Lercara Friddi - A Sicilian Mafia Town

 

Mafia Boss - Lucky Luciano

Lercara Friddi in Sicily, translates to English as "cold places". I believe this former mining town gets chilly because of its high altitude. It is 28 miles southeast of Palermo and was known for sulphur mining. It's also known for something called the Lercara Friddi massacre of 1893, when peasants and miners were killed on Christmas Day when protesting about taxes during the Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori (Sicilian Workers Leagues), uprising.

When they closed the sulphur mines in the 1950s, a lot of the miners emigrated to Belgium. It's not only the birthplace of Lucky Luciano but also Frank Sinatra's father. It seems that Frank Sinatra refused to acknowledge that his family came from Lercara Friddi and said they came from Catania. He was keen to distance himself publicly from any connections with the Mafia.

The more famous town of Corleone, is about 15 miles from Lercara Friddi and is also synonymous with gangsters and the Mafia.

An American writer called Maria Terrone, from New York, visited Lercara Friddi in 1983, and wrote about it in article entitled 'Sicily: My Enigma." She says that when a relative was asked, "Is the Mafia here?" he replied, "E a tutti banni", (It's Everywhere). Terrone was curious why there were no sit-down restaurants in one particular area that she visited and she was told that nobody would open a new business, because of the fear of extortion. She was told "For pizza, we travel to another town." Another relative from Lercara Friddi, also told her that when she was growing up, the Mafia even controlled the flow of water to the town faucets. She wrote that her own grandfather, a "prosperous store-owner", had left the town in 1907, when he refused to be extorted. Apparently, three armed men had visited him demanding money and he shot and killed one of the Mafioso. He then fled to America.

The "pizzu" or "pizzo", extortion money, is still common in some parts of Italy and Sicily. It has been claimed that the Mafia extorts more than 160 million Euros a year from shops and businesses in the Palermo region.