Men of Honour

Canadian security authorities and municipal police know that businesses in Montreal, Toronto, York Region, Hamilton and St.Catharines are well infiltrated by members of the Cosa Nostra, better known as the Italian Mafia. The criminal syndicate known as the Mafia dates from the early 1900s, a well seasoned criminal racketeering organization. Italian in origin, and widespread in Italy through their corrupt protection rackets.

Sketch of the 1901 maxi trial of suspected mafiosi in Palermo. From the newspaper L'Ora, May 1901

 

They have long established themselves as an organization that must be respected; they think of themselves as being honourable. And they extract money from businesses throughout Italy. That money is called pizzo, Sicilian for a bird's beak. The kind of bird, like one of nature's wonders, a hummingbird, known to flit from flower to flower, sipping nectar.

For the Cosa Nostra, skimming off a businesses' profits for guaranteed protection from harassment was nectar. The level of Mafia infiltration into Canada and North America in general has become more high profile and publicized of late, thanks to the uncovering of corruption in the Quebec building trades and their co-operation with and through political parties and government bureaucracies.

Much has been revealed of late thanks to the ongoing, spectacular witness revelations at the hearings of the Charbonneau Commission.  With one contractor and businessman after another implicating mayors of Quebec's largest cities, their political parties and the bureaucrats who work in the civil service, all involved to an amazing extent in the pay-offs and extortion demands.

What is being revealed for the Province of Quebec holds equal impact for Ontario, we are informed. And it remains to be seen how governments and their security agencies at various levels will be dealing with the issue. The Mafia is implicated in smuggling arms, tobacco, contraband drugs, and humans, quite aside from their financial interests in the construction trade.

What happens in Canada with the involvement of the Cosa Nostra is an underground secret; very few people know what is happening and how. In Italy it is quite a different matter. There the organization is known and feared and despised. It has feasted ravenously on the avails of business for a very long time. Most new businesses understand that part of their operating costs will be protection money.

But in Palermo, Sicily, thanks to the resentment of a group of young men who had the kind of stiff spines that would allow them to wonder why on Earth they would expect themselves to hand over hard-earned cash to crooks when planning to open a pub of their own, decided to do something about it. They began an at-first-underground group, naming it Addiopizzo ("goodbye pizzo"), to begin weaning business off the protection racket.

Defying the Mafiosos takes courage, and faith in one's fellow man to lend support and take risks themselves in becoming part of the effort. Heretofore, those rare individuals who had spurned the demands of the Mafia, found themselves without community support, and they became victims of their defiance, with their widows mourning the injustice of it all.

"It has not always been easy but we believe this is the right way. It is an important thing to do", explained one of the co-owners of a popular restaurant, the Antica Focacceria San Francesco, in Palermo, who has on prominent display in the window an Addiopizzo sign identifying them as one of the now one thousand businesses subscribing to independence from Mafia racketeering.

The movement did not bloom overnight with businesspeople scrambling eagerly to become part of the defiant resistance to the Mafia. Fear kept most from even contemplating joining the movement, well founded fear of violence, of having their businesses destroyed, of ending up dead, as so many had in the past.

To give businesses confidence, the group decided to canvass individuals as consumers, to ask whether they would agree to custom shops and businesses that agreed not to pay protection money. And with a roster of 3,500 names agreeing to support Mafia-free shops, businesses took comfort and courage and signed up. The campaign took off with its first one hundred business members, refusing Mafia racket-protection.

And they have never looked back. "Many investigations demonstrated that the so-called 'men of honour' tend to avoid committing extortions and similar crimes against members and associates of this kind of association", explained Eduardo Zaffuto, a spokesman for Addiopizzo. And the organization itself no longer hides its existence.

It has downtown offices in a luxury condominium once owned by a local Mafia boss. Under Italy's laws, convicted mobsters' property is confiscated and turned over to the benefit of groups within the community.