Sicilian mafia during the Mussolini regime

Pre-fascist map of Mafia presence in Sicily in the first decades of the XX century. Towns with Mafia activity are marked as red dots. The Mafia operated mostly in the west, in areas of rich agricultural productivity.

Sicilian mafia during the Mussolini regime is related to the fight of Mussolini against the Mafia in Sicily from 1924 to 1943. He appointed Cesare Mori, known in Italy as the "Iron Prefect" (Prefetto di Ferro) because of his iron-fisted campaigns against the Mafia on Sicily in the second half of the 1920s, as head of this fight.

Historical background

In 1864, Niccolò Turrisi Colonna, leader of the "Palermo National Guard" in the newly created Kingdom of Italy, wrote of a "sect of thieves" that operated throughout Sicily. This "sect" (called "Onorata Societa" or "Mafia") was mostly rural, composed of cattle thieves, smugglers, wealthy farmers, and their guards.

In a series of reports between 1898 and 1900, Ermanno Sangiorgi, the police chief of Palermo, identified 670 "Mafiosi" belonging to eight Mafia clans that went through alternating phases of cooperation and conflict.^[1] The report mentioned initiation rituals and codes of conduct, as well as criminal activities that included counterfeiting, kidnappings for ransom, murder, robbery, and witness intimidation. In an attempt to annihilate the Mafia, Italian troops arrested 64 people of Palermo in February 1898^[2].

The Sicilian Mafia was a lot less active during the era of Fascist Italy, mainly because it was harshly fought by Benito Mussolini's government. Indeed in June 1924, Mussolini instructed Cesare Mori to eradicate the Mafia from Sicily and on October 25, 1925, appointed Mori prefect of the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

History

The 'Iron Prefect' Cesare Mori

In 1924, Mussolini initiated a campaign to destroy the Sicilian Mafia, which undermined Fascist control of Sicily. A successful campaign would legitimize his rule and strengthen his leadership.^[3] Not only would a campaign against the Mafia be a propaganda opportunity for Mussolini and the National Fascist Party, but it would also allow him to suppress his political opponents in Sicily, since many Sicilian politicians had Mafia links.

According to a popular account that arose after the end of World War II, as prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, Mussolini had visited Sicily in May 1924 and passed through Piana dei Greci, where he was received by the mayor and Mafia boss Francesco Cuccia. At some point Cuccia expressed surprise at Mussolini’s police escort and is said to have whispered in his ear: "You are with me, you are under my protection. What do you need all these cops for?" After Mussolini rejected Cuccia's offer of protection, Cuccia, feeling he had been slighted, instructed the townsfolk not to attend Mussolini's speech. Mussolini felt humiliated and outraged.^[4][5] Cuccia’s careless remark became the catalyst for Mussolini’s war on the Mafia.

Mussolini's Minister of the Interior, Luigi Federzoni, recalled Mori to active service and appointed him prefect of Trapani. Mori arrived in Trapani in June 1924 and stayed until October 20, 1925, when Mussolini appointed him prefect of Palermo. Mussolini granted Mori special powers to eradicate the Mafia by any means possible. In a telegram, Mussolini wrote to Mori:

"Your Excellency has carte blanche, the authority of the State must absolutely, I repeat absolutely, be re-established in Sicily. If the laws still in force hinder you, this will be no problem, as we will draw up new laws."^[6]

Mori formed a small army of policemen, carabinieri and militiamen, which went from town to town, rounding up suspects. To force suspects to surrender, they would take their families hostage, confiscate their property,^[7] and publicly slaughter their livestock.^[8] Confessions were sometimes extracted through beatings and torture. Some Mafia members who had been on the losing end of Mafia feuds voluntarily cooperated with prosecutors to secure protection and exact revenge.^[9] Charges of Mafia association were typically leveled at poor peasants and gabellotti (tenant farmers), but generally not leveled at wealthy landowners.^[10] By 1928, over 11,000 suspects were arrested.^[11] Many were tried en masse.^[12][13] More than 1,200 were convicted and imprisoned,^[14] and many others were internally exiled without trial.^[15]

In order to destroy the Mafia, Mori felt it necessary to "forge a direct bond between the population and the state, to annul the system of intermediation under which citizens could not approach the authorities except through middlemen..., receiving as a favour that which is due them as their right."^[16] Mori’s methods were sometimes similar to those of the Mafia: He did not just arrest the bandits, but sought to humiliate them as well. Mori aimed to convince Sicilians that the Fascist government was powerful enough to rival the Mafia and that the Mafia could no longer protect them.

