ABSTRACT
The Mafia1 has its origin in the latifundismo in western Sicily. The absentee landlord employed the gabelloto, and entrusted him with control of the latifondo. The gabelloti supervised the peasantry, collected taxes, and so on. They organized the campieri under their control to chain the peasantry to the land by force. The Mafiosi, who came into existence as a kind of armed vigilante, ran the show on the land as ‘violent peasant entrepreneurs’ and took u pizzu (protection money) from the landowners and the peasants in return for protecting them from robbers and bandits, and by acting as the mediators between the farms and the outside world.2 However, the Mafiosi lost control of latifundia land as their power base with the enactment of agrarian reforms in 1950. A lot of peasants poured into the big cities like Palermo in search of jobs, and the rural Mafiosi followed them.
