Local mafia bosses preferred political settlement over violent response to an external challenger

Evidence

The dispute did not end there. Di Stefano’s challenge coincided with the attack launched by a Palermo faction against the Agrigento cartel. The account of these events in the files of the Agrigento trial is not altogether clear, but the most plausible reconstruction is that Di Stefano’s gang sided with the Palermo faction and participated in the action against the cartel. The first Agrigento mafioso to disappear was Carmelo Salemi in 1980 (his body was found in 1987, buried along with his BMW). Then Giuseppe Settecasi, the oldest and most prominent boss in the province, was shot dead in 1981. He was followed later that year by Alfonso Caruana, another leading mafioso from Siculiana, murdered in Palermo at his son’s wedding. For a brief while, Carmelo Colletti, boss of the town of Ribera, was the most prominent member of the Agrigento carrel still alive. Rather than respond violently, he tried to settle the dispute politically. Also, according to his son’s statement to the police three years later, he hoped to act as a mediator in the local feud between Di Stefano and the “official” Favara family. He had little success. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 274

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with Gambetta’s premise that violence is the mafia’s core asset — here the incumbent’s rational response to predation is mediation, not escalation, complicating the pure protection-market model.