Mori's inquiries brought evidence of collusion between the Mafia and influential members of the Italian government and the Fascist Party. His position became more precarious. Some 11,000 arrests were attributed to Mori’s rule in Palermo,^[17] creating massive amounts of paperwork which may have been partially responsible for his dismissal in 1929.^[18][19]

Mori's campaign ended in June 1929 when Mussolini recalled him to Rome, after making him a "senator". Although Mori did not permanently crush the Mafia, his campaign was successful at suppressing it. The Mafia informant Antonino Calderone reminisced: "The music changed. Mafiosi had a hard life. [...] After the war the mafia hardly existed anymore. The Sicilian Families had all been broken up."^[15]

Sicily's murder rate sharply declined.^[20] Landowners were able to raise the legal rents on their lands; sometimes as much as ten-thousandfold.^[9] The Fascist Party propaganda machine proudly announced that the Mafia had been defeated.^[21] The economy of Sicily greatly increased in the late 1930s, without the Mafia control.

Many Mafia members fled to the United States. Among these were Carlo Gambino and Joseph Bonanno, who became powerful Mafia bosses in New York City.

Post-Fascist revival

In 1943, nearly half a million Allied troops invaded Sicily. Crime soared in the upheaval and chaos. Many inmates escaped from their prisons, banditry returned and the black market thrived. During the first six months of Allied occupation, party politics in Sicily were banned.^[22] Most institutions, with the exception of the police and carabinieri were destroyed, and the American occupiers had to build a new order from scratch.^[23]

By the beginning of the Second World War, the Mafia was restricted to a few isolated and scattered groups and could have been completely wiped out if the social problems of the island had been dealt with ... the Allied occupation and the subsequent slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the "Onorata Societa" the weapons which Fascism had snatched from it.Michele Pantaleone^[24]

As Fascist mayors were deposed, the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) simply appointed replacements. Many turned out to be former Mafia members, such as Calogero Vizzini and Giuseppe Genco Russo.^[25][26] They easily presented themselves as fascist dissidents^[27] and their anti-communist positions strengthened their bids for political offices. Mafia bosses reformed their clans, absorbing some of the marauding bandits into their ranks.^[28]

References

See also

• Cesare Mori

Sources

• Mori, Cesare (1933) The last struggle with the Mafia, London & New York; Putnam;
• Duggan, Christopher (1989). Fascism and the Mafia, New Haven: Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-04372-4
• Duggan, Christopher (2008). The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 0-618-35367-4
• Dickie, John (2007). Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia, Hodder. ISBN 978-0-340-93526-2
• Petacco Arrigo, L'uomo della provvidenzaMussolini, ascesa e caduta di un mito, Milan: Mondadori.
• Newark, Tim (2007). Mafia Allies. The True Story of America’s Secret Alliance with the Mob in World War II, Saint Paul (MN): Zenith Press ISBN 0-7603-2457-3 (Review)
• Lupo, Salvatore (2009). The History of the Mafia, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-13134-6
• Servadio, Gaia (1976), Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg ISBN 0-436-44700-2
• Costanzo, Ezio (2007), The Mafia and the Allies: Sicily 1943 and the Return of the Mafia, New York, Wnigma books, ISBN 978-1-929631-68-1
• Finkelstein, Monte S. Separatism, the Allies and the Mafia: The Struggle for Sicilian Independence 1943-1948, Lehigh Univ Pr