Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (26 page)

Charles and his army brutalized Sicilians to the point where the island nation's entire population developed into a massive bomb waiting for a detonator, which arrived on Easter Sunday, 1282, in classic “Mafioso” manner. On that day, a young Sicilian woman in Palermo on her way to vespers was accosted and insulted by a group of French soldiers. Without warning, several outraged Sicilian men attacked the soldiers, killing them on the spot. When word of their assault spread, first to neighboring towns and eventually across the island, other Sicilian men joined the revolt, overwhelming and annihilating the French garrison in an explosive uprising that became known as the Sicilian Vespers.

Sicilian leaders knew it was only a matter of time before Charles gathered an army and returned to Sicily with massacre on his mind. In a strategic move, they appealed to Peter iii of Aragon, a sworn enemy of Charles and possessor of extensive lands in Spain. Peter was naturally pleased to oblige, proclaiming his sovereignty over Sicily and preventing Charles from wreaking terrible vengeance on the Sicilians as he planned. With Peter's death, however, Sicily's fortunes were now in the hands of Spanish rulers, where they remained for 500 years.

The Spaniards, in contrast with the Muslims who opened Sicilian life to other cultures, exerted tight control by imposing strict censorship on the country. Sicily remained isolated from the rest of the world for the next several hundred years, a period when all the rest of Western Europe was caught up in the artistic and scientific advances of the Renaissance. As a result, the intellectual and cultural eruption that changed the character of European civilization by-passed Sicily entirely. Developments in music, painting, sculpture, philosophy, agriculture, science, architecture and other miracles of the period passed unknown to people living literally within sight of the Italian boot, where many of these advances were taking place.

The Spanish preserved the feudal system imposed by the Normans long after it had crumbled in mainland Europe. The Sicilians suffered more under Spain's rule than under the Normans’ because the Spanish were even more discriminatory and brutal in dispensing justice. Some powerful Spanish lords living in Sicily, for example, were exempted from paying any tax at all. To fill the quota, other lords had to impose higher demands on their own vassals and peasants, increasing the inequality of Sicilian life.

Sicilians who dared object to Spanish dictums risked execution by either their lord or representatives of the Spanish government. The other long arm of Spanish reckoning, the dreaded Inquisition, added hideous torture to the hazard of speaking out or defying authority in any manner.

Other cultures were subjugated in a like manner through history. Only in Sicily, however, were injustices imposed so heavily on a people who had learned to turn inward as a means of defense and self-preservation. Only in Sicily was the population removed for so long from the positive influences of the Renaissance and the increasingly enlightened views of the Catholic Church. And only in Sicily did anything like the Mafia rise in direct response to this long litany of violence and humiliation.

Around 1500, one aspect of contemporary European life arrived in Sicily when the island's tradesmen began forming guilds. In other countries, the guilds functioned as a means for the trades-men to train personnel and establish standards, just as the Freemasons began in England. Sicilian trade guilds added a unique aspect to their operations when they assumed a judicial role as well, dispensing punishment to their members without any involvement from local officials who, of course, could not be trusted.

The rise of the guilds coincided with the rise of bandit gangs. Reminiscent of the legendary (and highly fictional) bandits led by Robin Hood in England 500 years earlier, the gangs targeted Spanish lords and nobles, robbing and murdering them, and represented the only means available for most Sicilians to strike back at their oppressors. They also distributed food to starving families in the villages beyond Palermo. To ensure their fair share, families would choose someone to represent them and distribute the food among brothers, sisters and cousins. These men, many of them members of bandit gangs, were called
capodecina
, shortened to
capos
.

Like Sherwood Forest outlaws, the Sicilian bandits created their own folk heroes, lauding their bravery and exploits as examples of gallantry. The most celebrated of them, a man named Saponara, was captured and imprisoned in 1578. According to Sicilian lore, Saponara was tortured by his Spanish captors in an effort to learn the names of his cohorts but Saponara chose to die in agony rather than betray others. His
bravery became a symbol for every Sicilian who believed their salvation could be achieved only through loyalty.

Driven by the actions of the bandit gangs that grew steadily in strength and daring, many Spanish landowners abandoned the countryside to relocate in Palermo, Sicily's largest city. By the early 1600s, most of the largest estates were being administered by
gabelloti
, managers chosen by the Spanish landowners for the prominence and respect they commanded among local citizens. The most important function of the
gabelloti
was tax collection, carried out by
uomo di fiducia
, men appointed to visit personally every citizen and pocket the tax payable. The collectors were often accompanied by
campieri
, armed and mounted men assigned to maintain peace and command respect.

To anyone familiar with the modern Mafia, the
gabelloti
,
uomo di fiducia
and
campieri
portray an early Mafia organizational chart. Even the management technique is recognizable. From a distant and luxurious setting, the order to collect stipends from the common people would go out to a series of bosses (
capos
). On instructions from the capos, low-level workers would pay personal visits to the targeted sources of money, accompanied by armed men to enforce the command. Neither Al Capone nor Tony Soprano could have drawn up a more appropriate model for the system that enriched them.

The withdrawal from the countryside of the Spanish lords, and their replacement by appointed bosses, served as inspiration for Sicilians to begin to assume control of their own destinies. Coinciding with the belated rise of the middle class, who sought affluence through the new (to Sicily) role of playing middleman, the mould to achieve wealth and power had been created, and it remained in place after the Spanish withdrew in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Spanish departure created a vacuum of authority. For a thousand years, Sicily had no effective governing body, and with the withdrawal of the Spanish only one organization existed to fill that role: the Mafia. The Italian nation-builder and liberator Garibaldi arrived in 1860 to bring Sicily into the
Italian kingdom, but those hundreds of years of secrecy and independence could not be undone overnight. In fact, as history has proven, they were not undone at all. The Mafia continued to exert its power and influence over government institutions imposed on Sicily by Rome, and within a few years virtually every Sicilian political office and court was infiltrated and controlled by Mafia elements.

