Cosa Nostra

1 No one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be a third person to do it.
2 Never look at the wives of friends.
3 Never be seen with cops.
4 Don't go to pubs and clubs.
5 Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty - even if your wife is about to give birth.
6 Appointments must absolutely be respected. (probably refers to formal rank and authority.)
7 Wives must be treated with respect.
8 When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.
9 Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.
10 People who can't be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who has a close relative in the police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn't hold to moral values.

Structure

Cosa Nostra is not a monolithic organization, but rather a loose confederation of about one hundred groups known alternately as "families", "cosche", "borgatas", or "clans." (Despite the name, their members are generally not related by blood.) Each of these claims sovereignty over a territory, usually a town or village or a neighborhood of a larger city, though without ever fully conquering and legitimizing its monopoly of violence. For many years, the power apparatuses of the single families were the sole ruling bodies within the two associations, and they have remained the real centers of power even after superordinate bodies were created in the Cosa Nostra beginning in the late 1950s (the Sicilian Mafia Commission).[123]
Clan hierarchy
Hierarchy of a Cosa Nostra clan. In 1984, mafioso informant Tommaso Buscetta explained to prosecutors the command structure of a typical clan.[18] A clan is led by a "boss" (capofamiglia or rappresentante) who is aided by an underboss (capo bastone or sotto capo) and supervised by one or more advisers (consigliere). Under his command are groups (decina) of about ten "soldiers" (soldati, operai, or picciotti). Each decina is led by a capodecina.
The actual structure of any given clan can vary. Despite the name decina, they do not necessarily have ten soldiers, but can have anything from five to thirty.[124] Some clans are so small that they don't even have decinas and capodecinas, and even in large clans certain soldiers may report directly to the boss.[125]
The boss of a clan is typically elected by the rank-and-file soldiers (though violent successions do happen). Due to the small size of most Sicilian clans, the boss of a clan has intimate contact with all members, and doesn't receive much in the way of privileges or rewards as he would in larger organizations (such as the larger Five Families of New York).[126] His tenure is also frequently short: elections are yearly, and he might be deposed sooner for misconduct or incompetence.[127]
The underboss is second in command to the boss. The underboss is sometimes a family member, such as a son, who will take over the family if the boss is sick, killed, or imprisoned.
The consigliere ("counselor") of the clan is also elected on a yearly basis. One of his jobs is to supervise the actions of the boss and his immediate underlings, particularly in financial matters (e.g. preventing embezzlement).[128] He also serves as an impartial adviser to the boss and mediator in internal disputes. To fulfill this role, the consigliere must be impartial, devoid of conflict of interest and ambition.[129]
Other than its members, Cosa Nostra makes extensive use of "associates". These are people who work for or aid a clan (or even multiple clans) but are not treated as true members. These include corrupt officials and prospective mafiosi. An associate is considered by the mafiosi nothing more than a tool, someone that they can "use", or "nothing mixed with nil."[18]
The media has often made reference to a "capo di tutti capi" or "boss of bosses" that allegedly "commands all of Cosa Nostra". Calogero Vizzini, Salvatore Riina, and Bernardo Provenzano were especially influential bosses who have each been described by the media and law enforcement as being the "boss of bosses" of their times. While a powerful boss may exert great influence over his neighbors, the position does not formally exist, according to Mafia turncoats such as Buscetta.[130][131] According to Mafia historian Salvatore Lupo "the emphasis of the media on the definition of a 'capo di tutti capi' is without any foundation".[131]
