sicilian 'partiti'

[scagghiuni]

The first historical document in which a mafia-like clan is named is from 1837, in which the attorney general of Trapani, Pietro Calà Ulloa, refers to his superiors in Naples on the activity of strange sects or brotherhoods dedicated to criminal enterprises and which corrupted also public employees:

'In many countries there are unions or brotherhoods, especially sects that are called parties, without color or political purpose, without meeting, with no other link than that of dependence on a leader, who here is a landowner, there an archpriest. A common fund helps needs, now to have an official exonerated, now to defend him, now to protect a defendant, now to blame an innocent. There are many kinds of small governments in the government. The lack of public force has multiplied the number of crimes. Just as thefts happen, the brokers come out to offer a transaction for the recovery of the fleeced objects. The number of such agreements is infinite'

in 1870s a suspected mafioso, Calogero Gambino, told Sangiorgi that the criminal organizations were called 'parties'

this document discovered in 2009 by the national state archives could prove the existence of the mafia (with another name) as early as 1830s

[B.]

Great information.

There was also an investigation in the 1820s in Agrigento where it was discovered that men in towns like Siculiana, Cattolica Eraclea, and Burgio were part of a ritualistic criminal secret society. One of the figures arrested was a priest in Burgio. Unfortunately I couldn't find further details or references but it certainly sounds like the mafia given the villages mentioned. Would indicate the mafia was active in Agrigento by the 1820s.

An indication the mafia was in Caltanissetta that far back is Leonardo Messina (b. 1955) saying he was the seventh generation in his family to join the local mafia. Depends on what he means by generation, but a rough estimate could easily take his family's membership back to the 1820s.

[scagghiuni]

Great information.

There was also an investigation in the 1820s in Agrigento where it was discovered that men in towns like Siculiana, Cattolica Eraclea, and Burgio were part of a ritualistic criminal secret society. One of the figures arrested was a priest in Burgio. Unfortunately I couldn't find further details or references but it certainly sounds like the mafia given the villages mentioned. Would indicate the mafia was active in Agrigento by the 1820s.

An indication the mafia was in Caltanissetta that far back is Leonardo Messina (b. 1955) saying he was the seventh generation in his family to join the local mafia. Depends on what he means by generation, but a rough estimate could easily take his family's membership back to the 1820s.

yes, there was also an investigation in Agrigento in 1828

[motorfab]

Great info scagghiuni. Do you have a link about this ?

[scagghiuni]

Great info scagghiuni. Do you have a link about this ?

i found it in different books, i'm surprised John Dickie or someone else (Lupo, Vittorio Coco etc.) didn't link the two investigations

[B.]

Baron Turrisi Colonna's 1863 pamphlet called the mafia "the sect". He said it had been around for twenty years by that time.

yes, there was also an investigation in Agrigento in 1828

Hopefully we can eventually get some names. An old report says the mafia in Agrigento and Palermo were both part of the early development in the Sicilian mafia and lists tons of villages in those provinces. Trapani only has a few villages listed (Castellammare is one) and one village is listed in Caltanissetta.

[scagghiuni]

Baron Turrisi Colonna's 1863 pamphlet called the mafia "the sect". He said it had been around for twenty years by that time.

yes, but it is probably a Turrisi's speculation, he couldn't know when it started exactly, anyway he knew its existence

Hopefully we can eventually get some names. An old report says the mafia in Agrigento and Palermo were both part of the early development in the Sicilian mafia and lists tons of villages in those provinces. Trapani only has a few villages listed (Castellammare is one) and one village is listed in Caltanissetta.

i think Trapani is also an early development but there are less informations

[B.]

Agreed, he was just throwing a number out. Some who knew him said he was made so the 1840s could be when he was initiated.

[johnny_scootch]

Some who knew him said he was made so the 1840s could be when he was initiated.

You mean the Baron Turrisi himself?

[B.]

Some who knew him said he was made so the 1840s could be when he was initiated.

You mean the Baron Turrisi himself?

Rival politicians alleged Turrisi was a mafioso, never confirmed. He was extremely close to Giammona the boss of Uditore whose son married Carlo Gambino's sister.

