by PolackTony » Mon Feb 17, 2025 5:41 pm
B. wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2025 3:04 pm
Great analysis. It does seem increasingly unlikely Ribera or even Agrigento played a foundational role in the American mafia based on what you found.
1891/1892 is the earliest I can definitively say immigrants from Ribera and Caltabellotta were settling in NYC. There were Carubia and Gallettas among them, both surnames shared with important NYC DeCavalcante members, but no idea if there was a relation to the later mafiosi.
Some of the Spinellis who settled in Elizabeth were living in New Orleans circa 1900 but they arrived in the late 1890s. The Smeraglias of Alabama also initially lived in New Orleans for a few years after coming in the late 1890s. I did come across some other Riberesi who arrived via New Orleans after 1900 who had relatives living in New Orleans but nothing to suggest there was a substantial group earlier. I actually had no idea immigration from Agrigento was so delayed so that's great info.
A few points that I think are worth considering here to contextualize the trends that I identified in the pre-1900 arrival data.
Coastal Palermo province was, obviously, one of the more economically developed zones in Sicily and had longstanding commercial ties to Mainland Italy and other European countries such as Great Britain and France, due to the primacy of the citrus export trade, in the main part (though other agricultural produce such as wheat, wine, and olive oil were also important, of course). It's unsurprising that Palermitani were thus the majority of the early arrivals to the US, given ties to export markets and more ready access to transportation via the port of Palermo. Chain migration is always a significant factor in creating sort of path dependencies for migratory flows and inducing further migration from those back home; the earliest Sicilian migrants to the US were mainly Palermitani produce exporters, of course, who set up shop in major cities like NOLA, NYC, and Chicago etc in the decades prior to the Civil War (by which I mean not just those from Palermo City but also important towns such as Termini Imerese and Monreale). So the Palermitani also had a big head start here, which I think is important.
In the last decades of the 19th century, several economic and social crises sort of converged to provide significant "push" mechanisms that induced large-scale emigration from rural areas of Western and Central Sicily.
- Modest improvements in living standards from the 1860s on led to a notable population growth in the rural districts of Western Sicily.
- The moribund latifondia system in the agricultural zones was unable to absorb this growing population and was hitting the limits of what its inefficient production could sustain.
- An increasingly unbearable tax burden on the peasants and smallholders, as the "Honeymoon" period ended in the years after the Risorgimento and the new Italian state set about trying to squeeze as much revenue as they could from the Mezzogiorno.
- The devastation of the important viticulture industry, particularly important in Western Agrigento in places like Sambuca, Menfi, and the towns around Ribera/Burgio etc., due to an epidemic of phylloxera that killed many grapevines. These take time to regrow and this economic sector was basically devastated.
- The decline of the fishing industry in coastal Agrigento towns like Sciacca, in particular. Sciacca's port and fishing fleets were outdated and poor, and thus increasingly unable to compete with Northern Italian and other competitors in the fishing market and local, coastal trade of goods.
- The decline of the sulfur industry in Agrigento and neighboring Caltannissetta. Sicily had dominated the global sulfur market, but by the 1880s was facing stiff competition from foreign competitors; the sulfur industry went into a death spiral around this time, with mines closing and large numbers of rural workers displaced. While sulfur mining was not a local factor in Western Agrigento, the economy of the province broadly was heavily dependent on sulfur production and export, and there were various downstream effects as people migrated out of the sulfur-producing regions in search of work etc., in agricultural sectors that were not well-disposed at this time to absorb any such influx.
- In response to the above factors, there was a major rise of political organization and agitation by peasants and rural laborers in the interior of Western/Central Sicily in the last decades of the 19th Century. You mentioned Crispi already, but the 1890s was the peak of the political turmoil around the Fasci Siciliani, and the subsequent crackdown and violent repression of this movement in 1894. It should be noted that the prime bases of support for the Fasci Siciliani lay in exactly the agricultural zone spanning SW Palermo Province (Corleone, Lercara Friddi, Bisacquino, Contessa Entellina, Palazzo Adriano, Chiusa Sclafani) and nearby Agrigento comuni such as Ribera, Lucca Sicula, Burgio, etc. Many people fled this crackdown and sought refuge by emigrating, and we can note that the timing of this social crisis correlates very well with the rise of immigration from these towns to the US. We have discussed this before, but people from these towns in Agrigento and adjacent Palermo province can be readily noted as co-travelers in the US, settling in the same places, intermarrying, and engaging closely in social networks such as that of the mafia.
For obvious reasons, migrants from the fishing port town of Sciacca tended to cluster near major East Coast ports such as NYC/Brooklyn, Newark, Philly, and Boston. Early migrants from the rural zones of Western Agrigento such as Sambuca often came in via NOLA, and some went to the sugar sectors of Louisiana, but many of these then later decamped for more favorable opportunities in industrial cities like Chicago. Dislocated workers from the sulphur mining and adjacent zones naturally congregated in coal mining areas like PA, Southern IL, and CO, beginning around 1890, as well as integrating into the pre-existing Sicilian/Italian communities in industrial cities.
