Angelo La Barbera
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Angelo La Barbera (Palermo, July 3, 1924 – Perugia, July, 1975) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Together with his brother Salvatore La Barbera he was the head of the Mafia family of Palermo Centro. Salvatore La Barbera sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission that was set up in 1958.
Mafia career
Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera were born in the slums of the centre of Palermo. Their father sold firewood for a living. They started with petty larceny and murder and raised themselves to become prominent leaders of a new generation of mafiosi in the 1950s and 1960s who made their fortune in real estate transactions, cigarette smuggling and heroin trafficking. One of the La Barbera’s hitmen was Tommaso Buscetta, who subsequently became a pentito (collaborating witness) after he was arrested in Brazil in 1983.The La Barbera brothers were present at a series of meetings between Sicilian and American mafiosi that took place on October 12-14, 1957, in hotel Delle Palme in Palermo. Joseph Bonnano, Lucky Luciano, John Bonventre, Frank Garofalo, Santo Sorge and Carmine Galante were among the American mafiosi present, while among the Sicilian side there were Salvatore Greco "Ciaschiteddu" and his cousin, Giuseppe Genco Russo, Gaetano Badalamenti, Calcedonia Di Pisa and Tommaso Buscetta.
In 1960 Angelo La Barbera was spotted in Mexico City and subsequently expelled from the United States and Canada for allegedly organising trafficking in heroin. According to Buscetta, La Barbera tried to smuggle heroin from Mexico into the US, but was stopped by Carlo Gambino who threatened to kill him if he would proceed.
Political Connections
Angelo La Barbera had connections with local politicians of the Christian Democrat party (DC - Democrazia Cristiana) – in particular with Salvo Lima, the mayor of Palermo from 1958-1963. The new generation of mafiosi like La Barbera needed to create a new political base of their own, pushing forward new politicians through they could influenced control regional corporations, credit banks and circumvent building regulations.This period was later referred to as the “sack of Palermo” because the construction boom led to the destruction of the city's green belt, and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks. In the meantime Palermo’s historical centre was allowed to crumble. In 1964, during an investigation, Lima had to admit that he knew Angelo La Barbera.
First Mafia War
The La Barbera brothers were the protagonists in a bloody conflict between rival clans in Palermo in the early 1960s – known as the First Mafia War, a second started in the early 1980s –, for the control of the profitable opportunities brought about by rapid urban growth and the illicit heroin trade to North America.The conflicted erupted over an underweight shipment of heroin. The shipment was financed by Cesare Manzella, the Greco cousins from Ciaculli and the La Barbera brothers. Suspicion fell on Calcedonia Di Pisa, who had collected the heroin for Manzella from the Corsican supplier, Pascal Molinelli, and had organised the transport to Manzella’s partners in New York.
The case was brought before the Mafia Commission, but disagreement on how to handle it, led to a bloody conflict, between clan’s allied with the Greco’s, headed by Salvatore Greco, and clan’s allied with the La Barbera’s – in particular when Di Pisa was killed on December 26, 1962. The Greco’s suspected Salvatore and Angelo La Barbera of the attack.
On January 17, 1963, Salvatore La Barbera disappeared and was never heard of again. Angelo La Barbera also disappeared, but two weeks later Meanwhile he tried to retaliate
Death
Angelo La Barbera was sentenced to 22 years in 1968 but appealed. Pending the appeal, he was sent into banishment in the North of Italy and later to a remote island. When he was finally locked up in a prison in Perugia he was stabbed to death by three mafiosi.
Gaia Servadio, an English\Italian journalist who wrote a biography of Angelo La Barbera, described him as the symbol of the quick, clever gangster. The new post-war mafioso who in the end became the victim of the many politicians he himself had built up. He represented the proletariat who tried to become mafioso, middle class, and ultimately did not succeed.
Biography
- Angelo La Barbera : the profile of a Mafia boss (1974) Gaia Servadio, London : Quartet Books, 1974.
References
- Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day (1976) Gaia Servadio, Secker & Warburg ISBN 436447002
- Men Of Honour: The Confessions Of Tommaso Buscetta (1987) Tim Shawcross & Martin Young, Collins ISBN 0002175894
- Octopus. How the long reach of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade (1990) Claire Sterling, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0671734024
- Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia (2004) John Dickie, Coronet, ISBN 0340824352
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