the origins of the mafia --8/4/26

04 Aug 2026

the origins of the mafia --8/4/26

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Today's selection -- from Mafia by Ryan Gingeras. The Mafia and the Camorra, one of the oldest and largest Italian criminal organizations from the Campania region, at the turn of the twentieth century:

"As is the case with most mafias, no written record of the Camorra's moment of invention exists. Like the term ‘mafia’ itself, even the origin of the name is a matter of dispute. One policeman testified in 1915 that the fraternity took its name from a Spanish adventurer, Raimondo Garnur, who founded the group in the seventeenth century (an event many scholars doubt ever happened). Camorra might derive from the Spanish word camorra, meaning a quarrel or fight, or chamarra, meaning jacket, in reference to the tight waistcoat worn by those who gave their allegiance to a gang. What we know of the Camorra's origins largely comes from fellow prisoners, most notably dissidents inspired by the Coal Burners. These first sources testify to the existence of an ‘honored society’ birthed around the middle of the nineteenth century. As a gang, they imposed a rigid system of order and tribute over inmates in the city's central jail. No one, as one witness recalled, was ‘allowed to eat, drink, smoke, or gamble without a camorrista's permission.’ Those who defied these impositions ‘ran the risk of being clubbed to death’ or worse. Any convenience or allowance came with a tax, or pizzo, to be paid. The Camorra possessed unique rituals and customs. New members swore an oath over crossed daggers and were compelled to duel a more senior camorrista with a knife. Most duels did not end in death but with slashes to the arms and body. Many of the initiated eventually sported elaborate tattoos on various body parts. All were bound to a secret code of conduct, such as not prostituting one's wife or sister. Though perverse, one early researcher likened the Camorra's inner culture to a ‘pseudo-Masonic phantasmagoria.’

“Why the Camorra chose to adopt rituals mimicking those of the Freemasons is not clear. They were, however, not alone. The Charcoal Burners, as well as more mainline lodges, likely influenced the rituals associated with Sicily's Mafia. By the 1870s, Italian investigators uncovered sources detailing the initiation rites and codes associated with the Mafia's cosche, or clans. Outsiders learned that young mafiosi sealed their loyalty after pricking their finger and smearing their blood on an effigy of a saint. Older members then set fire to the image, an homage to the literal and figurative hell awaiting anyone who betrayed their brethren. Now there is nothing secret about the Mafia's initiation rites. The public confessions of well-known informants, such as Joe Valachi, as well as film depictions, such as from The Sopranos, have made the Mafia's customs into the stuff of popular lore. Revelations such as these carried a different weight in the mid-nineteenth century. For outsiders, as well as perhaps for mafiosi and camorristi themselves, mimicking the rituals of the Freemasons underscored the solemnity of their "honored societies." Freemasonry invoked notions of a power or an authority that was not evident to the naked eye. Adopting the culture of masonic secrecy was not simply a tool to maintain discipline and order within their ranks. It became instrumental to the mystique cultivated by the Camorra.

Camorristi in Naples, 1906

As with the Camorra, we possess no evidence of when or why Sicily's Mafia crafted their own rituals. The question of its genesis is an even greater mystery. ‘Mafia,’ or terms to that effect, were part of Italian parlance well before the nineteenth century. Florentines, for example, have used the word as a synonym for poverty and misery. Yet in Sicily, "mafia" may have come from a different root. Some scholars speculate it derives from Arabic and was used in reference to someone who is bold or brags. A ‘mafioso,’ in this respect, could mean virtually anyone who was tough or domineering. Indeed, many officials and investigators in the 1800s came to conclude that the Mafia, more than anything, was a state of mind as opposed to a coherent organization. There may be, ironic as it may sound, some truth to this. In the absence of certifiable sources, it could be the case that the Mafia was, at one point, a way of being. Yet by the time of the establishment of a united Italy, it is clear that a cross-section of Sicilians formed a coherent subculture of crime and conspiracy in the western portion of the island.

