Calogero Vizzini
Encyclopedia
Calogero Don Calò Vizzini (July 24, 1877 – July 10, 1954) was a historical Mafia
boss of Villalba in the Province of Caltanissetta
, Sicily
. Vizzini was considered to be one of the most influential and legendary Mafia bosses of Sicily after World War II
until his death in 1954. In the media he was often depicted as the "boss of bosses
" – although such a position does not exist in the loose structure of Cosa Nostra.
He was the archetype of the paternalistic "man of honour" of a rural Mafia that disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s. In those days a mafioso was seen by some as a social intermediary and a man standing for order and peace. Although he used violence to establish his position in the first phase of his career, in the second stage he limited recourse to violence, turned to primarily legal sources of gain, and exercised his power in an open and legitimate fashion.
Vizzini is the central character in the history of direct Mafia support for the Allied Forces during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. After World War II
he became the personification of the reinstatement of Cosa Nostra during the Allied occupation and the subsequent restoration of democracy after the repression under Fascist
rule. Initially he supported the separatist movement, but changed allegiance to the Christian Democrat party, when it became clear that Sicilian independence was unfeasible.
When he died in 1954, thousands of peasants dressed in black, and high ranking mafiosi, politicians and priests took part in his funeral. The funeral epitaph stated that "his 'mafia' was not criminal, but stood for respect of the law, defense of all rights, greatness of character. It was love."
Vizzini was born in Villalba
, a village in the Province of Caltanissetta
, with a population of approximately 4,000 people at the time. This area in the middle of Sicily, known as the “Vallone”, was a poor region where most people lived off subsistence agriculture. His father, Beniamino, was a peasant, but managed to marry into a slightly more well-off family that owned some land. A member of his mother’s family, Giuseppe Scarlata, had risen to high eminence in the Catholic Church. Calogero’s brothers, Giovanni and Giuseppe, both became priests. Giuseppe Vizzini became the bishop of Noto. Calogero Vizzini, however, was semi-literate and did not finish elementary school.
The Mafia of Villalba was of relatively recent origin, as it did not go back to the 1860s, considered to be the period when the Mafia emerged around Palermo
. It started as a form of private protection and has little to do with large estates as was the case in many other rural areas where many mafiosi started as caretakers and lease-holders (gabelloto
or bailiff
) for absentee landlords.
In the 1890s some people – including the young Calogero Vizzini – decided to do something about the absence of peace and security in the countryside. The state police at the time was as much a danger as the brigands. The Villalba Mafia thus emerged as an alternative social regime centred on the membership in church-sponsored associations that generated considerable social capital. It later transformed into a protection racket
, victimizing villagers and landowners alike through violence, intimidation and omertà
.
Don Calò once explained how he saw the mafia when he was interviewed by one of Italy’s most famous journalists, Indro Montanelli
, for the Corriere della Sera
(October 30, 1949): "The fact is that in every society there has to be a category of people who straighten things out when situations get complicated. Usually they are functionaries of the state. Where the state is not present, or where it does not have sufficient force, this is done by private individuals." At one time, Vizzini’s criminal dossier included 39 murders, six attempted murders, 13 acts of private violence, 36 robberies, 37 thefts and 63 extortions.
He arranged protection with the bandit Francesco Paolo Varsallona
whose hide-out was in the Cammarata
mountains. Varsallona, an alleged "man of honour", also supplied manpower to noble landowners to repress farmers' revolts. Vizzini enrolled in Varsallona’s band while conducting his cancia business. Both were arrested in 1902 when Varsallona’s band finally fell into a trap set up by the police. Vizzini stood trial with the rest of the band for "association to commit a crime" – but he was one of the few to be acquitted.
The episode had few negative consequences. In 1908 Vizzini was able to acquire a substantial part of the Belici estate when he brokered a deal between the owner, the duke Francesco Thomas de Barberin who resided in Paris
, and the local rural bank Cassa Rurale, whose president, the priest Scarlata, was Vizzini’s uncle. Vizzini held 290 hectares for himself and generously left the rest to the bank to lease out to Catholic peasants.
, Vizzini was the undisputed head of the Mafia in Villalba. The war provided the mafiosi with new opportunities for self-enrichment when the Italian Army requisitioned horses and mules in Sicily for the cavalry and artillery. Vizzini came to an agreement with the Army Commission to delegate the responsibilities to him. He collected a poll tax on the animals whose owners wanted to avoid requisition. He was also the broker for animals that were rustled for the occasion, buying at a low price from the hustlers and selling at market prices to the Army.
However, too many horses and mules died of diseases or old age before they even reached the battlefield and the army ordered an inquiry. In 1917, Vizzini was sentenced to 20 years in first instance for fraud, corruption and murder, but he was absolved thanks to powerful friends who exonerated him. He made his fortune on the black market during World War I, and expanded his activities to the sulphur mines. As a representative of a consortium of sulphur mine operators, Vizzini participated in high-level meetings in Rome
and London
concerning government subsidies and tariffs, next to such men as Guido Donegani
, the founder of Montecatini
chemical industries and Guido Jung, Finance minister during Benito Mussolini
’s fascist regime
.
Don Calò further established his fortune in 1922 when he led disgruntled peasants who grabbed land from the aristocratic absentee landlords. Vizzini bought three estates in the Villalba region; he divided them up and handed them over – allegedly without making a penny, according to some – to a cooperative he had founded. According to a local villager, although every peasant got a plot, Don Calò kept more than 12,000 acres (49 km²) for himself.
At the time, according to German sociologist Henner Hess, Vizzini could easily have had himself elected as a parliamentary deputy. Nevertheless, he preferred to remain in the background and instead advise voters and elected officials, playing the role of benevolent benefactor, strengthening his clientele and prestige. The authorities had him listed as a dangerous criminal. A 1926 police report described Vizzini as a "dangerous cattle rustler, the Mafia boss of the province linked with cattle rustlers and Mafiosi of other provinces."
With the rise of Benito Mussolini
and Fascist rule
, Vizzini’s fortunes changed. Mussolini did not tolerate a rival power on Sicily. He appointed Cesare Mori
as the prefect of Palermo and granted special powers to persecute the Mafia. Vizzini claims to have been incarcerated by Mori, but there are no historical records. He most likely was sent into confinement on the Italian mainland, although the exact town is not sure. Despite the confinement he was seen regularly in Villalba and Caltanissetta
.
In July 1943, Calogero Vizzini allegedly helped the American army during the invasion of Sicily during World War II (Operation Husky). In the US, the Office of Naval Intelligence
(ONI) had recruited mafia support to protect the New York City
waterfront from Axis Powers
sabotage since the US had entered the war in December 1941. The ONI collaborated with Lucky Luciano
and his partner Meyer Lansky
, a Jewish mobster, in what was called Operation Underworld
. The resulting Mafia contacts were also used by the US Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) – the wartime predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) – during the invasion of Sicily. Later, the alliance was maintained in order to check the growing strength of the Italian Communist party on the island.
Popular myth has it that a US Army airplane had flown over Villalba on the day of the invasion and dropped a yellow silk foulard marked with a black L (indicating Luciano). Two days later, three American tanks rolled into Villalba after driving thirty miles through enemy territory. Don Calogero climbed aboard and spent the next six days travelling through western Sicily organizing support for the advancing American troops. As General Patton
's Third Division moved onward the signs of its dependence on Mafia support were obvious to the local population. The Mafia protected the roads from snipers, arranged enthusiastic welcomes for the advancing troops, and provided guides through the confusing mountain terrain.
