The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

Abstract

“Working” relationships emerged between bootleggers of every ethnicity, just as conflicts within and between groups intensified, calling for ever more lethal weapons, ever larger arsenals and armored cars, ever more sophisticated strategies to launder money, bribe police, corrupt politicians, and take down competitors. In this context, the American Mafia outstripped its Sicilian counterpart in capital accumulation and attempts at central coordination and control in order to contain the violence—that is, until the Sicilian Mafia became the global mediator of heroin trafficking in the late 1970s and 1980s. Taken together, these books suggest new ways of thinking about organized crime and Italian migrant communities in the United States. It is not just that the American version was a simple transplant from Sicily; as Lombardo emphasizes, each developed in a specific historical context and adapted in its own way to very different social contexts. Thus, for example, the Sicilian Mafia played an organic role in the development of mass political power on a national scale in Italy (an aspect that Lupo explores but is not discussed here), while the American Mafia was considerably more involved in labor racketeering and gained special power from supplying the population’s thirst for alcoholic beverages during the Prohibition years. Yet, as part of the same world system, with members who easily traveled back and forth, transporting resources and evading arrest, each organization provided support and manpower to the other at critical moments in its history.