More Letters from Sicily

by Carl Russo

Below are more excerpts of emails sent to the funders of my Sicilian Mafia photo shoot, which concluded March 2. Where are all the photos? I'm saving them for the book, of course!

Ninetta BagarellaFEBRUARY 23: It took me four trips to Corleone over the years to get every photo I need, and the collection is now complete. Only in the last year did I find home addresses for godfathers Luciano Leggio and his protege, Totò Riina. Totò's sister still lives in the Riina house, but she has never been a problem. Getting the house of Riina's wife, Ninetta Bagarella—that's been intimidating.

She was born into the Mafia in this house and became the first woman to be convicted of Mafia association. Her husband Totò "the Beast", her eldest son and her brother are all behind bars. But with with the youngest son out of prison (living north) and a daughter who married a mafioso in town, I didn't want to let any menfolk catch me taking pictures of the house….

By my luck, I chose Saturday morning, the time the old women beat their rugs on their balconies and waddle off to the market. I waited for one to finish her errands—too short to be Ninetta—then powered up my tiny backup camera in my pocket and walked down that alley. I got to #24 and took three automatic shots of varying exposures. No screams, no guys yelling "O! O!"….

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Pushback

by Bluto Ray

You’re late for an appointment in downtown Palermo. The traffic was insane, the one-way streets ran you in circles, but, at last, you’ve found a space in a dark alley just big enough for your car. As you open the door and step out, a young man approaches.

“How long will you be?” he asks, smiling. You’re taken aback. You realize he wants money and you’re intimidated.

Vincenzo Conticello“About fifteen minutes,” you respond. It’s a lie but he might be a car thief. “How much is it?”

“Whatever you want,” he says with a shrug. You cough up a few euros and he thanks you graciously.

After an hour passes, you rush back to find your car safe and sound. As you pull out of the alley, you pass the young man who nods and flashes another smile. You feel taken and curse him under your breath. But as time goes on, you start to look for illicit parking attendants like him, and even feel uncomfortable leaving your car without paying somebody to protect it.

In southern Italy, paying the pizzo (in Sicilian, “u pizzu”) can feel like the natural order of things. The nineteenth-century grain farmers who turned over most of the harvest to overlords were expected to give an additional scoop, the pizzu, or beakful, to the estate guards. Thus, “wetting the beak” (“fari vagnari u pizzu”) became the tribute paid to the middlemen--the mafiosi who guaranteed distant landlords a smooth operation under threat of violence.

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