Made Men

by Marcel Danesi

  Omertà

  From the dawn of time, humans have organized their social relations and affairs into codes of conduct to impart continuity and fluidity to these relations. Culture is a network of codes that regulate human beings and provide guidelines on conduct and interactions. Some codes stipulate the fundamental values shared by members of the culture and by which they should live. All organizations also develop codes for themselves, explicit or implicit. Codeless organizations are an oxymoron. The Mafia continues to exist as an institution because of its code of omertà; without such a code, it would collapse. Criminal codes are typically kept secret. What is kept secret is meaningful; if revealed, it is believed to imperil the group, and the revealer is punished severely. As British writer Aldous Huxley writes, secrecy is a powerful motivating force in human groupings: “To associate with other like-minded people in small, purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction. Exclusiveness will add to the pleasure of being several, but at one; and secrecy will intensify it almost to ecstasy.”[4] In a conversation with another mobster in 1998, Carmine Alvaro, a ’Ndrangheta boss, was recorded saying the following: “Let me say one thing. The ’Ndrangheta is ugly for those outside of it. . . . But the ’Ndrangheta is extremely beautiful because it has the most beautiful rules. If anything goes, everything comes apart. Chaos results. Things must be done according to the rules” (translation ours).[5]

  The Mafia code is especially powerful and compelling because it taps into the cavalleria rusticana psychology of the Sicilian people, which also espouses an implicit principle of vendetta—anyone whom the Mob has targeted or persecuted and who seeks recourse to legal authority against the Mob is branded as a coward, meriting reprisal. This principle reflects a common attitude in various Latin and Mediterranean societies, that recourse to the law for offenses involving personal insult is unmanly. In fact, the Sicilian word for omertà (umirtà) connotes not only humility, but also manliness. “The marks of the true Mafioso,” writes Lunde, “are that he speaks little, makes each word count, and maintains a grave and dignified presence at all times, even under extreme provocation.”[6] This ideal of manliness goes back to ancient times when the Stoics extolled it, believing that a “real man” should be free from senseless passion and should calmly accept all occurrences as the unavoidable result of fate. A real man, according to omertà, will defend his honor and that of his family, no matter what personal consequences this will incur. In real chivalric times, the appropriate action for restoring lost honor was the duel or some other form of vengeful retribution involving physical conflict. Today, it is death by assassination. The code thus has a practical value for the Mafiosi—it hampers police investigations, because informants have been either sworn to silence by the code or else fear reprisal from the Mob. Ordinary citizens similarly fear retaliation, knowing full well that they or their loved ones would be punished severely if they broke the silence.

  A perfect example of this mind-set is found in a conversation between a Mafioso and his young son that was intercepted by police surveillance in 2001 in a town near Rome. The relevant part of the conversation is cited in what follows:

  Father: Did you understand what Mafioso means?

  Son: Uh?

  Father: What it means?

  Son: It’s when . . .

  Father: Ok, you have to listen very, very, very carefully to what I am going to tell you. There exists a concept of the law . . . the law exists . . . there are policemen, judges . . . there exists a concept of the family . . . do you follow, do you understand? Well, a [real] family never turns to the law, but seeks justice on its own terms. Do you understand what I’m saying? If someone does something against you, I would never go to the police and blab to them. “Someone has done something to my son.” I will get the person responsible and kill him! Do you understand how it works? That’s what the Mafia is all about.[7] (translation ours)

  The honor code of the Mob exacts total and complete obedience and compliance from members. Dickie puts it as follows:

  Honor accumulates through obedience: In return for what they call “availability,” individual Mafiosi can increase their stock of honor and, in doing so, gain access to more money, information, and power. Belonging to Cosa Nostra offers the same advantages as does belonging to other organizations, including the achievement of aspirations, an exhilarating sense of status and comradeship, and the chance to pass responsibility, moral or otherwise, upward in the direction of their bosses. All of these are ingredients of mafia honor.[8]

  Codes require symbols. Without symbols, a code will have virtually no meaning, as de Tocqueville points out. The Mafia code is replete with symbolism, transforming a mere criminal gang into a self-contained culture, imparting to its members a sense of belonging to something meaningful, and thus producing internal cohesion and a sense of identity that allows mobsters to set themselves markedly apart from the riffraff, which includes not only random gangs and street thugs, but also virtually everyone else.

