UNIT 42

► Ex. /. Scan through the text. Work in pairs to question the text and to give answers.

Mafia is a large organised group of criminals who control many illegal activities especially in Italy and the US. In the United States, the organization had adopted the name Cosa Nostra ("Our Affair"). The Mafia arose in Sicily during the Middle Ages, where it possibly began as a secret organization dedicated to overthrowing the rule of the various foreign conquerors of the island. The Mafia owed its origins and drew its members from the many small private armies, or mafie, that were hired by absentee landlords to protect their landed estates from bandits. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the energetic ruffians in these private armies organized themselves and grew so powerful that they turned against the landowners and became the sole law on many of the estates, extorting money from the landowners in return for protecting the latter's crops. The Mafia's moral code was based on omerta — i.e., the obligation never, under any circumstances, to apply for justice to the legal authorities and never to assist in any way in the detection of crimes committed against others. The right to avenge wrongs was reserved for the victims and their families, and to break the code of silence was to incur reprisals from the Mafia. By about 1900 the various Mafia "families" controlled most of the economic activities in their respective localities. In the early 1920s Benito Mussolini came close to eliminating the Mafia by arresting and trying thousands of suspected mafiosi and sentencing them to long jail terms. Following World War II, the American occupation authorities released many of the mafiosi from prison, and these men proceeded to revive the organization. The Mafia's activities henceforth were directed more to industry, business, and construction, as well as the traditional extortion and smuggling. During the late 1970s the Mafia in Palermo became deeply involved in the refining and transportation of heroin for the United States. The enormous profits sparked fierce competition between various clans within the Mafia, and the resulting spate of murders led to a lot of trials in 1987.