While mafiosi supported the US Army, recent research has led most serious historians to dismiss the legend of Luciano's foulard nowadays. Vizzini was unknown in other parts of Sicily at the time and had no overall power since prefect Mori’s operations had disconnected the network of the Mafia. According to historian Salvatore Lupo: “The story about the Mafia supporting the Anglo-Americans with the invasion in Sicily is just a legend without any foundation, on the contrary there are British and American documents about the preparation of the invasion that refute this conjecture; the military power of the Allies was such that they did not need to use such measures."
Historian Tim Newark unravelled the myth in his book Mafia Allies. A version that is probably closer to the truth is that Vizzini simply led a delegation of locals to meet an Allied patrol whose commander had asked to speak to whoever was in charge. He quotes local historian, Luigi Lumia, who described how a procession of people with Calogero Vizzini at the helm made its way towards the tanks chanting: 'Long Live America', 'Long Live the Mafia', 'Long Live Don Calo'. Vizzini was taken to a command post outside Villalba and was interrogated about a recent firefight involving an American jeep on patrol. When Vizzini made it clear that the Italian soldiers had fled and the firefight had been caused by exploding ammunition, the frustrated US army official took his rage out in a stream of obscenities. Vizzini was utterly embarrassed by the incident and ordered his interpreter not to tell anybody what had happened.
A witness at the time described the appointment of Vizzini: “When Don Calò Vizzini was made mayor of the town almost the entire population was assembled in the square. Speaking in poor Italian, this American lieutenant said, ‘This is your master’.” According to Vizzini’s own account he was carried shoulder high through Villalba on the day he took office as mayor. He claimed to have acted as a peacemaker; only his intervention saved his Fascist predecessor from being lynched.
Michele Pantaleone
, who first reported the legend of Luciano’s foulard, observed the Mafia's revival in his native village of Villalba. He described the consequences of AMGOT's policies: "By the beginning of the Second World War, the Mafia was restricted to a few isolated and scattered groups and could have been completely wiped out if the social problems of the island had been dealt with ... the Allied occupation and the subsequent slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the Onorata Societa the weapons which Fascism
had snatched from it."
The Americans seemed to have appreciated Vizzini, not only because of his political power, but also because he had opposed the Fascists. For his part, Vizzini liked to brag about his contacts with the Americans, and spoke of their support for the separatist movement. Vizzini was later to become an important player during the separatist crisis. The Americans seem to have treated Vizzini as the Mafia’s overall boss. The OSS relied on the Mafia, and in particular on Vizzini, for its intelligence. His codename was ‘Bull Frog’ in secret communications. For a while, the chief of the OSS Palermo office, Joseph Russo, met him and other Mafia bosses ‘at least once a month’.
Because of his excellent connections, Vizzini also became the 'king' of the rampant post-war black market and arranged to get Villalba's overly inquisitive police chief killed. AMGOT relied on mafiosi who were considered staunch anti-fascists because of the repression under Benito Mussolini
. Many other mafiosi, such as Giuseppe Genco Russo
, were appointed as mayors of their own hometowns. Coordinating the AMGOT effort was the former lieutenant-governor of New York, Colonel Charles Poletti
, whom Luciano once described as "one of our good friends."
A peasant told the social activist Danilo Dolci
in the 1950s how the situation was in Villalba after the Americans had landed: the Mafia "robbed the storehouses of the agrarian Co-op and the army’s storehouses; sold food, clothes, cars and lorries in Palermo on the black market. In Villalba all power was in their hands: church, Mafia, agricultural banks, latifundia, all in the hands of the same family … One used to go and see him and ask 'Can you do me this favour?' even for a little affair one had with some other person."'
Vizzini established one of the largest black market operations in southern Italy, together with the American gangster Vito Genovese
, who had fled to Italy in 1937 after being accused of murder. Don Calogero sent truck caravans loaded with all the basic food commodities necessary for the Italian diet rolling northward to hungry Naples
, where their cargoes were distributed by Genovese's organization. All of the trucks were issued passes and export papers by the AMGOT administration in Naples and Sicily, and some corrupt American army officers even made contributions of gasoline and trucks to the operation. According to Luke Monzelli, a lieutenant in the Carabinieri
assigned to follow Genovese during his time in Italy: “Truckloads of food supplies were shipped from Vizzini to Genovese — all accompanied by the proper documents which had been certified by men in authority, Mafia members in the service of Vizzini and Genovese.”
separatists movement of the Sicilian Independence Movement (Movimento Indipendentista Siciliano - MIS) in Catania
. Other prominent Mafia bosses like Giuseppe Genco Russo
, Gaetano Filippone, Michele Navarra
and Francesco Paolo Bontade
did not hide their sympathies for the separatists either. The separatists were enjoying the covert support of the OSS. As Italy veered to the left in 1943-1944, the American military became alarmed about their future position in Italy and felt that the island's naval bases and strategic location in the Mediterranean might provide a possible future counterbalance to a Communist mainland.
On December 9, 1943, the central committee met in secret in Palermo. Vizzini's presence signalled the Mafia’s adherence to the cause of independence, and aided the conservative separatists in their attempt to control the movement. Vizzini and baron Lucio Tasca – one of the more important leaders of the movement – held common views, and despite protests by progressives, Vizzini remained at the session as the representative of Caltanissetta.
Later, Vizzini represented the Fronte Democratico d’Odine Siciliano, a satellite political organization of the separatist movement. The Fronte Democratico demonstrated the Mafia's hesitation to fully commit to the MIS. The Fronte was popular on the island and advocated independence of Sicily under American influence. Although the Americans strongly emphasized that the United States did not want Sicily as the 49th state, in late 1944, some claimed that the Fronte's ideas were the result of American propaganda that had encouraged separatism prior to the invasion. Fronte leaders spread rumours that they had the backing and protection of the United States. Many of its members were "lieutenants in the high Mafia" and Vizzini was considered its leader.
Declassified secret dispatches from the US consul in Palermo, Alfred T. Nester, to the United States Department of State
show Vizzini’s involvement in the separatist movement and covert support from Italian army officials. Nester had good ties with leading mafiosi. General Giuseppe Castellano
– who negotiated the 1943 Armistice with Italy
– and Vizzini met with Trapani politician Virgilio Nasi to offer him the leadership of a movement for Sicilian autonomy with the support of the Mafia. The plan was to stage Nasi as a candidate for High Commissioner for Sicily to oppose the favourite, the Christian Democrat Salvatore Aldisio
.
Castellano became convinced that the Mafia was the strongest political and social force on Sicily to be reckoned with. He started to establish cordial relations with Mafia leaders. The general believed that law and order could be restored if "the system formerly employed by the old and respected Maf(f)ia should return to the Sicilian scene." Castellano made contacts with Mafia leaders and met with them several times. He gained the cooperation of Vizzini, who had supported separatism but was now prepared for a change in the island’s political situation in the direction of regional autonomy.
, one of the party’s leaders, approached Vizzini to abandon the separatists and join the Christian Democrats. He welcomed Vizzini's joining the DC in an article in the Catholic newspaper Il Popolo in 1945.
Vizzini offered to meet with Aldisio – who had been appointed High Commissioner in August 1944 – to solve the island’s grain problem, implying he had the power to do so. There is no evidence that Aldisio and Vizzini ever met to discuss the issue. Aldiso did, however, invite Calogero Volpe, a fellow Christian Democrat and Mafia member befriended by Vizzini, to secret gatherings with Christian Democrats. This was seen as a first step in the government’s alliance with the Mafia. Mafia chieftains perceived Aldisio’s appointment as a first sign of the government’s determination to subdue the separatist movement. They were now forced to reconsider their loyalty to it.
