In Sicily, Defying the Mafia | People & Places | Smithsonian Magazine
4/22/13 In Sicily, Defying the Mafia | People & Places | Smithsonian Magazine Pow ered by In Sicily, Defying the Mafia Fed up with extortion and violent crime, ordinary citizens are rising up against organized crime By Joshua Hammer Photographs by Francesco Lastrucci Smithsonian magazine, October 2010, Until recently , Ernesto Bisanti could not hav e imagined he would face down the Cosa Nostra (Our Thing)—the Sicilian Mafia. In 1 986 Bisanti started a furniture factory in Palermo. Soon after, a man he recognized as one of the neighborhood’s Mafiosi v isited him. The man demanded the equiv alent of about $6,000 a y ear, Bisanti told me, “ ‘to keep things quiet. It will be cheaper for y ou than hiring a security guard.’ Then he added, ‘I don’t want to see y ou ev ery month, so I will come ev ery June and December, and y ou will giv e me $3,000 each time.’ ” Bisanti accepted the deal—as had nearly all the shop and business owners in the city . The arrangement lasted for two decades. “Sometimes he showed up with a son in tow,” Bisanti recalled, “and he would say , ‘Please tell my son that he has to study , because it’s important.’ It became like a relationship.” A stocky man with gray hair, Bisanti, 64, told me the money wasn’t that burdensome. “In their sy stem, it’s not important how much y ou pay . It’s important that y ou pay ,” he said. “It’s a form of submission.” Then, in Nov ember 2007 , police arrested Salv atore Lo Piccolo, the head of Palermo’s Mafia.
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