LAST OF THE MAFIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19977, 20 December 1926, Page 11

LAST OF THE MAFIA

EXTERMINATION OF ORDER. A NEFARIOUS SOCIETY. (Frees Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.} ROME, December 17. The Mafia, after flourishing for over half a century, has been finally ex' -r----miuated. More than 1000 members of the order were captured in their last stronghold near Palermo (Sicily), and will shortly stand their trial. As no court is big enough to hold the accused, a special temporary court is being erected. The most dangerous members of the Mafia are refugees in America. Those captured include a famous woman brigand named Cagnaecia, who ruled the countryside around the Madonie Mountains with a rod of iron, even arranging marriages and levying taxes.—A. and N.Z. Cable. The Mafia, whose real home has been around Palermo, has for years terrorised Italy, and has baffled all attempts by the police to cope with it. In its crudest form the Mafia was co-operative brigandage, blended with the vendetta. The more strictly organised Mafia was a result of the disorders consequent on the expulsion of the King of Naples by Napoleon. When the Bourbon court took refuge in Sicily there was a large number of armed retainers in the service of the Sicilian feudal nobility. Ferdinand IV., at the bidding of England, granted a constitution to the island in 1812, and with the destruction of feudalism most of the feudal troops became brigands. Powerless to repress them, Ferdinand organised the bandits into a rural gendarmerie, and they soon established a reign of terror. The abject poverty of the poorer classes, who were unable to eke < i an existence by work in the sulphur mines or on the fields, fostered the growth of two classes. The vast majority of the inhabitants were glad to put themselves as passive members under the protection of the Mafia, while the active members shared in the plunder. The Mafia thus became a looselyorganised society under an unwritten code of laws or ethics known as Omerta (manliness), which embodied the rules of the vendetta. Candidates were admitted after trial by duel, and wer. sworn to resist law and defeat justice. Like the Camorra, the Mafia was soon powerful in all classes, and even the commander of the royal troops acted in collusion with it. Around Palermo no traveller was safe from robbery and the knife. In recent times the Mafia.has survived in an organised form only in isolated districts. It has been described as not so much a criminal association as a complex social phenomenon, the consequence of centuries of mikgovernment. A member was governed by a sentiment, akin to arrogance, that imposed a special line of conduct upon him. He considered it dishonourable to have recourse to lawful authority, to obtain redress for a wrong or crime committed against him. He therefore hid the identity of the offender from the police, reserving vengeance to himself, or his friends. In 1892, about 150 members of the Mafia were arrested at Catania, but the repressive measures proved useless. The Mafia has continued to flourish despite all efforts to repress it.