THE BLACK HAND FORUM

Pogo The Clown wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 12:42 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 9:06 am We're familiar with Battista Balsamo

The first Godfather.


Pogo

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm Another thing however is outside of Palermo, we don't know the set up. Did Corleone stop at Corleone or did it include Villafrati or Baucina in a way that the Fratellanza is described- a boss in Favara and sub bosses in different towns? We don't have examples of smaller/rural Sicilian Families and the territory they control. At least I don't. Without that I'm apprehensive to draw a conclusion. Tree falls in the woods type of thing.

One example might be Vallelunga / Villalba / surrounding towns. It appears they were one family, at least at one point, as Calogero Sinatra of Vallelunga was the boss of an area that included Villalba and his cousin Angelo Bruno was recorded talking about how small Sinatra's group was. Italian LE reported a dinner attended by Bruno and Sinatra in that area that included a total of like 5 mafia members. It wouldn't surprise me if that was most of the family at the time. We know Villalba had members living there and produced Calogero Vizzini as boss at one point, so if these towns were always under one family it appears anyone from one of those towns could be boss, they just had few members even when they included multiple towns.

Giuffre's account of the Caccaco mandamento includes towns/villages that don't appear to have had their own family, either, but did have members who reported to the closest family. A couple of the members he identified as members of the Caccamo family lived in other nearby towns, so that's another example.

Not every village had its own family, so there was some amount of consolidation of nearby towns if they weren't significant enough to support a family. But the above two examples were small towns very close to each other -- closer than say, Buffalo and Rochester.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pmWith the exception of Chicago, Newark and maybe upstate NY (the argument you presented which makes sense) I've seen very little in the way of consolidation or merging of groups. Had that been the case, the DeCavs would have been ripe for the picking. Why have this little pygmy in Jersey when they can be a Gambino decine?

The DeCavalcantes had a cap of 75 members according to acting boss Vinnie Palermo and at the time of his cooperation had 50+ members with many proposed, plus members who died in the preceding years. Is that a pygmy family ripe for the picking? Because we have such little information on their size and position in the 1920s/30s I'm not comfortable making a real judgment, but if they had anywhere near 75 members that would be a significant group that would be nipping at the heels of groups like the Profaci and Lucchese families, especially since they were focused in NJ.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm A better question might be why San Francisco and San Jose were both created and allowed to coexist so close to each other in an area with few organic recruits. That def challenges the idea I'm suggesting of regional consolidation, but going back to the recent Schiro thread again, there is reason to believe they had political backing from different powers in NYC (Schiro / D'Aquila). Might not be that different from the reason D'Aquila / Mineo became separate, on a smaller scale.

It would have to make political as well as regional sense to combine people into one group. Erie PA and Rochester were part of Buffalo and both had a population from Caltanissetta which fit perfectly with Buffalo's membership in addition to being regionally close. Yet Endicott / SWNY fell under Pittston even though they also had men from Caltanissetta and Castellammare, like Buffalo, and weren't far away.

It could be, but there was also Chicago and Chicago Heights which started as separate entities. The reasons could be political but it could also be seen as a need fulfulled. SF and SJ and even Oakland all had a sizable Italian population. When I looked at the SJ activity in 1910 I remember thinking there's enough size and activity to warrant a group here this early, same with Rochester. But for unknown reasons they did not. Now there's new evidence coming out that SJ might be older than 1940.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm The Capomandamento just makes it easier. It reduces 23 talking heads to 8. There's also more members in Sicily than there are in America and a 3rd tier was required. The Mafia is conservative in its ranks, if it doesn't need them they don't have them. We've seen cases where there's no underboss or captains or consigliere at one point in time or another in different instances. With the exception of Messenger and informal treasurer we don't see alot of added ranks/positions. I think in America there wasn't as big a need for more organization. The 5 year annual assembies and the Commission in NY took care of things until the 60's when Chicago overseen the west and NY the east.

At the time the US mafia established the territory associated with certain families there was apparently no mandamento system in Sicily, so they wouldn't have had that on their brains. Instead, to simplify mafia politics it would have made more sense to combine the groups into larger regional families under one boss.

