The Sicilian mafia once painted a portrait of their women; their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, as sweet innocent objects who stand behind their Mafioso men. These women traditionally turned their back to the “business” of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons pretending not to notice the violation of human rights, posed on a daily basis. This is starting to change; and female Mafiosi are proving to be as violent and to have the same lack of regard for human rights as their male counterparts.
In the past decade, female Mafiosi have stepped up to fill the roles of their absent husbands, sons, fathers and brothers when they go missing or are locked behind bars. Women are not just overseeing the family business while their men are away; they are taking care of everything from cooking the books to cold blooded murder.
A History of the Italian Mafia in Sicily
Americans have fallen in love with the romanticized Italian mafia based on the common misconceptions painted in films such as “The Godfather,” “Boss of Bosses,” “Goodfellas” and even the reality show “Growing Up Gotti.” The Italian-American mafia recently stole the show so to speak, with the ever popular television series “The Soprano’s.
These programs have made mafia men into hero’s who are followed and worshiped by many. These movies have made people profess their love for Italian heritage and make murder, racketeering and drug smuggling look like fun and something worth praise others for doing. These stories have made a “mafia style” trend into a large consumer market with movies, memorabilia, board games and clothes; all while laughing in the face of human rights.
The reality is that these strong, secretive mafia men who are idolized by millions of people from America to Sicily itself are stepping aside and leaving openings for women to break the glass ceiling in organized crime and enter a world where human rights are virtually non-existent. Because of this, many lives have been lost at the hands of the mafia by both male and female members. Other violations such as stealing, threatening and forcing people to live in fear are among the most disregarded human rights by the Sicilian mafia.
There are rumors and guesses as to how the Italian Mafia originated and how it grew to the massive size it is now. Because the mafia code of “omerta” (silence) dictates that all Mafiosi must be careful to deny any knowledge of such a criminal organization and not leave a trail of their conduct, there were no writings which referenced the Mafia until the late 1800’s. Even after the first documentation was discovered, Italians everywhere have denied, and some still continue to deny, the existence of the Italian mafia which started on the island of Sicily.
Evidence, of the Italian mafia dates back several hundred years ago. Speculation exists that the mafia started in the hills of Sicily when Sicilian farmers and plantation owners needed ways to protect their lemon orchards from thievery, crime and high taxes imposed by the government. The government and law enforcement officials also were blamed by Sicilian lemon farmers as negligent in responding to their claims of thievery.
The Arabs are believed to have brought over the lemon tree to Sicily. Farmers were able to grow this fruit bearing tree in the rich soil found on the island using the unique irrigation system of “runoff” into the ocean. Because of the popularity for this citrus product, combined with the successful growth of the tree, unlike in any other location in the immediate trading area, the Sicilians abandoned their once profitable grain plantations on the island and started planting lemons.
Soon after the first trees were planted, there was a major demand for the fruit. The British Royal Navy used large amounts of lemons in the 1700’s to prevent scurvy on ships for example. The popularity of the little yellow citrus fruit grew and by the mid to late 1800’s almost three (3) million cases of lemons a year were being shipped to America and arriving in New York’s Harbor alone.
For as long as Sicily has been inhabited, poverty, underemployment, lack of job skills and training have been sources of consistent economic and social problems. These issues called for people who had jobs as lemon farmers and those who had land to grow lemons on, to take action against thieves and potential damage to crops and produced goods.
Lemons started to disappear during the night when thieves would jump over fences into the plantations and help themselves. They then sold the lemons to cash in on the profit before the plantation owner discovered the fruit missing. Eventually equipment and fuel (primarily coal) was also disappearing at night, and large Sicilian plantation owning families had a serious problem and they needed to organize themselves in a way to stop the crime.
The original reasons for the organization of the mafia evolved and produced the mafia we have today. Originally it was important for the Sicilians to stand together as families and protect what was theirs (the lemons). Sicilians often thought that the government was “out to get them” with laws and taxation combined with a failure to prosecute people who were stealing lemons and other goods off their property. It was decided that if no one would help the farmer, then he would have to take care of the matter himself, or with the help of his family.
