Ndrangheta question

[calabrianwatch]

Happy to chat more

[calabrianwatch]

Oh and last thing - the first ndrangheta trial was not with Gratteri at all - Gratteri arrived at mid 2000 but the important ndrangheta trials were already there in the 1980s with first pentito Scriva and then trial olimpia as well in the 1990s, a maxi trial in Reggio among others

[furiofromnaples]

Saggarrista is the highest level of the Minor Society. It's like a street boss, a guy who directly oversees operations and underlings.

But he would still be a rank lower than Santista or no? like officially people in the major societies are considered to be more superior?

Yes the Santisti and the members of Major Society are more powerful then the Minor Society but the most part of ndrangheta men are part of Minor Society and the numbers you seen on wiki are referred to members not the contrasti onorati that are sinply associates.

Thank you Furio, another question of mine is, does the member of the minor societies have to be blood relatives of the families as well or are they also allowing outsiders to be baptized in these ranks?

I only know Antonio Schettino a camorrista that in the 1980s was baptized and arrived to the rank of Evangelista and killed 58 people including Roberto Cutolo in 1990.
For the other thing,yes the force of ndrangheta is the family ties,so if you didnt come from a family in the ndragheta shouldnt be baptized.

[PolackTony]

Almost all of the structural/organizational info that I’ve seen on the ‘Ndrangheta pertains to Reggio province (and some for Crotone as well). I’ve seen very little info regarding the clans in Central/Northern Calabaria (Catanzaro, Vibo Valentia, Cosenza), past or present. Given that the ‘Ndrangheta clans have a lot of independence and are largely free to operate locally as they wish, I wonder how much of the info on baptisms, ranks, protocol etc applies to these other regions or if this is all mostly specific to Reggio and the clans elsewhere are set up very differently.

To give some context to my interest, there were a bunch of guys in the Chicago Outfit over the decades from these areas (Simbario, Vibo Valentia and Lamezia Terme, Catanzaro as well as all over Cosenza province) and some of them seem to have kept ties to criminal organizations or family in Calabria even up until the 80s (Rocky Infelise and the Frattos to the area around Taverna, Catanzaro, specifically). In the 1930s Chicago Heights capo Dom Ruberto was deported back to Italy, where he seems to have remained as a Chicago liaison (possibly involved in decades thereafter in narcotics trafficking to Chicago). He was from Sambiase in the Lamezia Terme area (as was his nephew Frank LaPorte) and there was a photo published of Ruberto and Jim Emery (also Calabrese from Cosenza province) posing with “amici” in Calabria, all looking like serious gangsters (I believe in the 1930s).

I believe that these other regions of Calabria had their own phenomenon of the old “Piccioteria” that emerged locally in parallel to the better documented Piccioterie of Reggio, which developed into the modern ‘Ndrangheta there. These organizations were probably influenced by the old prison “Camorra” groups that spread out into Southern Italy in the late 19th century. Certainly by the turn of the 20th century there was an organized clan in the Lamezia Terme/Nicastro/Sambiase area, as the organization was busted by the police. Interestingly, the boss of this organization at that time was reported to be an Antonio Ruberto.

I have no idea to what degree these local Piccioteria traditions persisted over the 20th century or to what degree they came to influence local clans in the modern era.