Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...could irrigate some 25,000 acres of parched, stingy land in the northwest. The government assigned funds for the dam two years ago. but, Dolci laments, "Not one stone 'has been turned." Danilo and the government had counted without Sicily's most implacable foe of progress: the Mafia...
Violently resisting any step that might loosen their feudal hold on the pinched and primitive peasantry, Mafia bullyboys scared off government engineers with threats and gunfire, sabotaged machinery for the dam. Landowners, whose fields would be submerged by the backed-up water, turned down the government's offer of $840 per acre, asked $3,600 instead -presumably on Mafia orders...
...been worth if it was watered, that's a loss of $160 million-while poverty continues to erode hundreds of thousands of families." At week's end Dolci won. In Rome, a Cabinet Minister called a meeting to re-study the lato project; in Sicily, even the Mafia began to feel uneasy. With Mafia permission, landowners announced their willingness to accept a new government offer of $1.200 per acre. Crusader Dolci, with victory in sight, broke his ten-day fast and looked around for another windmill of privilege worthy of his lance...
...lacked proof of their actions. One wealthy villager who refused to listen was shot to death by three masked gunmen. Gardener Lo Bartolo was arrested as an accomplice, soon was found in his cell hanging by the bed sheet-victim either of suicide or of preventive murder by the Mafia, who feared that he would squeal. Evidence against the friars finally came to light two years ago, when police discovered a typewriter in Father Vittorio's cell that matched some of the death threats...
...despite the attempts of top New Jersey Democrats to land him a job with the Administration, the former Phillipsburg lawyer-who took a fatal hesitation step before jumping on the 1960 Kennedy bandwagon-announced that he would be returning to private practice. As Meyner himself once confided, "The Irish Mafia doesn't like...