Before we get to the books, a general question: instead of referring to the Italian mafia, would it be more accurate to talk about the Italian mafias, given that there are several criminal organizations operating in the country?
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yes i would. There are three powerful mafias in Italy: Cosa Nostra, or the Sicilian Mafia as it is known today; the ‘ndrangheta of calabria in the extreme south of the country, and the camorra in the region of naples and campania. cosa nostra and ‘ndrangheta are quite similar. the easiest way to define a mafia is as a freemasonry of criminals, they are the freemasons for murderers, and that is what the cosa nostra and the ‘drangheta are. The camorra is different in that it is an umbrella term for an archipelago of much less centrally coordinated gangs ranging from city drug dealers to clans that are much more like the Sicilian mafia, such as the Casalesi, who threatened to kill journalist Roberto Saviano.
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those are the three main ones, although there are also smaller ones. As I say in my book Brotherhoods of the Mafia, Italy not only has a mafia, it has a criminal ecosystem in which existing mafias evolve and new ones arise.
when did they first take root in italy?
its origins are closely linked to the emergence of italy as a unified state. italy formally became a single country in 1861. the long process that led to italian unification—il risorgimento—is really the key explanation for the rise of the mafias. very briefly, in southern italy il risorgimento was much more of a revolution and more violent than in the rest of the country. revolutions need an armed wing, and the idealistic patriots plotting to overthrow the kingdom of the two sicilies—as sicily and southern italy were called—and unite it with the rest of italy, formed an alliance with violent criminals whom they used as revolutionaries. muscle. Our best guess as to why the mafias are organized like Freemasons, with admission rituals, hierarchies, internal courts, and codes of conduct, is that they learned that way of organizing from these patriots, many of whom were Masons or involved in Freemason secrets. Masonic style. societies.
“the long process that led to Italian unification, il risorgimento, is really the key explanation for the rise of the mafias.”
There are a couple of addendums to that theory. first of all, the ‘ndrangheta came a little later, in the 1880s. the camorra also died out at one point, mainly due to a big trial in 1911 and 1912. since that time, the camorra has actually meant a A number of different things, as I’ve already mentioned, ranging from common or yard-smuggling gangs to much larger gangs. , more formally structured criminal groups. The Camorra in the form of an honor society resurfaced in the 1970s, in Raffaele Cutolo’s remarkable Nuova Camorra Organizzata. Cutolo probably borrowed the ideas for his organization, the largest in the history of the Italian mafia, from the ‘drangheta, into which he was initiated, as well as from books on the old Neapolitan honorary society that he borrowed from the libraries of the Italian mafia. prison.
In terms of your current power, how does it compare to, say, 25 years ago?
in the late 70s and 80s, much of sicily and the south seemed to become narco-provinces. Cosa Nostra controlled the wholesale heroin market in the eastern United States and generated rivers of dollars. he had the organization, the wealth, and the firepower to take on the Italian state directly, to literally kill anyone who stood in his way. on top of that, he had also heavily infiltrated the Italian state. the two except cousins, who were probably men of honor as mafia insiders are known, ran the company that collected most of sicily’s taxes and pocketed around 10% of the island’s tax revenues. this gives you an idea of the level of infiltration in the 1980s.
There have been great advances since then. the streets are not as full of bodies as they were 20 or 30 years ago. Italy, largely due to the sacrifice of heroic policemen, magistrates, and carabinieri, has far better organized and professional law enforcement than ever before. The entire historical leadership of the Sicilian mafia, for example, is behind bars except for one man: Matteo Messina Denaro.
That doesn’t mean the mob is dead, far from it. One of the reasons the Sicilian mafia is organized the way it is is that there is always someone willing to step into their boss’ shoes. but, nevertheless, it is a crisis that the cosa nostra is experiencing now and it has to find different strategies to survive and prosper. to a certain extent, that is also true for the camorra and the ‘ndrangheta, where the judiciary has also had some success. but we are still talking about entrenched organizations capable of raising protection money. Last year alone, more than 140 journalists were threatened by them and there are still very high-level politicians being investigated for links to the mafia. so there is still a long way to go.
the books you have chosen, some of them are quite deep and maybe more for someone who already knows a bit about the mafia. For someone who has never read a nonfiction book about the mob, I should probably start with one of your books, do you think?