Vizzini’s support for the DC was not a secret. During the crucial 1948 elections that would decide on Italy’s post-war future, Vizzini and Genco Russo sat at the same table with leading DC politicians, attending an electoral lunch. In the course of the start of the Cold War
, the 1948 elections
were a triumph for the Christian Democrats, who would govern Italy with up and downs for the next 45 years in different coalitions. On of its main aims was to keep the Italian Communist Party
– the biggest communist party in a NATO member state – away from power.
Vizzini, a staunch anti-Communist who opposed the fight for land of Sicilian peasants, organised his own peasant cooperatives in his area during both post-war periods, through which he deflected the appeal of the left-wing parties, maintained his hold over the peasants, and guaranteed his own continued access to the land. He was in a fierce dispute over the lease of the large estate Miccichè of the Trabia family in Palermo, with a peasant cooperative headed by Michele Pantaleone
who had founded the Italian Socialist Party
(Partito Socialista Italiano – PSI) in Villalba. Vizzini had tried hard to persuade Pantaleone to marry his niece but failed. Pantaleone used his leverage with the left wing press. In return Don Calò arranged for the crops on Pantaleone family’s land to be vandalized. There was even a failed attempt on Pantaleone’s life.
On September 16, 1944, leaders of the Blocco del popolo (Popular Front) in Sicily, the communist Girolamo Li Causi
and Pantaleone, went to speak to the landless labourers at a rally in Villalba, challenging Don Calò in his own personal fiefdom. In the morning tensions rose when Christian Democrat mayor Beniamino Farina – a relative of Vizzini as well as his successor as mayor – angered local communists by ordering all hammer-and-sickle signs erased from buildings along the road on which Li Causi would travel into town. When his supporters protested, they were intimidated by separatists and thugs.
The rally began in late afternoon. Vizzini had agreed to permit the meeting as long as land problems, the large estates, or the Mafia were not addressed. Both speakers who preceded Li Causi, among which was Pantaleone, followed Vizzini’s commands. Li Causi did not. He denounced the unjust exploitation by the Mafia, and when Li Causi started to talk about how the peasants were being deceived by ‘a powerful leaseholder’ – a thinly disguised reference to Vizzini – the Mafia boss hurled: It’s a lie. Pandemonium broke out. The rally ended in a shoot-out which left 14 people wounded including Li Causi and Pantaleone. Six months later Vizzini acquired of the lease for the Miccichè estate.
According to Vizzini’s own account, La Verità sui Fatti di Villalba (The Truth About the Events in Villalba) that appeared in separatist newspapers, it had been the Communist who had started the shooting. When Pantaleone and Li Causi had arrived in the town, they asked Vizzini if they were in hostile territory and whether their meeting might be disturbed. Vizzini “assured them that they were free to hold their meeting without any fear of disturbance if they were careful enough not to speak on local matters.” Vizzini admitted that he interrupted Li Causi, but denied that he had ignited the violence. The Carabinieri
quickly restored order and arrested eight people, including the mayor. Several others, including Vizzini, evaded the police dragnet. Sixty persons were interrogated, but the investigation was doomed from the start. (Don Calò and his bodyguard were accused of attempted manslaughter. The trial dragged on until 1958, but by 1946 the evidence had already disappeared. Vizzini was never convicted because by the time of the verdict he was already dead.)
The Villalba attack inaugurated a long series of Mafia attacks in Sicily on political activists, trade union leaders and ordinary peasants resisting Mafia rule. In the following years many left-wing leaders were killed or otherwise attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of over thirty at a May 1 labour parade in Portella della Ginestra. The Portella della Ginestra massacre
was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano
. Nevertheless, the Mafia was suspected of involvement in the bloodbath and many other attacks on left-wing organisations and leaders.
set up a candy factory in Palermo exporting all over Europe and to the US. Police suspected that it was a cover for heroin trafficking. The laboratory operated undisturbed until April 11, 1954, when the Roman daily Avanti!
published a photograph of the factory under the headline "Textiles and Sweets on the Drug Route." That evening the factory was closed, and the laboratory's chemists were reportedly smuggled out of the country.
In 1950, Lucky Luciano was photographed in front of the Hotel Sole in the centre of old Palermo
– often the residence of Don Calò Vizzini – talking with Don Calò’s bodyguards. The photographer was beaten up, but he never reported the fact to the authorities after receiving an expensive new camera and cash. Vizzini’s network reached the United States where he knew the future family boss Angelo Annaloro of Philadelphia, known as Angelo Bruno
, who was born in Villalba.
In the media Vizzini was often depicted as the "boss of bosses
" – although such a position did not exist in the loose structure of Cosa Nostra, and later Mafia turncoats denied he ever was the boss of the Mafia in Sicily. According to the pentito
Tommaso Buscetta
the title capo dei capi or "boss of bosses" did not exist in Cosa Nostra. According to author John Dickie, "the question is if Vizzini was as dominant in the Mafia as he was famous outside it." In the matter of Mafia support for the separatist movement, other Cosa Nostra bosses sidelined Vizzini, who was considered to be tainted by his association with radical separatist leaders Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile and Lucio Tasca. These bosses wanted nothing to do with either the island’s bandits or EVIS, to which Vizzini and Lucio Tasca were suspected to be connected. According to the pentito Antonio Calderone Vizzini never had been the boss of Cosa Nostra of Sicily.
Nevertheless, Vizzini wielded considerable power. The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini
, who claimed to know Vizzini well, described his stature and daily life in Villalba in his book The Italians: "From the shadows along the walls and narrow side streets emerged people who had arrived earlier, some from far away, and were waiting to talk to him. They were peasants, old women with black veils on their head, young mafiosi, middle class men. They all walked along with him in turn, explaining their problems. He listened, then called one of his henchmen, gave a few orders, and summoned the next petitioner. Many kissed his hand in gratitude as they left." Vizzini’s magnanimous and protective manner, the respectful greetings of passers-by, the humbleness of those approaching him, the smiles of gratitude when he addressed them, reminded Barzini of an ancient scene: a prince holding court in the open air.
The former mayor of Villalba and local historian, Luigi Lumia, remembers Don Calò walking the streets of Villalba: "He was squat with skinny legs and a protruding stomach. He always wore tinted spectacles, as you can see on photographs. And behind these spectacles his eyes were half closed, as if he was slumbering. His mouth was always open, with his lower lip hanging out. He looked dim-witted, for those who did not know him."
His power was not restricted to just his hometown, but reached the high offices on Sicily as well. According to Indro Montanelli, Vizzini could get through on the telephone without trouble to the regional president, the prefect, the cardinal-archbishop of Palermo and any deputy or mayor of Sicily any time he wanted. Lumia maintains that Vizzini never explicitly ordered someone to kill somebody. "He always tried to 'accommodate' matters and bring people to reason, that is to say, in the way he had decided how people and things should be. If someone remained headstrong nonetheless… with a gesture, a nod, he left it to his friends to take care of the problem. Every now and then he intervened: 'But who made him do it?', 'Who knows what end he will find'."
Don Calò Vizzini died on July 10, 1954. Thousands of peasants dressed in black and politicians and priests took part in his funeral, including Mussomeli boss Giuseppe Genco Russo
and the powerful boss Don Francesco Paolo Bontade
from Palermo (the father of future Mafia boss Stefano Bontade
) – who was one of the pallbearers. Even the New York Times reported the news of the death of this local Mafia chief.
Villalba's public offices and the Christian Democratic headquarters closed for a week in mourning. An elegy for Vizzini was pinned to the church door. It read: "Humble with the humble. Great with the great. He showed with words and deeds that his Mafia was not criminal. It stood for respect for the law, defence of all rights, greatness of character: it was love." He left approximately two billion lire (one million euro) worth of sulphur, land, houses and varied investments.
