MAFIA ITALO - AMERICANA History

Giuseppe Esposito was the first Sicilian mafia to emigrate to the United States. He fled to New York (along with six other “cronies”) after killing, in series, 11 wealthy landowners, a chancellor and a deputy chancellor. He was arrested in New Orleans in 1881 and extradited to Italy. And it is in New Orleans that there was the first “excellent murder” in the United States. On October 15, 1890, city police superintendent David Hennessey was killed in what was called an “execution” by the FBI. Repression follows, hundreds of Sicilians are arrested and 19 of them indicted for the murder. They were acquitted but, the indignation of the citizens of New Orleans, led to a real lynching, with the killing of 11 of the 19 defendants.

From that moment the American mafia has evolved up to the constitution of “La Cosa nostra” (LCN), differentiated from the Sicilian “Cosa Nostra”. But the key moment for American investigators was in 1956 when the

Already mentioned Lucky Luciano (who founded the most important Genovese family), with the Americans who had already understood the violence of the mafia, we reached the seventies-eighties with the investigations of two judges and a policeman: Rocco Chinnici Giovanni Falcone and Boris Giuliano. It was Rocco Chinnici, at the time head of the Palermo Education Office, inventor of the anti-mafia ‘pool’, who entrusted Falcone with the investigation that would lead him to the center of drug trafficking between the two shores of the ocean: “A particular pride of mine - commented Chinnici - is the declaration of the Americans according to which the Education Office of Palermo has become the pilot center of the anti-mafia struggle, an example for other magistracies ”.

Giovanni Falcone focused his attention on the zips (slang term with which the new immigrants from Sicily are indicated in the United States) and on the ‘escaped’, i.e. those who had survived the carnage ordered by Totò Riina to conquer absolute power in Cosa Nostra fleeing to the other side of the world. They were, in particular, the Inzerillos, allies of Stefano Bontade, and in turn distantly related to the American Gambinos.

The organization of ‘La Cosa nostra’

In the United States it branched out more and more, until it was divided into five families (Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese), whose leaders sat in a revisited “dome” with a clear Sicilian flavor.

From the aforementioned Genovese family of Lucky Luciano - which extends its criminal power in all the five boroughs of New York, we arrive at that of the Gambinos, founded by Salvatore ‘Totò’ D’Aquila in 1910, and - according to the investigators - beyond Frank Calì is headed by Domenico Cefalù and Joseph Corozzo, but also by Joseph Lanni. He has a ‘reserved’ man, brother of a private investigator. The Gambinos, whose name still resonates in Sicily, more precisely in the Ragusa area.

Thenthere are the Bonanno who are one of the oldest mafia families, born in Castellamare del Golfo, in the last years of the nineteenth century. The Bonanno family had a moment of great power in the 1930s, under the leadership of Salvatore Maranzano, who was later killed by Lucky Luciano. They have always had strong interests in drug trafficking and construction, expanding into all five New York boroughs: Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

The Lucchese family, on the other hand, was founded in 1922 by Tommy (born Gaetano) Reina. Today it extends between the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn and has among its illegal activities those of “street business”: robbery, usury and receiving stolen goods. The last family of the “five” is the youngest, namely that of the Colombo family, founded in 1928 by Joe Profaci and always active, especially in Brooklyn.

Among the criminal activities that produce significant “revenue” are fraud in the construction sector, the classic drug trafficking, huge money laundering and the most innovative trafficking in which some families are specializing: the international pharmaceutical one. For the FBI, the greatest alarm is related to the “labor racket”, “in order to influence related companies and industries”. These include the Genovese and Gambino families, engaged in the labor racket in the “Port Everglades”. All this through the control of the trade unions and the