Nation: United by Oath and Blood

CENTURIES before La Cosa Nostra was heard of in the U.S., the Mafia operated—even as it does today—as a brigand government in much of Sicily. Though many Italian immigrants had come to the U.S. to avoid just such oppression as the Mafia offers, a few among them formed a new Mafia in the new country. In the crowded “Little Italys” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the thugs found easy prey among people who had been taught to dread the terrorists’ Black Hand.

Prohibition offered the transplanted Mafiosi the chance they could not have made for themselves. Only they had the organization that could capitalize on the potential of bootlegging. Only they lived among people who already operated home stills that could quickly be converted into commercial distilleries. With fantastic profits, little crooks became big crooks, and the peculiar society of petty outlaws became the all-powerful Cosa Nostra.

There was enough intraorganizational feuding to fill a graveyard. Often the battle lines were drawn between Sicilians and Neapolitans—a distinction that causes ill feeling even today. But Sicilians from one area also fought Sicilians from another area, going so far as to take Neapolitans as allies. A particularly bloody period in 1930-31 called the Castellammarese War (the town of Castellammare del Golfo was home to one of the factions) killed about 60 gangsters. Thus the factions agreed to unite behind the Mob’s modern founding father, Salvatore Maranzano.

A Castellammarese who borrowed his ideas from Julius Caesar’s military command, Maranzano laid down the patterns that still, with minor modifications, hold today. To stop the killing, said Maranzano, the gangs that then existed would henceforth be recognized as families, each with its own territorial limits. Heading each family would be a boss, or Capo. Under him would be an underboss, or Sottocapo, and beneath the underboss would be any number of lieutenants, or Caporegimes, leading squads of soldiers, or “button men.” One advantage of the scheme was the insulation it provided the men at the top. In the ordinary course of events, they would never put themselves within easy reach of the law.

The organization’s code of conduct was partly Maranzano and partly Mafia omerta, a combination of such qualities as manliness, honor and willingness to keep secrets. Its requirements have never changed. The penalty for breaching the code: death. Except for the Chicago branch, which has always disdained the ornate, members are bound by an elaborate ceremony of medieval hocuspocus. Flanked by the boss and his lieutenants, the initiate and his sponsor may stand in front of a table on which are placed a gun and, on occasion, a knife. The boss picks up the gun and intones in the Sicilian dialect: “Niatri representam La Cosa Nostra. Sta famigghiaè La Cosa Nostra [We represent La Cosa Nostra. This family is Our Thing].” The sponsor then pricks his trigger finger and the trigger finger of the new member, holding both together to symbolize the mixing of blood. After swearing to hold the family above his religion, his country, and his wife and children, the inductee finishes the ritual. A picture of a saint or a religious card is placed in his cupped hands and ignited. As the paper burns, the inductee, together with his sponsor, proclaims: “If I ever violate this oath, may I burn as this paper.”

Brilliant as Maranzano’s plan was, it had one major flaw: Maranzano himself. Like his hero Caesar, Maranzano suffered from overweening ambition. Above the family bosses, there was, under his scheme, to be a Boss of All Bosses, a Capo di Tutti Capi, by the name of Salvatore Maranzano. When several of the family bosses found out that he was plotting to kill them, they worked up an assassination scheme. Five months after he took power, Il Capo di Tutti Capi was murdered. The same day, Sept. 10, 1931, 40 leaders allied with him were slain across the country.

With Maranzano’s death, a kind of peace did settle over Cosa Nostra. There have been skirmishes and murders aplenty since then, but never anything like the Castellammarese War. In place of the Capo di Tutti Capi, the mobsters formed a Commission made up of nine to twelve family bosses to guide the organization and settle disputes. While its powers have never been precisely spelled out, the Commission seems to be roughly analogous to the governing body of a loose confederation. It must approve each family’s choice of boss, and it can, if it wants to, remove a boss—usually by assassination.

Often, the Commission’s chief function seems to be preservation of the balance of power, making sure that no one boss gains too much power. In Cosa Nostra’s terms, as in nations’, that is guns. Theoretically, at least, the 24 families have not been allowed to increase their numbers since the ’30s. They vary greatly in size now, as they did then, from Carlo Gambino’s army of 1,000 in New York to James Lanza’s tiny, ineffectual squad of twelve in San Francisco. Currently, several families are open to recruits, offering new opportunities for growth and power. United by oath and blood, Maranzano’s organization may have as long a life as Caesar’s.