How activists are
winning Sicily back
from the mafia

On 8 April, at the height of Italy’s coronavirus lockdown, the brother of Nicolò Cusimano, a well-known Sicilian mafia boss, was spotted carrying shopping bags full of food to homes in the Zen, one of Palermo’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Local authorities believe it was evidence of the Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s infamous mafia, attempting to gain influence and control among impoverished communities as economic hardship intensified across the city during the pandemic.

“This is the mafia’s strategy,” says Edoardo Zaffuto, a founding member of the Palermo-based anti-mafia organisation, AddioPizzo, whose name refers to saying “goodbye” to the “pizzo” – Sicilian slang for the mafia’s extortion of businesses. “They try to take advantage of this current situation of vulnerability” adds Zaffuto, of the mafia. “Sometimes they use threats and violence, but occasionally they can also put on a generous attitude. That way they can ask for something in return, in the future. So we knew there was an immediate urgency to help those families.”

In response, the team at AddioPizzo ramped up its focus on social outreach programmes across the Sicilian city. From February until April, donations were collected from supermarket shoppers – everything from packs of pasta to babies’ nappies – and distributed to 80 of the poorest families in Palermo, with AddioPizzo’s headquarters in the Kalsa neighbourhood acting as a ramshackle storage facility.

“The food distribution is an answer to the needs of the people, and also to prevent the mafia from doing it instead of us,” Zaffuto explains. “We wanted to show that the institution [of Addiopizzo] as well as the community could provide something really helpful for these families. So they could rely on us.”

AddioPizzo has also been helping members of the community - many of whom do not have access to computers or the internet - with their online applications for coronavirus-related government financial assistance. This follows three years of diverse outreach work, including helping schoolchildren with homework, cultural activities and sport, as well as raising €25,000 to build a playground in Piazza Magione. To raise awareness, educational tours, open to tourists and soon available in a virtual format, have offered insight into the city’s history of civic resistance against the mafia.

AddioPizzo was founded in 2004, and it began as a support network linking small businesses that refused to pay the “pizzo”. It gathered local consumers willing to support a “clean” economy. Today the social enterprise leads a network of more than 1,000 businesses in and around Palermo. Distinctive window stickers proclaiming “I pay who does not pay” help identify them. 

Marco Ferro, 62, is the owner of A Ma Che Bontà, a shop in Palermo’s historical centre selling classic Sicilian produce – from Modica’s renowned grainy chocolate to pistachios from Bronte. He’s been part of the scheme for nine years. “I refused to pay something that wasn’t due, I didn’t want to participate in illegality,” he says. “When I heard about the AddioPizzo scheme, I wanted to join straight away. The support network has been very important for us.”

The Sicilian mafia has long held an iron-like grip on Palermo and much of the Italian island. Feeding like a parasite on cafés, bars and restaurants across the city, the mafia ruled with bloodshed, publicly murdering politicians and prosecutors that got in its way. According to a 2012 study by SOS Impresa, the anti-racket arm of the Italian retailers association, around 70% of the 50,000 businesses based in Sicily paid the pizzo, mostly in large urban centres such as Palermo, Trapani, Catania and Messina. 

The costs for businesses can be enormous. A survey by the Rocco Chinnici Foundation found that small businesses such as shopkeepers and artisans on average pay up to €600 a month in protection money. For larger companies like supermarkets and construction firms, the price of the pizzo can reach thousands of euros.

But in large part thanks to AddioPizzo, Palermo is gradually being won back by the people of the city. In June, some 90,000 companies in Sicily, led by local associations, signed a manifesto against the pizzo – a huge act of defiance, and arguably a sign that a tipping point has been reached.

The stories that AddioPizzo members tell, however, reveal that this has not been an easy struggle. Lucio Gionti, 66, the owner of Caffè del Kassaro in Palermo, says he first began receiving threatening phone calls from the mafia in 1997. To force him to pay the pizzo, they set fire to some wooden benches in his shop. And he describes how, later on, gangsters tasked with controlling the area surrounding his business superglued his cafe’s shutters, as a warning.

“People think that they come into a shop screaming and with a gun,” says Gionti. “But more often than not, their threats are subtle. They don’t want to draw attention to themselves.”

Gionti has remained steadfast in his opposition to the mafia, even after they tried to force him to install poker machines in the café in 2013. “It’s a refusal of everything they stand for,” he says. “It will take generations, but we will be victorious.”

Umberto Santino is a well known historian of the Sicilian mafia and founded the No Mafia Memorial, an educational centre in Palermo. He believes the AddioPizzo scheme has been key in turning the tables. “The  mafia is much less powerful than before,” he says. “It is in crisis and it has many problems.”

But Santino also cautions that during periods of economic hardship, procurement fraud, extortion money and the exploitation of communities remain sources of income for the gangsters. “This is a very important moment,” he warns.

Palermo is home to some of the poorest communities in Europe, and the situation is set to worsen with the impending, pandemic-induced economic recession. As one of the founders of AddioPizzo, Zaffuto stresses that the organisation is now trying to estimate how many of the businesses in its network won’t be able to survive this crisis. Statistics show Italy is experiencing its worst recession since world war two.

“We know the crime of shark loans is increasing,” said Zaffuto. “The mafia can make a lot of money through interest on loans, and many small to medium sized businesses could fail. These can be more tempted to seek the mafia’s help because banks are less inclined to offer loans.”

To counter this danger, AddioPizzo has applied for project funding from the EU - to  further social projects aimed at protecting businesses. This would help provide extra tools, like legal aid, psychological assistance and business consulting. Zaffuto is hopeful that businesses “will be better prepared for a future without the mafia”. He adds: “If we can achieve that, we will have reached our goal”.