Although Vizzini throughout his lifetime acquired extensive land holdings, the Mafia historian Salvatore Lupo considers him to be the undertaker of the large feudal estates rather than the protector of that system. Vizzini also made sure that local peasants (in particular the ones organised in catholic cooperatives) got their share of land, once he had secured his cut. When land reform was finally enacted in 1950, mafiosi like Vizzini were in a position to perform their traditional role of brokerage between the peasants, the landlords, and the state. They were able to exploit the intense land hunger of the peasants, gain concessions from the landlords in return for limiting the impact of the reform, and make substantial profits from their mediation in land sales.
Vizzini was the archetype of the paternalistic "man of honour" of a bygone age, that of a rural and semi-feudal Sicily that existed until the 1960s, where a mafioso was seen by some as a social intermediary and a man standing for order and peace. Although he used violence to establish his position in the first phase of his career, in the second stage he limited recourse to violence, turned to primarily legal sources of gain, and exercised his power in an open and legitimate fashion.
He represented a Mafia that controlled power and did not let power control them, according to German sociologist Henner Hess. To make a good impression, or fare figura, is important: "they enjoy the respect shown them, they enjoy power, but they do not wish to give rise to its discussion. They know very well that behind the veil of modesty power is felt to be all the more uncanny." Italian journalist Indro Montanelli
quoted a typical remark by Don Calò: "A photograph of me? Whatever for? I'm no one. I'm just a citizen. … It is strange … People think that I don’t talk much from modesty. No. I don’t talk much because I don’t know much. I live in a village, I only rarely go to Palermo, I know few people…"
"When I die, the Mafia dies," Vizzini once told Montanelli. However, with the death of Vizzini his old-fashioned traditional rural Mafia slowly passed away to be replaced with a more modern, often urban version of gangsterism involved in cigarette smuggling, drug trafficking and laundering their proceeds in construction and real-estate development. While still alive and after his death Vizzini’s stature as an all powerful Mafia boss rose to mythical proportions. Since the 1990s historians have moderated his magnitude.
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
boss of Villalba in the Province of Caltanissetta
Province of Caltanissetta
The Province of Caltanissetta is a province in the southern part of Sicily, Italy...
, Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
. Vizzini was considered to be one of the most influential and legendary Mafia bosses of Sicily after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
until his death in 1954. In the media he was often depicted as the "boss of bosses
Capo di tutti capi
Capo di tutti capi or capo dei capi is Italian for "boss of all bosses" or "boss of bosses". It is a phrase used mainly by the media, public and the law enforcement community to indicate a supremely powerful crime boss in the Sicilian or American Mafia who holds great influence over the whole...
" – although such a position does not exist in the loose structure of Cosa Nostra.
He was the archetype of the paternalistic "man of honour" of a rural Mafia that disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s. In those days a mafioso was seen by some as a social intermediary and a man standing for order and peace. Although he used violence to establish his position in the first phase of his career, in the second stage he limited recourse to violence, turned to primarily legal sources of gain, and exercised his power in an open and legitimate fashion.
Vizzini is the central character in the history of direct Mafia support for the Allied Forces during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he became the personification of the reinstatement of Cosa Nostra during the Allied occupation and the subsequent restoration of democracy after the repression under Fascist
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
rule. Initially he supported the separatist movement, but changed allegiance to the Christian Democrat party, when it became clear that Sicilian independence was unfeasible.
When he died in 1954, thousands of peasants dressed in black, and high ranking mafiosi, politicians and priests took part in his funeral. The funeral epitaph stated that "his 'mafia' was not criminal, but stood for respect of the law, defense of all rights, greatness of character. It was love."
Early years in Villalba
Villalba
-Places:Italy*Villalba, Sicily, a comune in the Province of CaltanissettaPuerto Rico*Villalba, Puerto Rico, a municipio in the Commonwealth of Puerto RicoSpain*Collado Villalba, a municipio in the Community of Madrid...
, a village in the Province of Caltanissetta
Province of Caltanissetta
The Province of Caltanissetta is a province in the southern part of Sicily, Italy...
, with a population of approximately 4,000 people at the time. This area in the middle of Sicily, known as the “Vallone”, was a poor region where most people lived off subsistence agriculture. His father, Beniamino, was a peasant, but managed to marry into a slightly more well-off family that owned some land. A member of his mother’s family, Giuseppe Scarlata, had risen to high eminence in the Catholic Church. Calogero’s brothers, Giovanni and Giuseppe, both became priests. Giuseppe Vizzini became the bishop of Noto. Calogero Vizzini, however, was semi-literate and did not finish elementary school.
The Mafia of Villalba was of relatively recent origin, as it did not go back to the 1860s, considered to be the period when the Mafia emerged around Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
. It started as a form of private protection and has little to do with large estates as was the case in many other rural areas where many mafiosi started as caretakers and lease-holders (gabelloto
Gabelloto
In Sicily, a gabelloto was a person who rented farmland for short-term use. They were rural entrepreneurs who leased the lands from aristocrats more attracted to the comforts of the city.Many gabelloti were associated with, if not members of, the Mafia...
or bailiff
Bailiff
A bailiff is a governor or custodian ; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed...
) for absentee landlords.
In the 1890s some people – including the young Calogero Vizzini – decided to do something about the absence of peace and security in the countryside. The state police at the time was as much a danger as the brigands. The Villalba Mafia thus emerged as an alternative social regime centred on the membership in church-sponsored associations that generated considerable social capital. It later transformed into a protection racket
Protection racket
A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces a victim to pay money, supposedly for protection services against violence or property damage. Racketeers coerce reticent potential victims into buying "protection" by demonstrating what will happen if they...
, victimizing villagers and landowners alike through violence, intimidation and omertà
Omertà
Omertà is a popular attitude and code of honour and a common definition is the "code of silence". It is common in areas of southern Italy, such as Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and Campania, where criminal organizations defined as Mafia such as the Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and...
.
Don Calò once explained how he saw the mafia when he was interviewed by one of Italy’s most famous journalists, Indro Montanelli
Indro Montanelli
Indro Montanelli was an Italian journalist and historian, known for his new approach to writing history in books such as History of the Greeks and History of Rome....
, for the Corriere della Sera
Corriere della Sera
The Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...
(October 30, 1949): "The fact is that in every society there has to be a category of people who straighten things out when situations get complicated. Usually they are functionaries of the state. Where the state is not present, or where it does not have sufficient force, this is done by private individuals." At one time, Vizzini’s criminal dossier included 39 murders, six attempted murders, 13 acts of private violence, 36 robberies, 37 thefts and 63 extortions.
Early career
Vizzini became a cancia – an intermediary between the peasants who wanted their wheat milled into flour and the mills that were located near the coast. Mafiosi that did not tolerate any competition controlled the mills. In the case of Villalba the mills were some 80 kilometres away. To get the grain safely to the mills over roads infested by bandits was no easy task.He arranged protection with the bandit Francesco Paolo Varsallona
Francesco Paolo Varsallona
Francesco Paolo Varsallona or Varsalona was a Sicilian bandit who operated on the island around the turn of the 20th century. He is considered to be the last great bandit of the pre-fascist era...
whose hide-out was in the Cammarata
Cammarata
Cammarata is a comune in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region Sicily, located about 60 km southeast of Palermo and about 35 km north of Agrigento on the eponymous mountain in a territory rich of forests....
mountains. Varsallona, an alleged "man of honour", also supplied manpower to noble landowners to repress farmers' revolts. Vizzini enrolled in Varsallona’s band while conducting his cancia business. Both were arrested in 1902 when Varsallona’s band finally fell into a trap set up by the police. Vizzini stood trial with the rest of the band for "association to commit a crime" – but he was one of the few to be acquitted.