“Sicily, like Naples, entered the nineteenth century as a land long governed by foreign lords from Spain and Austria. The politics of administering the island and its people was a far more complicated arrangement. By 1800, much of Sicily's nobility left behind their feudal estates and resided in larger towns and cities. For absentee landowners living in the western city of Palermo, managing their lands, orchards, and mines was a task assigned to renters or hired overseers, a group largely referred to as gabellotti. A gabellotto, conceivably, could have come from any walk of life. What was paramount for local lords was the maintenance of good order among their tenant farmers and contracted miners. Upholding the peace required individuals capable of imposing their will upon others. Gabellotti did not always perform this task alone. Some formed militias made up of local thugs to serve alongside them as overseers. By mid-century, this system of land tenure and authority came to compromise the fabric of local government. One magistrate swore that "there is not a single official who does not prostrate himself before the local men of influence and power and who does not intend to profit from his office." From his vantage point, there were fraternities, or ‘sorts of sects,’ whose bosses reigned over this culture of corruption. Though no one can say for sure, this arrangement among landlord, overseer, militiaman, and peasant helped engender the Mafia. The earliest mafiosi were not necessarily criminals per se. Instead, they composed an informal class of enforcers, extortionists, and arbiters. Although the job of a gabellotto was a cornerstone of this order, the Mafia's earliest generations-may have been made up of anyone who wielded power through their personal authority and threat of violence. What mattered most was that Sicily's elites depended upon this system for their benefit and the benefit of the kingdom.

“Further waves of upheaval would bring both the Camorra and the Mafia into the center of politics. Amid the Napoleonic Wars, British troops occupied Sicily. In the spirit of progress, occupation authorities abolished the feudal rights under which the island's nobility owned and administered their land. The restoration of Spanish rule after Napoleon's defeat compounded the breakdown of this system. Provincial communities grew more unsettled as land changed hands, a process that further empowered the surrogates of the old nobility. The imposition of monarchical rule drove Sicilian converts to the Carbonari cause and successive revolts led to the mass imprisonment of would-be revolutionaries. As in Naples, it was in the dungeons of Palermo's central prison that the Charcoal Burners came to know the Mafia. The synergy between mafiosi and imprisoned rebels led some Italian commentators to suggest the Mafia was ‘a form of Freemasonry or Carbonaria’ since both ‘hated all despotic governments.’

All those who reviled Spanish rule were redeemed in 1860. In the spring a raucous army led by famed revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi marched into Palermo. By September, Naples also fell to Garibaldi, paving the way for the unification of what became the Kingdom of Italy. Among those who rejoiced in the capture of Palermo and Naples were members of the Camorra and the Mafia. In advance of Garibaldi's victories, frantic government officials in Naples retained the services of camorristi as informants and policemen in a vain attempt to forestall the tide of revolution. With the fall of the monarchy, many in the Camorra effortlessly switched their allegiances. Having abandoned their habits when they became policemen under the Spanish, many ‘went back to being camorristi but did not stop being policemen’ under a united Italian government.

“The retention of Camorra members became indicative of the problems the Italian state faced in Naples after unification in 1860. Within a year of Italy's birth, a rebellion rocked Naples when camorristi resisted being disciplined for their wanton criminal behavior. Mass roundups did little to stern their influence. Over the following decades, the Camorra became further entrenched within Neapolitan society. In addition to extracting a pizzo from neighborhood shops, camorristi exploited wealthy business leaders and rival criminals. Italy's testy electoral environment created opportunities for the Camorra to ingratiate themselves with politicians. Above all, their dominance over the Neapolitan underworld made them partners and allies of corrupt and desperate officials. One newspaper complained in 1879 that gambling houses 'subsidized' local constables to the tune of ten lira a day. ‘One could say the Camorra was always around, all that changes is the uniform of the lazy bourgeois [elite] and that of the idle police official.’