It makes sense to us but we don't know what they were thinking. We can guess but there's so many unknowns. You know this already. But really, with the exception of Chicago/Chicago Heights/Gary, Newark and maybe Buffalo/Troy there's no evidence beyond any consolidation. These examples are individual cases not tied to any synonymous reformation.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm He did. But in America there were 7-9 bosses overseeing 24-6 groups, in Sicily there's 20+ groups in Palermo alone. For every boss to be on it would e like one of Gentile's 300 member meetings he described.

Not just members, but apparently leaders/rappresentanti. He might have been exaggerating or misremembering, but his and Bonanno's accounts of those meetings are one of the reasons I suspect there were more families earlier on. If that's the case, it makes total sense why they would eventually consolidate the families into larger regional families opposed to tons of colonies with their own rappresentanti attending national assemblies by the hundreds.

One question is, what did Sicily do when they didn't have the mandamento system? This might play into one of those Italian reports about Agrigento I referenced earlier, where the authorities said the early rural mafia groups in Agrigento were more disconnected and autonomous than those in Palermo. Maybe those families were less involved/concerned with politics in Palermo and aside from being mafia members and part of the network just weren't involved in the finer details of island-wide politics as long as they could manage their own affairs, which is exactly what one of those reports suggests. Later, the mandamento / provincia Commissions allowed those families to become more involved but as we know Palermo still reigned supreme.

I don't know, but they needed an extra level with the modernization of the times, the tobacco and drug business were emerging.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm I am specifically comparing these larger US territorial families to the mandamento system and not the provincial system, which had its own Commission made up of capiprovincia. You could make a comparison between the provincial groups in the Sicilian mafia and larger regions of the US, i.e. midwest, west coast, east coast. The families in these larger regions did have subtle unique qualities within their region and certainly some families had more influence in their region (i.e. Chicago), but there was no high-level "west coast", "midwest", "south", or "east coast" representative and we can see where Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all had seats on the Commission, meanwhile the west coast relied on east coast families for Commission representation.

Yes, but cities like Akron, Cleveland and Youngstown didn't start out as separate organizations that combined into one in the 1930's. That's Luciano's Cosa Nostra Legend. These larger territories were usually much more anemic in their members and it wouldn't make sense to have an Akron, Cleveland and Kent Family have Joe Lonardo serve as capomandamento or even tri-state boss when it can be one organization with a capo in each city.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm I'm still not seeing it. Are we discussing commission representation and how maybe Philly was represented by the Gambinos due to the Belmonte connection while LA was repped by the Gen due to the Corleonese connection? The big difference is the mandamenti were local affiliations alongside eachother merged into one entity whereas in America those affiliations could change as we seen with Philly and the Gambinos/Genovese.

I am talking about Commission representation (i.e. Philly->Gambinos, San Jose->Profaci, Los Angeles->Lucchese, etc.), but I'm comparing it to a disconnected version of the provincial Commission in Sicily, not the mandamenti Commission. In Sicily you have boss, capomandamento, and capoprovincia. The capimandamenti had their own Commission meeting overseen by their capoprovincia (for capomandamento Giuffre, this was Toto Riina, who represented all of Palermo province). The capiprovince then had their own Commission above that. The capoprovincia of Palermo was then the unofficial boss of bosses.

In the US, I am comparing the sprawling regional families to mandamenti in the way that these territories are organized for political convenience, while the Commission members representing other families are more like disconnected capiprovince.

None of this directly translates because the US is huge, has fewer members/families, and most importantly never had the official roles of capomandento and capoprovincia. However, I believe there were similar layers to the way the mafia was organized for both geographic and political reasons even if they're not a straight up mirror of each other.

Great points all around, my brother... a fun braintwister for these long hours of national "lockdown".

I'm still not seeing it. Maybe Antiliar can weigh in?

Great points from you too. Again I'm not dismissing it, I'm just not seeing it. If we're going to compare the political operations of the US and Sicily Mafie we'll see similarities and differences since they follow a basic model that tends to rarely deviate.

cavita wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:33 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 2:48 am So Antonino Lombardo and Antonio Musso each married a daughter of Vincenzo Piro and both went onto become bosses of other cities?

Yes, Antonino Lombardo married Camille Piro while Antonio Musso married Camille's sister Maria. I don't know where or when Lombardo married his wife but Musso married his wife in New Orleans in 1917 where Vincenzo was still based before he moved to Los Angeles.

