Cosa Nostra

Genesis

It was during the turbid years of the XIXème century that the Italian leaders start to intend to speak for the first sicilian time of the Maffia. Without having very clear ideas on the question, the first studied the gangster phenomenon supposed that it was about an antiquated tradition going back to the Moyen-âge, and preserved because of bad foreign administrations being succeeded in the island and having maintained it in a late situation.

Actually the origins of Cosa Nostra are far from being also old. The Maffia would be contemporary new Italian nation. The genesis of the Maffia does not imply only one, but several tangled up stories. One estimates it during the turbulent time of the years 1860 at 1876 with a short flashback in the half-century which preceded them.

History

One cannot study the Maffia in a relevant way without analyzing the company in which it was born and developed. The Sicily, in particular its Western area, can be defined like a company mafiogene (i.e. producing of Maffia) because of certain characteristics, such as acceptance, by most of the population, violence and illegality; the weakness of the legal economy or the brittleness of social fabric.

For as much, one should not forget that is not nor the product of immutable a ethos (within the meaning of " familism amoral" of Banfield) nor that of an ancestral antisocial behavior (the thesis of Putnam). Sicily knew important popular fights against the Maffia, from those of the " Fasci " sicilians (1891 - 1894: political organizations of peasants against the great landowners)) with those of the agricultural work force the shortly after the Second world war, which gathered hundreds of thousands of people and caused hundreds of deaths.
Their defeat, which forced with the emigration of the million individuals, is explained not only by the violent reaction of the landowners and the mafiosi, but also by the complicity of the local and central institutions.

Figures

Cosa Nostra counts approximately: 1700 " familles" (a hundred in the province of Palermo - year 2002) of various size and virulence. It is estimated that the number of affiliated people (chiefs, soldiers, initiated, honest of the clan,…) is of: 50,000 individuals on the whole of the territory of Sicily.

The turnover of the Italian gangster organizations rose to 90 billion euros, out the drug trafficking. Independent sources of incomes: the usurious Ready (30 billion euros of receipts: 150,000 companies victims), the Racket (10 billion), the Counterfeits (7,4 billion), the Flight (7 billion), the Swindle (4,6 billion). (Source: Confesercenti, association gathering: 270,000 tradesmen and Italian small companies)

Organization

Each family of Cosa Nostra is organized in a pyramidal way. This hierarchical structure comprises a top and an epicentre based with Palermo. It is there that seat management called " coupole" or " commission". It is necessary to keep in mind that gangster architecture is evolutionary according to economic opportunities, financial and of the level of repression. A chief of the " coupole" such as Toto Riina had dictatorial designs, centralized and terrorist of the organization. Whereas its successor Bernardo Provenzano had a discrete design, more consensual, decentralized, quasi feudal.

Godfather: Head of the household " chief; Capo" Under Chief-delegate Consigliere: To advise (one, sometimes several) Foreman - foreman - foreman Soldato - Soldato - Soldato - Soldato - Soldier - Soldato: Soldier

With the top of the " famille" and at the local, regional or national level (Sicily), the structure is identical:

The " famille" gangster of Cosa Nostra is always composed of 3 concentric human circles:

In the center, the hard core made up of the executives and " men of honneur" formally initiated
Around the core, a cerle composed of the close relations of the initiates by the way of blood or sponsorship.
Second circle, that which is composed of the tactical allies, of the " associés" , the figureheads, etc None of the latter is likely to be initiated.

Regional or inter-provincial commission

The commission regional (or inter-provincial) was created in 1975. In the beginning, it is a collegial authority between the chiefs of " famille". But at the end of the Années 1970, Corléonais - that the Palerman gangsters call with contempt " U Viddanu" (Idiots, country bumpkins) - have seized the power of the province of Palermo, then of the commission at the price of a true blood bath. During nearly fifteen years and until its capture (January 1993), Toto Riina directed of an iron hand the regional commission and exerted a true dictatorship on all the Maffia Sicilian with the contempt of all her traditions.