“Politicians from Rome, as well as foreign visitors, tended to attribute the power of the Camorra to the character of the city's inhabitants. Why the Camorra thrived, however, tended to be the result of widespread poverty. Despite earlier periods of prosperity, listless periods of economic growth, as well as outbreaks of cholera, took a terrible toll on workers and families in the late nineteenth century. Destitute residents of Naples's urban grottos provided the Camorra with many willing recruits. For visitors like William Trollope, one could empathize with the city's poor since it was their oppression that supplied camorristi with ‘its first and bottomless foundation.’ It did not change the fact that Naples, as he heard it said, was a Mediterranean ‘paradise inhabited by devils.’

“Economic hardship was no less common in Sicily. But poverty was not the only factor to influence the rise of the Mafia on the island. In 1866, anti-government sentiment again surged, leading to acts of rebellion in the streets of Palermo. Many Sicilians, including former soldiers in Garibaldi's army, came to reject unification as yet another expression of foreign rule. More random and endemic forms of violence shook western portions of the island. Bandits plagued the countryside, leading to a raft of kidnappings, animal thefts, and blackmail. Ongoing disputes over land led to daring assassinations and massacres of whole families. Violence loomed over the most basic forms of trade. Rising European demand for lemons and oranges in the mid-nineteenth century saw citrus cultivation become a staple of the Sicilian economy. Yet by the 1870s, few in the citrus industry could operate free of extortion or the threat of harm. Competition over the right to extort and extract eventually produced states of war in villages and towns throughout Sicily's western highlands. In Uditore, a district lying just beyond Palermo, fighting between rival clans in 1874 left thirty-four people dead, a number totaling more than 4 percent of the population. Outsiders interpreted all of these signs of upheaval as the telltale traits of the Mafia.

“By then, authorities in Palermo and Rome understood that Uditore's clans, or cosche, were but one component of Sicily's Mafia. Other conspiratorial forces appeared to dominate the island but pinpointing them was a matter of heated debate. Among those who tried to grasp the essence of the problem was Leopoldo Franchetti, an intellectual and onetime parliamentarian from Tuscany. Franchetti arrived in Sicily in 1876 to conduct what he called a private inquiry into the troubles plaguing the island. He found no shortage of evidence of some kind of malevolent force that exploited innocent victims and undermined the state's authority. Clarifying exactly what was at the heart of these troubles was more difficult to explain. ‘Mafia is an extremely difficult thing to define,’ one policeman told him. ‘You would need to live in Sambuca to get an idea.’ As a liberal thinker, Franchetti interpreted the Mafia as a kind of rogue entrepreneurialism, or, as he called it, ‘an industry of violence.’ A mafia boss, or capo, used murder and the threat of harm to regulate ‘the division of labor and function’ and impose the sort of discipline that business demanded to ‘achieve an ample and constant flow of profits.’ Franchetti's high-minded explanations, however, had little effect upon Italian perceptions of the Mafia. Local politicians, as well as members of Italy's literati, often cast it as something more benign and less structural. Mafiosi, Palermo's mayor told one public inquiry, could be ‘anyone who has self-respect and has a certain exaggerated pride, and the inclination to not be overwhelmed but to overwhelm others, the will to appear courageous, to be ready to fight, and so on.’

“Some, however, were convinced that the Mafia was more than a culture of bravado and thuggishness. Police in Palermo had evidence of the Mafia's elaborate initiation rituals as early as 1876. This led one senior prosecutor to conclude that there were ‘groups or associations of criminals of various sizes here and there in Sicily,’ though they were not necessarily ‘confederated or bound to one another by links of mutual complicity.’ Historians tend to agree that what was called ‘the Mafia’ by 1900 constituted a spectrum of behavior and conspiracy. Cosche in Uditore and other parts of Sicily formed a constellation of small and often competitive bands who taxed and monopolized businesses such as the citrus industry. Bandits who looted the countryside often did so under the patronage of powerful landowners and petty officials who received a portion of their spoils. Petty criminals in Palermo and other towns similarly paid tribute to men of authority, be they policemen or political leaders. All of these instances at times were expressions of the Mafia's power. They did not, however, emanate from a singular organization or source of authority.”