  As in any cult or secret society, one has to earn admittance into the group by endorsing and assimilating the code and then proving his mettle and commitment through some initiation rite. Outsiders are considered irrelevant, at best, and cowards or disposable bodies, at worst. Traitors to the code are, needless to say, the most despised, because they have broken the oath of silence, honor, and respect. The code is a formidable emotional tool for engendering and guaranteeing allegiance to the Mafia. Belonging is perceived to be a privilege that only real men can earn. The Mafia code is not, of course, a legal document; it is a “legitimizing” document, complete with its own attendant norms, principles of justice, and set of lifestyle rules that are reminiscent of the honor codes of the past, especially those of medieval chivalric groups and secret societies like the Freemasons.[9]

  Membership in a Mafia clan produces a shared illusion of invulnerability and personal empowerment, and this illusion provides members with the impetus to take extraordinary risks and rationalize warnings and potential danger signs. In other words, membership produces an “empathy of belonging” based on the belief that agreement on issues is unanimous among all members. This puts the individual member in a position to ignore the broader ethical implications of what he does. Once a wise guy, always a wise guy. Like the three musketeers of fictional narrative lore, wise guys live by the creed of “one for all, all for one.” This puts pressure on members who stray from the clan’s belief system, who will inevitably be marginalized, ostracized, and even eliminated. Members feel compelled to shelter and protect the clan, and especially the leader, from adversities of all kinds. In other words, the code taps into a latent “village psychology,” described so eloquently by French writer Jean de La Bruyère in 1608:

  The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes. While the association holds and the fashion lasts, they admit nothing well said or well done except by one of themselves, and they are incapable of appreciating anything from another source, to the point of despising those who are not initiated into their mysteries.[10]

  Initiation rites into “the mysteries,” as de la Bruyère calls them, are compulsory and perceived as being of the utmost importance. A new member shows allegiance to the clan and its leader by undertaking specified actions (including murder), donning appropriate symbols (for example, marks on the body), and performing particular rituals. He must also take a specific oath of loyalty and assume the duty of patrolling a territory determined to be his turf. Finally, he must learn to use various signs, signals, and words so as to be able to communicate meaningfully with others and, at times, furtively with the other members in the presence of outsiders.

  The enormous emotional power of the code and its attendant symbols and practices, with their underlying chivalric connotations, has more to do with Mafia longevity than any of the traditionally accepted socioeconomic and sociopolitical causes.
[11] A recurrent reason why young people join gangs was encapsulated in the response given by one of them to a researcher for this book investigating the phenomenon of gang membership in general: “It’s cool, man! Nobody, messes around with us!”[12] Glorified by movies and other media, gang membership affords many young people the opportunity to look and act tough, just for the sake of it, or, more accurately, for the look of it. One thinks, for instance, of the media fixation with ghetto teen gangs in the 1950s—a phenomenon captured brilliantly by the 1957 musical West Side Story.[13] And, of course, movies like The Godfather and television series like The Sopranos add to the mystique of manly honor that is intrinsic to the constitution of all criminal organizations.

