The fight against the Mafia
Posted on June 12, 2006
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Ma-fi-a, a word of uncertain etymology. It is not only the name of a criminal organization in Sicily, a name extended to many different organizations: Russian Mafia, American Mafia, Japanize Mafia… Althought it is a Sicilian word, is used in the whole southern Italy with another meaning: “To be in mafia” means to be elegant. The word could come from Arabic –maafya, i.e. “There is nobodoy”, or maehfil, “meeting point” or mahias “boldness”. Who knows. But the paradox is that “Mafia” is something like a literary word, as stated by Tommaso Buscetta, a reknown pentito, i.e. a former affiliated who later collaborated with the magistrates. Actually the mafiosi call themselves uomini d’onore,”men of honour”, and Mafia is called Cosa Nostra, “Our stuff”.
The Mafia is perhaps like many other criminal organizations in the world, but it appears different if compared with other similar Italian organizations.
First of all for the longevity –the Mafia is a brotherhood which has ruled for more than 100 years. There have been internal revolutions, but no central government has been able to take over. In Sicily the Mafia is a political organization: it rules social life, it has its internal laws: it is hierarchically organized, it takes care of economic life, it has a taxation system, it does not refuse corporal punishments (torture, rape) and, as everybody knows, has the death penalty.
The Mafia looks like a society in which the value of the French Revolution are still unrecognized. A primitive society, coming directly from the Middle Ages, which has no need to hide some of its violent sides, as modern democracies do.
So, how can two political organizations (Mafia and Italian Governments) coexist in the same society?
One answer can be found in a new documentary by Stefano Maria Bianchi and Alberto Nerazzini (”La Mafia bianca”, book and DVD, edited by BUR, 2005, Italy). People in the streets in Palermo, Sicily’s capital, say “Men of honor provide us jobs, protection. Of course it is good to have them here”. Shouldn’t be the Italian State the one charged with providing jobs and protection? Where is it? There is an endemic lack of working public institutions. The origin of this lack has been investigated for 140 years. Pasquale Villari, in “Meridional Letters”, 1875, i.e. 15 years after Italian Unification, writes about the exploitation of people in the sulphur mines, and later adds “Weak people are destroyed, the strong ones survive to mandate. The men become easily enemy of the society, which treats him so cruelly”. Unified Italy did not take these situations into consideration. South-Italy was nothing more than an internal colony and the political representatives, with some exceptions such as Villari, took care of their own business (as mainly the large landed estates).
Nevertheless, in Sicily the State exists. People pay taxes to the Central Government –in addition to Cosa Nostra. And the State does something. It builds railways, for instance: there are 1449 km, 90% single railway, 38% no electrified, well below the standard one can find in North Italy; highways, as the one connecting the two biggest towns, Palermo and Messina, 182 km long, which will probably be completed soon –it started in 1969; aqueducts, which cannot provide enough water to a region which needs 2 billion cube meters of water and has 7 billion cube meters available from precipitations –in most towns tap water is available one day out of three. And of course there is a judiciary system, police, army….
Now something happened. After 43 years in hiding, the Mafia superboss Bernardo Provenzano was arrested the 11th of April. In the late 90s, thousands of mafiosi were arrested and the magistrates gave 251 life sentences only for crimes related to the Mafia. If Bernardo Provenzano will remain a single case, it means probably that he was not so powerfull as used to be. If, after the Provenzano’s capture, a strong attack against the Mafia will follow, then the Italian state is back again into the fight. The last time the “mistake” made by the magistrates was to investigate politicians also, not limiting themselves to men of honour. They had then the whole political class against them. Let us hope the judges will do the same error in the future, but that the reaction of the government, this time, will be different.
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