The episode had few negative consequences. In 1908 Vizzini was able to acquire a substantial part of the Belici estate when he brokered a deal between the owner, the duke Francesco Thomas de Barberin who resided in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and the local rural bank Cassa Rurale, whose president, the priest Scarlata, was Vizzini’s uncle. Vizzini held 290 hectares for himself and generously left the rest to the bank to lease out to Catholic peasants.
World War I and after
By 1914, at the outbreak of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Vizzini was the undisputed head of the Mafia in Villalba. The war provided the mafiosi with new opportunities for self-enrichment when the Italian Army requisitioned horses and mules in Sicily for the cavalry and artillery. Vizzini came to an agreement with the Army Commission to delegate the responsibilities to him. He collected a poll tax on the animals whose owners wanted to avoid requisition. He was also the broker for animals that were rustled for the occasion, buying at a low price from the hustlers and selling at market prices to the Army.
However, too many horses and mules died of diseases or old age before they even reached the battlefield and the army ordered an inquiry. In 1917, Vizzini was sentenced to 20 years in first instance for fraud, corruption and murder, but he was absolved thanks to powerful friends who exonerated him. He made his fortune on the black market during World War I, and expanded his activities to the sulphur mines. As a representative of a consortium of sulphur mine operators, Vizzini participated in high-level meetings in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
concerning government subsidies and tariffs, next to such men as Guido Donegani
Guido Donegani
Guido Donegani, , an engineer from Torino Polytechnic, 1901, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1943...
, the founder of Montecatini
Montecatini
- Places in Italy :* Montecatini Terme, health resort in Tuscany* Montecatini Val di Cecina, village and mining town to the south of Pisa*Montecatini, hamlet in the comune of San Martino in Rio...
chemical industries and Guido Jung, Finance minister during Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
’s fascist regime
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
.
Don Calò further established his fortune in 1922 when he led disgruntled peasants who grabbed land from the aristocratic absentee landlords. Vizzini bought three estates in the Villalba region; he divided them up and handed them over – allegedly without making a penny, according to some – to a cooperative he had founded. According to a local villager, although every peasant got a plot, Don Calò kept more than 12,000 acres (49 km²) for himself.
At the time, according to German sociologist Henner Hess, Vizzini could easily have had himself elected as a parliamentary deputy. Nevertheless, he preferred to remain in the background and instead advise voters and elected officials, playing the role of benevolent benefactor, strengthening his clientele and prestige. The authorities had him listed as a dangerous criminal. A 1926 police report described Vizzini as a "dangerous cattle rustler, the Mafia boss of the province linked with cattle rustlers and Mafiosi of other provinces."
With the rise of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Fascist rule
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
, Vizzini’s fortunes changed. Mussolini did not tolerate a rival power on Sicily. He appointed Cesare Mori
Cesare Mori
Cesare Mori was a prefect before and during the Fascist period in Italy. He is known in Italy as the Iron Prefect because of his iron-fisted campaigns against the Mafia on Sicily in the second half of the 1920s.- Early years :Mori was born in Pavia and grew up in an orphananage and was only...
as the prefect of Palermo and granted special powers to persecute the Mafia. Vizzini claims to have been incarcerated by Mori, but there are no historical records. He most likely was sent into confinement on the Italian mainland, although the exact town is not sure. Despite the confinement he was seen regularly in Villalba and Caltanissetta
Caltanissetta
Caltanissetta is a city and comune located on the western interior of Sicily, capital of the province of Caltanissetta...
.
Alleged support for allied invasion of Sicily
Office of Naval Intelligence
The Office of Naval Intelligence was established in the United States Navy in 1882. ONI was established to "seek out and report" on the advancements in other nations' navies. Its headquarters are at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland...
(ONI) had recruited mafia support to protect the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
waterfront from Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
sabotage since the US had entered the war in December 1941. The ONI collaborated with Lucky Luciano
Lucky Luciano
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian mobster born in Sicily. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first commission...
and his partner Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky , known as the "Mob's Accountant", was a Polish-born American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the "National Crime Syndicate" in the United States...
, a Jewish mobster, in what was called Operation Underworld
Operation Underworld
Operation Underworld was the United States government's code name for the cooperation of organized crime figures from 1942 to 1945 to counter Axis spies and saboteurs along the U.S...
. The resulting Mafia contacts were also used by the US Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(OSS) – the wartime predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) – during the invasion of Sicily. Later, the alliance was maintained in order to check the growing strength of the Italian Communist party on the island.
Popular myth has it that a US Army airplane had flown over Villalba on the day of the invasion and dropped a yellow silk foulard marked with a black L (indicating Luciano). Two days later, three American tanks rolled into Villalba after driving thirty miles through enemy territory. Don Calogero climbed aboard and spent the next six days travelling through western Sicily organizing support for the advancing American troops. As General Patton
George S. Patton
George Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army officer best known for his leadership while commanding corps and armies as a general during World War II. He was also well known for his eccentricity and controversial outspokenness.Patton was commissioned in the U.S. Army after his graduation from...
's Third Division moved onward the signs of its dependence on Mafia support were obvious to the local population. The Mafia protected the roads from snipers, arranged enthusiastic welcomes for the advancing troops, and provided guides through the confusing mountain terrain.
While mafiosi supported the US Army, recent research has led most serious historians to dismiss the legend of Luciano's foulard nowadays. Vizzini was unknown in other parts of Sicily at the time and had no overall power since prefect Mori’s operations had disconnected the network of the Mafia. According to historian Salvatore Lupo: “The story about the Mafia supporting the Anglo-Americans with the invasion in Sicily is just a legend without any foundation, on the contrary there are British and American documents about the preparation of the invasion that refute this conjecture; the military power of the Allies was such that they did not need to use such measures."
Historian Tim Newark unravelled the myth in his book Mafia Allies. A version that is probably closer to the truth is that Vizzini simply led a delegation of locals to meet an Allied patrol whose commander had asked to speak to whoever was in charge. He quotes local historian, Luigi Lumia, who described how a procession of people with Calogero Vizzini at the helm made its way towards the tanks chanting: 'Long Live America', 'Long Live the Mafia', 'Long Live Don Calo'. Vizzini was taken to a command post outside Villalba and was interrogated about a recent firefight involving an American jeep on patrol. When Vizzini made it clear that the Italian soldiers had fled and the firefight had been caused by exploding ammunition, the frustrated US army official took his rage out in a stream of obscenities. Vizzini was utterly embarrassed by the incident and ordered his interpreter not to tell anybody what had happened.
Mayor of Villalba
The Mafia only became credible again after the end of the invasion. The Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT), looking for anti-fascist notables to replace fascist authorities, made Don Calogero Vizzini mayor of Villalba, as well as an Honorary Colonel of the US Army. In the chaos that followed the invasion of Sicily and the collapse of Fascism, the American army often relied on senior churchmen for advice on whom to trust. Don Calò was one of those recommended. He had a long record of involvement with Catholic social funds and there were several clergymen in his family.A witness at the time described the appointment of Vizzini: “When Don Calò Vizzini was made mayor of the town almost the entire population was assembled in the square. Speaking in poor Italian, this American lieutenant said, ‘This is your master’.” According to Vizzini’s own account he was carried shoulder high through Villalba on the day he took office as mayor. He claimed to have acted as a peacemaker; only his intervention saved his Fascist predecessor from being lynched.
