We really don't know much of what DiLeonardo was doing though either, he wasn't involved in counterfeiting so the SS wasn't on him and if he met Cascioferro during this time, the agents failed to identify him. Now, the SS didn't capture everything so that's not indicative of anything. Cascioferro, aside from Morello and Boscarino (of Bisac.), he was friendly with Inzerillo (Resuttana) and others in Lower Italy, he even had one friend described as a French-Italian.B. wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:15 pm3 - We know that's how things ended up later, but the DiLeonardos were involved from the first decade of the 1900s. That's what makes this difficult. You can look at someone like Girolamo Asaro who lived in Manhattan and ran a saloon where the Manhattan Castellammarese hung out, but no doubt he was part of the family based in Williamsburg given his background and Carlo Costantino bailing him out of jail, plus all his descendents joining the Bonannos. But that wasn't followed 100% of the time, so who knows. Al D'Arco's sponsor Joe Schiavo was a Castellammarese who lived on the Brooklyn/Queens border and reported to a captain whose family came from Trapani (Vario), but they were all Luccheses, a family that was centered in the Bronx/EH.
He had a nephew in the 1900's named Peppino, in 1914 Clemente met a Cascio nephew with the surname Guarino who was 25 making him likely too young to be ripping and running a decade prior. Anyway, there's current Guarino's in the Gambinos today, are they Bisacquinese?
I don't see it that way. I mean it's a fact, not my own theory that these affiliations ran on regional affiliation. We see elements of it in the modern times. But it's like anything with this subject, there are exceptions. We have examples of members who didn't go through a ceremony, who didn't have to kill someone, who wasn't even Italian on his father's side. These exceptions don't delegitimize the normal standard.B. wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:15 pm 4 - This must have happened, but it kind of goes against the argument you make in your article (which I agree with)... while there were exceptions, it looks like the NYC families were formed mainly around compaesani lines, and we know most other US families were formed that way. What confuses it is that compaesani were typically centered in a specific colony, so you do see territory-based affiliation but it's hard to separate how much of that is location vs. the fact that compaesani tended to live near each other. But you also see people like the Bronx Palermitani who "should" have gone with the Lucchese/Genovese but didn't.
Sicilians are quite proud of where they came from so there is that. But even more importantly, the mafia is an interpersonal organization that recruits through close friends and relatives. Given mobility at the time, we tend to see Families with membership all centered in one city or area. But if you're a member and you had the chance to deal with a stranger from your hometown or with another member from a different city, you'd likely choose the other member.
Yeah, many would think that just like they'd think Phila.'s Boston Crew should be affiliated with the Patriarcas or the Gens, but it has to do with affiliation and their ran through Phila. I always assumed it spread throughout Sicily that way.B. wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:15 pm This does go back to Palermo, though. We know Sicilian mafia affiliation was based almost entirely around neighborhood and village, yet Allegra was a Trapanese made into a Palermo family. However he doesn't seem to have had a mafia background and was living in Palermo, so that makes sense. Then you have the early Catania members who reported to a Palermo family. They didn't have a family yet but given the territorial nature of the Sicilian mafia you'd think Catania members would report to a closer family in Caltanissetta or Agrigento. It does actually make sense that they would be under the sponsorship of a family in the island's powerbase of Palermo. I think it's for similar reasons that you typically see NYC families with "remote" crews (i.e. Springfield, Montreal) even though there were other families closer to them.