Membership Membership in Cosa Nostra is open only to Sicilian men. A candidate cannot be a relative of or have any close links with a lawman, such as a police officer or a judge. There is no strict age limit; boys as young as sixteen have been initiated.[132] A prospective mafioso is carefully tested for obedience, discretion, courage, ruthlessness, and skill at espionage.[18][132] He is almost always required to commit murder as his ultimate trial,[18] even if he doesn't plan to be a career assassin. The act of murder is to prove his sincerity (i.e., he is not an undercover policeman) and to bind him into silence (i.e., he cannot break omertà without facing murder charges himself).
To be part of the Mafia is highly desirable for many street criminals. Mafiosi receive a great deal of respect, for everyone knows that to offend a mafioso is to risk lethal retribution from him or his colleagues. Mafiosi have an easier time getting away with crimes, negotiating deals, and demanding privileges. A full member also gains more freedom to participate in certain rackets which the Mafia controls (particularly protection racketeering).
Traditionally, only men can become mafiosi, though in recent times there have been reports of women assuming the responsibilities of imprisoned mafiosi relatives.[133][134]
Clans are also called "families", although their members are usually not related by blood. The Mafia actually has rules designed to prevent nepotism. Membership and rank in the Mafia are not hereditary. Most new bosses are not related to their predecessor. The Commission forbids relatives from holding positions in inter-clan bodies at the same time.[135] That said, mafiosi frequently bring their sons into the trade. They have an easier time entering, because the son bears his father's seal of approval and is familiar with the traditions and requirements of Cosa Nostra.
A mafioso's legitimate occupation, if any, generally does not affect his prestige within Cosa Nostra.[5] Historically, most mafiosi were employed in menial jobs, and many bosses did not work at all.[5] Professionals such as lawyers and doctors do exist within the organization, and are employed according to whatever useful skills they have.[136]
Commission Main article: Sicilian Mafia Commission Since the 1950s, the Mafia has maintained multiple commissions to resolve disputes and promote cooperation among clans. Each province of Sicily has its own Commission. Clans are organized into districts (Mandamenti) of three or four geographically adjacent clans. Each district elects a representative (capo mandamento) to sit on its Provincial Commission.[137]
Contrary to popular belief, the commissions do not serve as a centralized government for the Mafia. The power of the commissions is limited and clans are autonomous and independent. Rather, each Commission serves as a representative mechanism for consultation of independent clans who decide by consensus. "Contrary to the wide-spread image presented by the media, these superordinate bodies of coordination cannot be compared with the executive boards of major legal firms. Their power is intentionally limited. And it would be entirely wrong to see in the Cosa Nostra a centrally managed, internationally active Mafia holding company," according to criminologist Letizia Paoli.[138]
A major function of the Commission is to regulate the use of violence.[137][139] For instance, a mafioso who wants to commit a murder in another clan's territory must ask the permission of the local boss; the commission enforces this rule.[139] Any murder of a mafioso or prominent individual (police, lawyers, politicians, journalists, etc.) must be approved by the commission.[Such acts can potentially upset other clans and spark a war, so the Commission provides a means by which to obtain their approval.
The Commission also deals with matters of succession. When a boss dies or retires, his clan's reputation often crumbles with his departure. This can cause clients to abandon the clan and turn to neighboring clans for protection. These clans would grow greatly in status and power relative to their rivals, potentially destabilizing the region and precipitating war. The Commission may choose to divide up the clan's territory and members among its neighbors. Alternatively, the commission has the power to appoint a regent for the clan until it can elect a new boss.

