The mafia has remained confined to western Sicily for over a century

Evidence

The enduring connection with the country is matched by an even more extraordinary stability which disposes of another stereotype: no only did the mafia grow mainly in western Sicily, but, with the exception of Catania, it has remained there to this very day. Leopoldo Franchetti was intrigued by this geographic rigidity as long ago as 1876 (p. 55). A map plotting the incidence of homicides a lupara based on reports from the newspaper L’Ora in 1956-7 (Map 2) shows an almost perfect overlap with the maps of the Prefects in 1874 and that of Cutrera (1900a; see Map 1 in Chapter 4). More importantly, this overlap extends to a Carabinieri report of 1987 indicating the towns and villages in Sicily where the mafia is particularly virulent (these are marked with a triangle in Map 1). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 662

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to Gambetta’s own argument that the protection industry depends on local embedded networks — this geographic rigidity is direct evidence for the theory.

Related

• Mafia families existed even in provinces considered untouched by 1990 (similarity 0.88)
• The Mafia industry shows strong geographic rigidity within Italy (similarity 0.87)
• Established mafia families never successfully transplanted outside Sicily (similarity 0.86)
• The mafia originated in southern Italy and nowhere else (similarity 0.84)
• Early mafia flourished in wealthy areas, not backward ones (similarity 0.83)
• Mafia emerged in prosperous divided-property districts, not poor ones (similarity 0.83)
• Criminal protection moved inland from the coast, not only cityward (similarity 0.82)
• Sicily had 24 percent of Italy’s robberies with 9 percent of its population (similarity 0.82)
• Mafia in rebellious Ionian Calabria took on populist, antistate connotations. (similarity 0.82)
• A thriving economy alone cannot explain mafia origins. (similarity 0.81)
• Sicily’s mafia is fragmented across 105 firms, not one monopoly. (similarity 0.81)
• Sicily’s 105 mafia families preclude a region-wide centralized monopoly (similarity 0.81)
• The mafia emerged between 1812 and 1875, anchored by dated evidence. (similarity 0.81)
• Sicily’s robbery share vastly exceeded its population share in 1990 (similarity 0.81)
• Mafia existed in towns as well as countryside from the start. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Prosperity alone cannot explain why the mafia arose only in western Sicily #corroborates (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 223
• Mafia families existed even in provinces considered untouched by 1990 #contradicts (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 879