The Sicilian mafia entered an invisibility phase after being defeated in the 1990s, with hundreds of arrests, and after the fall of the Crow’s clan, which had filed a real war with the State. Since then it is not what it was, but there it continues. From time to time he receives police coups, but he always starts again: a new operation of the Prosecutor’s Office of Palermo and the Carabinieri has revealed that he had again reorganized again.
More than 40 years ago, since the great raid of Judge Giovanni Falcone in 1984 with 366 arrests, which gave rise to the great process against the mafia, which Nostra did not suffer a blow of such dimensions: more than 1,200 agents have arrested 183 people On Tuesday night, accused of belonging to several of the most important mafia families in Palermo, such as Porta Nuova, Tommaso Natale-San Lorenzo, Bagheria, Terrasini, Pagliarelli, and Santa Maria Di Gesù.
The most interesting thing is the flow of information that has come to light, with numerous telephone listeners, which allows an idea of how the new Nostra thing is. It is a combination of the traditional and the most modern: the bosses make mafia peaks per chat with video call, protected by encryption programs, even from prison with tiny mobiles, one of the most alarming discoveries of the investigation. In fact, 33 of the arrest orders have been for mafia who were already in jail. Moreover, the Capo de Porta Nuova, Calogero Apresti, ordered someone to punish, from his cell and through his encrypted mobile, and then attended the beating live, by video call. The clans also buy weapons in the Dark Web and internet bets are involved in the business.
Chance was decisive in the investigation, as the Carabinieri discovered the secret chat through microphones placed in the house and in the cars of a capo, seriously Nunzio, reggent from the Tommaso Natale area. It turns out that the chat he had used until that moment did not work, and had to launch a new one. For this, the members of the original chat, so that they were adding them; In this way the agents knew who formed the group. At that time they organized a drug shipping from Calabria. Drug trafficking remains the big mafia business, and in that field maintains collaborative relationships with the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabresa mafia, which for years replaced Nostra as the most important and dangerous criminal organization.
The rest is the usual, which resists surprisingly: clans organized in Mandamenti By city areas, solid hierarchies, rules of honor, bosses that continue to give orders from jail, lessons to young people who begin, Topos In court, extortion … the clans continue to demand the Pizzothe mafia tax on merchants in their area, and very few denounce. The imposition of fresh fish distributors in restaurants from Sferrracavallo, neighborhood by the sea, and Mondello, the famous beach of Palermo has also been detected.
For that attachment to tradition, in some conversations the nostalgia of good times is perceived. The Brancaccio hood, Giancarlo Romano, laments one of its young affiliates: “The level today is low, arrested one and becomes repentant, arrest another, a miserable level …”. He advises you to study to meet important people and get relationships (“You will know doctors, lawyers, those who have sent in Italy and in Europe”), and amazes, although not so much, checking as the stereotype is as strong as reality, because he cites The godfather As a school of life: “If you see The godfather You see the relationships he had, it was not the absolute capo, he is very influential due to the power that has been built at the political level in important environments. ” Then follow a relief, because the current clans have lost contacts and relevance, but they never lose hope of taking over the city of Palermo.
The particular values of the Uomini d’Onore They appear in more than one conversation, like this amazing phrase of Gioacchino Badagliacca: “I have never believed in a nostra thing for profit, I have always thought that it is for noble principles, for me this is Nostra. I have always believed it from the deep of my heart, and I have spent ten years in jail. ”
What impresses, according to the information provided by the Italian Prosecutor’s Office, is the capacity for resistance of the clans against adversity, and the loyalty of the gangsters to their way of life. Even after leaving prison, after long sentences, they return to what they have always done. In fact, in recent years heavyweights had been released and his return to the streets was seen with restlessness by researchers. It has now been confirmed that they had reasons for it.
After the fall of the Corleoneses, the so -called Provincial Commission was not met again, a kind of Board of Directors of the great clans, which was definitely dissolved. But in 2018 a police operation broke a new attempt to restore it. The scheme that now emerges is that of the traditional cast for territories of each family, but with a collaboration of clans in large businesses and a role of superior authority of the Palermo’s clans over those of the rest of the province. And within Palermo, the researchers have found that the Capo de Porta Nuova has a preminent role, which would have the power to give orders even out of their territory.
Rituals and rigid rules
In this way the importance of rituals emerges again and what could be called the mafia bureaucracy. For example, the case of a gangster who says he has suffered an affront of a Syracuse individual has been known, and before punishing him he asks for permission to the local family capo, who nevertheless replies that he has to follow the hierarchy, making the Application first in Palermo.
It may seem surprising, but a rigid rules system is a guarantee against divisions and terrible wars of the past, which caused hundreds of dead in the eighties. In several conversations, the capos are aware that the unit is essential. And for this the problems must be solved without shots, to always maintain a low profile.
To follow tradition, an important factor is to train mafia young people, continue source of concern of veterans. The number of candidates does not seem to be a problem, because the investigation indicates that Nostra still has an alarming magnetism among the young people of each area who want to make a career in the crime. The problem is, rather, form them properly and educate them in respecting the rules. A significant case has been rebuilt in the Mandatory Pagliarelli, where a young man was given authentic mafia lessons, in charge of an expert mafious who would have been responsible for teaching him the trade, as the way of demanding and collecting the Pizzo and how to behave at meetings with other gangsters.
“Nostra thing continues to exercise its charm in certain environments, as in the peripheral neighborhoods, where young people have few alternatives of life and identify with the image of power that the mafia still transmits,” explained the prosecutor of Palermo, Maurizio de Lucia , in a press conference.