Hopefully, yes, that was my intention in writing them. beginning with cosa nostra, I wanted to provide a new, non-fictional starting point. So that would be the idea. In addition, the book by Varese that I have recommended to you, Mafia Life, is very good. it is not specific to italy and covers all kinds of criminal brotherhoods around the world.
How do your other books fit in, in terms of covering the mob ecosystem?
cosa nostra is simply about the Sicilian mafia. when it came to writing the other two, i wanted to write a history of the other big criminal fraternities: the camorra in naples and the ‘drangheta in calabria. there was no point in writing about them individually, so mafia brotherhoods and mafia republic cover two different historical periods. mafia brotherhoods is from the unification of italy to the fall of fascism. Mafia Republic spans from post-war to present day. they cover the history of all three organizations, and in the process, I was able to integrate all sorts of new material on the Sicilian Mafia. They’re not just a retread of Cosa Nostra, because there’s been all sorts of new research, some by me, some by others, since Cosa Nostra was first published in 2003. So I wanted to reflect the state of new research. .
your books talk about myths and misconceptions about the mafia in italy. what are they?
There are so many, and they are often contradictory. one of the most important is the widespread opinion outside italy that criminal organizations in italy are not really organizations, but an expression of the family and culture of southern italy. that is complete nonsense. historically, mafias have developed very specific ways to suit their business activities.
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Cosa Nostra and the ‘drangheta have a dynastic polity that resembles the royal families of medieval Europe. that is, they keep their women at home and use them as pawns in the diplomatic game. when a war is going to be waged, alliances are made by marrying your daughter to the son of another family. or if a war has just ended, seal the peace with a marriage. southern Italians just don’t do that. this is a very specific form of mob behavior that has to do with the politics of organizations and finding ways to project their power and wealth across generations. he’s remarkably farsighted, and one of the things that sets mafias apart from mere gangsters.
and mario puzo’s novel, the godfather, paints a completely wrong picture.
is spectacular and often comically incorrect. not only is it badly written, but it also gets the mafia wrong in one crucial respect: it thinks it’s about the family and not the organization. falls squarely into that myth of the ancient culture of southern Italy that defends itself by forming this entity called the mafia. the mafia is a criminal organization and always has been.
The Godfather is a “three bears” story about the three sons: sonny, michael and fredo. sonny is too macho and too violent, and fredo is too cowardly. Michael is right: he is the calculating family man. the book makes for uncomfortable reading because it uses sex and sexuality as a metaphor for all of this. fredo is dissipated and a bit of an esthete, while michael only has sex in the missionary position. sonny is basically a walking male member: the novel talks a lot about the dimensions of his virilia. so the godfather has that kind of comic look. it’s a really weird novel and it seems extraordinary that it managed to sell 21 million copies, given how clumsy and weird it is.
let’s move on to the books you recommended to understand what the mafia is really like (besides yours, of course!) why don’t we start with salvatore lupo, who you described as “the pioneer” of mafia history? tell us a bit about him and what was the state of mafia history before he appeared?
Salvatore Lupo is Sicilian and is now a history professor at the University of Palermo. he is a friend of mine in a sense, lupo’s research is the common thread of my book, cosa nostra, although it is also based on many other sources. he was trying to make his research, as well as much else, accessible to a non-specialist English-speaking audience.
lupo started out writing a book about the lemon industry in sicily, which is significant because that’s where the mafia started. but his historical investigations moved in parallel with the history of the maxi trial of palermo. That’s the trial that began with the first confession of a mob boss, Tommaso Buscetta, who became state evidence in 1984, and ended with the final verdict of Italy’s Supreme Court in 1992. Over the course of those eight years, we found out what the mafia was, legally. a whole new precedent was set for treating the mafia as an organization, and not some kind of loose archipelago of gangs or, worse yet, some kind of fuzzy Sicilian mentality. the shocking thing is that it was really the first time it was shown. then, of course, it was in 1992 when the two magistrates who started that maxi trial (giovanni falcone and paolo borsellino) were murdered by the mafia in revenge.
