Blood Brotherhoods (132 page)

G. Buccini, ‘I due Delfino, carabinieri, e i boss Nirta: un’epopea a Platì’,
Corriere della Sera
, 16/10/1993. Delfino family lore.

L. Malafarina, ‘La leggenda di Massaro Peppe’,
Gazzetta del Sud
, 9/9/1986. An interview with Delfino’s son.

P. Bevilacqua,
Le campagne del Mezzogiorno tra Fascismo e dopoguerra. Il caso della Calabria
, Turin, 1980.

V. Cappelli,
Il fascismo in periferia. La Calabria durante il Ventennio
, Lungro di Cosenza, 1998.

F. Cordova,
Il fascismo nel Mezzogiorno: le Calabrie
, Soveria Mannelli, 2003.

L. Izzo,
Agricoltura e classi rurali in Calabria dall’Unità al Fascismo
, Geneva, 1974.

E. Miséfari,
L’avvento del fascismo in Calabria
, Cosenza, 1980. On ‘acute factionitis’, p. 116.

A. Placanica,
Storia della Calabria
, Rome, 1999 (1993).

J. Steinberg, ‘Fascism in the Italian South: the case of Calabria’, in D. Forgacs (ed.),
Rethinking Italian Fascism. Capitalism, Populism and Culture
, London, 1986.

33. Liberation

ASRC, Tribunale di Locri, Sentenza 20/3/1937, Macrì Antonio + 12, vol. 286. Don ’Ntoni has one of his early brushes with the law.

La mafia a Montalto. Sentenza 2 ottobre 1970 del Tribunale di Locri
, Reggio Calabria, 1971. Includes a detailed criminal profile of don ’Ntoni Macrì.

National Archive, London

Italy. Zone Handbook Sicily. WO 220/277.

Italy. Zone Handbook no. 3. Calabria. WO 220/278.

Italy. Zone Handbook no. 6. Campania. WO 252/804.

WO 204/9719, Sicily and southern Italy: reports on social, economic and political aspects of provincial living conditions. 1943 Oct–1944 Jan. Includes Lord Rennell’s report from Calabria.

WO 204/11462, Psychological Warfare Branch. PWB and OSS activities reports. 1944 Dec–1945 May. Includes accounts of food riots in traditional picciotteria areas but no mention of gang activity.

WO 204/12625, Italy. Political situation. Naples and Campania. For figures on prostitution in Naples see the report reviewing the situation since Liberation, dated 19/4/1945. On the food supply from the hinterland see report dated 2/5/1945.

WO 204/12627, Italy. Political situation. Naples and Campania. On the ‘fantastic gangland situation’ in the hinterland north of the city see report of 21/2/1946.

WO 204/6313, Psychological Warfare Branch. Naples: weekly reports on economic and political conditions. 1944 Apr.–Aug. Report dated 3/5/1944 on the police cut on goods coming out of the port, and on the main black market sales points in the city. Report of 23/6/1944 on the problems of those on fixed incomes. Report of 30/6/1944 on class distinctions disappearing.

WO 204/6314, Psychological Warfare Branch. Naples: weekly reports on economic and political conditions. 1944 Aug.–Oct. Report of 16/8/1944 on two kinds of spaghetti. Report of 28/9/1944 on the inactivity of the Military Police. Report of 5/10/1944 on the old crone tipping a bank clerk for counting her money. Report of 26/10/1944 (interview with woman) for the role of street-corner bosses.

WO 204/6315, Psychological Warfare Branch. Naples: weekly reports on economic and political conditions. 1944 Nov.–1945 Jan. Report of 23/11/1944 on a Casoria gang that stages train robberies between Rome and Naples.

WO 204/6277, Psychological Warfare Branch. Italy: reports on conditions in liberated areas. 1944 Jan.–Mar. Report of 28/3/1944 on the Caputos sentenced to seven years.

C. Alvaro, ‘Il canto di Cosima’, in
idem
,
L’amata alla finestra
, Milan, 1994.

F. Barbagallo,
Storia della camorra
, Rome-Bari, 2010. On the Giuliano boys in Forcella, p. 103.

E. Ciconte,
’Ndrangheta dall’Unità a oggi
, Rome-Bari, 1992. On mafia mayors and what little we know about this under-researched period of ’ndrangheta history, pp. 239–44.

E. Ciconte,
Storia criminale. La resistibile ascesa di mafia, ’ndrangheta e camorra dall’Ottocento ai giorni nostri
, Soveria Mannelli, 2008. On Delfino pp. 283–4.

D. Ellwood,
Italy 1943–1945
, Leicester, 1985. Also quotes Lord Rennell on mayors from an ‘American gangster environment’, p. 59.

N. Gentile,
Vita di capomafia
, Rome, 1993.

A. Gramsci,
Lettere dal carcere
, Turin, 1947. For an example of the prison gangs as viewed by a political prisoner under Fascism. When Antonio Gramsci, the founding member and leader of the Italian Communist Party, was jailed by Mussolini, he witnessed a camorra initiation in a Naples prison. He also saw a ‘fencing academy’ and a friendly duelling tournament conducted according to the rules of what he termed the ‘four realms of the southern Italian underworld (the Sicilian realm, the Calabrian realm, the Puglian realm, and the Neapolitan realm)’. The weapons, in this case, were harmless: spoons rubbed against the wall so that whitewash marked hits on the duellers’ clothing. But even so, the rivalry between Sicilians and Calabrians was so intense that they did not even fight with spoons in case the battle escalated. See particularly the letter dated 11/4/1927.

