"Mafia"

"Mafia," in Arabic, means a place of sanctuary, and the word took its place in the Sicilian language when the Saraceans ruled the country in the tenth century. Throughout history, the people of Sicily were opressed mercilessly by the Romans, the Papacy, the Normans, the French, the Germans, and the Spanish. Their governments enslaved the poor working class, exploiting their labor, raping their women, murdering their leaders. Even the rich did not escape. The Spanish Inquisition of the Holy Catholic Church stripped them of their wealth for being heretics.

And so the "Mafia" sprang up as a secret society of avengers. When the royal courts refused to take action against a Norman noble who raped a farmer's wife, a band of peasants assassinated him. When a police chief tortured some petty thief with the dreaded cassetta, that police chief was killed. Gradually the strongest-willed of the peasants and the poor formed themselves into an organized society which had the support of the people and in effect became a second and more powerful government. When there was a wrong to be redressed, no one ever went to the official police, they went to the leader of the local Mafia, who mediated the problem.

Lupara: a deadly sawed-off shotgun. It is tradition that every Sicilian peasant own a lupara. The hatred of a Sicilian peasant could never be taken lightly.

The greatest crime a Sicilian could commit was to give any information of any kind to the authorities about anything done by the Mafia. They kept silent. And this silence came to be called omerta. Over the centuries the practice enlarged to never giving the police information about a crime committed even against oneself. All communications broke down between the people and the law enforcement agencies of reigning governments so that even a small child was taught not to give a stranger the simplest directions to a village or a person's house.
Throughout the centuries the Mafia governed Sicily, a presence so shadowy and indistinct that the authorities could never quite grasp the extent of its power. Up until World War II, the word "Mafia" was never uttered on the Island of Sicily."

In the Italian culture, the family is a crucial and fundamental element of society. Its importance probably goes beyond other Western cultures today. The family is always a source of protection and support for the individual.
"A man who never spends time with his family, can never be a real man."

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