“lupo started out writing a book about the lemon industry in sicily, which is significant because that’s where the mafia started”
Lupo’s historical investigations were triggered by judicial findings. As the existence of the mafia was delineated and the cosa nostra was shown to exist in the 1980s, historians began to ask, “when did it start?” how it began? when did it become what it is now? Has it always been the same?’ Lupo was truly the first to write a believable mafia story. he started by researching certain key moments in his history and then stitched all the research together for the first time in a very dense little book. he has been researched much more since then, but the book on him still holds up very well. It was the first proper story of the Sicilian Mafia and was only published in 1993, a year after the murder of Falcone and Borsellino. so it was a very important book.
As for the book you recommend by Salvatore Lupo, it’s called The Two Mafias: A Transatlantic History, 1888-2008. how does it fit?
that’s a more recent book. Lupo’s original book was, unfortunately, very poorly translated, so poorly translated, in fact, that it is hardly worth reading in English. this book, las dos mafias, was much better translated, in part because i proofread it and talked in depth with lupo while it was being translated into english, to make sure everything was ok.
The advance of this book is that it treats the American and Sicilian mafia as part of the same criminal system. American historians had focused exclusively on the American side of the story and dismissed the Sicilian side as a primitive, old-fashioned mob. Sicilian writers had focused exclusively on the Sicilian side. What he argues is that since the 1980s there has been a constant traffic of ideas, criminal personnel and criminal goods (such as drugs), back and forth across the Atlantic. There really have been transatlantic mafia bosses who have operated in both spheres and we cannot conceive of how the mafia became so powerful on both shores without examining the dynamic relationship between the two branches of the organization. neither one nor the other is more sophisticated or powerful or more professional than the other. both are part of the same system.
It’s an extraordinary insight and allows Lupo to explain a lot of new things about the mafia. it’s an international perspective and that’s why it’s so exciting.
so there is no senior or junior partner, head office versus satellite?
not. and there are fascinating ideas, for example how mobsters discuss whether being a member of the sicilian mafia automatically entitles you to mobster status in the united states or not. They argue about that sort of thing. it gives you the feeling that they are in the same world, in the same system.
the two mafias is an extraordinary work of scholarship. People tend to forget how difficult it is to write a reliable story when some of the sources are mobsters, many of whom are born liars. lupo shows true forensic skill in separating lies from truth and showing how lies can still be very significant in their own way.
the next book you recommend is by giovanni falcone, whom you already mentioned for being one of the great heroes of the fight against the mafia. Almost three decades have passed since the Cosa Nostra blew up a highway to kill him, along with his wife and his bodyguards. Can you tell us in a little more detail who he was?
giovanni falcone was an epoch-making figure in the history of the italian mafia. He was a tax magistrate who, assisted by his close colleague Paolo Borsellino, who was also assassinated in 1992, developed a new method of investigating the mafia. he based himself, in the first instance, on following the money trail. Then they built the case for the prosecution in the most important mafia trial of all time, the Maxi Trial in Palermo, which took place from 1986 to 1987. It was a massive trial in which more than 400 mafiosi were accused, sat a legal precedent for the existence of the Sicilian mafia. as i mentioned before, italy did not acknowledge the existence of the mafia until the maxi trial. In fact, it did not formally acknowledge the existence of the Sicilian Mafia until January 1992, when Italy’s Supreme Court issued a ruling approving the Maxi Trial verdict. It’s no coincidence that Falcone and Borsellino were murdered within weeks of that ruling: they had proven that the Mafia existed and the Mafia reacted by killing them.
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“He famously says that the mafia is a human creation and, like all human creations, it has a beginning and it will have an end”
falcone also did something very important that is often forgotten. in the last phase of his career, when he was working in rome, he created national coordination structures to investigate and prosecute mafia crimes based on his methods. everyone who is involved in the fight against the mafia now works according to the falcon method.
please tell us about your book, men of honor.
It’s based on an interview with a French journalist a few weeks before the Falcone exploded on May 23, 1992. It’s basically a topic-by-topic account of what la cosa nostra is and how it works, by someone who knew it. better than nobody. you get a sense of the extraordinary lucidity and humanity of the man in the way he describes him. he famously says that the mafia is a human creation and, like all human creations, it has a beginning and it will have an end. so he certainly didn’t subscribe to the theory that the mafia was built into the Sicilian psyche and couldn’t be separated and defeated.
