Word: nostras
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Where is the law? Why, despite some troubles, does Cosa Nostra survive and thrive? Beyond its own inherent strength and tradition is its ability to corrupt civil officials. Probably no other group in history has made such a fine art of corruption. Without the fix, Cosa Nostra would not last out the year. Nor are local cops the only ones who yield to temptation. Three days after a report on skimming in Las Vegas was sent to the U.S. Attorney General's office in 1963, a complete copy was in the hands of the criminals cited in the report...
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...
...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...
...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...
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...