The Sicilian Mafia Gangland Graveyard Sicilian Mafia also known as Cosa Nostra, in English Our Thing This Thing Of Ours is a criminal syndicate in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering. Each group, known as a family, clan, or cosca, claims sovereignty over a territory, usually a town or village or a neighbourhood borgata of a larger city, in which it operates its rackets. Its members call themselves men of honour, although the public often refers to them as mafiosi. The American Mafia arose from offshoots of the Mafia that emerged in the United States during the late nineteenth century, following waves of emigration from Italy. There were similar offshoots in Canada among Italian Canadians. The same has been claimed of organised crime among Italians in Australia Since their appearance in the 18th century, Italian organized crime and criminal organizations have infiltrated the social and economic life of many regions only in Southern Italy, the most notorious of which being the Sicilian Mafia, which would later expand into some foreign countries including the US. There are five main known mafia like organizations in Italy. Cosa Nostra of Sicily, Ndrangheta of Calabria, who are considered among, if not the biggest cocaine smugglers in Europe and Camorra of Naples, are rather old: they started to develop between 1500 and 1800. Recently, two new organizations, Stidda and Sacra Corona Unita of Puglia have appeared.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 22:20:50 +0000
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