[PolackTony]

The first historical document in which a mafia-like clan is named is from 1837, in which the attorney general of Trapani, Pietro Calà Ulloa, refers to his superiors in Naples on the activity of strange sects or brotherhoods dedicated to criminal enterprises and which corrupted also public employees:

'In many countries there are unions or brotherhoods, especially sects that are called parties, without color or political purpose, without meeting, with no other link than that of dependence on a leader, who here is a landowner, there an archpriest. A common fund helps needs, now to have an official exonerated, now to defend him, now to protect a defendant, now to blame an innocent. There are many kinds of small governments in the government. The lack of public force has multiplied the number of crimes. Just as thefts happen, the brokers come out to offer a transaction for the recovery of the fleeced objects. The number of such agreements is infinite'

in 1870s a suspected mafioso, Calogero Gambino, told Sangiorgi that the criminal organizations were called 'parties'

this document discovered in 2009 by the national state archives could prove the existence of the mafia (with another name) as early as 1830s

I recall reading somewhere (don't recall where at the moment) the claim that the earliest mafia formed around 1799 in Mazara del Vallo. Don't know if this was related to the Trapanese "Partiti" that you reference here.

[B.]

Kind of like NJ claiming to be the first Family as a point of pride vs. the Commission recognizing New Orleans as the first, wouldn't be surprised in Sicily if there are different villages or provinces that felt they were the first. They might know the history better there too, i.e. the recording of guys talking about who specifically committed the Petrosino murder.

Personally I suspect the mafia formed in a rural area. No concrete reason to believe it but some early Italian reports believed the mafia began as a rural phenomenon and that's where they could dominate the entire municipality. I keep coming back to the border between Palermo and Agrigento and one indication is the sheer number of distinct Families in that area. Trapani and Caltanissetta have fewer villages with their own Families but Palermo and Agrigento are/were covered.

Wouldn't be surprised if the origins were somewhere obvious like Palermo, Castellammare, coastal Agrigento, or Corleone. Those places come up again and again as powerbases in the US and Sicily since the 1800s up to present day and they produced so many dang members everywhere. It's the mafia though so we could find out it began in some weird place like Mazzara.

[CabriniGreen]

Kind of like NJ claiming to be the first Family as a point of pride vs. the Commission recognizing New Orleans as the first, wouldn't be surprised in Sicily if there are different villages or provinces that felt they were the first. They might know the history better there too, i.e. the recording of guys talking about who specifically committed the Petrosino murder.

Personally I suspect the mafia formed in a rural area. No concrete reason to believe it but some early Italian reports believed the mafia began as a rural phenomenon and that's where they could dominate the entire municipality. I keep coming back to the border between Palermo and Agrigento and one indication is the sheer number of distinct Families in that area. Trapani and Caltanissetta have fewer villages with their own Families but Palermo and Agrigento are/were covered.

Wouldn't be surprised if the origins were somewhere obvious like Palermo, Castellammare, coastal Agrigento, or Corleone. Those places come up again and again as powerbases in the US and Sicily since the 1800s up to present day and they produced so many dang members everywhere. It's the mafia though so we could find out it began in some weird place like Mazzara.

I'm no where near as accomplished as a researcher, but I have to agree wholeheartedly. I believe the Sicilian mafia had rural origins. More specifically, the POWER of the mafia was in the land. Its the way Gabelotti were able to use force/military strength to insert themselves in between politics, finance and labor. As Dicke put it, to be a toolfor local government.I think those transactional/symbiotic relationships formed the genesis of what the modern day mafia is.


That post by Scaguinni was very telling. About the early mafia leader being a landowner. It was also telling that the mafiosi that didnt control land, were most likely engaging in Blackhand type extortions, hustling, probably in the more populated areas, as you dont have the land to link you to politicians and big business. It seems like it's harder to get close to politicians the bigger the city.

I'm a firm believer that the landowners always had a vested interest in paying a few Gabelloti, vs paying fair worker wages, and worker conditions ect.....


Respectfully, it's why I couldnt get with the idea that the mafia isnt criminal. The wealthy have always used the criminal element to fuck the peasant workers. This dynamic kinda IS the mafia. They need each other, it really cant work with JUST one side of it. They have a vested interest in that criminal element. Otherwise, a Salvatore Guiliano would have won, there would have probably been significant progress made on workers rights, Unions, all that..... and that doesnt benefits landowner, right?

Just some thoughts.....Great thread...carry on..

[B.]

That post by Scaguinni was very telling. About the early mafia leader being a landowner. It was also telling that the mafiosi that didnt control land, were most likely engaging in Blackhand type extortions, hustling, probably in the more populated areas, as you dont have the land to link you to politicians and big business. It seems like it's harder to get close to politicians the bigger the city.