  The authorities are, of course, well aware of the power of omertà. In its 2003 annual report, the Commissione Parlamentare Antimafia characterized the ’Ndrangheta as a society held together by internal rules, hierarchies, and statutes that assign “dignity” to its actions, assuring the unabashed faithfulness of the initiate. Connecting to instinctive human values is, arguably, what makes the code compelling. The symbol used by the ’Ndrangheta to represent itself is, in fact, an ancient one connected to human origins—the “tree of knowledge”—that is divided into its various parts: the tree base, representing the head of the clan or capobastone, who exerts power of life and death over members; the trunk (fusto), representing the sgarristi, who are the spinal column of the clan; the branches (rami), or camorristi, who are responsible for organizing activities; the smaller branches (ramoscelli), who are the foot soldiers, known as the picciotti; and the leaves (foglie), which stand for recruits. The leaves that fall to the ground are the betrayers who, because of their disloyalty, are destined to die.[14] The ’Ndrangheta continues to thrive, as those familiar with its operations assert, because of the emotional influence of its code.[15] The symbol of the tree of knowledge as used by the ’Ndrangheta was first made public by testimony given in a Calabrian court in 1897, by a certain Pasquale Trimboli, and then published in Cronaca di Calabria, a weekly newspaper, on March 11, 1897.

  Throughout the world, the family is the traditional institution where values are learned and perpetuated.[16] Mafia culture is a culture stylized to resemble the extended family structure, but the concept of family espoused by the Mafia is an artificial and self-serving one. The movie Il capo dei capi (2007), which tells the story of infamous Mafioso Totò Riina, reveals the distorted view of family that the Mafia upholds on the surface. Riina has no respect for the lives of others, apart from those in his immediate circle of friends, family, and acquaintances. He endorses family and Catholic values openly but ends up perverting both. In the movie, Riina often says that one must never kill a cristiano, which in Italian means both “Christian” and “human being,” yet he turns around and does exactly that. Riina sees himself as a larger-than-life figure, resorting to omertà to justify his actions, alluding cleverly to the historical plight of Sicilians by suggestion. As John Lawrence Reynolds notes, it is in such subtle ways that the code imbues the Mafia with a sense of self-dignity and historical validation, since omertà “was born not from the machinations of a criminal mastermind but out of the desperate necessity of middle-class Sicilian families seeking control over their lives,” and this makes it possible to see that the “appalling behavior of the Mafia and its various progeny is actually rooted in good intentions.”[17] This theme is implicit in many early movies on the Mafia, including Italian Blood (1911), Omertà (1912), Dramma alla masseria (1912), The Padrone’s Ward (1914), Tresa (1915), and Malacarne (1918).

  The appeal of omertà can be explained, in part, in psychological terms. The code is appealing because it embraces an archetypal view of manliness and masculinity that is present in folk legends worldwide. It can be called the “Robin Hood archetype” mixed in with the “Shadow archetype,” as Carl Jung calls it—the archetype that expresses people’s innate fear of the dark and of secret or mysterious ongoings.[18] Mafia culture is both Robin Hood and Shadow culture. This is why Mafiosi link themselves to pirates, famous historical bandits, and the like. A case in point is that of the legendary bandit Salvatore Giuliano, which merits some commentary here, since he was the most famous bandit in Italian history, rising to the level of a folk hero, in large part because Giuliano understood the power of the media. The image of Giuliano as a rugged and handsome “bad boy” and Robin Hood figure was captured by the cameras, bestowing iconic power on him, as Dickie notes, writing the following:

  At the peak of his notoriety, Salvatore Giuliano made himself as accessible for photojournalists as he was elusive for the authorities. Consequently, his features are still instantly recognizable in Italy. In one of the most familiar photographs, he looks straight into the camera, his thumbs hooked inside the belt from which his holster hangs, his jacket pushed behind his hips to reveal a loose shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Giuliano had what is called an open countenance. By a recent calculation, forty-one biographies of him have been written since his death—more than any other person in postwar Italian history. Each book has promised finally to reveal the secrets hidden behind that broad, handsome face.[19]

  Giuliano’s reign as Italy’s Robin Hood lasted from 1943 to 1950. He prevailed for such an extensive period of time because he was protected opportunistically by the Mafia in collusion with corrupt politicians. When he was no longer useful to them, they murdered him. He became famous because he knew how to manipulate the media, writing letters to newspapers and giving interviews to journalists. He was photogenic and young—the perfect image of a swashbuckling folk hero. Admired by peasants and portraying himself as a staunch anti-communist, he became a veritable icon in his heyday. As support for Giuliano began to fade, he was shot dead by his close friend, Gaspare Pisciotta, purportedly under coercion by the Mafia.