[quote=B. post_id=289865 time=1739829857 user_id=127]
Great analysis. It does seem increasingly unlikely Ribera or even Agrigento played a foundational role in the American mafia based on what you found.
1891/1892 is the earliest I can definitively say immigrants from Ribera and Caltabellotta were settling in NYC. There were Carubia and Gallettas among them, both surnames shared with important NYC DeCavalcante members, but no idea if there was a relation to the later mafiosi.
Some of the Spinellis who settled in Elizabeth were living in New Orleans circa 1900 but they arrived in the late 1890s. The Smeraglias of Alabama also initially lived in New Orleans for a few years after coming in the late 1890s. I did come across some other Riberesi who arrived via New Orleans after 1900 who had relatives living in New Orleans but nothing to suggest there was a substantial group earlier. I actually had no idea immigration from Agrigento was so delayed so that's great info.
[/quote]
A few points that I think are worth considering here to contextualize the trends that I identified in the pre-1900 arrival data.
Coastal Palermo province was, obviously, one of the more economically developed zones in Sicily and had longstanding commercial ties to Mainland Italy and other European countries such as Great Britain and France, due to the primacy of the citrus export trade, in the main part (though other agricultural produce such as wheat, wine, and olive oil were also important, of course). It's unsurprising that Palermitani were thus the majority of the early arrivals to the US, given ties to export markets and more ready access to transportation via the port of Palermo. Chain migration is always a significant factor in creating sort of path dependencies for migratory flows and inducing further migration from those back home; the earliest Sicilian migrants to the US were mainly Palermitani produce exporters, of course, who set up shop in major cities like NOLA, NYC, and Chicago etc in the decades prior to the Civil War (by which I mean not just those from Palermo City but also important towns such as Termini Imerese and Monreale). So the Palermitani also had a big head start here, which I think is important.
In the last decades of the 19th century, several economic and social crises sort of converged to provide significant "push" mechanisms that induced large-scale emigration from rural areas of Western and Central Sicily.
[list]
Modest improvements in living standards from the 1860s on led to a notable population growth in the rural districts of Western Sicily.
[/list]
[list]
The moribund latifondia system in the agricultural zones was unable to absorb this growing population and was hitting the limits of what its inefficient production could sustain.
[/list]
[list]
An increasingly unbearable tax burden on the peasants and smallholders, as the "Honeymoon" period ended in the years after the Risorgimento and the new Italian state set about trying to squeeze as much revenue as they could from the Mezzogiorno.
[/list]
[list]
The devastation of the important viticulture industry, particularly important in Western Agrigento in places like Sambuca, Menfi, and the towns around Ribera/Burgio etc., due to an epidemic of phylloxera that killed many grapevines. These take time to regrow and this economic sector was basically devastated.
[/list]
[list]
The decline of the fishing industry in coastal Agrigento towns like Sciacca, in particular. Sciacca's port and fishing fleets were outdated and poor, and thus increasingly unable to compete with Northern Italian and other competitors in the fishing market and local, coastal trade of goods.
[/list]
[list]
The decline of the sulfur industry in Agrigento and neighboring Caltannissetta. Sicily had dominated the global sulfur market, but by the 1880s was facing stiff competition from foreign competitors; the sulfur industry went into a death spiral around this time, with mines closing and large numbers of rural workers displaced. While sulfur mining was not a local factor in Western Agrigento, the economy of the province broadly was heavily dependent on sulfur production and export, and there were various downstream effects as people migrated out of the sulfur-producing regions in search of work etc., in agricultural sectors that were not well-disposed at this time to absorb any such influx.
[/list]
[list]
In response to the above factors, there was a major rise of political organization and agitation by peasants and rural laborers in the interior of Western/Central Sicily in the last decades of the 19th Century. You mentioned Crispi already, but the 1890s was the peak of the political turmoil around the Fasci Siciliani, and the subsequent crackdown and violent repression of this movement in 1894. It should be noted that the prime bases of support for the Fasci Siciliani lay in exactly the agricultural zone spanning SW Palermo Province (Corleone, Lercara Friddi, Bisacquino, Contessa Entellina, Palazzo Adriano, Chiusa Sclafani) and nearby Agrigento comuni such as Ribera, Lucca Sicula, Burgio, etc. Many people fled this crackdown and sought refuge by emigrating, and we can note that the timing of this social crisis correlates very well with the rise of immigration from these towns to the US. We have discussed this before, but people from these towns in Agrigento and adjacent Palermo province can be readily noted as co-travelers in the US, settling in the same places, intermarrying, and engaging closely in social networks such as that of the mafia.
[/list]
For obvious reasons, migrants from the fishing port town of Sciacca tended to cluster near major East Coast ports such as NYC/Brooklyn, Newark, Philly, and Boston. Early migrants from the rural zones of Western Agrigento such as Sambuca often came in via NOLA, and some went to the sugar sectors of Louisiana, but many of these then later decamped for more favorable opportunities in industrial cities like Chicago. Dislocated workers from the sulphur mining and adjacent zones naturally congregated in coal mining areas like PA, Southern IL, and CO, beginning around 1890, as well as integrating into the pre-existing Sicilian/Italian communities in industrial cities.