Page 582 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

1979), who launched a women’s movement against the Mafia with the words, “If you

manage to change the mentality, to change the consent, to change the fear in which the
Mafia can live – if you can change that, you can beat them.”

It is precisely that element of “consent” among ordinary Sicilians that has always
been the strongest weapon in the Mafia’s armoury, indeed the very foundation of the
Mafia’s existence, bolstered by an attitude that has traditionally regarded the mafioso
stance as a revolt against the State, justified by centuries of oppression by foreign
regimes. This historical dichotomy is perhaps best expressed by one of Sicily’s

greatest writers, