The Mafia Essay

Salvatore Lucania was born on November 24, 1897 in Sicily, Italy; almost ten years later, he began a new life of crime and prosperity in New York City’s lower east side. Upon arrival, he could not speak english; he bullied the other kids into paying him for protection and participated in drug dealing. One day, Lucania was abducted, beaten, stabbed, and left for dead; miraculously, he survived. This rather fortunate recovery led him to become known as Lucky Luciano (“Lucky Luciano Biography.com.” Edited by Biography.com, The Biography.Com website, A&E Television Networks, 17 June 2015, www.biography.com/people/lucky-luciano -9388350). In 1916, he became the leader of the Five Points Gang and continued to make a name for himself. During these early years, Luciano was in and out of jail-- mostly for getting caught dealing drugs.

The gangster genre within films in America has accomplished numerous positive criticisms and constant willing audiences due to containing outstanding spectacles and mind-blowing action. The Godfather, being second on the IMDb Top 250 Movies, has set a new popular concept to life within the Mafia from their point of view. Doing so, creating a positive association. Yet within Italy, the same topic contains a complete different view. Movies such as I Cento Passi demonstrate unenthusiastic view by those whom are outside yet negatively affected by those members. Unlike American films, the gangsters are not as often viewed at the protagonist and are the main causes for the problematic events. But how different is Italian Mafia and American

The Sicilian Mafia is a criminal organization that has its origin in Sicily, Italy. They are estimated to have come to existence during the 1800’s. Also known as Cosa Nostra and are mainly located in Sicily, some parts in Italy and America.

The New Mafia refers to style of mafia that became increasingly prevalent in the 1950s. Prior to the New Mafia, the Old Mafia ran their operations with a focus on achieving power in society. They often associated with those in political power, even to the extent of pledging their alliance with a powerful political party in Italy, the Christian Democratic Party (Abadinsky, 2017). In return, their pledge would essentially secure an unofficial position of power within the Italian government.

Even Italian tenor Enrico Coruso received a "Black Hand" letter demanding two thousand dollars. Without thought or hesitation, Enrico paid in full. However, when he received a second "Black Hand" letter demanding an additional fifteen thousand dollars, Enrico went to the police. Because of this set up, authorities were able to arrest two men inconnection with the Mafia. For the next three years, Enrico feared for his life, and had several guards escort him everywhere

Ermanno Sangiorgi was the police chief in Palermo at the time and he wrote an extensive report on the mafia of Sicily between 1898-1900 that would be the basis for the arrest and trial of 89 mafia members, among them Antonino Giammona. However, due to the political landscape at the time, most were released and only 32 criminals were convicted of belonging to a criminal network, i.e. the mafia. One of the people which Dickie points his fingers to as a possible villain in the story is Vincenzo Cosenza, the chief prosecutor (Dickie 2004). “Cosenza had written to the new Minister of the Interior and declared, ‘During the course of performing my duties I have never noticed the mafia” (Dickie, p110, 2004). This reveals a disturbing fact concerning the relationship between the mafia and the Italian state, namely that the mafia had already gained ground in the politics of the state and that the notion of the non-existing mafia became a leading viewpoint in Italian politics. The reason to why this claim hold some validation is that the politicians, or higher ups, such as a prosecutor, managed to influence a police-case to the extent that leading Mafioso’s such as Antonino Giammona was released and could resume their

     Exactly what is the Mafia? Mafia, more specifically the Italian-American Mafia, is a group of criminals organized into "families," and operating primarily in North America. Also known as La Cosa Nostra, at one time there were 26 families in the United States - roughly one for each major city. The Mafia composed of bosses of numerous families, mostly New York, was the overseeing authority for all of the other La Cosa Nostra families. New York City is the place of origin for organized crime in the United States. Currently, there are five families in the New York City outfit of the La Cosa Nostra. The five families are, the Gambinos, Genovese, Colombo,

Besides the crimes that were murder for hire the mafia also did many other crimes that would make not only Carlo Gambino a feared character but the whole organization financially stable. It was prohibition that brought rivalry between the mafia crime families. The rivalry was to determine who had more territory and control over the city; specifically

