Calogero Vizzini
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Calogero Vizzini, Mafia boss of Villalba |
Calogero Don Calò Vizzini (
July 24,
1877, Villalba â€"
July 10,
1954, Villalba) was the
Mafia boss of
Villalba in the
Province of Caltanissetta. Vizzini was considered to be one of the most influential Mafia bosses of Sicily after World War II until his death in 1954.
In the media he was often depicted as the "boss of bosses" â€" although such a position does not exist in the loose structure of the Mafia, and later Mafia turncoats denied Vizzini ever was the boss of the Mafia in Sicily.
Don Calogero Vizzini was the archetype of the paternalistic "man of honour" of a bygone age, that of a rural and semi-feudal Sicily that existed until the 1960s, where a mafioso was seen by some as a social intermediary and a man standing for order and peace.
Don Calò once explained how he saw the mafia when he was interviewed by
Indro Montanelli in the
Corriere della Sera (October 30, 1949):
"The fact is that in every society there has to be a category of people who straighten things out when situations get complicated. Usually they are functionaries of the state. Where the state is not present, or where it does not have sufficient force, this is done by private individuals." Vizzini's onetime criminal dossier included 39 murders, six attempted murders, 36 robberies, 37 thefts and 63 extortions.
Vizzini's was born in
Villalba, a village in a poor region of
Sicily, where people lived of subsistence agriculture. Calogero Vizzini's father was a farmer, and his brothers Giovanni and Giuseppe were both priests. Giuseppe Vizzini became the bishop of Muro Lucano.
Calogero Vizzini, however, was semi-literate and didn't finish elementary school. He was protected by the
bandit Francesco Paolo Varsallona, an alleged "man of honour", who supplied manpower to noble landowners to repress farmers' revolts. When Varsallona was arrested in 1903, the young Vizzini was already a
gabelloto â€" a leaseholder of an estate subletting land.
The Mafia of Villalba was of relatively recent origin. It does not go back to the 1860s. It started as a form of private protection and has little to do with large estates. Around the 1890s some people â€" including the young Calogero Vizzini â€" decided to do something about the absence of peace and security in the countryside. The state police at the time was as much a danger as the brigands. The Villalba Mafia thus emerged as an alternative social regime centered around the membership in church-sponsored associations that generated considerable social capital. It later transformed into a protection racket, victimizing villagers and landowners alike through violence, intimidation and
omertà .
[Village Politics and the Mafia in Sicily, Filippo Sabetti, McGill-Queens University Press 2002 (First published in 1984 as Political Authority in a Sicilian Village, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick (NJ) ]In 1917, Vizzini was sentenced to 20 years in first instance for fraud, corruption and murder, but he was absolved thanks to friends which exonerated him. He made his fortune on the black market during World War I, and expanded his activities to the sulphur mines. As a representative of a consortium of sulphur mine operators, Vizzini participated in high-level meetings in Rome and London concerning government subsidies and tariffs.
Don Calo further established his fortune in 1922 when he led disgruntled peasants who grabbed land from the aristocratic absentee landlords. Every peasant got a plot but Don Calo, with characteristic forethought, kept more than 12,000 acres (49 km²), for himself, according to a local villager.
[Villalba Journal; How Don Calo (and Patton) Won the War in Sicily, The New York Times, May 24, 1994]In 1931, during Fascist rule, when the prefect of Palermo,
Cesare Mori, was granted special powers to prosecute the Mafia, he was banned for several years from Sicily. According to the police he was involved in several crimes and he had connections with other Sicilian Mafia bosses. He returned to Villalba in 1937, received and respected by the entire village.
In July 1943, Calogero Vizzini allegedly helped the American army during the invasion of Sicily during World War II (
Operation Husky). In the US, the
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had recruited mafia support to protect the
New York waterfront from
Axis Powers sabotage since the US had entered the war in December 1941. ONI collaborated with
Lucky Luciano and his partner
Meyer Lansky, a Jewish mobster, in what was called Operation Underworld.
The resulting Mafia contacts were also used by the US
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) â€" the wartime predecessor of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) â€" during the invasion of Sicily. Popular myth has it that a US Army airplane had flown over Villalba on the day of the invasion and dropped a yellow silk handkerchief marked with a black L (indicating Luciano). Vizzini subsequently organised a proper welcome for the Allied troops and helped them to defeat the Italian and German troops. Historians are inclined to dismiss this legend nowadays.
The American Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) looking for anti-fascist notables to replace fascist authorities made Don Calogero Vizzini mayor of Villalba, as well as a Honorary Colonel of the US Army. Because of his excellent connections, Vizzini also became the ‘king' of the rampant post-war black market. AMGOT relied on mafiosi who were considered staunch anti-fascist because of the repression under
Mussolini. Many other mafiosi, such as
Giuseppe Genco Russo, were appointed as mayor of their own home town. Coordinating the AMGOT effort was the former lieutenant governor of New York, Colonel
Charles Poletti, whom Luciano once described as "one of our good friends."