History

The genesis of Cosa Nostra is hard to trace because mafiosi are very secretive and do not keep historical records of their own. In fact, they have been known to spread deliberate lies about their past, and sometimes come to believe in their own myths.
Post-feudal Sicily The Mafia began as an extralegal force in the 19th century, coinciding with Sicily's transition from feudalism to capitalism. Under feudalism, the nobility owned most of the land and enforced the law through their private armies. After 1812, the feudal barons steadily sold off or rented their lands to private citizens. Primogeniture was abolished, land could no longer be seized to settle debts, and one fifth of the land became private property of the peasants. After Italy annexed Sicily in 1860, it redistributed a large share of public and church land to private citizens. The result was a huge increase in landowners — from 2,000 in 1812 to 20,000 by 1861. With this increase in property owners and commerce came more disputes that needed settling, contracts that needed enforcing, transactions that needed oversight, and properties that needed protecting. The barons released their private armies to let the state take over the job of enforcing the law, but the new authorities were not up to the task, largely due to their inexperience with capitalism.[33] Lack of manpower was also a problem; there were often fewer than 350 active policemen for the entire island. Some towns did not have any permanent police force, only visited every few months by some troops to collect malcontents, leaving criminals to operate with impunity in the interim. Compounding these problems was banditry. Rising food prices, the loss of public and church lands, and the loss of feudal commons pushed many desperate peasants to steal. In the face of rising crime, booming commerce, and inefficient law enforcement, property owners turned to extralegal arbitrators and protectors. These extralegal protectors eventually organized themselves into the first Mafia clans.
In countryside towns that lacked formal constabulary, local elites responded to banditry by recruiting young men into "companies-at-arms" to hunt down thieves and negotiate the return of stolen property, in exchange for a pardon for the thieves and a fee from the victims.[35] These companies-at-arms were often made up of former bandits and criminals, usually the most skilled and violent of them.This saved communities the trouble of training their own policemen, but it may have made the companies-at-arms more inclined to collude with their former brethren rather than destroy them. Scholars such as Salvatore Lupo have identified these groups as "proto-Mafia".

