Historical differences between the US and Sicilian Mafias

[Angelo Santino]

1) In the 1920's in Villabate a Sicilian from another town- I disremember the name- in Palermo that had it's own Mafia Family was made by the Villabate boss and his affiliation placed into another Family in another City. This is very odd that A) This individual was made by one Family boss and "assigned" to another Family and B) despite this Sicilian's hometown having it's own Family, he was instead placed into another city's Family.

2) Family switching in Sicily is literally unheard except in the rarest of cases. In the USA from 1900-1930 it was somewhat more common when members wanted to move to another city for whatever reason.

3) Family forming in Sicily is more common, usually from breaking off of another group. Quite the opposite in America with the last family being formed being Rochester which was formed by Pittsburgh members with the blessing of Buffalo.

Others?

[B.]

Calderone talks about a guy named Damiano Caruso from Villabate who was "illegally" made by Giuseppe DiCristina, boss of Riesi. He says there were protests but that it was eventually accepted. So that is two examples, both involving Villabate.

[Angelo Santino]

Illegally made? His name was not passed around?

4) Smaller Family memberships traditionally. It may have changed within the last 50 years but before then Families rarely amounted to 10-30 men. When groups got too big they splintered in an amicable fashion into smaller Families. New York due to immigration could not control their levels of membership and got inflated to 2-300 member beasts.

5) The Mafia and its use of mandamenti was based on these previously combined factions. There was never any equivalent in the USA.

6) It requires ten members to form a Family. In the USA Families are not created nor destroyed easily.

[furiofromnaples]

Some strong differences:

1)If a made man in sicily flips,all his relatives would be killed, even if they are not criminals, there is formal rule against kill women or children (the young Di Stefano strangulate and dissolved in acid from Brusca);
2)No formal rules against drug trafficking;
3)If necessary is more common to kill cops,judges,politicians,journalists ecc (in usa Stanfa ordered to kill george anastasia but ended with only 2 hands granades trought anastasia home's windows)

[Pogo The Clown]

Stanfa wanted the hand grenades thrown into GAs but it never got carried out.


Pogo

[Dwalin2014]

4) Smaller Family memberships traditionally. It may have changed within the last 50 years but before then Families rarely amounted to 10-30 men. When groups got too big they splintered in an amicable fashion into smaller Families. New York due to immigration could not control their levels of membership and got inflated to 2-300 member beasts.

Stefano Bontate in the Santa Maria di Gesu' district in Palermo had 300 or 400 made members (without counting the associates), I read in several books and articles. Don't know how many families with that number there were though. As you say, most likely only a few, this one was considered the biggest. By the way, is it known how many of them does the mafia have in that area today? At least an approximative number.

5) The Mafia and its use of mandamenti was based on these previously combined factions. There was never any equivalent in the USA.

Due to a lesser number of families probably...In the USA, the whole commission didn't even amount to 10 even in its peak of power, if I remember well. In Sicily, even with the capi mandamento system, the provincial commission in Palermo numbered about 12 or 15 I think (each of them controls about 3 families or so; although the regional commission had only 6 members, since the Siracusa, Ragusa and Messina provinces didn't have their own representatives); not sure if they use the same system in any other provinces though. Some books and articles say they don't, although then I read in some books specifically about the Agrigento province, that they use the "capi mandamento" system there too, but sometimes it isn't a family boss at all, but a formally a soldier in one of the families in his territory. In Palermo, on the other hand, at least after the war in the 60s, the capo mandamento is always a boss of one of the 3 families reporting to him, I think. A little complicated sometimes anyway...

[SonnyBlackstein]

What is the Italian leadership model?
Do they employ the boss, UB, consig structure?
Do leadership models differ between Sicilian, Ndrangheta, Camorra etc?

Cheers.

[Dwalin2014]

What is the Italian leadership model?
Do they employ the boss, UB, consig structure?
Do leadership models differ between Sicilian, Ndrangheta, Camorra etc?

Cheers.

The Cosa Nostra in Sicily has the same structure, the only difference is that the Sicilian term for a crew leader is "capo decina", and in America it's "capo regime" I think. Although the small families sometimes don't have capos.

In the camorra, only the Nuvoletta family have (or at least had) the same structure, but then the Nuvoletta brothers were made into the Cosa Nostra as well, most of the camorra families don't have a formal initiation I think, although they have to be divided in crews with a sort of "capos" in charge of each, but I never read about them using any terminology or ceremony, only Raffaele Cutolo had that.

In the 'Ndrangheta, I am not sure, it's more complicated. They initially used other terms for ranks, like "picciotto", "sgarrista" etc (for the non-affiliated associates the term "contrasto onorato" was used) then, then after the war in the 70s they created a special "sub-structure" called the "Santa", which included members that were affiliated in freemasonry and dealt directly with corrupt law enforcement and politicians, and (at least I read that) were even allowed to arrange for "annoying or otherwise inconvenient" members to be arrested if necessary, while if a non-Santa-member does that, he would be labeled a rat. Then they also created other ranks above the "santista" (member of the Santa), which I get confused with, like "quartino", "quintino", "trequartino" etc (I could translate some paragraphs from Italian books, but I don't understand this mess myself very much); not sure if somebody who has these ranks is required to be a boss or not though. Then, they use the term "locale" for the Sicilian "mandamento", it means a territory where several families operate, and the "capo locale" is the same as the "capo mandamento": supervises more than 1 family. After the war in the 80s, they created something resembling the Cosa Nostra commission, but it's temporary and doesn't control every decision of all bosses; the meeting assembly is called "Crimine" and the elected chairman "Capo Crimine", but he doesn't have the power as the boss of bosses in the first decades in the USA had.