Also, the article states “By the mid-20th century, there were 24 known crime families in America, comprised of an estimated 5,000 full-fledged members and thousands of associates across the country” (History.com Staff). On the FBI website, it states “Prior to the 1960s, some government leaders, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, were skeptical about the existence of a national Italian-American organized crime network and suggested instead that crime gangs operated strictly on a local level” (FBI). As a result, law enforcement agencies used a few methods on stopping the spread of the Mafia during this period. The Sicilians Mafia doesn't worry if the group gain money from its actions because it came at the cost of the oppressive authorities. They are some of the most infamous group in criminal societies.

The Mafia way of life may seem like a romantic updated version of the western movie played out on the streets of the big cities where the good guys and the wise guys who share the same instincts and values do battle before an enthralled public but it is actually very different. The Mafia is really just a group of uneducated thugs making money by victimizing the public. Initially, the Mafia was setup as a prominent supplier of bootlegged liquor, but it has spread into many different areas of crime. During this research paper I will discuss three aspects of the Mafia which are crime, structure and decline in leadership.

La Cosa Nostra Perhaps one of the most poignant moments in American cinema is the closing scene in the film “The Godfather” when Don Vito Corleone’s son Michael takes over his father’s position... and one of the most unforgettable moments, a severed horses’s head lies bloody in a man’s bed. It is this tradition and brutality that characterizes the Mafia, a secret Sicilian society that lives and functions just as much today on American soil as it did and does still in Italy. To understand this organized crime, one must begin to understand how it came to be organized in the first place. During the medieval times in Sicily, Arabs invaded the land and native Sicilians fled and took refuge in the hills. Some of these refugees formed a

The term “Mafia phenomenon” delineates the significance of the indefinite number of networks within US society, advocating particular values and conventions cultivated by the Italian “mafiositá”. “La Cosa Nostra”, the phrase etymologised by America meaning “Our concern” is an organisation with it’s roots in the Sicilian Mafia. The organisation rose to prominence in the beginning of the nineteenth century by conducting a large scale immigration to the United States, particularly to the cities of New York and Chicago. The Mafia and the idea’s from the Sicilian Mafia they brought with them became the impetus of change from the 1920’s to 1960’s in American Society.

The Italian Mafia in the U.S. can trace its origins all the way back to the Sicilian Mafia which was founded in Sicily during the 1800’s (Italian Organized Crime). After thousands of years of different armies with different nationalities conquering Italy and exploiting its people, the Sicilians became to be more clannish and family focused. Originally they were just resistance fighters that were protecting their friends and family. They were relied on for protection, justice, and survival. Nobody cared if they got money from it because it came from the oppressive authorities. Members of these groups were known as “Men of Honor” and they were well respected and even admired because they looked out for their family and kept silent sometimes even unto death. They didn’t become an organized crime group until the 1920’s however (Italian Organized Crime). It was around this same time that the US began to see what later became La Cosa Nostra or “our thing,” better known as the American Mafia which was aided by the “thousands of Italian organized crime figures, mostly Sicilian Mafiosi” who came to the United States illegally (Italian Organized Crime). The modern American Mafia is credited to Charles “Lucky” Luciano who came over in the 1920’s (Italian Organized Crime). Luciano structured La Cosa Nostra just like their Sicilian

The word Mafia itself has many meanings. In Arabic it means "refuge", which refers to the origins of the Mafia as a society that fled to the hills of Italy to avoid attack. Some Italians hold it as a word of high respect implying strength, courage, agility, quickness, endurance, and

Speaking about criminality, it is necessary to say about Italian mafia. Based on the report of 2009 year, commissioned by Italy's parliamentary anti-mafia commission, it is possible to say that now it is silently prospering, moving on from spectacular crimes and massacres to business and politics, with a prudent dose of intimidation and violence in a bid to take over the fundamental role of the state. The highest concentration of people living under the shadow of the mafia, 95.9%, was in the province of Agrigento in Sicily, followed by Naples, at 95%. (Tom Kington, guardian.co.uk, 2009).