I'm a firm believer that the landowners always had a vested interest in paying a few Gabelloti, vs paying fair worker wages, and worker conditions ect.....


Respectfully, it's why I couldnt get with the idea that the mafia isnt criminal. The wealthy have always used the criminal element to fuck the peasant workers. This dynamic kinda IS the mafia. They need each other, it really cant work with JUST one side of it. They have a vested interest in that criminal element. Otherwise, a Salvatore Guiliano would have won, there would have probably been significant progress made on workers rights, Unions, all that..... and that doesnt benefits landowner, right?

Great point about the landowners. It likely wasn't as simple as gabelloti exploiting non-mafia landowners but a collaboration between all classes of men with mafia membership. In the 1896 Castellammare del Golfo murder case, the leaders of the CDG Family owned a big rural estate and it was used as the Family's base for exploiting the neighboring landowners which is how they ended up killing the guard of a neighboring estate who challenged them.

- The mafia exploited non-mafia landowners in the same way the mafia exploits non-mafia businesses, but there were mafia landowners just like there are mafia businessmen. The mafia insiders from different backgrounds always work together against outsiders -- they fight amongst themselves too but there is more collaboration than conflict even though we do see "peasants vs. aristocrats" in Sicilian mafia wars and "gangsters vs. businessmen" like Sammy Gravano and Phil Leonetti talked about. That tension is always there but they are excellent at keeping the balance most of the time.

- In the same way the Gambino Family had guys like Paul Castellano and Patsy Conte who were born into families with businesses and resources alongside guys like John Gotti who pulled themselves up on the street, there is reason to believe the early Sicilian mafia had members of all types who each brought his own set of assets and resources to the organization.

- Many Sicilian mafia members were already part of the owning class when they came to the US, bringing money, businesses, professions, and property with them. It wasn't only the bosses either. Members were often from multi-generation mafia families in Sicily too so they inherited assets and resources. Not that they were all as well off as Joe Bonanno and Joe Profaci but they were from the middle class (or whatever the equivalent was then -- our idea of the middle class today is much different and a middle class lifestyle was a luxury then).

- Some of the young guys (many probably not made yet) are listed as laborers or tradesmen when they arrived but some of that may have been their age and it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. Within a short amount of time we see many of them owning stores and property without much time to have acquired significant criminal wealth. Some guys were actual peasants and escaping poverty but the myth of the mafia forming in the US because immigrants were escaping poverty wasn't the norm for the Sicilian mafia. Tommaso Buscetta was more like a John Gotti (in many different ways actually) than he was Paul Castellano even though they were both from Palermo. Buscetta was quite a bit different from some of his peers.

- Early Sicilian US mafia members often lived below their means especially in large cities. CC has explained how Italians and especially Sicilians loathe the idea of paying rent and it's entirely foreign to them in Sicily. They feel the same way about taxes (again the mafia is conservative in nature). LE discovered Giuseppe Morello was sharing a bed in a tenement apartment with his brother when he was capo dei capi. Not a total rule but we do see this type of thing.

- With guys like Giuliano, notice how they inducted the leader(s) of the bandits but not the guys who worked for Giuliano. Giuliano was from a mafia clan in Montelepre and his relatives were part of the mafia leadership. It plays into the idea of mafia members not being "foot soldiers" but leaders in their own right -- they inducted the bandit leader, not necessarily the average bandit. Giuliano's top man (who along with Buscetta ID'd Giuliano as "amico nostra") was also the son of a mafia member so you have Giuliano and his top lieutenant from mafia lineage and they had more status than other bandits.

I agree with your take on criminality actually. I think where some of the confusion in that debate comes from is we all agree the mafia is corrupt and breaks the law as it sees fit, but it's not necessarily defined by street crime. I've spent absurd # of hours talking to CC about this, so when he started his thread about that I know where he's coming from -- he's saying the mafia isn't inherently based on street crime activity and members traditionally don't have to go that route. Some of them do, but it's not the entirety of the org. Where I think we all agree is that the entire mafia is designed to tolerate and encourage corruption and crime so long as it serves the org. It doesn't require it, though... it only requires that they enable it because all of this makes up the dynamic whole of the mafia.

Good points man. One of my favorite topics these days haha.

[CabriniGreen]

That post by Scaguinni was very telling. About the early mafia leader being a landowner. It was also telling that the mafiosi that didnt control land, were most likely engaging in Blackhand type extortions, hustling, probably in the more populated areas, as you dont have the land to link you to politicians and big business. It seems like it's harder to get close to politicians the bigger the city.

