Antonino Calderone - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Antonino Calderone is a Sicilian

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

Mafioso

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

who turned state witness (pentito

Pentito

Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...

) in 1987 after his arrest in 1986.

Antonio was the brother of Giuseppe Calderone

Giuseppe Calderone

Giuseppe “Pippo” Calderone was an influential Sicilian mafioso from Catania. He became the ‘secretary’ of the interprovincial Sicilian Mafia Commission, formed around 1975 on his instigation. Its purpose was to coordinate the provincial Mafia commissions and avoid conflicts over public contracts...

, the boss of the Mafia in Catania

Catania

Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse. It is the capital of the homonymous province, and with 298,957 inhabitants it is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy.Catania is known to have a seismic history and...

. Antonio's memoirs, Men of Dishonor: Inside the Sicilian Mafia, were published in 1992

1992 in literature

The year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...

with Antimafia sociologist Pino Arlacchi

Pino Arlacchi

Giuseppe Arlacchi, also known as Pino, is an Italian sociologist and is well known worldwide for his studies and essays about the Mafia...

and are considered a handbook for understanding Cosa Nostra and the life of a mafioso. It was translated into many languages.

Mafia career

Originally, Catania

Catania

was not a traditional Mafia area. The Mafia was much more infested in the western part of Sicily. According to Antonino Calderone, the first Mafia family in Catania was started by Antonio Saitta. He had been prosecuted by Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

’s Iron Prefect, Cesare Mori

Cesare Mori

Cesare Mori was a prefect before and during the Fascist period in Italy. He is known in Italy as the Iron Prefect because of his iron-fisted campaigns against the Mafia on Sicily in the second half of the 1920s.- Early years :Mori was born in Pavia and grew up in an orphananage and was only...

. One of his daughters was the mother of Giuseppe and Antonino Calderone. Another uncle had helped the Mafia get back on its feet after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, organizing the black market in contraband cigarettes.

Antonino Calderone, narrating his initiation ritual in Catania in 1962, recalls that he was surprised to see at the gathering people he knew and he never suspected were in the Mafia, and not to see people he thought were in the organization. Despite being from a historical Mafia family and the brother of the boss of the Mafia in Catania, Calderone was not aware of what was going on.

Antonino Calderone became the underboss of the Catania Mafia family. On September 30, 1978, his brother and boss of the Catania Mafia, Giuseppe Calderone

Giuseppe Calderone

, was killed by his former close friend and protégé Nitto Santapaola. Santapaola had forged an alliance with the Corleonesi

Corleonesi

The Corleonesi is the name given to a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was called the Corleonesi because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca...

and took over the command of the Catania Mafia Family.

Calderone was more and more marginalized and decided to leave Catania in 1983 fearing for his life. With his wife and three children he moved to Nice

Nice

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, where he ran a Laundromat. On May 9, 1986, he was arrested in Nice

Nice

Pentito

While he was in the Nice prison, Calderone became convinced that he was about to be killed by other Sicilian inmates. Suddenly, he began screaming for a prison guard and demanded to see the head of the prison. He said he wanted to talk to judge Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone was an Sicilian/Italian prosecuting magistrate born in Palermo, Sicily. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Mafia in Sicily...

. Calderone was moved to an insane asylum for his own protection.

On April 9, 1987, Falcone – together with French prosecutor Michel Debaq sat face to face with Calderone in a Marseille

Marseille

Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

prison. After an initial refusal to talk, Calderone suddenly said, "I know a lot about the Mafia, because I am a member of it." Once he started, Calderone talked for almost a year.

Falcone flew once a week to Marseille, taking some 1,000 pages of deposition from Calderone. Calderone proved to be a remarkably accurate witness. More than 800 details were checked. On March 19, 1988, Falcone issued 160 arrest warrants on the basis of the testimony of Antonino Calderone.

Mafia in Catania

While previous pentiti

Pentito

had all been from Palermo

Palermo

Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...

, Calderone described the grip of Cosa Nostra in Catania

Catania

, the main city and industrial centre on Sicily

Sicily

's east coast. He testified about the relationship between the Mafia and the four Cavalieri del Lavoro (Knights of Labour) of Catania: the construction entrepreneurs Carmelo Costanzo, Francesco Finocchiaro, Mario Rendo and Gaetano Graci – who needed the mafiosi for protection. Construction sites of rival companies were bombed and at least one rival of Costanzo was assassinated.

Calderone also talked about the links of Cosa Nostra with law enforcement, freemasonry

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

, judges and politicians in Catania and the Italian government. "We in Catania, when we had a problem with the judiciary, we would turn to the local Masonic head. We knew that many magistrates were lodge members and that, thanks to the local chief, we could even interfere with ongoing criminal proceedings," Calderone said.

The Catanese Mafia was generally able to learn about arrest warrants before they were issued and sometimes have names crossed off the list. When they needed a false passport they turned to ‘their’ member of parliament in Rome, Giuseppe Lupis of the small Democratic Socialist Party

Italian Democratic Socialist Party

The Italian Democratic Socialist Party is a minor social-democratic political party in Italy. Mimmo Magistro is the party leader. The PSDI, before the 1990s decline in votes and members, had been an important force in Italian politics, being the longest serving partner in government for Christian...

. Lupis was one of the top vote-getters in Catania.

According to Calderone the late 1970s were a turning point in the relationship between the Mafia and politics. The Mafia started to feel superior and politicians could not refuse requests for favours.