  Many Mafiosi came to model themselves after Giuliano. The idea that gangsters are fashionable and handsome, yet brutal, has its own charm.[20] They belong to that “forbidden universe,” as previously mentioned, that common people seem unwilling to enter into, to escape the banality of modern living.[21] As Bill James writes, gangster archetypes are appealing to Americans because they are part of a morality tale from which they can learn something about themselves,[22] being “an expression of our impulse to draw a protective circle around ourselves.”[23] But lost in all this mythic glorification of criminals is, ultimately, the intense human suffering that comes from their crimes. Demystifying the archetype and the symbolism is crucial in bringing about a change in this deeply rooted attitude.

  As Reynolds observes, the Mafia likes to tell archetypal stories of early bandits who showed uncommon courage, the most famous of whom was a man named Saponara, captured and imprisoned by Spanish invaders in 1578:

  According to Sicilian lore, Saponara was tortured by his Spanish captors in an effort to learn the names of his cohorts, but Saponara chose to die in agony rather than betray others. His bravery became a symbol for every Sicilian who believed their salvation could be achieved only through loyalty.[24]

  But reality is vastly different from the legends. The real Mafia boss is not a larger-than-life personage, as is Marlon Brando in The Godfather. He is a brutal killer whose deeds are not romanticized by the gripping music of Nino Rota. No one says to a real capo, “Leave the gun; take the cannoli,” as in the movie. The Mafia loves to romanticize its image. In fact, the notion of padrino (godfather) comes from the movie, not from real Mafia culture. It is a convenient fiction that the Mafia has willingly adopted from the silver screen. The reason for this, nevertheless, makes historical sense. The padrino figure is, actually, an ancient archetype in Mediterranean cultures. His role is seen as a means for reinforcing family cohesiveness. He is a backup plan for fatherhood (should the biological father disappear from the family either through death or by wandering). All secret organizations, including noncriminal ones, have a padrino, or kingpin figurehead, who is in charge. In southern Italian religious culture, the padrino is perceived as being more
important to preserving family unity than the biological father. He is seen to be a kind of wise elder, providing sustenance to the family, both material and moral. The “capo-as-padrino,” as mentioned earlier, was adopted by the Mafia from The Godfather, seeing to it that it quickly became part of its own pseudo-religious mythology. Real padrini do not resemble the padrini of Hollywood. They appear commonplace, often rough looking and unassuming. To moviegoing audiences, images of real-life Mafiosi are thus somewhat jarring.

  All this collage of archetypes and myths would not have been possible in the first place without a sustaining code of omertà. The code allows Mafiosi to claim manly honor, in contradistinction to common hoods. Unlike the latter, the Mafia formalizes and thus legitimizes its vendettas, using its own form of tribunal justice reminiscent of the Inquisition, with similar interrogation techniques and ferocious punishments against both nonpaying individuals of the pizzo and internal traitors (those who betray the Mob by either leaving it or going to the authorities). The faccia tagliata (“the cut face”), for instance, is an indelible sign of infamy among the mobsters; it derives from the same kind of punishment meted out by the inquisitors to heretics. The “stone in the mouth” is also reminiscent of Inquisition symbolism, constituting a version of the mordacchia (a type of muzzle) used by the inquisitors to punish blasphemers. The testimony of a certain Salvatore D’Amico in the 1870s before a judge in Sicily accusing certain Mafiosi for having murdered his two sons dramatically emphasizes what Mafia justice is all about: “I will die at the hands of the Mafia because without doubt I will be killed. Neither you yourself, your authority, or the entire police force will be able to save me. A mother never forgives her dishonorable children” (translation ours).[25]