Michele Pantaleone
Michele Pantaleone
Michele Pantaleone was a respected journalist and expert on the Sicilian Mafia and one of the first to shed light on the links between organized crime and political power....
, who first reported the legend of Luciano’s foulard, observed the Mafia's revival in his native village of Villalba. He described the consequences of AMGOT's policies: "By the beginning of the Second World War, the Mafia was restricted to a few isolated and scattered groups and could have been completely wiped out if the social problems of the island had been dealt with ... the Allied occupation and the subsequent slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the Onorata Societa the weapons which Fascism
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
had snatched from it."
The Americans seemed to have appreciated Vizzini, not only because of his political power, but also because he had opposed the Fascists. For his part, Vizzini liked to brag about his contacts with the Americans, and spoke of their support for the separatist movement. Vizzini was later to become an important player during the separatist crisis. The Americans seem to have treated Vizzini as the Mafia’s overall boss. The OSS relied on the Mafia, and in particular on Vizzini, for its intelligence. His codename was ‘Bull Frog’ in secret communications. For a while, the chief of the OSS Palermo office, Joseph Russo, met him and other Mafia bosses ‘at least once a month’.
King of the black market
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
. Many other mafiosi, such as Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo was an Italian mafioso, the boss of Mussomeli in the Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily....
, were appointed as mayors of their own hometowns. Coordinating the AMGOT effort was the former lieutenant-governor of New York, Colonel Charles Poletti
Charles Poletti
Charles Poletti was an American lawyer and politician. He was the 46th Governor of New York in 1942, and was the first Italian-American governor in the United States.-Early life and education:...
, whom Luciano once described as "one of our good friends."
A peasant told the social activist Danilo Dolci
Danilo Dolci
Danilo Dolci was an Italian social activist, sociologist, popular educator and poet. He is best known for his opposition to poverty, social exclusion and the Mafia on Sicily, and is considered to be one of the protagonists of the non-violence movement in Italy...
in the 1950s how the situation was in Villalba after the Americans had landed: the Mafia "robbed the storehouses of the agrarian Co-op and the army’s storehouses; sold food, clothes, cars and lorries in Palermo on the black market. In Villalba all power was in their hands: church, Mafia, agricultural banks, latifundia, all in the hands of the same family … One used to go and see him and ask 'Can you do me this favour?' even for a little affair one had with some other person."'
Vizzini established one of the largest black market operations in southern Italy, together with the American gangster Vito Genovese
Vito Genovese
Vito "Don Vito" Genovese was an Italian mafioso who rose to power in America during the Castellammarese War to later become leader of the Genovese crime family. Genovese served as mentor to future mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante...
, who had fled to Italy in 1937 after being accused of murder. Don Calogero sent truck caravans loaded with all the basic food commodities necessary for the Italian diet rolling northward to hungry Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, where their cargoes were distributed by Genovese's organization. All of the trucks were issued passes and export papers by the AMGOT administration in Naples and Sicily, and some corrupt American army officers even made contributions of gasoline and trucks to the operation. According to Luke Monzelli, a lieutenant in the Carabinieri
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations, and is a branch of the armed forces.-Early history:...
assigned to follow Genovese during his time in Italy: “Truckloads of food supplies were shipped from Vizzini to Genovese — all accompanied by the proper documents which had been certified by men in authority, Mafia members in the service of Vizzini and Genovese.”
Supporting the separatists
Vizzini initially supported the separatist movement in Sicily. On December 6, 1943, Vizzini participated at the first clandestine regional convention of the SicilianSicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
separatists movement of the Sicilian Independence Movement (Movimento Indipendentista Siciliano - MIS) in Catania
Catania
Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse. It is the capital of the homonymous province, and with 298,957 inhabitants it is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy.Catania is known to have a seismic history and...
. Other prominent Mafia bosses like Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo was an Italian mafioso, the boss of Mussomeli in the Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily....
, Gaetano Filippone, Michele Navarra
Michele Navarra
Michele Navarra was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was a qualified physician and headed the Mafia Family from the town of Corleone...
and Francesco Paolo Bontade
Francesco Paolo Bontade
Francesco Paolo Bontade , also known as Don Paolino Bonta, was a legendary and powerful member of the Sicilan Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He hailed from Villagrazia, a rural village before it was absorbed into the city of Palermo in the 1960s...
did not hide their sympathies for the separatists either. The separatists were enjoying the covert support of the OSS. As Italy veered to the left in 1943-1944, the American military became alarmed about their future position in Italy and felt that the island's naval bases and strategic location in the Mediterranean might provide a possible future counterbalance to a Communist mainland.
On December 9, 1943, the central committee met in secret in Palermo. Vizzini's presence signalled the Mafia’s adherence to the cause of independence, and aided the conservative separatists in their attempt to control the movement. Vizzini and baron Lucio Tasca – one of the more important leaders of the movement – held common views, and despite protests by progressives, Vizzini remained at the session as the representative of Caltanissetta.
Later, Vizzini represented the Fronte Democratico d’Odine Siciliano, a satellite political organization of the separatist movement. The Fronte Democratico demonstrated the Mafia's hesitation to fully commit to the MIS. The Fronte was popular on the island and advocated independence of Sicily under American influence. Although the Americans strongly emphasized that the United States did not want Sicily as the 49th state, in late 1944, some claimed that the Fronte's ideas were the result of American propaganda that had encouraged separatism prior to the invasion. Fronte leaders spread rumours that they had the backing and protection of the United States. Many of its members were "lieutenants in the high Mafia" and Vizzini was considered its leader.
Declassified secret dispatches from the US consul in Palermo, Alfred T. Nester, to the United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
show Vizzini’s involvement in the separatist movement and covert support from Italian army officials. Nester had good ties with leading mafiosi. General Giuseppe Castellano
Giuseppe Castellano
Giuseppe Castellano was an Italian general who negotiated the Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces on September 8, 1943.-Military career:...
– who negotiated the 1943 Armistice with Italy
Armistice with Italy
The Armistice with Italy was an armistice signed on September 3 and publicly declared on September 8, 1943, during World War II, between Italy and the Allied armed forces, who were then occupying the southern end of the country, entailing the capitulation of Italy...
– and Vizzini met with Trapani politician Virgilio Nasi to offer him the leadership of a movement for Sicilian autonomy with the support of the Mafia. The plan was to stage Nasi as a candidate for High Commissioner for Sicily to oppose the favourite, the Christian Democrat Salvatore Aldisio
Salvatore Aldisio
Salvatore Aldisio was an Italian Christian Democratic politician.He was born in Gela is a town in the province of Caltanissetta. Thanks to the organizing work of Aldisio his hometown underwent a renewal process and also a social and economic transformation from the post-war years to the beginning...
.
Castellano became convinced that the Mafia was the strongest political and social force on Sicily to be reckoned with. He started to establish cordial relations with Mafia leaders. The general believed that law and order could be restored if "the system formerly employed by the old and respected Maf(f)ia should return to the Sicilian scene." Castellano made contacts with Mafia leaders and met with them several times. He gained the cooperation of Vizzini, who had supported separatism but was now prepared for a change in the island’s political situation in the direction of regional autonomy.
Shifting to the Christian Democrats
Most mafiosi soon changed sides, joining the Christian Democrat party (Democrazia Cristiana – DC) when it became clear that an independent Sicily was not feasible and the OSS quietly dropped support for the separatist movement in 1945 and turned to the DC. Bernardo MattarellaBernardo Mattarella
Bernardo Mattarella was an Italian politician for the Christian Democrat party . He has been Minister of Italy several times...