Testimonies

Calderone was different from previous pentiti

Pentito

such as Tommaso Buscetta

Tommaso Buscetta

Tommaso Buscetta was a Sicilian mafioso. Although he was not the first pentito in the Italian witness protection program, he is widely recognized as the first important one breaking omertà...

and Salvatore Contorno

Salvatore Contorno

Salvatore "Totuccio" Contorno is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who turned into a state witness against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of Tommaso Buscetta. He gave detailed accounts of the inner-workings of the Sicilian Mafia...

. While they expressed no regret for their crimes, Calderone seemed to suffer from genuine remorse.

As the brother of a Commission

Sicilian Mafia Commission

The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra...

member, Calderone knew a lot about the workings of Cosa Nostra and confirmed the essential role of the Commission in the major assassinations of the 1970s and 1980s. He provided first-hand accounts of the leaders of the Corleonesi

Corleonesi

, Luciano Leggio

Luciano Leggio

Luciano Leggio was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone...

, Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano

Bernardo Provenzano

Bernardo Provenzano is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of having been the head of the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the village of Corleone, and de facto capo di tutti capi of the entire Sicilian Mafia until his arrest in 2006.His nickname is Binnu u tratturi...

. "The Corleone bosses were not educated at all, but they were cunning and diabolical," Calderone said about Riina and Provenzano. "They were both clever and ferocious, a rare combination in Cosa Nostra."

One of the more bizarre anecdotes Calderone related in his memoirs was that of Riina giving a tearful eulogy at the funeral of his murdered brother, even though Riina himself had ordered the killing. Yet, Riina's admiration for Giuseppe Calderone might have been sincere: he regretted having to have him killed, just as a president of a company regrets having to lay off a valued employee during difficult economic times.

Calderone’s most explosive revelation was about Salvo Lima, prime minister Giulio Andreotti

Giulio Andreotti

Giulio Andreotti is an Italian politician of the now dissolved centrist Christian Democracy party. He served as the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior , Defense Minister and Foreign Minister and he...

’s chief lieutenant in Sicily, and the Salvo cousins

Antonio Salvo

Antonio Nino Salvo and his cousin Ignazio Salvo were two wealthy businessmen from the town of Salemi in the province of Trapani. They had strong political connections with the Christian Democrat party , in particular with the former mayor of Palermo, Salvo Lima, and Giulio Andreotti...

, wealthy tax collectors on the island. He described how he and his brother conferred with Lima and the Salvo cousins to get a zealous police officer in Catania transferred.

’Mafia analyst’

Calderone testified in numerous trials, among others in the Maxi Trial

Maxi Trial

The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant...

appeals and in the trial against Giulio Andreotti

Giulio Andreotti

. In 1992 he published a book with Antimafia sociologist Pino Arlacchi

Pino Arlacchi

Giuseppe Arlacchi, also known as Pino, is an Italian sociologist and is well known worldwide for his studies and essays about the Mafia...

about his life in Cosa Nostra, that was translated in many languages. These memoirs read like a handbook for understanding Cosa Nostra and the life of a mafioso.

After the murder of Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone

, Calderone gave a little noticed but accurate analysis of the attack: "Such a spectacular public bombing is never in the interest of the Mafia … it is a sign of weakness." The killing had become necessary because of a series of major defeats, according to Calderone. "Falcone had been condemned to death a long time ago, but the sentence could no longer be put off for two reasons: the Supreme Court’s decision to confirm the life sentences of the bosses of the Commission

Sicilian Mafia Commission

… and the increasing certainty that Falcone would be super-prosecutor. As long as convictions could be overturned in Rome, there was no need to act. But a definitive life sentence unleashed a reaction of rage. The Corleonesi

Corleonesi

and the winning families lost their heads." He went on to predict that other killings would soon follow: "Cosa Nostra has a little book and for every name there is a time."

Quotations

Every mafioso knows perfectly well, when all is said and done, where his power comes from. People are scared of being physically hurt, and, more than that, no one wants to risk being killed.

In a world as complicated as Cosa Nostra’s even small wrongs are remembered for years and there are thousands of tangled relationships; … grounds for suspicion and sinister hypotheses are never lacking.

The mafioso is like a spider, building webs of friends, acquaintances, obligations.

One goes in and comes out of Cosa Nostra with blood. You will see for yourselves, in a little while, how one enters with blood. And if you leave, you’ll leave with blood because you’ll be killed.

Around every man of honour of a certain rank there is always a circle of twenty, thirty, youths who are nobodies wanting to become somebodies.

The Christian democrats were truly democratic, they divided power up. You could come to an arrangement, you could cheat a lot more.

Biography

Arlacchi, Pino & Antonio Calderone (1992). Men of Dishonor. Inside the Sicilian Mafia. An Account of Antonio Calderone, New York: William Morrow & Co.

Sources

Gambetta, Diego (1993). The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection, London: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-80742-1
Behan, Tom (1996). The Camorra, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-09987-0
Paoli, Letizia (2003). Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-515724-9
Schneider, Jane T. & Peter T. Schneider (2003). Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo, Berkeley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-23609-2
Stille, Alexander
Alexander Stille
Alexander Stille is an American author and journalist. He is the son of Ugo Stille, a well-known Italian journalist and a former editor of Italy's Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper. Alexander Stille graduated from Yale and later the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism...

(1995). Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage ISBN 0-09-959491-9

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