia as it is known today.

A Mafioso is a member of the Mafia – this Italian word derives from the Sicilian word “mafiusu” which signified an arrogant, proud or fearless man. It did not initially refer to a criminal, but rather someone who was suspicious of government. Strangely enough the feminine form of “mafiusa” means a beautiful or attractive woman.

The birth of the Sicilian Mafia.

In 1861, Sicily became a province of the newly unified (and very chaotic) Italy. With rampant crime, the Italian government needed help and asked the Sicilian Mafia families to go after some dangerous criminal gangs – in exchange the officials would look the other way when it came to the Mafia’s protection rackets. While Rome thought this would be temporary until they gained control, the Mafia families became much more powerful and expanded their criminal activities to include corruption and intimidation in politics.

To strengthen themselves even further, these Sicilian clans introduced initiation ceremonies that included new recruits pledging loyalty and swearing secret oaths. The most important was Omerta, the code of silence based on the old Sicilian belief that no-one should cooperate with the authorities when seeking justice for a crime.

The American Mafia.

The Sicilian Mafia continued its growth until Benito Mussolini came to power in the 1920s. Mussolini saw the Mafia as a threat to the Fascists and imprisoned around a thousand suspected Mafiosi. However, in the 1950s, the post-World War II building boom in Sicily was controlled by mob backed construction companies and by the 1970s the Mafia was dominant in the narcotics trade.

The American Mafia gained significant power in the 1920s Prohibition era as neighbourhood gangs developed into more sophisticated criminal networks via the illegal liquor trade. In 1930, Lucky Luciano established the Commission – a central governing body for all the crime families operating in the United States. In 1933 after 13 years, Prohibition was repealed, and this was when the Mafia really started becoming powerful. They became involved in a number of illegal activities such as loansharking, drug trafficking and also infiltrated legitimate organisations and businesses like unions, construction companies and the garment industry.

The Mafia 1 – The Law 0.

Initially there was no contest – the Mafia with wallets filled from bootlegging profits were always ahead of the FBI. With the Mafia using “Tommy” guns and from 1932 using the new Ford V8 they were easily able to outgun and outrun the law. In those days, the local police forces were not only poorly equipped and under trained, but their jurisdictions stopped at state borders – they were overwhelmed by the power and efficiency of organised crime.

The Bureau of Investigation (formally renamed as the FBI in 1935) was not doing much better than the local police – they were inefficient and had a reputation for politically based investigations. J. Edgar Hoover changed all that – he introduced professional standards, codes of conduct, formal training and he preferred candidates to have law or accounting experience. It still took many years for the FBI to recognize the Mafia problem – in 1963 Joe Valachi became the first Mafioso to testify as a witness for the state and to publicly acknowledge the Mafia’s existence. A few years later the FBI created the Organised Crime Strike Force, which helped but still did little to stop the Mafia – it was only in the 1980s that the FBI was able to start making real progress against them.

The Mafia 0 – The Law 127.

In the early hours of January 20, 2011 more than 700 federal agents arrested 127 members of the Mafia in New York City and the East Coast. It was the largest coordinated crime prevention activity in the FBI’s history. More than thirty of those arrested were “made” mafia members (a made man received full backing of the Mafia and was considered untouchable by other criminals).

The American Mafia is now a shadow of its former self even to the point that the FBI started cutting their budget devoted to fighting organised crime. The Mafia continues to be involved in a number of illegal activities such as murder, corruption, labour racketeering and even tax fraud schemes, but is now mostly limited to New York City and Chicago.

A few interesting Mafia facts.

• Vincent Gigante was a mafia boss dubbed “The Oddfather” – for 30 years he wandered the streets of Greenwich Village in his pyjamas, mumbling incoherently to himself, in an effort to fake insanity and avoid prosecution. He was eventually charged and came clean about his “insanity”.
• Estimates put Al Capone’s net worth at around $100 million, which in today’s terms is nearly $1.5 billion. His grandniece claims he told her he put his money in different safety deposit boxes, put the keys in a strong box, buried it and after he got out of prison could not find it!
• The Thompson Submachine Gun, commonly called the Tommy Gun was also called the Chicago Typewriter – a mix of the infamous Chicago mob and the “rat-tat-tat” clicking sound the Tommy Gun makes when fired.
• The Italian-American Civil Rights League (founded by crime boss Joseph Columbo) requested the producers of the 1972 movie The Godfather to exclude the word “mafia” from the final script. The League wanted the movie to present a less negative portrayal of Italian Americans.
• The hit series “The Sopranos” has been lauded for its authenticity, so much so that real Mafia members feared they were under surveillance. These suspicions, ironically overheard through actual FBI surveillance, testify to the show’s eerily accurate representation of the Mafia life.

Whilst most Mafiosi die younger than the norm there are always exceptions. John “Sonny” Franzese Sr, an underboss of the Columbo crime family, when released from prison in 2017, was the oldest federal inmate in the US and the only inmate to reach centenarian status. His son, John Jr, an associate in the same Columbo family testified against his father resulting in his final 8-year stint in prison. Considering that John Jr exited the Witness Protection Program in 2017 after being recognised and exposed on Facebook he still managed to meet and reconcile with his father in 2019. His father died in 2020 at the age of 103 and surprisingly John Jr is still alive and living under the name of Mat Pazzarelli.

Warrick Asher

General Manager – Business Development, BarnOwl GRC.