Cultural Aspect: The Mafia

The Mafias roots begin in Silica a city where The Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, French, Spanish and lots of other invaders like the mentioned ones ruled the city. The residents of this island, formed groups to protect themselves from the occupying forces, as well as from other regional groups of Sicilians.

These groups developed their own system for justice and retribution, carrying out their actions in secret. By the 19th century, small private armies known as “mafie” took advantage of the frequently violent, chaotic conditions in Sicily and forced protection money from landowners. From this history, the Sicilian Mafia emerged as a collection of criminal clans.

Although its precise origins are unknown, the term Mafia came from a Sicilian-Arabic dialect expression that means “acting as a protector against the arrogance of the powerful,”

After some years in 1861, Sicily became a province of Italy. However, by the moment chaos and crime reigned across the island. In the 1870s, Roman officials even asked Sicilian Mafia clans to help them by going after dangerous, independent criminal bands; in exchange, officials would look the other way as the Mafia continued its protection. The government believed this arrangement would be temporary but instead Mafia became skillful at political corruption and intimidated people to vote for certain candidates.

The Mafia’s influence in Sicily grew until the 1920s, when Prime Minister Benito Mussolini came to power and launched a brutal crackdown on mobsters, who he viewed as a threat to his Fascist regime.

The American Mafia, a separate entity from the Mafia in Sicily, came to power in the 1920s Prohibition era after the success of Italian-American neighborhood gangs in the booming bootleg liquor business. Like the Sicilian Mafia, American Mafia families were able to maintain their secrecy and success because of their code of omerta, as well as their ability to bribe and intimidate public officials, business leaders, witnesses and juries. For these reasons, law-enforcement agencies were largely ineffective at stopping the Mafia during the first part of the 20th century.

However, during the 1980s and 1990s, prosecutors in America and Italy began successfully employing tough anti-racketeering laws to convict top-ranking mobsters. Additionally, some Mafiosi, in order to avoid long prison terms, began breaking the once-sacred code of omerta and testified against fellow mob members. By the start of the 21st century, after hundreds of high-profile arrests over the course of several decades, the Mafia appeared to be weakened in both countries; however, it was not eliminated completely and remains in business today.