The Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is well-known around the world through its fictional portrayal in books, film, and television. The Godfather movie trilogy (yes, even the last one) introduced millions of people to the arcane rituals and honor code of the Cosa Nostra, often portraying its members as sympathetic antiheroes. More recently, fans of the hit HBO show The Sopranos followed the lives of several mafia members as they tried to balance their often violent and always illegal work with home lives as upper-middle-class Americans in the 2000s. Despite the mafia originating in Sicily in the 1800s, it has become an American symbol in many ways: violent and amoral on the one hand, while also loyal and enterprising on the other.
But in Italy, the Cosa Nostra is not the only game in town.
Alongside the Cosa Nostra in southern Italy are two other notable crime syndicates: the Camorra and the ‘Nadrangheta. Both of these organizations behave in much the same way as the Cosa Nostra. They engage in extortion, control smuggling in their regions, and run drug and prostitution rackets. These organizations also use violence to achieve their goals, emphasizing secrecy in their operations.
But the three organizations have different histories and structures.
The Camorra was first mentioned in a royal decree in the 1700s, but is thought to have originated in the 1600s in the Italian region of Campania, namely in the city of Naples. The Camorra existed for nearly two centuries as a collection of semiorganized thugs and hooligans. But it was transformed into a force to be reckoned with during the Italian independence movement of the mid-1800s. The pro-republican forces used the Camorra during some of the more violent street protests. By the late 1800s, the Camorra was one of the three major criminal syndicates and had expanded to countries with Italian diasporas around the globe.
The structure of the Camorra is horizontal in nature, with clans operating semi-autonomously. Despite not being tied to one leader or having a central structure, the Camorra clans live by a similar code that ties them together. The lack of a single leader has proven to be both beneficial and detrimental to the Camorra: The cell structure limits the effects that law enforcement raids have on the organization, but it also leaves the individual clans susceptible to other, larger criminal organizations.
Like the Camorra, the ‘Ndrangheta historically operated in a horizontal structure; member clans were semi-autonomous but followed the same code. The ‘Ndrangheta probably originated sometime in the mid-1800s in the region of Calabria, Italy, which put them physically between the Camorra and the Cosa Nostra. The ‘Ndrangheta’s proximity to the Camorra and Cosa Nostra has led to some conflicts with these syndicates, but there has mainly been cooperation among them—the leaders would usually come to agreements over territory and rackets.
But the decentralized nature of the ‘Ndrangheta became problematic for it.
The various clans began fighting each other in the 1980s and 1990s, which resulted in hundreds of deaths and the syndicate assuming a more Mafia-like centralized structure. Once the smoke cleared, the ‘Ndrangheta laid low while their Cosa Nostra counterparts fought with the Italian state. The result was the ‘Ndrangheta’s supremacy over the criminal underworld by the 2000s.
But in America, the Cosa Nostra is still king. The Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta have both set up operations in the United States but, due to a combination of aggressive law enforcement investigations, the presence of other organized ethnic crime syndicates, and Cosa Nostra members’ almost full integration into American culture (most know very little Italian), their members usually join American Cosa Nostra families.
Yes, the Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta may be older and more powerful than the Cosa Nostra. But, due to the latter’s “Americanness,” it will continue to be the subject of many more Hollywood films as well as the premier Italian crime syndicate in the United States for years to come.