Sorry if I sound somehow confusing about the 'Ndrangheta, I would like to understand the structure better myself. Even some of the older bosses didn't get it completely imo, with this creation of the "Santa" and the new ranks: Antonio Macri' (the boss of Siderno killed in 1975), who was one of the most important ones, just kept the rank of "sgarrista" and didn't want to partecipate in the new "bureaucracy", as I remember reading.

[scagghiuni]

dwalin, i think that the family of bontade (santa maria gesù) had 100 made members, the biggest in palermo
the santapaola family from catania is the biggest with over 200 made members
but they are exceptions, all the other families have 50 made members at most, several 20-30 only
all the western provinces (palermo, trapani, agrigento, caltanissetta) have 'capimandamento' and their internal commissions
palermo has 15 mandamenti, agrigento 7, trapani and caltanissetta 4
in the eastern provinces there are not mandamenti and almost all the families answer to the santapaola family in the commission

[Dwalin2014]

dwalin, i think that the family of bontade (santa maria gesù) had 100 made members, the biggest in palermo
the santapaola family from catania is the biggest with over 200 made members

The numbers are different from one article or book to another, but I never read about the Bontate family having only 100...Here I just picked a random article (the Andreotti indictment), it says it had 200 members (although I am sure some other articles said 300, but maybe they exaggerated). This is the link and the quote:

http://www.archivioantimafia.org/senten ... accusa.pdf

nel periodo considerato dal CALDERONE, la famiglia di Santa Maria di Gesù era la più
numerosa e contava circa 200 membri; si trattava di una forza d'urto terrificante, se si tiene
presente che ogni uomo d'onore, tra amici e parenti, può contare almeno su 40-50 persone,
che ne seguono pedissequamente le direttive

translation (sorry if there are inaccuracies, hope not)

During the period considered by Calderone, the Santa Maria di Gesu' family was the largest and had about 200 members; it was an incredible power, if we consider that every made member can count on about 40-50 people, among friends and relatives, who follow faithfully the directives

Although I remember this quote was used when talking about how many votes can the mafia provide to have their politicians elected, so those 40-50 associates for every made member weren't necessarily shooters or even criminals, just people who voted who they were being told.

About the Catania family, they did really well then if they have 200 now....In the book "History of the mafia" by Salvatore Lupo it's said that in the 70s they only had 35 members (when Giuseppe Calderone was still alive). Also, Buscetta listed the Catania province as one of the weakest: I remember a quote where he said that, if the power of different provinces was to be measured in 10 points, then Palermo would have 10, Trapani and Agrigento 8, Caltanissetta 6 and Catania 4. Don't know why he didn't mention Enna though, they also had a seat on the regional commission....Maybe it was so weak they weren't even considered, just a presence "in name only"? Don't know.

[scagghiuni]

buscetta said that the santa maria gesù family under bontade had 100 made members (i don't know the whole mandamento), calderone was from catania so i think buscetta is right
according to the dia the santa maria gesù mandamentlo has currently about 100 made members
i doubt the number of members increased so much in the latests decades considering that the area (santa maria gesù, villagrazia and guadagna neighborhoods) is still a real mafia stronghold
yes, the santapaola family had 40 members in the 1970s but it increased very much in the latest decades, it has crews all across catania province and other provinces
in the past enna had a seat in the commission, today is answers to catania

[SonnyBlackstein]

Great info.

Thanks Dwalin and scgghiuni.

[Confederate]

From what I read from other sources, it seems Christie had the right idea that the Families were usually around 30 members give or take and they were all related by blood or marriage. That makes the Sicilian Mafia a lot different than the American Cosa Nostra.

[Angelo Santino]

From what I read from other sources, it seems Christie had the right idea that the Families were usually around 30 members give or take and they were all related by blood or marriage. That makes the Sicilian Mafia a lot different than the American Cosa Nostra.

No one has to take my word for it, it's documented and can be looked up. Read Salvatore Lupo or Letizia Paoli, a professor and a criminologist in Italy who have written on the subject of membership totals. I posted about this exact topic before and if the fucking search function performed like it should I'd provide a link. Instead it'll just tell me to fuck off because "Mafia Memberships Trapani Paoli Gambino" is too broad of a search. However, the information does indeed cover the historical rather than the modern era and traditionally, Palermo had the largest memberships whereas Trapani I believe had only 7 or 8 and that evidently was enough. I'm less interested in the numbers than I am in how they reflect the way individual organizations functioned and the contrasts between let's say the 400 sized Gambinos and the 50-60 sized Cleveland.

I wouldn't necessary say all were related but there is a correlation between families and their mafia involvement that spans multiple generations and have been known to intermarry. It's only compounded by the fact that a great deal of Sicilian Mafiosi in America had surnames and came from locations that the families they left behind went onto have some sort of mafia involvement. But it's a symptom and not a trait, not every male family member is obligated to join the mafia or steered into it. In fact it's generally been the opposite since the 1960's with exceptions.

[Angelo Santino]

1) In the 1920's in Villabate a Sicilian from another town- I disremember the name- in Palermo that had it's own Mafia Family was made by the Villabate boss and his affiliation placed into another Family in another City. This is very odd that A) This individual was made by one Family boss and "assigned" to another Family and B) despite this Sicilian's hometown having it's own Family, he was instead placed into another city's Family.

I'd very much like to hear B's perspective on this matter. The above scenario just seems so odd to me and seemingly violates Mafia norms. Imagine a scenario where the Colombo boss encountered a Boston native in 1925, straightened him out and then assigned him to the Scranton Family? One can envision multiple instances where doing this would lead to problems later on. I can only surmise that this occurred after the first World War and maybe the Mafia was going through a "rebuild" and this was a one off occurrence. I can't find any other examples such as this.