To remedy these issues of stealing and being ignored by authorities, Sicilian land owners took maters into their own hands and this proved to prevent thieves. Because of their power and growth in popularity of the mafia, a once small boys club meant for protecting land and goods has turned into drug-trafficking, contract killing, black market dealing and other illegal criminal activity. Though the mafia is most famous for its Hollywood style murders, it is these other activities such as drug-trafficking and black market deals that lead to killing, that have moved the mafia into the limelight.
Because the police wanted nothing to do with the complaints of the farmers, the farmers felt the need to “clean up” the crimes they committed in retaliation against those who stole from them. The crimes which were morally wrong against humans were hidden by the mafia so that they themselves did not get into trouble. What evolved was a long line of human rights violations.
To combat the problem of stolen fruit and farm equipment, plantation owners started by sending threatening letters to people presumed to be stealing the fruit. As the problem escalated, so did the remedy used by plantation owners. There are documented instances when men were killed for stealing fruit from another man’s farm. Before long Italian men were craving the attention they received when they joined a family and committed crimes on behalf of the family.
As this criminal trend grew, so did the list of human rights violations against the people stealing the lemons and equipment. Sometimes a simple letter was sent, at other times a hand was cut off for stealing or both hands were removed. In extreme cases people were murdered for stealing lemons and young men were soon jumping at the chance to prove loyalty to a family and commit murders for them.
By committing such a horrible crime, a young man was proving himself as worthy of being a made man with a family. Much like Americans are fascinated with the mafia, so were these men committing the murder and sending the threats. Because these young men knew they did not want to find themselves at the wrong end of a gun, they decided to join the ranks of organized crime and offered to murder people to join. As a result many people (though the numbers range from the hundreds to the thousands during the start of the lemon-inspired mafia wars) were murdered for trying to feed their families when they were poverty stricken and hungry. Sometimes people were murdered because they were simply in the way of made men trying to conduct businesses.
The mafia had only a few rules at this point. To join you had to take a vow of silence and never speak of the mafia. If you committed a worthy crime and vowed to keep silent, the last thing you had to do was promise to keep women out of the “family business” which most men did.
Italians, who pride themselves on family, have over the years, built alliances between families and started wars with others, all in a struggle for power. By the early 1900’s is was apparent that the mafia did have power and could commit a crime as well as clean it up without police knowing about it. If police did catch wind of a crime, they were so scared of the mafia and their lives, as well as the lives of their family, that they looked the other way and allowed the mafia to conduct business and commit crimes, including murder without punishment.
Before long people everywhere feared the mafia and the crimes that they were capable of. If someone did not want to live in fear of the mafia, they could pay the mafia to protect them. For a large sum of money, the mafia would commit themselves to protecting someone (or a family and the family business) from other mafia families. Often time a person or family would pay the mafia for protection thinking they no longer had to fear the mafia, only to be robbed of the money and given no protection from other families. People all over Italy, and the world as the mafia branched out, were soon fearing the mafia and avoiding them at all costs.
Law Enforcement Intervenes
In the 1980’s law enforcement in Italy decided to stop fearing the mafia and launched an anti-mafia campaign, in which the arrests of hundreds of Mafiosi ensued. Initially, Italian woman took a step back while their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers were thrown into the spotlight of the media and shown brightly on law enforcements radar screens.
The Italian legal system boasted that they were successfully cleaning up crimes and damages left behind by Mafiosi who were now being locked behind bars if they were not killed on the streets. The same anti-mafia campaign was happening in America as the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was speaking out about their efforts to take the all too powerful cousin of the Sicilian mafia, the Italian-American mafia, off the streets as well.
People who had feared having a “run-in” with the mafia and therefore often lived their lives in fear were told the mafia was not a problem any more. The message was out that the streets were safer and that the legal system had the upper hand on mafia related organized crime. The reality is that this was not happening and local Sicilian Italians (as well as Americans) could not feel any safer than they had in hundreds of years.
It was true that made men were being taken off the streets and placed behind bars, but it was not evident until the 1990’s what was really happening. True to their secretive mafia style inner-workings, men behind bars were still running the outside world, violating human rights more than ever and they were doing it through the least likely suspects.
