B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:20 pm
Didn't know Palizzolo was from Termini. He was very close with the mafia in Villabate and Bagheria. No doubt early Chicago relationships went back overseas as these places are close. The Accardi cattle rustling operation was in the 1920s-30s but there was a lot of crosspollination in island politics and activities earlier.
Termitani were already established in Chicago by the 1880s, so it wouldn't be surprising that these eastern Palermo comuni seem to have supplied an important core for the mafia in both the city and the Heights. I'm not sure when the first Corleonesi became established in Chicago, so my working theory is that the Termitani founded the Chicago mafia c.1880.
B. wrote:
- What I wonder is if Chicago was the same as Riccobene described early Philadelphia with three or four Families (like NYC) divided mainly by compaesani, especially since we can confirm they had separate Chicago + Heights Families as late as the mid-1920s (Philly was consolidated by then). Chicago had the make-up to have separate Castelvetrano/Marsala, eastern Palermo coast/inland, and maybe other groups. Like we were saying, a question is whether the guys from those eastern Palermo villages would have divided themselves or seen themselves as one since they were neighbors. The Sicilians in Birmingham were no doubt one single Family but historians said the paesan colonies stayed separate and viewed each other as rivals even though they were neighbors in Sicily.
This is a question that I've been mulling over as well. I think it's certainly possible that at least two families initially existed in the city proper -- Termitani and Corleonesi -- though this would be still in the 19th century. Chicago had a great number of Sicilians, of course, and a number of distinct Italian colony neighborhoods, so I think the conditions were there for an initial development along the lines of what occurred in Philly. I'd have no way of really judging at what point these may have coalesced into one family. Seems that this occurred, if it indeed did, by the 1910s at the very latest, as with D'Andrea we can see that Little Sicily and Taylor St were under one admin. I think this would've already occurred earlier; an example is the Giuseppe Macaluso who I noted above, who operated in both Little Sicily and on S Clark St.
B. wrote:
- Then there's the powerful Agrigento guys but what kind of colony did Mike Merlo join when he arrived? His father died early on in Chicago and you found later guys from Sambuca, then most of the Ribera guys came around the time Merlo became boss. Except for Families that were created/dominated by Agrigento (Cleveland, DeCavalcante, Pueblo) we see them more than happy to have their own faction under leadership from elsewhere. Merlo seems to have been in with D'Andrea and what we know as the single Chicago Family by the 1910s. Agrigentini prefer their own even by mafia standards, though.
Yeah, unlike those other cities, I see no evidence to suspect that Agrigentesi networks played a central role in the formation of the Chicago mafia. Of course, I write that with the caveat that there were certainly guys we don't know about; but still, I think we do have a good grasp on the broad outlines of who seemed to have been the major players, and in the earlier phases they were not Agrigentesi. So when they came into the organization later, they got in where they fit in, I'm sure.
B. wrote:
- Giuffre said the Caccamo Mandamento had the following towns when he was in charge but not all of them had their own Family:
Caccamo, Ventimiglia di Sicilia, Trabia, Termini Imerese, Sciara, Cerda, Montemaggiore Belsito, Aliminusa, and San Nicolo l'Arena
Obviously, the networks that were formalized with the development of the mandamento system long predated it. Worth noting that several of those comuni were well represented in Chicago (Ventimiglia, Trabia, Montemaggiore).
B. wrote:
- The top Caccamesi leaders were all killed in the mid- and late-1920s. The Chicago Heights and Pittsburgh admins (who both have ties to the Landolina name) and Giorgio Catania in Philadelphia (said by Riccobene to have been former boss of the Philly-Caccamo Family). Odd coincidence, especially given some other conflicts were ethnically-driven (i.e. Castellammarese War) and national in scope.
There may have been something afoot, for sure. This could be an important dynamic that we otherwise wouldn't grasp if we only saw it viewed from the level of local Chicago-area underworld competition. In the latter light, the removal of Piazza by the Roberto/Emery group can be cast as a simplified Calabresi vs Sicilians war over bootlegging, in the vein of how people have depicted the Capone vs Aiello contest. I suspect that, as in the Capone case, this had a lot more to do with internal mafia politics than people have assumed. By this time in the 1920s, the process of incorporating these mainlander organizations into the mafia, I believe, was in full force, and it's fully possible that Chicago used this as a way to take out Piazza and absorb the Heights family as a decina. The possibility that Caccamesi leaders were iced out on a broader scale at the same time I think goes to further support that line of reasoning and points to a potentially larger context apart from local Chicago concerns.
Thanks for pointing out the Landolina connection, also. Piazza's wife, of course, was Carmella Landolina.
EDIT: Actually, I'm pretty certain that Phil Piazza's wife Carmella was the sister of the Nicasio Landolina killed in Pittsburgh in 1928 (maybe you were aware of this already). So, yeah. Something was going down then.
