The Everything Mafia Book (4 page)

The Sicilian dialect, while basically an offshoot of Italian, also has strong Greek and Arabic influences, since these cultures occupied Sicily for a time, usually as unwelcome guests.

The secret societies that formed against the oppressive invaders also battled pirates, bandits, and assorted outlaws that plagued the peasants. Some of these men were brave and patriotic and became heroes of the people. The legend is that they became real-life Robin Hoods, battling the French invaders and instilling a national pride in a conquered people. They had gained power by fighting for the oppressed peoples of the island against a common enemy—the French.

You Need Some Protection

The Mafia’s first foray into moneymaking was when it began to extort money from the very people it purported to protect. People would receive courtly and politely written letters “requesting” money for protection. The gimmick was that the money was protection from the group that sent the letter. If the recipients did not pay up, they could expect a violent response. Family members might be kidnapped and held for ransom. Their house could be set ablaze and destroyed. They might even be killed. People lived in terror that one of these notes would be slipped under their door.

The “Black Hand” was an early group of Italian criminals. It was called that for the gang’s penchant for slipping a politely written note under people’s doors asking them in a nice way to pay a fee to avoid being killed. The note was not signed, but instead was stamped with an inked image of the caller’s hand.

Political Power

The Sicilian Mafia continued to gain power, prestige, and influence in all aspects of the island’s culture and political establishment. By 1876 the Mafia chieftain Don Raffaele Palizzolo was elected to the Sicilian Parliament. He arranged for his handpicked men to become prime minister and director of the National Bank. This commingling of Mafia and politics is a tradition that has never stopped. As you will see in later chapters, the American Mafia has been a behind-the-scenes player in American politics, allegedly influencing at least one presidential election.

The Omerta Code

Omerta was the tradition in which young men were initiated into the secret society of the Mafia. It evolved into the modern Mafia tradition of Mafiosi being “made,” that is, when they are allowed into the inner sanctum of the Mafia family. One of the requirements for membership in the modern Mafia family is to have killed someone or to have participated in a murder, even if the initiate isn’t the one who pulls the trigger.

Ancient Wisdom

The code of the modern Mafia harks back to the Old-World traditions of the ancient Sicilian culture. In addition to the vow of Omerta, a second element of the Mafia code is a vow of total devotion and loyalty to the head of the family, or don. This comes from the ancient traditions of royalty and the divine right of kings. Among royalty, the clever kings determined that there could be no dissent or challenge of the monarch, because it was God’s will that the king was on the throne.

The Sicilians go by the name Mafia, but there are actually three other crime groups on the mainland of Italy: the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta, the Neapolitan Camorra, and the Pugliese Sacra Corona Unita.

Another source of the Mafia tradition of total obedience to the don was the feudal system. This medieval social structure had a feudal lord in his castle lording over the peasant class. Serfs, as the peasants were called, worked the land and delivered the majority of the produce to the castle while they kept just enough for themselves to eat. This medieval tradition is carried on in the modern Mafia, where the people on the lower rungs of the hierarchy work for the good of those above them.

A third code of the Sicilian Mafia was the duty to offer help to anyone “in the family” that was in need and any person or group with close ties to the Mafia that needs assistance. The fierce loyalty to friends and equally fierce hostility to any outsiders is a cornerstone of both the Old-World and New-World Mafia.

The fourth code followed by the Mafia is the obligation to seek vengeance against anyone who attacks a member of the family. In its very insular unity, the Sicilian Mafia took an assault on one member of the family as an attack on the family as a whole. The Old-World term for this is vendetta. The Sicilians took it to an extreme that the American Mafia did not. The Sicilian Mafia would slaughter the entire families of anyone who offended them.

This is something the American Mafia did not do. In fact, they prided themselves for “only killing their own,” and anyone who violated that rule would be killed. The Sicilian Mafia of the nineteenth century are akin to the vicious Colombian drug cartels of the later twentieth century who routinely and ruthlessly wiped out the entire families, including the small children and babies, of their enemies.

The fifth code of the Sicilian Mafia is that its members must avoid interaction with the authorities. They could bribe corrupt policemen and crooked politicians, even intimidate and kill them, but they were not allowed to socialize with them.