A peasant told the social activist
Danilo Dolci [
1] in the 1950s how the situation was in Villalba after the Americans had landed:
"They robbed the storehouses of the agrarian Co-op and the army's storehouses; sold food, clothes, cars and lorries in Palermo on the black market. In Villalba all power was in their hands: church, Mafia, agricultural baks, latifundia, all in the hands of the same family … One used to go and see him and ask ‘Can you do me this favour?' even for a little affair one had with some other person."[Quoted in Mafioso by Gaia Servadio (see references).]The Italian author
Luigi Barzini, Jr. described his stature and daily life in Villalba in his book 'The Italians':
"From the shadows along the walls and narrow side streets, people would come out and line up to see him â€" peasants, old women in black, young mafiosi. His magnanimous and protective manner, the respectful greetings of passers-by, the humbleness of those approaching him, the smiles of gratitude when he addressed them, all recalled an ancient scene: a prince holding court in the open air."Vizzini, a staunch anti-communist who opposed the fight for land of Sicilian peasants, organised his own peasant cooperatives in his area during both post-war periods, through which he deflected the appeal of the left-wing parties, maintained his hold over the peasants, and guaranteed his own continued access to the land.
On September 16, 1944, the Communist leader
Girolamo Li Causi went to speak to the landless labourers at an election rally in Villalba, challenging Don Calò in his own personal fiefdom. Li Causi denounced the unjust exploitation of the Mafia. The rally ended in a shoot out which left 18 people wounded including Li Causi himself.
In the following years left-wing leaders in Sicily were killed or otherwise targets of attacks, culminating in the killing of eleven people and wounding over thirty at a May 1 labour parade in
Portella di Ginestra. The attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader
Salvatore Giuliano. However, the Mafia was suspected to instigate many of the attacks.
Vizzini initially supported the separatist movement in Sicily and its main protagonist Salvatore Giuliano. He soon changed sides, however, adhering to the
Christian Democrat party (DC â€"
Democrazia Cristiana) when it became clear that an independent Sicily was not feasible.
Bernardo Mattarella, one of the party's leaders, welcomed Vizzini adherence to the DC in an article in the Catholic newspaper
Il Popolo in 1945. He allegedly helped to capture and kill Giuliano in 1950.
Vizzini's support for the DC was not a secret. During the crucial 1948 elections that would decide on Italy's post-war future, Vizzini and Genco Russo sat at the same table with leading DC-politicians attending an electoral lunch.
In 1949 Vizzini and Italo-American gangster boss Lucky Luciano set up a candy factory in Palermo exporting all over Europe and to the US, which police suspected was a cover for heroin trafficking.
In 1950, Lucky Luciano was photographed in front of the Hotel Sole in the centre of old
Palermo â€" often the residence of Don Caló Vizzini â€" talking with Don Caló's bodyguards. The photographer was beaten up, but he never denounced the fact after receiving an expensive new camera and cash.
His tentacles reached the United States where he knew the future family boss Angelo Annaloro of
Philadelphia, known as
Angelo Bruno, who was born in Villalba.
Don Calò Vizzini died on July 10th 1954. Thousands of peasants dressed in black, as well as politicians and priests took part in his funeral, including Mussomeli boss
Giuseppe Genco Russo and the powerful boss Don
Francesco Paolo Bontade from Palermo (the father of Mafia boss
Stefano Bontade) â€" who was one of the pallbearers. Even the
New York Times reported the news of the death of this local Mafia chief (
Sicilian Mafia 'King' Dies, July 13, 1954).
Villalba's public offices and the Christian Democratic headquarters closed for a week in mourning. An elegy for Vizzini was pinned to the church door which said:
"Humble with the humble. Great wit the great. He showed with words and deeds that his Mafia was not criminal. It stood for respect for the law, defence of all rights, greatness of character: it was love."With the death of Vizzini the old-fashioned traditional rural Mafia slowly passed away as well to be replace with a more modern, often urban version of gangsterism.
"When I die, the Mafia dies," he told journalist Indro Montanelli.
Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day (1976) Gaia Servadio, Secker & Warburg ISBN 436447002
The Politics of Heroin. CIA complicity in the global drug trade (1972) Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill Books
Octopus. How the long reach of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade (1990) Claire Sterling, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0671734024
Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (2003) Letizia Paoli, Oxford University Press ISBN 0195157249
Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia (2004) John Dickie, Coronet, ISBN 0340824352
*
Excerpt from The Honoured Society, by
Norman Lewis (first published in 1964).
*
The Mafia and Politics, by Judith Chubb, Cornell Studies in International Affairs, Occasional Papers No. 23, 1989.