J. Huston,
An Open Book
, London, 1988 (1980).

N. Lewis,
Naples ‘44
, London, 2002 (1978). I have used Lewis’s classic work of reportage here, but sparingly. After reading the manuscript notes upon which the text is based, I felt that the references to the ‘
zona di camorra’
in
Naples ‘44
were not sufficiently reliable to be used as historical evidence, and that they may well have been a product of literary licence based on Lewis’s later visits to Naples and his encounters with films such as
La sfida
.

C. Malaparte,
La pelle
, Rome-Milan, 1950. ‘Two dollars the boys, three dollars the girls!’ p. 19.

T. Newark,
The Mafia at War: Allied collusion with the mob
, London, 2007. Quotes the OSS report (‘theirs for the asking’, dated 13/8/1943), pp. 209–10. On 45 per cent of Allied military cargo stolen, Newark quotes the report from Allied Civil Affairs to the War Cabinet in London 19/4/1944 (National Archive, MAF 83/1338), p. 217.

V. Paliotti,
Forcella. La Casbah di Napoli
, Naples, 2005.

E. Reid,
Mafia
, revised edn, New York, 1964. Reproduces Dickey’s testimony, pp. 163–89.

C. Stajano,
Africo
, 1979. On Delfino’s dancing.

‘Lord Rennell’, obituary in
The Geographical Journal
, vol. 144, No. 2 (July 1978).

PART VII: FUGGEDABOUTIT

34. Sicily: Banditry, land and politics

V. Coco and M. Patti,
Relazioni mafiose. La mafia ai tempi del fascismo
, Rome, 2010.

S. Di Matteo,
Anni roventi. La Sicilia dal 1943 al 1947
, Palermo, 1967.

D. Ellwood,
Italy 1943–1945
, Leicester, 1985.

N. Gentile,
Vita di capomafia
, Rome, 1993.

F.M. Guercio,
Sicily. The Garden of the Mediterranean. The Country and its People
, London, 1938. See pp. 64, 88 for the proclamations of the Sicilian canker’s demise.

R. Mangiameli, ‘La regione in guerra’, in M. Aymard and G. Giarrizzo (eds),
La Sicilia
,
Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi
, Turin, 1987.

P. Pezzino,
Mafia: Industria della violenza
, Florence, 1995. The October 1946 report on the ‘occult organisation’ is by
Carabinieri
General Amedeo Branca to the Comando Generale dell’Arma, and is reproduced on pp. 190–91.

U. Santino,
Storia del movimento antimafia. Dalla lotta di classe all’impegno civile
, Rome, 2009 (updated edn). On the Santangelo brothers and other aspects of the mafia’s political atrocities in this period.

A. Spanò,
Faccia a faccia con la mafia
, Milan, 1978. ‘The mafia has never been as powerful and organised as it is today’, p. 130.

The Scotten report on the mafia is in the National Archives, FO 371/37327.

Meridiana
, 63, 2008. Monographic issue on
Mafia e fascismo
.

New York Times
, ‘Mafia chiefs caught by Allies in Sicily’, 10/9/1943; ‘Mafia in Sicily’, 11/9/1943.

35. Sicily:
In the Name of the Law

O. Barrese,
I complici. Gli anni dell’antimafia
, Milan, 1978. The quotation from Scelba is on p. 7.

A. Blando, ‘L’avvocato del diavolo’,
Meridiana
, 63, 2008.

Dizionario biografico dei meridionali
, vol. 2, Naples, 1974, ‘Lo Schiavo Giuseppe Guido’.

D. Forgacs,
Rome, Open City
, London, 2000. André Bazin’s famous 1946 quotation about the ‘skin of History peels off as film’ is discussed on p. 23.

E. Giacovelli,
Pietro Germi
, Rome, 1991.

G.G. Lo Schiavo, ‘La redenzione sociale nelle opere del Regime’,
Politica Sociale
, X, August, 1937.

G.G. Lo Schiavo,
Piccola pretura
, Rome, 1948. The quote comparing the mafia boss to Buddha is on p. 114. The novel would go on to form part of a trilogy of novels with equally questionable visions of the mafia. The trilogy was published together as
Terra amara
(Rome, 1956). The other two episodes in it are
Condotta di paese
(1952) and
Gli inesorabili
(1950). This latter novel was turned into an alarmingly bad film of the same name (dir. Camillo Mastrocinque, 1950), which was issued in the United States as
The Fighting Men
and can be viewed at
http://archive.org/details/fighting_men
. Charles Vanel reprises his role as a mafia boss—this time as a caped righter of wrongs: ‘we protect all honest people’.

G.G. Lo Schiavo, ‘Nel regno della mafia’,
Processi
, 5, 1955. Contains Lo Schiavo’s fond recollections of Calogero Vizzini.

G.G. Lo Schiavo,
100 anni di mafia
, Rome, 1962. Contains many of Lo Schiavo’s writings, including his original 1933 response to Puglia, ‘La mafia siciliana’, with the addition of some very strange new footnotes in which he tries to wriggle out of his earlier opinions.

G.G. Lo Schiavo, ‘Il cinema alla luce del costume e della libertà’, Trieste, 1963 (extract from
L’osservatore economico e sociale
, V, 1). Also contains biographical information.

G.G. Lo Schiavo, ‘La mafia della lupara e quella dei colletti bianchi’,
Nuovi Quaderni del Meridione
, 4, 1963.

L. Sciascia, ‘La Sicilia nel cinema’ in
La corda pazza
, Turin, 1970.