You really understood the mindset of mobsters, especially the hidden meanings in their mannerisms and gestures, didn’t you?
that’s mainly because he was the first magistrate who really took the testimonies of mafia defectors seriously, seriously in the sense that he not only wanted to take pieces of their evidence that he could use, but he wanted to find know the entire mafia system, its way of thinking and the rules that governed its internal behavior. much of what he learns comes from tommaso buscetta, who in his own way made history as much as giovanni falcone. Buscetta became state evidence in July 1984 after most of his family was murdered by his mob enemies. It was Falcone’s cross-examination of Buscetta that set the Maxi trial in motion and gave Falcone a real understanding of human reality within Cosa Nostra. he said that buscetta was like an interpreter that allowed him to finally speak and understand the language of the mafia. Falcone proves in this book that he really was the first non-mobster to master that language.
Next on your list is Sicilia e gli alleati 1943-45 by Manoela Patti, who is also a historian at the University of Palermo. The book is about this fascinating period of history after the Allies landed in Sicily in 1943. Unfortunately, it is only available in Italian (so far). can you explain why it is so important that you have included it in your list of books to understand the mafia?
patti is listed as representative of a whole generation of young researchers who have done much in recent years to advance our understanding of the mafia in sicily and elsewhere. her little book deals with the crucial years in sicily after the allied invasion in the summer of 1943. some of the most widespread myths about the sicilian mafia refer to that moment in history. it is often said, particularly in italy, that mussolini had killed the mafia 15 years earlier, and that the americans brought the mafia in 1943. it is even claimed—and people get very angry if you deny this myth—that the americans planned in secret his invasion of sicily with the collaboration of the mafia. patti’s study shows a number of things: that the mafia had never disappeared and that it was widespread and influential in fascist italy; that the Americans had no grand plan to bring back the mob; and that it was the climate of confusion and illegality (dysfunctional rationing, black market, etc.) that gave the mafia enormous opportunities to impose themselves after 1943.
Now let’s move on to Federico Varese’s Mafia Life, which you already mentioned as a good starting point for learning about the Mafia. This book isn’t just about Italy or America, but about the mafia way of life around the world, and what it’s like.
federico varese, who is a professor of criminology at oxford, has written here a very accessible report on international mafia-type organizations. he has an unrivaled knowledge of mafias beyond the Italian context. what he shows is the remarkable similarity in methods and behavior between criminal brotherhoods in all sorts of different geographic locations. That’s why the Italian word ‘mafia’ has become so general: because it describes a form of criminal organization that can be found all over the world.
I know that one of the themes of your book, Mafia brotherhoods, is how the Mafia exploits women and family relationships. tell us more about your final choice, clare longrigg’s mob women.
mafia women is a great piece of journalism and another one of those rare mafia books written by an outsider who commands respect in italy. addresses a subject that is fascinating and historically very important: it is about what the mafia does to women and the role they have. We are all fascinated by the figure of the female gangster, but longrigg shows that there are many more dimensions to women’s roles within Italian criminal organizations.
when you look closely, it’s not the active armed women who are the most fascinating, it’s the women whose existence is dominated by the task of raising mafia children and passing on the values of honor and violence when their parents are in prison or dead. they live under extraordinary psychological pressure and it is a story that we are just beginning to know.
Is this book a collection of individual stories?
The foundation is stories about individual women, some of whom are both victims and perpetrators. One that sticks in mind as powerfully moving is the story of Rita Atria. She was the daughter of a gangster and her brothers were gangsters. she converted the state’s evidence after her brother was killed. she was just a teenager at the time and had to unlearn the mafia brainwashing that she had suffered from her birth. Several mobsters were convicted based on her testimony.
while going through this whole process, she became very close to paolo borsellino, who became a kind of surrogate father for her. Tragically, exactly one week after Borsellino was murdered in July 1992, Rita Atria jumped from the window of her safe house. It’s a horrible story that simply gives an idea of the extraordinary risks involved in being a woman within that mafia culture.
In terms of Mafia fiction, are there any novels or movies that you think would be useful to read or watch to learn more about it?
I have my students watch Gomorrah (the movie, not the book or TV series). it is a film that gives a very powerful sense of the disorienting and semi-chaotic world of the Neapolitan brawl. It does so by defying some of the cinematic clichés we owe to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy, clichés that ended up glamorizing the mob. Gomorrah tells us that we have to change the lens if we really want to understand the reality of organized crime.
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