Loading ...New England Organized Crime Home Page The Beginning
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If you've a real interest in New England Organized Crime and landed on this page by following a browser link and haven't seen the homepage you should check it out here. There are two videos with info on the current state of the family here. It'll give you an idea of whats happening and who's who. Really worth watching.
Welcome to the New England Organized Crime Site. It seems that there is huge interest in the New York families and that’s understandable as there are five distinct families in one state therefore a greater amount of activity. I don’t think most are aware of the size and power of the New England family and the events that occurred that made it what it is. Following is a time line of events that chronicle the birth of organized crime and the path it took to get to New England.
The Beginning
1282:
Palermo, Sicily; The "Sicilian Vespers", a rebellion staged by the Sicilians against the French domination of Sicily. The rebellion broke out at Palermo at the start of Vespers on Easter Monday 1282 and is viewed by most as the birth of the Sicilian Mafia. Angevin troops and nobles were expelled from Sicily, with thousands of French occupiers massacred. The underground movement against the French may be seen as the ancestor of a later Mafia.
Spain; The crown of Sicily was offered to Peter of Aragon, who accepted and is acclaimed king. Sicily was ruled from Spain for the next four centuries, isolating her from the rest of Italy.
Sicily; Sometime in the 16th century Sicilians adopted a code of silence or "omerta" as a defense against prosecution.
Naples; A criminal society known as the Garduna was transplanted from Spain with their arrival in Italy. The Garduna was established in Naples under the name Camorra and spread throughout the region of Campania. It was a secret oath-bound society and would-be members must commit murder as a final test to gain entry to the brotherhood. Like the Mafia, each group is lead by a Caporegime or Capo; the ultimate governing body being the Grand Ruling Council. In essence, the Camorra is to Naples what the Mafia is to Sicily, but there are some very important differences. The Camorra has always thrived in cities whereas the Mafia, although now city-based, came from rural beginnings. Also, the Mafia began as a nationalist movement dedicated to the protection of fellow Sicilians. This accounts for the huge support the Mafia received in Sicilian communities, a support that Neapolitans never shared for the Camorra. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Mafia has always been the more successful of the two societies.
How the word Mafia got its modern meaning.
An excerpt from “Sicily And The Mafia” by Mike La Sorte, Professor Emeritus
"In Palermo, Sicily, in 1862 a young and penniless playwright, Gaspare Mosca, and the actor Giuseppe Rizzotto wrote and brought to the stage a play set in the new prison of the city, the Ucciardone. This production would serve to popularize the Sicilian word Mafia and to change its traditional meaning from positive to negative.
Gaspare Mosca was a political dissident during the period when the Spanish Bourbons controlled Sicily. He participated in the revolution of 1848, when the Sicilians sought to throw out the foreign government. A wanted man, Mosca fled from the Bourbon police by joining a traveling troupe of actors that toured through Italian towns. After Garibaldi invaded Sicily, in 1860, Mosca served under arms for two years. Returning to Palermo in 1862, he joined the theatrical company at the Sant'Anna playhouse. There he met Giuseppe Rizzotto, called Pepè.
Rizzotto introduced Mosca to the playhouse publicist, Gioacchino D'Angelo, AKA Jachinu Funcinazza. As Mosca later recalled, "D'Angelo had spent half his life in prison. His criminal skills were so esteemed by the other inmates that he soon became their leader. He carried a deep scar on his cheek of which he was quite proud."
D'Angelo suggested to the two men that they write a farcical play with a prison setting. He would supply a vocabulary of the inmate argot to give to the scenes an immediate realism.
A script was drafted with the working title "La vicaria di Palermo." (Vicaria meant in this sense the prison.) But that title was soon to change.
"At that time in Palermo," Mosca recalled, "there was the habit of calling something out of the ordinary that caught the eye and was deemed favorable or challenging as a mafiusu. About a bright tie, nicely knotted, one would say mafiusa. Of a well-rounded belly (indicating health and prosperity) one would say mafiusu. The same could be said of an elegant suit, the sparkling eyes of a charming girl, a beautiful head of hair, or a saucy hat. A mafiusu was man with a particular gift of courage or enterprise; for a woman, she represented a perfect femininity. In sum, the term signified a characteristic of a person that revealed a notable difference, a boldness, an impudence."
The term entered Mosca's thoughts one day when while walking the streets. He encountered two men arguing who were about to come to blows. One exclaimed to the other in a challenging fashion, "Varrissi fari u' mafiusu cu mia?" (You want to make like a mafioso with me?)
This heated exchange sparked an idea in Mosca's mind. He immediately hurried to Rizzotto's house. "Pepè, we gotta change the title of the play. Let's call the inmates mafiusi."
Thus was launched "I mafiusi di la vicaria di Palermo." The play gained a huge success during several performances throughout Italy, and inspired other playwrights to develop similar productions.
Mosca and Rizzotto created these mafiusi. They brought out of the cocoon of popular Sicilian culture the terms mafia and mafioso, introducing them to general public, and giving them the sinister significance that they have today. The play brought together the myths and realities of Sicilian life by forming a legend of a sect of men "forced" by circumstances to search for justice in the illusion that they were participating in a noble "social protest," which was to burst its bounds and get out of hand.
At the same time of the play's success the Italian government began its initial investigations of crime in Sicily. Needing a collective noun to refer to the phenomenon, the word mafia was readily at hand. The first use of the word was in a government report in 1865 in Palermo. The legend and the word diffused outward from there.
The celebrated Sicilian folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè was among those not amused by this development because it implicated Mafia as the bedrock, the driving force, of Sicilian popular culture. The two, he contended, were not one and the same. Furthermore, he accused Mosca and Rizzotto of the degeneration of the word, concluding with a certain deep resentment that "the expression had been a good and innocent one, but now it represents bad things. Before, mafia meant beauty, attractiveness, perfection, boldness, graciousness, and excellence. Now, its meaning had been so corrupted any definition is impossible."
By the time the word entered the Italian language in the 1890s the original, more innocent meanings had become completely lost. In an 1893 Italian dictionary we find this definition: "MAFI A. Name of a secret organization in Sicily that has as its aim to achieve profits through illicit means."
That the word predated the 1800s there can be no doubt. Leonardo Sciascia discovered that in "the roster of those reconciled by an Act of Faith celebrated in 1658…the word Maffia was the nickname of a sorceress of Catarina la Licatina, also called Maffua."
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