, one of the party’s leaders, approached Vizzini to abandon the separatists and join the Christian Democrats. He welcomed Vizzini's joining the DC in an article in the Catholic newspaper Il Popolo in 1945.
Vizzini offered to meet with Aldisio – who had been appointed High Commissioner in August 1944 – to solve the island’s grain problem, implying he had the power to do so. There is no evidence that Aldisio and Vizzini ever met to discuss the issue. Aldiso did, however, invite Calogero Volpe, a fellow Christian Democrat and Mafia member befriended by Vizzini, to secret gatherings with Christian Democrats. This was seen as a first step in the government’s alliance with the Mafia. Mafia chieftains perceived Aldisio’s appointment as a first sign of the government’s determination to subdue the separatist movement. They were now forced to reconsider their loyalty to it.
Vizzini’s support for the DC was not a secret. During the crucial 1948 elections that would decide on Italy’s post-war future, Vizzini and Genco Russo sat at the same table with leading DC politicians, attending an electoral lunch. In the course of the start of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, the 1948 elections
Italian general election, 1948
The Italian elections of 1948 were the second democratic elections with universal suffrage ever held in Italy, taking place after the 1946 elections to the Constituent Assembly, responsible for drawing up a new Italian Constitution...
were a triumph for the Christian Democrats, who would govern Italy with up and downs for the next 45 years in different coalitions. On of its main aims was to keep the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
– the biggest communist party in a NATO member state – away from power.
The Villalba incident
Michele Pantaleone
Michele Pantaleone was a respected journalist and expert on the Sicilian Mafia and one of the first to shed light on the links between organized crime and political power....
who had founded the Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...
(Partito Socialista Italiano – PSI) in Villalba. Vizzini had tried hard to persuade Pantaleone to marry his niece but failed. Pantaleone used his leverage with the left wing press. In return Don Calò arranged for the crops on Pantaleone family’s land to be vandalized. There was even a failed attempt on Pantaleone’s life.
On September 16, 1944, leaders of the Blocco del popolo (Popular Front) in Sicily, the communist Girolamo Li Causi
Girolamo Li Causi
Girolamo Li Causi was a Sicilian Communist leader. As a Sicilian and communist he was actively involved in the post war struggle against the Mafia...
and Pantaleone, went to speak to the landless labourers at a rally in Villalba, challenging Don Calò in his own personal fiefdom. In the morning tensions rose when Christian Democrat mayor Beniamino Farina – a relative of Vizzini as well as his successor as mayor – angered local communists by ordering all hammer-and-sickle signs erased from buildings along the road on which Li Causi would travel into town. When his supporters protested, they were intimidated by separatists and thugs.
The rally began in late afternoon. Vizzini had agreed to permit the meeting as long as land problems, the large estates, or the Mafia were not addressed. Both speakers who preceded Li Causi, among which was Pantaleone, followed Vizzini’s commands. Li Causi did not. He denounced the unjust exploitation by the Mafia, and when Li Causi started to talk about how the peasants were being deceived by ‘a powerful leaseholder’ – a thinly disguised reference to Vizzini – the Mafia boss hurled: It’s a lie. Pandemonium broke out. The rally ended in a shoot-out which left 14 people wounded including Li Causi and Pantaleone. Six months later Vizzini acquired of the lease for the Miccichè estate.
According to Vizzini’s own account, La Verità sui Fatti di Villalba (The Truth About the Events in Villalba) that appeared in separatist newspapers, it had been the Communist who had started the shooting. When Pantaleone and Li Causi had arrived in the town, they asked Vizzini if they were in hostile territory and whether their meeting might be disturbed. Vizzini “assured them that they were free to hold their meeting without any fear of disturbance if they were careful enough not to speak on local matters.” Vizzini admitted that he interrupted Li Causi, but denied that he had ignited the violence. The Carabinieri
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations, and is a branch of the armed forces.-Early history:...
quickly restored order and arrested eight people, including the mayor. Several others, including Vizzini, evaded the police dragnet. Sixty persons were interrogated, but the investigation was doomed from the start. (Don Calò and his bodyguard were accused of attempted manslaughter. The trial dragged on until 1958, but by 1946 the evidence had already disappeared. Vizzini was never convicted because by the time of the verdict he was already dead.)
The Villalba attack inaugurated a long series of Mafia attacks in Sicily on political activists, trade union leaders and ordinary peasants resisting Mafia rule. In the following years many left-wing leaders were killed or otherwise attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of over thirty at a May 1 labour parade in Portella della Ginestra. The Portella della Ginestra massacre
Portella della Ginestra massacre
The Portella della Ginestra massacre was one of the more violent acts of in the history of modern Italian politics, when 11 people were killed and 33 wounded during May Day celebrations in Sicily on May 1, 1947, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi...
was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death...
. Nevertheless, the Mafia was suspected of involvement in the bloodbath and many other attacks on left-wing organisations and leaders.
Links to American gangsters
In 1949 Vizzini and Italian-American crime boss Lucky LucianoLucky Luciano
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian mobster born in Sicily. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first commission...
set up a candy factory in Palermo exporting all over Europe and to the US. Police suspected that it was a cover for heroin trafficking. The laboratory operated undisturbed until April 11, 1954, when the Roman daily Avanti!
Avanti! (Italian newspaper)
Avanti! is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since December 25, 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts.-History:...
published a photograph of the factory under the headline "Textiles and Sweets on the Drug Route." That evening the factory was closed, and the laboratory's chemists were reportedly smuggled out of the country.
In 1950, Lucky Luciano was photographed in front of the Hotel Sole in the centre of old Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
– often the residence of Don Calò Vizzini – talking with Don Calò’s bodyguards. The photographer was beaten up, but he never reported the fact to the authorities after receiving an expensive new camera and cash. Vizzini’s network reached the United States where he knew the future family boss Angelo Annaloro of Philadelphia, known as Angelo Bruno
Angelo Bruno
Angelo "The Gentle Don" Bruno was a Sicilian-American mobster who ran the Philadelphia crime family for two decades. Bruno gained his nickname and reputation due to his preference for conciliation over violence.-Early years:Born in Villalba, Sicily, Bruno emigrated to the United States in his...
, who was born in Villalba.
Boss of bosses?
Capo di tutti capi
Capo di tutti capi or capo dei capi is Italian for "boss of all bosses" or "boss of bosses". It is a phrase used mainly by the media, public and the law enforcement community to indicate a supremely powerful crime boss in the Sicilian or American Mafia who holds great influence over the whole...
" – although such a position did not exist in the loose structure of Cosa Nostra, and later Mafia turncoats denied he ever was the boss of the Mafia in Sicily. According to the pentito
Pentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta was a Sicilian mafioso. Although he was not the first pentito in the Italian witness protection program, he is widely recognized as the first important one breaking omertà...
the title capo dei capi or "boss of bosses" did not exist in Cosa Nostra. According to author John Dickie, "the question is if Vizzini was as dominant in the Mafia as he was famous outside it." In the matter of Mafia support for the separatist movement, other Cosa Nostra bosses sidelined Vizzini, who was considered to be tainted by his association with radical separatist leaders Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile and Lucio Tasca. These bosses wanted nothing to do with either the island’s bandits or EVIS, to which Vizzini and Lucio Tasca were suspected to be connected. According to the pentito Antonio Calderone Vizzini never had been the boss of Cosa Nostra of Sicily.
Nevertheless, Vizzini wielded considerable power. The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini
Luigi Barzini, Jr.
Luigi Barzini Jr. was an Italian journalist, writer and politician most famous for his 1964 book The Italians, delving deeply into the Italian national character and introducing many Anglo-Saxon readers to Italian life and culture.-Early life:Barzini junior was born in Milan, Lombardy, the son of...
