Sicilian mafiosi ran drug trafficking long before the 1960s

Evidence

Two persistent stereotypes—that mafiosi, like Don Corleone in The Godfather, were reluctant to embark on the drug trade, and that in Sicily they were occupied exclusively with rural affairs until the 1960s—are simply untrue. As early as 1935, Serafino Mancuso was sentenced by a U.S. court to forty years’ imprisonment for dealing in narcotics. Deported in 1947, he returned to Alcamo, where he resumed with his brother what was to be a long-lived and successful business. The Mancusos were not just merchants; they were also competent in processing morphine (Serafino, for instance, reprocessed ten kilos of poor-quality heroin, “squeezing” five good kilos out of it). In 1947-48 Lucky Luciano, Frank Coppola, and Angelo Di Carlo were also deported to Italy and brought their expertise back to their homeland. These repatriations gave the trade new impetus (CPM: 74, 78, 622, 999). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 628

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Directly rebuts the Don Corleone drug-reluctance trope from The Godfather; also ties into my reading purpose via how criminal expertise is repatriated across borders.
• ADDENDUM: Furnishes concrete documentary data that could extend the ‘On Sacrifice’ theme of mafia as alternative governance — here evidencing a pre-state drug market.

Related

• Mafia members engaged in the drug trade well before the 1970s (similarity 0.94)

Broader Connections

• Mafia cartels formed per province only after the late 1950s #contradicts (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 283
• The mafia has remained confined to western Sicily for over a century #contradicts (0.70) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 662