Girl Power
In 1990 a shoot out occurred in Italy, at which time one Italian woman was arrested for the crime of murder and not the usual suspects, Italian men. In the years that followed, more shootings were taking place on the streets of Italy and it was women who were behind the gun and pulling the trigger. It has become evident that while the men were in jail, the women were filling in for their jailed Mafiosi counterparts and they were conducting business as usual.
As police and law enforcement started to keep track of the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of known Mafiosi, they were finding that women were taking the reins of control and committing some of the most heinous crimes, hence violating the human rights of the people around them. It was discovered that women were just as likely to kill another person or assault them in some way, without reservation. This type of behavior has always been thought of as actions only men were capable of. This would explain the reasoning for made men leaving their female families out of the organized crime workings.
Traditionally females in the mafia were the wives, daughters, mothers and sisters of made men. Men regarded their wives as inferior and made a point not to let them in on their business. Subsequently mothers raised there daughters to accept their roles as future wives of made men. Their roles and duties included taking care of children and the home, going to church, and having dinner on the table when their men came home. Women were raised to not ask questions about their husband’s line of work.
As times change and more and more of the Sicilian mafia’s made men were landing behind bars or going for long naps with the fishes, Sicilian woman are stepping up to fulfill the roles of their absent husbands, brothers, fathers and sons.
As more Mafiosi are being placed behind bars, the women are often the only ones left who can fill the role of their husbands, brothers and sons. If these women do not step up to the plate and take over controlling the families organized crime dealings, the family risks loosing the empire some of the prominent and well known families have spent decades building. Italian men do not want to have their ego’s crushed by losing their money, fame and fortune behind bars. Because of this women are becoming expected to take over the family business and made decisions. They are also expected to commit the same crimes to keep and maintain control as their men.
There is no evidence that a woman can gain entrance to this boys club of organized crime by committing a crime and proving her loyalty to a family like many men used to do when the mafia was first forming and gaining popularity. It appears as though these women are simply filling in for their men out of necessity.
It also appears as though some women are expecting the power to be handed to them at some point. One of Italy’s most wanted women, Erminia Giuliano, was arrested in the late 1990’s for murder. As she was being taken away she was heard yelling to her daughter “I’m counting on you now,” she was quoted. “I am relaxed. I have taught you all the true values in life.”
Many people believe that this was a signal to her daughter from Giuliano that she could no longer run the family and so her daughter must step up to the challenge. It was concluded that Erminia Giuliano was placed in charge of the crime family she hailed from only after all the men in her family were arrested or killed in the streets. The quote is speculated to show how women are not only finding themselves in a position of power in organized crime, but have become expectant of it. It is believed that these girls are being taught how to do the job from an early age.
Since the rising in female arrests, many people in Italian media and law enforcement are speculating that Italian women are bring raised in a fashion that moves away from the traditional picture of them; as tight-lipped, church going, child bearing mothers, to a more center stage role in organized crime.
In Conclusion
The Sicilian mafia once painted a portrait of their women; their wives, mothers and daughters, as sweet innocent objects who stand behind their Mafioso men. These women traditionally turned their back to the “business” of their husbands, fathers and sons; pretending not to notice the violation of human rights posed on a daily basis.
Slowly this preconceived image of Italian women is starting to change; and female Mafiosi are proving to be as violent and to have the same lack of regard for human rights as their male counterparts.
Law enforcement continues to gain intelligence pertaining to the inner workings of the mafia, bringing down Mafiosi continues to move towards the forefront of law enforcements duties.
In the past decade, female Mafiosi have stepped up to fill the roles of their absent husbands, sons and brothers when these men go missing, or are locked behind bars. Women are not just overseeing the family business; they are taking care of everything from cooking the books, to cold-blooded murder. These women by default have broken the glass ceiling on Italian organized crime and have committed themselves to a lifestyle of human rights violations. these women have yet to express concern for the actions they take as they violate other humans.
These women are led to believe they are taking care of their family and pleasing their now absent male counterparts. They act as though organized crime is a duty and they continue to disregard their duty to fellow humans and their basic human rights.
As law enforcement works to stop male Mafiosi from violating human rights, the doors have been opened to females committing the same crimes and working against the law. There does not appear to be an end in sight to the human rights violations committed by the Italian mafia, as women now have hung up their aprons and start packing pistols instead of pasta.