Each " famille" is obliged to obey the decrees of the inter-provincial commission (cupola). The supreme authority in Sicily decides for example on Trier of Easter and Christmas, prohibition of sequestrations of people on the island, etc

All the strategic questions of Cosa will nostra concern the regional commission. Its decisions are without call and must be carried out at any price, even of long years after the initial order. It is with it that returns the capacity to validate or not any sanction striking a gangster. Exercise finally rather simple since the measurement of the sorrows inflicted by the " justice mafieuse" count only two bars:

the gangster is excluded and cannot approach whoever any more belongs to Cosa Nostra and none the members of the honourable company must to more speak him. Only solution: the exile.
much more frequently, the gangster is condemned to died and cut down.

The central management of Cosa Nostra Sicilian is ensured since the Années 1980 by the " famille" of Corleone. This criminal power of planetary scale knew to cut its strongholds in the great residential areas of the North of Italy. It maintains the old bonds with powerful clans of Camorra and tied contacts followed with the Colombian trusts while preserving a quasi absolute monopoly of the heroin traffic between Sicily and the United States.

Recruitment of Cosa will nostra

Cosa Nostra is scrupulous during the initiation of a future member within their " famille". A gangster must be obligatorily:

sicilian of father and mother
of male sex and catholic

Are of office prohibited of initiation:

Elements born out of Sicily,
illegitimate Wire (even of separate or divorced parents),
Communists or wire of the latter,
wire or brothers of women " légères" ,
the homosexual ones,
divorced, the
United or close to victims of Cosa Nostra (the wish of truth between men of honor would reveal the name of the assassin to them and would start vendettas without end),
Close relatives of police officers, magistrates or civils servant of any repressive authority.

As of the Age of Enlightenment, and often of wire father, the young person is impregnated " values mafieuses". The young person is observed, measured lengthily by the old ones, then prudently approached by insinuations, half-silences or allusions. If all is positive, the candidate is invited to adhere to Cosa Nostra. This introduction is with one way and one leaves the honourable company only dead or excluded. What in such a case is practically equivalent to same.

During its initiation, the new gangster must lend oath. The code of following honor is enacted to him:

not to wish the women of other men of honor,
not to fly, not to deliver themselves to the procuring,
not to kill out of other men of honor, except order of the " Coupole" ,
never not to speak about Cosa Nostra in public,
never to be presented oneself in the form of a man of honor, even with other men of honor,
To respect the omertà (law of silence).

The first test after initiation is often a murder indicated by the Cupola as a sign of obedience and tender to the organization. However, the contractors, the civils servant, the members of liberal professions and the acclésiastiques ones are exempted of assassination.

Rules intended for the men of honor

The rupture of the omertà is punished of death, even decades after the sentence. The gangsters should under no pretext write what relates to Cosa will nostra. At the end of the Years 1960, the young person and brilliance Michele Cavataino of the family of Acquasanta discusses the territorial recutting of the sicilian capital with Members of the provincial Commission of Palermo. Taken by its subject, it takes a sheet of paper and, in front of his dumb-founded and outraged colleagues, it explains its idea by crayonnant a diagram. Condemned to died by the commission, it will be killed shortly after the meeting.

Are strictly prohibited:

notorious adultery.
alcoholism (a man of honor must preserve his cold blood and its dignity in any circumstance. Intoxication is severely prohibited also because a drunk person does not have a secrecy).
the usurious loan, procuring and all dishonouring activities.
removals on the island.

Activities

In Sicily, Cosa Nostra is present in the following fields of activity:

Narcotic Traffic of S,
illicit Interventions in the Adjudication S of the Public works and Construction,
Racket and Extortion of funds near the Trading S or of the Undertaken S,
Wear,
Swindle S on the markets of the Wine, the fishing, the Citrus fruits S and the Oleaginous , through the Community aids for example,
Traffic of Bank card.

For the extortions, the Maffia does not save the Italian large companies, in particular those committed in great public works like Italcementi (cement), Impregilo (Italian number one of the BTP) and Condotte (BTP and water conveyance). These firms prefer to make a pact rather than to denounce the blackmails whose they are the object (Report/ratio 2007, " S.O.S Entreprises" , Confesercenti)

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