CHAPTER 2
Mafia . . . The Prequel

Organized crime’s rise in America can be traced to the large influx of immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century. While 99 percent of all immigrants were law-abiding, there was a small but influential group that chose a life of crime. They came from the slums and teeming streets of poverty. While others rose through hard work, the early gangsters rose through crime, oftentimes at the expense of their own neighbors and friends. From these early gangs, the Mafia rose, bribing and killing its way to the top of the crime heap.

The Immigrant Experience

In the 1860s there was a wave of immigration to America from Italy and Sicily, and an even larger one in the 1890s. While some immigrants came through cities like New Orleans and Los Angeles, an overwhelming majority of them took their first look at America by gazing up at the Statue of Liberty and the neighboring Ellis Island. It was through the immigration office at Ellis that millions of Italian Americans’ ancestors came through processing and on their way to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tampa, or Newark. There they settled into tight-knit ethnic enclaves. “Little Italys” sprang up across the country, letting the newcomers enjoy the comforts of their birthplace while making their way in their adopted homeland.

The Gangs of New York

The Five Points slum was a bad place. Not only was it a vermin-infested den of squalor, but it was also the breeding ground for thousands of thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes, con men, extortionists, and murderers. But even though the area was notorious, it was home to teeming masses of new immigrants and those not wealthy enough to move further “uptown” to more affluent neighborhoods. It was a place where bloodlines were forged as gangs battled each other for control—and it produced some of the most infamous gangsters in American history.

The Gangs in Film

Martin Scorsese’s movie
The Gangs of New York
was actually based on a 1928 book by Herbert Asbury. The sensationalist book detailed the lives and crimes of the early gangsters who lived among the crowded masses. Primarily Irish immigrants, the gangs boasted colorful, even goofy, names like the Dead Rabbits and the Roach Boys. They were part extortionists, part political muscle. They operated under the protection of political bigwigs like the notorious Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies.

The Five Points Gang

One of the earliest Mafia incubators was the Five Points Gang. It was an incubator in the literal sense. Most of the members were young kids! But from these inauspicious beginnings, some of the earliest Mafia figures emerged—products of their new homeland. Paul Kelly (whose real name was Paolo Vaccareli) led the Five Points Gang, whose roster included such mob all-stars as Johnny Torrio and Al Capone.

Tong Wars

One of the earliest organized crime groups originated in China. The contemporary Chinese criminal groups, called
triads
, all trace their roots back to this old tradition. As Chinese immigration to America increased in the late nineteenth century, a new organization emerged. Called
tongs
, these groups were formed to provide assistance and support to the new immigrant experience. But the tongs soon became powerhouses in the criminal underworld.

Chinatowns are known for their vibrant, touristy atmospheres, with lots of restaurants and trinket shops. But at one time the darker specter of criminal gangs dominated, which became worrisome to community leaders. After the tong wars, the gangs decided to keep the fighting to a minimum to keep the area a place where they could make money off tourism. Capitalism at its finest!

Rumble on Canal Street

Two of New York City’s most powerful tongs, the Hop Sing Tong and the On Leong Tong, had a bitter rivalry in the early part of the twentieth century that reached across to Chinatowns in other parts of the country. Disagreements over gambling, opium dens, and liquor dealings brought dozens of killings in the narrow, crowded streets below Canal. But by the time the Mafia was on the rise, things had settled into a quiet storm. The warring tongs had made peace in 1911, cutting off their ponytails to symbolize the new relationship. But, as you’ll see in Chapter 21, gangs were still a problem in Chinatown, and a far more sophisticated Chinese crime group would eventually gain control of the Asian underworld.

The Irish

The first criminal bands that emerged from the gritty slums of areas like Five Points were the Irish. Although many Irish became civil servants, there were a few who chose the underworld road to success. While the Sicilians were going by the moniker Black Hand, the Irish were using White Hand. Based out of the Brooklyn docks, these groups made most of their money by extorting the longshoremen, hijacking loads of merchandise off the boats, and running gambling operations open to the dockworkers.