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 6:42 pm
If the source for Gambino being at the funeral was Bill Balsamo then it certainly is suspect. I thought that came from an external source.

Do you know the background on Jerry Maranzano? He was in a documentary talking about his relative Sal and how he and Joe the Boss were the big cats that couldn't get along or something lame like that.

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 2:48 am So Antonino Lombardo and Antonio Musso each married a daughter of Vincenzo Piro and both went onto become bosses of other cities?

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:08 pm Another thing however is outside of Palermo, we don't know the set up. Did Corleone stop at Corleone or did it include Villafrati or Baucina in a way that the Fratellanza is described- a boss in Favara and sub bosses in different towns? We don't have examples of smaller/rural Sicilian Families and the territory they control. At least I don't. Without that I'm apprehensive to draw a conclusion. Tree falls in the woods type of thing.

With the exception of Chicago, Newark and maybe upstate NY (the argument you presented which makes sense) I've seen very little in the way of consolidation or merging of groups. Had that been the case, the DeCavs would have been ripe for the picking. Why have this little pygmy in Jersey when they can be a Gambino decine?

The Capomandamento just makes it easier. It reduces 23 talking heads to 8. There's also more members in Sicily than there are in America and a 3rd tier was required. The Mafia is conservative in its ranks, if it doesn't need them they don't have them. We've seen cases where there's no underboss or captains or consigliere at one point in time or another in different instances. With the exception of Messenger and informal treasurer we don't see alot of added ranks/positions. I think in America there wasn't as big a need for more organization. The 5 year annual assembies and the Commission in NY took care of things until the 60's when Chicago overseen the west and NY the east.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am Now is that unique to the mafia? No. It's the nature of human beings, geography, and politics. But the point is, both the US and Sicilian mafia used a similar system for political representation and authority. The decision to use this kind of structure was not an arbitrary decision but something that allowed the mafia to be more cohesive and controlled on a national scale. If the mandamento system wasn't put into place until the 1950s/60s that's interesting, as wasn't the US mafia credited with helping the Sicilian mafia re-organize itself during that period? I recall some reliable source (Buscetta?) saying that US mafia leaders including Joe Bonanno helped set up a new Sicilian Commission.

He did. But in America there were 7-9 bosses overseeing 24-6 groups, in Sicily there's 20+ groups in Palermo alone. For every boss to be on it would e like one of Gentile's 300 member meetings he described.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am I am specifically comparing these larger US territorial families to the mandamento system and not the provincial system, which had its own Commission made up of capiprovincia. You could make a comparison between the provincial groups in the Sicilian mafia and larger regions of the US, i.e. midwest, west coast, east coast. The families in these larger regions did have subtle unique qualities within their region and certainly some families had more influence in their region (i.e. Chicago), but there was no high-level "west coast", "midwest", "south", or "east coast" representative and we can see where Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all had seats on the Commission, meanwhile the west coast relied on east coast families for Commission representation.