1900 map of Mafia presence in Sicily. Towns with Mafia activity are marked as red dots. The Mafia operated mostly in the west, in areas of rich agricultural productivity. The Mafia was (and still is) a largely western Sicilian phenomenon. There was little Mafia activity in the eastern half of Sicily. This did not mean that there was little violence; the most violent conflicts over land took place in the east, but they did not involve mafiosi.In the east, the ruling elites were more cohesive and active during the transition from feudalism to capitalism. They maintained their large stables of enforcers and were able to absorb or suppress any emerging violent groups. Furthermore, the land in the east was generally divided into a smaller number of large estates so that there were fewer landowners, and their large estates often required its guardians to patrol it full-time. The owners of such estates needed to hire full-time guardians. By contrast in the west, the estates tended to be smaller and thus did not require the total, round-the-clock attention of a protector. It was cheaper for these estates to contract their protection to a mafioso rather than employing full-time guards. A mafioso in these regions could protect multiple small estates at once, which gave him great independence and leverage to charge high prices.The landowners in this region were also frequently absent and could not watch over their properties should the protector withdraw, further increasing his bargaining power.
The early Mafia was heavily involved with citrus growers and cattle ranchers, as these industries were particularly vulnerable to thieves and vandals and thus badly needed protection. Citrus plantations had a fragile production system that made them quite vulnerable to sabotage.[39] Likewise, cattle are very easy to steal. The Mafia was often more effective than the police at recovering stolen cattle; in the 1920s, it was noted that the Mafia's success rate at recovering stolen cattle was 95%, whereas the police managed only 10%.
In 1864, Niccolò Turrisi Colonna, leader of the Palermo National Guard, wrote of a "sect of thieves" that operated throughout Sicily. This "sect" was mostly rural, composed of cattle thieves, smugglers, wealthy farmers, and their guards.[41][42] The sect made "affiliates every day of the brightest young people coming from the rural class, of the guardians of the fields in the Palermitan countryside, and of the large number of smugglers; a sect which gives and receives protection to and from certain men who make a living on traffic and internal commerce. It is a sect with little or no fear of public bodies, because its members believe that they can easily elude this." It had special signals to recognize each other, offered protection services, scorned the law, and had a code of loyalty and non-interaction with the police known as umirtà ("code of silence").Colonna warned in his report that the Italian government's brutal and clumsy attempts to crush crime only made the problem worse by alienating the populace. An 1865 dispatch from the prefect of Palermo to Rome first officially described the phenomenon as a "Mafia". An 1876 police report makes the earliest known description of the familiar initiation ritual.
Mafiosi meddled in politics early on, bullying voters into voting for candidates they favored. At this period in history, only a small fraction of the Sicilian population could vote, so a single mafia boss could control a sizable chunk of the electorate and thus wield considerable political leverage.Mafiosi used their allies in government to avoid prosecution as well as persecute less well-connected rivals. The highly fragmented and shaky Italian political system allowed cliques of Mafia-friendly politicians to exert a lot of influence.
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.[48] 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. The Mafia also maintained funds to support the families of imprisoned members and pay defense lawyers. In an attempt to annihilate the Mafia, Italian troops arrested 64 people of Palermo in February 1898.
A 2015 study in The Economic Journal attributed the emergence of the Sicilian Mafia to the resource curse. Early Mafia activity was strongly linked to Sicilian municipalities abundant in sulphur, Sicily's most valuable export commodity. The combination of a weak state and a lootable natural resource made the sulphur-rich parts of Sicily conducive to the emergence of mafia-type organisations. The emergence of a valuable natural resource in areas where law enforcement is weak or absent creates a demand for private protection (which mafia-type organizations can supply) and opportunities for extortion (by mafia-type organizations).[51] A 2017 study in the Journal of Economic History also links the emergence of the Sicilian Mafia to surging demand for oranges and lemons following the late 18th century discovery that citrus fruits cured scurvy.[52][53] A 2019 study in the Review of Economic Studies linked Mafia activity to "the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In an environment with weak state presence, this socialist threat triggered landowners, estate managers and local politicians to turn to the Mafia to resist and combat peasant demands."
Fascist suppression Main article: Sicilian mafia during the Mussolini regime In 1925, Benito Mussolini initiated a campaign to destroy the Mafia and assert Fascist control over Sicilian life. The Mafia threatened and undermined his power in Sicily, and a successful campaign would strengthen him as the new leader, legitimizing and empowering his rule.[ This would be a great propaganda coup for Fascism, and it would also provide an excuse to suppress his political opponents on the island, since many Sicilian politicians had Mafia links.
As prime minister, he visited Sicily in May 1924 and passed through Piana dei Greci where he was received by mayor/Mafia boss Francesco Cuccia. At some point, Cuccia expressed surprise at Mussolini's police escort and whispered in his ear: "You are with me, you are under my protection. What do you need all these cops for?" Mussolini rejected Cuccia's offer of protection, and the sindaco felt that he had been slighted and instructed the townsfolk not to attend the duce's speech. Mussolini felt humiliated and outraged.
Cuccia's careless remark has passed into history as the catalyst for Mussolini's war on the Mafia. Mussolini firmly established his power in January 1925; he appointed Cesare Mori as the Prefect of Palermo in October 1925 and granted him special powers to fight the Mafia.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, sell off their property, or publicly slaughter their livestock. By 1928, more than 11,000 suspects were arrested. Confessions were sometimes extracted through beatings and torture. Some mafiosi who had been on the losing end of Mafia feuds voluntarily cooperated with prosecutors,[61] perhaps as a way of obtaining protection and revenge. Charges of Mafia association were typically leveled at poor peasants and gabellotti (farm leaseholders), but were avoided when dealing with major landowners. Many were tried en masse. More than 1,200 were convicted and imprisoned,[65] and many others were internally exiled without trial.
Mori's campaign ended in June 1929 when Mussolini recalled him to Rome. He did not permanently crush the Mafia as the Fascist press proclaimed, but his campaign was nonetheless very successful at suppressing it. As 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."
Sicily's murder rate sharply declined.[67] Landowners were able to raise the legal rents on their lands, sometimes as much as ten-thousandfold.[68] Many mafiosi fled to Canada and the United States. Among these were Nicolo Rizzuto and Vito Rizzuto who became powerful Mafia bosses in Montreal in Canada, as well as Carlo Gambino and Joseph Bonanno in New York City in the United States

" Our Thing"

Type

Illicit, Syndicate