This golden age for the island of Sicily is the time that Mafia propaganda reaches back to for nostalgia.
Did the Mafia begin with the Sicilian Vespers?
The Borgo Piano
Swift and ruthless justice was delivered in a broad plaza to the north of Corleone. When Republicans in Sicily revolted, their insurrection was put down violently by King Ferdinand’s military battalions. Several of those involved, including two who survived the crackdown, had ties to one of the earliest documented organized criminal gangs in Corleone… and... Continue Reading →
A stranger in this town
At the height of the cholera epidemic, a foiled Republican plot for independence leads to mob violence. Strangers are the enemy in every story of Sicilian revolution. This is because the Sicilian story is one of constant invasion and foreign control. In 1282, during the Sicilian Vespers, anyone who looked or sounded French was killed.... Continue Reading →
City of courage, city of faith
There are two versions of the events of the twenty-seventh of May 1860 in Corleone. There is the version every person from Corleone knows and celebrates in a church festival each spring, in the month following Easter. And then there is what really happened. The popular story is that the revolution that birthed the Italian... Continue Reading →
The Ficuzza
The woods to the northeast of Corleone were a natural place to hide stolen cattle.
Mafia Genealogy 