, who claimed to know Vizzini well, described his stature and daily life in Villalba in his book The Italians: "From the shadows along the walls and narrow side streets emerged people who had arrived earlier, some from far away, and were waiting to talk to him. They were peasants, old women with black veils on their head, young mafiosi, middle class men. They all walked along with him in turn, explaining their problems. He listened, then called one of his henchmen, gave a few orders, and summoned the next petitioner. Many kissed his hand in gratitude as they left." Vizzini’s magnanimous and protective manner, the respectful greetings of passers-by, the humbleness of those approaching him, the smiles of gratitude when he addressed them, reminded Barzini of an ancient scene: a prince holding court in the open air.
The former mayor of Villalba and local historian, Luigi Lumia, remembers Don Calò walking the streets of Villalba: "He was squat with skinny legs and a protruding stomach. He always wore tinted spectacles, as you can see on photographs. And behind these spectacles his eyes were half closed, as if he was slumbering. His mouth was always open, with his lower lip hanging out. He looked dim-witted, for those who did not know him."
His power was not restricted to just his hometown, but reached the high offices on Sicily as well. According to Indro Montanelli, Vizzini could get through on the telephone without trouble to the regional president, the prefect, the cardinal-archbishop of Palermo and any deputy or mayor of Sicily any time he wanted. Lumia maintains that Vizzini never explicitly ordered someone to kill somebody. "He always tried to 'accommodate' matters and bring people to reason, that is to say, in the way he had decided how people and things should be. If someone remained headstrong nonetheless… with a gesture, a nod, he left it to his friends to take care of the problem. Every now and then he intervened: 'But who made him do it?', 'Who knows what end he will find'."
Death
Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo was an Italian mafioso, the boss of Mussomeli in the Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily....
and the powerful boss Don Francesco Paolo Bontade
Francesco Paolo Bontade
Francesco Paolo Bontade , also known as Don Paolino Bonta, was a legendary and powerful member of the Sicilan Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He hailed from Villagrazia, a rural village before it was absorbed into the city of Palermo in the 1960s...
from Palermo (the father of future Mafia boss Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He was the capomafia of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo...
) – who was one of the pallbearers. Even the New York Times reported the news of the death of this local Mafia chief.
Villalba's public offices and the Christian Democratic headquarters closed for a week in mourning. An elegy for Vizzini was pinned to the church door. It read: "Humble with the humble. Great with the great. He showed with words and deeds that his Mafia was not criminal. It stood for respect for the law, defence of all rights, greatness of character: it was love." He left approximately two billion lire (one million euro) worth of sulphur, land, houses and varied investments.
Legacy
Vizzini was the archetype of the paternalistic "man of honour" of a bygone age, that of a rural and semi-feudal Sicily that existed until the 1960s, where a mafioso was seen by some as a social intermediary and a man standing for order and peace. Although he used violence to establish his position in the first phase of his career, in the second stage he limited recourse to violence, turned to primarily legal sources of gain, and exercised his power in an open and legitimate fashion.
He represented a Mafia that controlled power and did not let power control them, according to German sociologist Henner Hess. To make a good impression, or fare figura, is important: "they enjoy the respect shown them, they enjoy power, but they do not wish to give rise to its discussion. They know very well that behind the veil of modesty power is felt to be all the more uncanny." Italian journalist Indro Montanelli
Indro Montanelli
Indro Montanelli was an Italian journalist and historian, known for his new approach to writing history in books such as History of the Greeks and History of Rome....
quoted a typical remark by Don Calò: "A photograph of me? Whatever for? I'm no one. I'm just a citizen. … It is strange … People think that I don’t talk much from modesty. No. I don’t talk much because I don’t know much. I live in a village, I only rarely go to Palermo, I know few people…"
"When I die, the Mafia dies," Vizzini once told Montanelli. However, with the death of Vizzini his old-fashioned traditional rural Mafia slowly passed away to be replaced with a more modern, often urban version of gangsterism involved in cigarette smuggling, drug trafficking and laundering their proceeds in construction and real-estate development. While still alive and after his death Vizzini’s stature as an all powerful Mafia boss rose to mythical proportions. Since the 1990s historians have moderated his magnitude.
Sources
- Arlacchi, Pino (1988). Mafia Business. The Mafia ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-285197-7 Arlacchi, Pino (1992). Gli uomini del disonore. La mafia siciliana nella vita del grande pentito Antonino Calderone, Milan: Mondadori ISBN 88-0435326-0 Arlacchi, Pino (1994). Addio Cosa nostra: La vita di Tommaso Buscetta, Milan: Rizzoli ISBN 88-17-84299-0 Badolati, Arcangelo & Stefano Dodaro (1985). Il Mammasantissima. La strage di Villalba e il processo calabrese a Calogero Vizzini, Cosenza: Pellegrini Editore, ISBN 8881012928
- Barzini, LuigiLuigi Barzini, Jr.Luigi Barzini Jr. was an Italian journalist, writer and politician most famous for his 1964 book The Italians, delving deeply into the Italian national character and introducing many Anglo-Saxon readers to Italian life and culture.-Early life:Barzini junior was born in Milan, Lombardy, the son of...
(1964/1968). The Italians, London: Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-014595-8 (originally published in 1964) Caruso, Alfio (2000). Da cosa nasce cosa. Storia della mafia del 1943 a oggi, Milan: Longanesi ISBN 88-304-1620-7 - Chubb, Judith (1989). The Mafia and Politics, Cornell Studies in International Affairs, Occasional Papers No. 23.
- Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet, ISBN 0-340-82435-2
- Finkelstein, Monte S. (1998). Separatism, the Allies and the Mafia: The Struggle for Sicilian Independence, 1943-1948, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania): Lehigh University Press ISBN 0-934223-51-3
- Hess, Henner (1998). Mafia & Mafiosi: Origin, Power, and Myth, London: Hurst & Co Publishers, ISBN 1-85065-500-6 (Review)
- Jamieson, Alison (2000). The Antimafia: Italy’s fight against organized crime, London: Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-80158-X.
- Lewis, Norman (1964/2003). The Honoured Society: The Sicilian Mafia Observed, London: Eland, ISBN 0-907871-48-8
- Lupo, Salvatore (2009). History of the Mafia, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-13134-6
- McCoy, Alfred W.Alfred W. McCoyAlfred William McCoy is a historian of Southeast Asia. He is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. McCoy graduated from the Kent School in 1964. He earned his B.A...
(1972/1991), The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. CIA complicity in the global drug trade, Lawrence Hill Books ISBN 1-55652-125-1 - Newark, Tim (2007). Mafia Allies. The True Story of America’s Secret Alliance with the Mob in World War II, Saint Paul (MN): Zenith Press ISBN 0-7603-2457-3 (Review)
- Paoli, Letizia (2003). Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-515724-9
- Sabetti, Filippo (1984/2002). Village Politics and the Mafia in Sicily, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press 2002 (First published in 1984 as Political Authority in a Sicilian Village, New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press) (Review)
- Servadio, Gaia (1976), Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg ISBN 0-436-44700-2
- Sterling, Claire (1990). Octopus. How the long reach of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-73402-4
External links
- Excerpt from The Honoured Society, by Norman Lewis (first published in 1964).
- The Honored Society, Norman Lewis, The New Yorker, February 8, 1964 Die Ehrenwerte Gesellschaft, Norman Lewis, Der Spiegel 52/1964 vom 23.12.1964 Quel giorno al "Des Palmes" incontrai Don Calogero, by Indro Montanelli, Corriere della Sera, September 27, 1995