I'm still not seeing it. Are we discussing commission representation and how maybe Philly was represented by the Gambinos due to the Belmonte connection while LA was repped by the Gen due to the Corleonese connection? The big difference is the mandamenti were local affiliations alongside eachother merged into one entity whereas in America those affiliations could change as we seen with Philly and the Gambinos/Genovese.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am I'm not suggesting US families are a direct translation of mandamenti, only that the idea of a family in the US (at their peak) covered a larger body of territory comprised of different cities/towns with their own activities, sometimes with captains and influential soldiers serving more like bosses of certain towns/areas within the regional territory. The true bosses of these families were more of a political representative of the regional territory than boss of a singular group, which is why the bosses of these larger territorial families often had a seat on the Commission.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am From reading Nino Giuffre's testimony about the 1980s, as capomandamento he was essentially "boss" of multiple separate families in the Caccamo mandamento and some of his stories brought to mind US families like Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, New England, and really any family with a boss who represented a wider region of territory opposed to a single concentrated unit. The big difference is the other groups in Giuffre's mandamento were families with their own bosses, but his role was not unlike a US Commission member in that he was the political representative and authority in the area. To reinforce this idea, the heads of mandamenti did have their own Commission.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am This also plays into the idea that there were more families in the early US mafia who were later combined into one larger regional family, but whether or not that's what happened doesn't really matter as they still adopted a regional model with a head political representative one way or another. In Sicily, where each cosca/family had a deeper history corresponding to a certain town/village, it would make more sense to keep them as separate families, while in the US where there was no history and whether they combined separate groups or created larger regional bodies right off the bat doesn't make a difference. The bigger point is that both the US and Sicilian mafia saw the use in combining all of the groups in a region into one political body with a higher-level representative who then participated in a Commission.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am Now is that unique to the mafia? No. It's the nature of human beings, geography, and politics. But the point is, both the US and Sicilian mafia used a similar system for political representation and authority. The decision to use this kind of structure was not an arbitrary decision but something that allowed the mafia to be more cohesive and controlled on a national scale. If the mandamento system wasn't put into place until the 1950s/60s that's interesting, as wasn't the US mafia credited with helping the Sicilian mafia re-organize itself during that period? I recall some reliable source (Buscetta?) saying that US mafia leaders including Joe Bonanno helped set up a new Sicilian Commission.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:28 am I am specifically comparing these larger US territorial families to the mandamento system and not the provincial system, which had its own Commission made up of capiprovincia. You could make a comparison between the provincial groups in the Sicilian mafia and larger regions of the US, i.e. midwest, west coast, east coast. The families in these larger regions did have subtle unique qualities within their region and certainly some families had more influence in their region (i.e. Chicago), but there was no high-level "west coast", "midwest", "south", or "east coast" representative and we can see where Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all had seats on the Commission, meanwhile the west coast relied on east coast families for Commission representation.

Antiliar wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 3:59 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Wed Mar 11, 2020 6:00 pm
He lived in Red Hook, smack dead in Palermitan territory. His funeral was also attended by Carlo Gambino. I don't think he was a NY boss, certainly not Mangano's predecessor like Bill Balsamo claimed. I would speculate Battista was either a soldier or captain early on, with no evidence really.

Carlo Gambino attended Battista Balsamo's funeral according to Bill Balsamo, a source we don't trust. Do we have any other sources that say Gambino attended his funeral? If not, Imma going to remain skeptical. It's possible, but I'm not confident.

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Wed Mar 11, 2020 6:00 pm
He lived in Red Hook, smack dead in Palermitan territory. His funeral was also attended by Carlo Gambino. I don't think he was a NY boss, certainly not Mangano's predecessor like Bill Balsamo claimed. I would speculate Battista was either a soldier or captain early on, with no evidence really.

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 1:53 pm

Villain wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 12:14 pm The old Outfit (during and after Capones reign) operated for decades with the help of four "separate" factions or "families" under one top admin (which is probably the main diference). The so-called territorial bosses had their own district capos and crew bosses who sometimes went in each others areas and so besides their capos, they also kicked up to the capos and territorial bosses who ruled those same areas which they "invaded"

EDIT: This type of process probably originated in Sicily and was later transferred or adopted by the mainlanders...or maybe it was the other way around, i dunno

I started a thread with some analysis of Chicago I've been throwing around for a while. Please feel free to weigh in, as I completely respect your dedication to the subject but there is a major disconnect in our views. Unless you're talking about a period pre-1930s where there was a Chicago family, Chicago Heights family, possibly an Indiana family under Paolo Palazzolo, and another group(?), I have no clue how four families fit into Chicago.

Villain wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 12:14 pm The old Outfit (during and after Capones reign) operated for decades with the help of four "separate" factions or "families" under one top admin (which is probably the main diference). The so-called territorial bosses had their own district capos and crew bosses who sometimes went in each others areas and so besides their capos, they also kicked up to the capos and territorial bosses who ruled those same areas which they "invaded"

EDIT: This type of process probably originated in Sicily and was later transferred or adopted by the mainlanders...or maybe it was the other way around, i dunno

B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:43 am

Villain wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:38 am

B. wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2020 8:49 pm What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

The old Chicago Outfit operated in similar, if not same fashion for a long time

Those are decina, though, not separate families unless you mean the early Chicago and Chicago Heights families. That's common with decine in most families.

What's unique about NYC and Palermo is you have multiple distinct families in one city/metro area.

Villain wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:38 am

B. wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2020 8:49 pm What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

The old Chicago Outfit operated in similar, if not same fashion for a long time

B. wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2020 8:49 pm What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.