Centuries of dominance by outside powers had carved a scar across the face of Sicily that prevented most of the island's citizens from trusting any imposed authority, no matter how legitimate its power or how even-handed its approach. The law, as enforced by government, could not be trusted to deliver justice. To most Sicilians only a vendetta was effective, because all crimes were personal and all vengeance was to be meted out by the oppressed victim and his family, as dictated by
omerta
.

The code of
omerta
decreed that any man who appealed for law enforcers to right a wrong was either a fool or a coward, and any wounded or offended man who would name his assailant was beneath contempt. The classic response of a wounded man to his assailant, spoken aloud or silently, was “If I live, I will kill you. If I die, you are forgiven.”

The Mafia's strength originated with, and continues to be drawn from, its organizational structure. Primitive in terms of other, more beneficent institutions such as governments and the Catholic Church, the Mafia nevertheless managed to develop a configuration that exerted discipline and control over its members. Over time, it crafted the group into an effective power in the same manner that disorganized guerrillas are transformed into an effective fighting force by adapting the techniques of a regimented and motivated army.

Ranked from the top down, the organization of the Sicilian Mafia included the following:

Capo Crimini/Capo de tutti capi
(Super Boss/Boss of bosses)
Capo Bastone
(Underboss, or second-in-command)
Contabile
(Financial adviser)
Caporegime or Capodecima
(Head of a crew consisting of ten
sgarristas
)
Sgarrista
(Foot-soldier carrying out daily business of the family;
in the U.S., referred to as a “made” member)
Piciotto
(Low-ranking soldiers; enforcers, “button men”)
Giovane D'Honore
(Non-Sicilian or non-Italian associate)

Italians correctly maintain that the Mafia's existence has created offensive stereotypes. Not every Italian is a Mafia member, of course, just as not every Chinese is a triad member or every Muslim a supporter of Al Qaeda. But even the most vociferous Italian patriot must agree that the Mafia is not unique among Italian secret societies bent on crime and violence. While criminal gangs exist in virtually every large urban center the world over, the Italian breed remains distinctive in its fixed structure and reliance on violence as a means of achieving its goals.

Nor does the Mafia represent the only Italian secret criminal society. In reality, at least three other extensive organizations with Italian roots remain active, their existence inspired, if not nurtured, by the Mafia.

Of these, the ’Ndrangheta is most closely associated with the Mafia, both geographically and historically. Operating in the rugged rural regions of Calabria, the southernmost part of the Italian “boot,” the ’Ndrangheta resulted from the Italian government's ill-fated efforts to break up the Mafia by banishing its most violent and powerful leaders and their families from Sicily in the 1860s.

It was a foolish move. The families simply relocated on the mainland directly across the Straits of Messina where, in remote Calabrian villages, they formed a secret society that differed from the Mafia in two distinct ways: it became even more secretive, and arguably more violent. A high-ranking Italian government official recently described ’Ndrangheta as “the most powerful and dangerous criminal organization in Italy because of its viciousness.”

The organization derives its name from the Greek word
andragathes
, meaning a noble and courageous man worthy of respect. Reflecting its origins—those violent families banished from their ancestral Sicilian homes—the ’Ndrangheta is organized exclusively along family lines, which produces a profound difference between it and the Sicilian Mafia. The Sicilians are bound by oaths, the ’Ndrangheta by blood. In addition, the ’Ndrangheta reportedly uses women in active roles from time to time, although its structure remains clearly male-dominated.

Unlike the classic pyramid structure of the Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta is organized on a horizontal basis and divided into clearly defined family segments or ’
ndrinas
. No overlap occurs between the activities or geographic region of two neighboring families; each has full control within its own territory and a monopoly on all activity there. The combination of tight structure and family blood provides the ’Ndrangheta with an enormous ability to maintain both secrecy and loyalty, consolidated through carefully arranged marriages between ’ndrinas. Nothing in Sicilian and Calabrian culture is more sacrosanct than family, and where linkages exist through marriage it would be an act of serious dishonor for one family to perform any act that would threaten the security of a related family. As one Sicilian parish priest explained: “There is strength in the sacred and impregnable structure of the family, the only secure place.
Only blood does not betray.”
(italics added).

Compared with ’Ndrangheta, the Mafia appears almost lax and sloppy in its internal discipline. Sons of Mafia members may choose to follow their fathers into the organization or not; sons of the ’
ndranghettisti
have no choice. To become a member of the criminal family is their
diritto di sangue
(right of blood), assigned at birth. While being groomed for their life's work, a process that begins shortly after puberty, male children are
giovani d'onore
, or “boys of honor.” At maturity, they become
picciotti d'onore
, soldiers expected to carry out orders from their superiors without question and without fail. The best of these are chosen as
cammorista
, in charge of groups of
picciottis
. When
they have risen to the next level as a
santista,
they can finally claim a fixed share of the spoils instead of the small stipend paid to the lower ranks.

Through exceptional work, and after solemnly swearing his dedication on a Bible, a
santista
may be promoted to the level of
vengelista
, perhaps later to join the
quintino
, five privileged sub-bosses with direct linkage to the
capobastone
, the highest power within the ’Ndrangheta family. Members of the
quintino
are permitted to identify themselves with a tattoo of a five-pointed star.

Tight secrecy, together with a reputation for extreme violence, has been the ’Ndrangheta's strength in maintaining its power and expanding its influence. Unlike the Mafia, no one can confidently estimate the size and global extent of its criminal activities, although in 2004 the Italian government suggested the ’Ndrangheta consisted of 155 family clans and a total membership of over 6000.