I'm a firm believer that the landowners always had a vested interest in paying a few Gabelloti, vs paying fair worker wages, and worker conditions ect.....


Respectfully, it's why I couldnt get with the idea that the mafia isnt criminal. The wealthy have always used the criminal element to fuck the peasant workers. This dynamic kinda IS the mafia. They need each other, it really cant work with JUST one side of it. They have a vested interest in that criminal element. Otherwise, a Salvatore Guiliano would have won, there would have probably been significant progress made on workers rights, Unions, all that..... and that doesnt benefits landowner, right?

Great point about the landowners. It likely wasn't as simple as gabelloti exploiting non-mafia landowners but a collaboration between all classes of men with mafia membership. In the 1896 Castellammare del Golfo murder case, the leaders of the CDG Family owned a big rural estate and it was used as the Family's base for exploiting the neighboring landowners which is how they ended up killing the guard of a neighboring estate who challenged them.

- The mafia exploited non-mafia landowners in the same way the mafia exploits non-mafia businesses, but there were mafia landowners just like there are mafia businessmen. The mafia insiders from different backgrounds always work together against outsiders -- they fight amongst themselves too but there is more collaboration than conflict even though we do see "peasants vs. aristocrats" in Sicilian mafia wars and "gangsters vs. businessmen" like Sammy Gravano and Phil Leonetti talked about. That tension is always there but they are excellent at keeping the balance most of the time.

- In the same way the Gambino Family had guys like Paul Castellano and Patsy Conte who were born into families with businesses and resources alongside guys like John Gotti who pulled themselves up on the street, there is reason to believe the early Sicilian mafia had members of all types who each brought his own set of assets and resources to the organization.

- Many Sicilian mafia members were already part of the owning class when they came to the US, bringing money, businesses, professions, and property with them. It wasn't only the bosses either. Members were often from multi-generation mafia families in Sicily too so they inherited assets and resources. Not that they were all as well off as Joe Bonanno and Joe Profaci but they were from the middle class (or whatever the equivalent was then -- our idea of the middle class today is much different and a middle class lifestyle was a luxury then).

- Some of the young guys (many probably not made yet) are listed as laborers or tradesmen when they arrived but some of that may have been their age and it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. Within a short amount of time we see many of them owning stores and property without much time to have acquired significant criminal wealth. Some guys were actual peasants and escaping poverty but the myth of the mafia forming in the US because immigrants were escaping poverty wasn't the norm for the Sicilian mafia. Tommaso Buscetta was more like a John Gotti (in many different ways actually) than he was Paul Castellano even though they were both from Palermo. Buscetta was quite a bit different from some of his peers.

- Early Sicilian US mafia members often lived below their means especially in large cities. CC has explained how Italians and especially Sicilians loathe the idea of paying rent and it's entirely foreign to them in Sicily. They feel the same way about taxes (again the mafia is conservative in nature). LE discovered Giuseppe Morello was sharing a bed in a tenement apartment with his brother when he was capo dei capi. Not a total rule but we do see this type of thing.

- With guys like Giuliano, notice how they inducted the leader(s) of the bandits but not the guys who worked for Giuliano. Giuliano was from a mafia clan in Montelepre and his relatives were part of the mafia leadership. It plays into the idea of mafia members not being "foot soldiers" but leaders in their own right -- they inducted the bandit leader, not necessarily the average bandit. Giuliano's top man (who along with Buscetta ID'd Giuliano as "amico nostra") was also the son of a mafia member so you have Giuliano and his top lieutenant from mafia lineage and they had more status than other bandits.

I agree with your take on criminality actually. I think where some of the confusion in that debate comes from is we all agree the mafia is corrupt and breaks the law as it sees fit, but it's not necessarily defined by street crime. I've spent absurd # of hours talking to CC about this, so when he started his thread about that I know where he's coming from -- he's saying the mafia isn't inherently based on street crime activity and members traditionally don't have to go that route. Some of them do, but it's not the entirety of the org. Where I think we all agree is that the entire mafia is designed to tolerate and encourage corruption and crime so long as it serves the org. It doesn't require it, though... it only requires that they enable it because all of this makes up the dynamic whole of the mafia.

Good points man. One of my favorite topics these days haha.

100% agreed on everything.... and I DO agree, crime is a TOOL for the mafia, NOT the underlying PURPOSE....