[The Mafia Papers 02] Short History of the Mafia
The Mafia was born as the armed wing of the feudal nobility for the repression of peasant claims. At the end of the 19th century, the links between the Mafia and political groups tightened. This lead to the rise of mafiosi to local power and the establishment of the practice of exchanging votes and favours. That consolidated also a relationship of domination-protection of the Mafia over the territory in which it operated.
The real qualitative leap coincided with the southern emigration to the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. The Mafia then assumed an important role in clandestine immigration, imposing its control over some parts of the labour-power and racketeering on the activities of the influenced area, and intensifying its electoral exchange practices also in the USA. In the 1920s the peasant demand for land and government measures for the formation of new estates allowed the mafiosi to act as an intermediary between landowners and peasant cooperatives.
During Fascism, C. Mori, prefect of Palermo (1925 - 28), was sent to crush the Mafia, intercepting its traditional ties with local politics and claiming the state monopoly of violence. The fascist State in Italy wanted not to accept other authorities besides of him.
Between 1943 and 1945, the Mafia, on which the Allies had relied to prepare the landings in Sicily and South Italy, forged relations with the separatist movement and, after 1945, with members of the ruling parties. That legitimised it as an anti-union, anti-communist force. While the local cosche took root in the fabric of the regional authorities, the mafiosi who had returned from the USA made Sicily the big Mediterranean centre of drug and arms trafficking. The Mafia in the Palermo area then organised itself into a „dome“ (Cosa Nostra), started a process of control of organised crime and identified new sectors of profit (for example construction, general markets, contracts), and becoming with that an „urban-entrepreneurial“ Mafia in the 1960s.
In the 1970s-80s the Mafia became a protagonist in drug trafficking, weaving relations with foreign organisations not only in the USA. In 1979, a violent offensive began to remove obstacles to its growth with the killing of politicians, policemen and magistrates, while major internal conflicts also occurred. From these emerged the group known as the Corleonesi as the winner.
Victims of the Mafia included P. Mattarella in 1980, P. La Torre and General C.A. Dalla Chiesa in 1982 and also Judge R. Chinnici in 1983. The culmination of this war was the assassination of the two important judges G. Falcone and P. Borsellino, the financier N. Salvo and the Christian Democrat deputy S. Lima in 1992.
In the meantime, however, the revelations of a number of „turncoat“ mafiosi allowed important steps to be taken in the anti-Mafia fight, including a maxi-trial of more than 400 people in 1986. These brought into prison the Corleone bosses L. Liggio, S. Riina, and in 2006 B. Provenzano, along with many other Mafia bosses. In 2023, after 30 years on the run, M. Messina Denaro was caught by a special police unit. After some month he died in prison because of a cancer desease.
(Source: Treccani)