Institutions and Mafia in Italy: The case of Messina

The authors have concentrated their research on Messina—the ‘city of the Straits’—in which historically the Mafia played quite a minor role, at least until after the Second World War. After all, the long dominance of the agricultural economy (well described by the so-called meridionalisti) which characterised the history of Sicily during the nineteenth and first half of the following century saw theMafia play a role conditioned by the interests of the owners of large agricultural estates. The Mafia’s function was to control the farm labourers’ markets, gaining gabelle (rents) from the exploitation of the workforce. In Messina, though, the countryside was characterised rather by the diffusion of small or medium-sized properties, and the prevalence of high-quality arboriculture (citrus fruits, wine, and hazelnuts). This created a more modern model of labour organisation than that of the large estates. The town of Messina itself grew up as a result of the shipping business connected with the port, and there for a long time the most popular illegal activity was usury, even among the wealthiest classes. The destruction caused by the earthquake of 1908 and the negative impact this had on the economy (due to the period of reconstruction and also to the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s [1]) shifted this practice of loansharking from the town’s commercial sector to lower middle-class society, where it became an endemic evil and allowed a privileged few criminals to prosper.