Fatti maschii, parole femine is the state motto of Maryland, the only state to have an Italian motto rather than one in English or Latin. It translates as “Deeds [are] Masculine, Words Feminine.”
Such male chauvinism is typical of Italian culture dating back to Roman times. Our word ‘virtue’ comes from the Latin root ‘vir’ (man). Romans placed enormous value on ‘virtus’: manliness, honorable, worthy of respect, and duty-bound as both a citizen and soldier.
Over the centuries “manliness” took a turn for the worse. ‘Men of Honor’ comes to mind in reference to mafiosi and The Godfather series. In fact, the original Sicilian meaning of mafia or maffia and mafioso, according to every source I’ve found, was ‘fearless,’ ‘proud,’ ‘respected,’ even ‘handsome.’ The terms were complimentary for any powerful man – honest or not. There is even a ‘complimentary’ surname Maffia that some families carry today.
These accolades came to be applied to thieves and murderers during the 19th Century when Sicily was under royal Bourbon control (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), before Garibaldi took possession of that island in 1860. Having power – legally or not – strong men filled a vacuum in Sicily before its reunification with Italy. Sicilians could not depend on the Bourbons for protection or justice. Such things became personal matters; so, appealing to a powerful robber baron or a gang leader was the only practical way to survive. Oppressive landowners hired mafiosi to keep sharecroppers in line and to protect their herds and property. Poor folks knew the system and kept quiet.
The art of keeping quiet had another Sicilian word: omertà. The word has nothing to with silence. The root is dialect from the Italian uomo (man), Latin homo, silence is a manly virtue.
The Camorra ruled
Caserta province.
The Bourbon police didn’t have the will or resources to tame the various mafias on Sicily. So, they hired them to be the police. Logically, who knows who the crooks better than other crooks? This was the system Garibaldi found in 1860. But, the new Italian government would have none of this collusion and tried over sixty years to clean up the island. Despite mass arrests and extra-legal methods, the State never succeeded. During this time, poor Sicilians fled the island for a better life in the Americas. Unfortunately, some mafiosi tagged along eventually supplanting the WASPs, Irish and Jews already running organized crime in the United States.
The new Italy also had to contend with other mafias in the Campania and Calabria regions on the peninsula. Outside of Naples it was the Camorra, in Calabria the ‘Ndrangheta. Just as in Sicily, the word ‘Ndrangheta was a manly appellation — from the Greek andrós (man) and agathós (good, brave). As for ‘Camorra,’ legend has the meaning as Capo [di] Morra (Boss of Gambling – morra being a finger game popular among men) humorously describing illegal gambling as one of their rackets.
When the Fascists came to power in 1922 these regional mafias needed to be eliminated. In 1925, Mussolini appointed Fascist Prefect Cesare Mori to handle Sicily. And, the Duce was just as shocked by the Camorra’s reign of terror concentrated in the Province of Caserta, a plague of murder, arson, and theft as bad as in Sicily. There, he sent Major Vincenzo Anceschi of the Carabinieri.
Both Mori and Anceschi unleashed the all-powerful Fascist State on the ‘Men of Honor.’ Thousands were jailed until Sicily and Caserta were pacified by 1929. As a double measure against the Camorra, Mussolini redrew the regional map of Campania. The governing of Caserta was assigned to the Province of Naples. Caserta’s port city of Gaeta, birthplace of explorers John Cabot and Enrico Tonti, was transferred to the new Province of Latina in the Lazio Region. As for the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria, its leaders quickly got the message and played dead until after the fall of Fascism.
With Italy’s defeat in 1943, the Mafia, Camorra, and ‘Ndrangheta were resurrected to ply their trades once more. Politically, Gaeta remains in Lazio, but Caserta Province was restored in 1945.
At least for today, no one associates manliness and virtue with these regional terrorists. -JLM
Nobody would know and nobody would care about those criminal organizations if Hollywood had never made movies and TV shows about them.
Antwerp (Belgium) is the European capital of cocaine trade and consumption. Does anybody care about criminals from Northern Europe?
Excellent comment on the very idea of media manipulation and/or mythologizing.
The only reason even the stupidest person knows the word “mafia” is because of endless media repetition.
In 1927’s “The Cameraman,” comedic great Buster Keaton plays a hapless New York city news photographer who ends up becoming unwittingly involved in a gang war between two violent mob factions. The Gambinos and the Profacis? No. Chinese Triad gangsters.
Imagine if some Hollywood producer had seized upon the image of “colorful” Chinese gangsters and then preceded to make movie after movie after movie after movie about them (real or fictionalized) over the next 80 years. Therein lies the difference.
There but for the grace of Hollywood, go the Asians.
If that had happened, it would be Chinese Americans, not Italian Americans, who’d constantly have to push back against the Big Lie that criminality is “part of” Asian culture.
I recently viewed Pompei, an Italian-made movie with an all-Italian cast. Dressed in togas and military garb, the actors had complete credibility as “noble Romans”. However, change the costumes and the locale to say Brooklyn, in an American-made mob movie, and the same actors could unquestionably pass as typical “mob types”. It’s all about the powerful conditioning that has occurred since The Godfather was made.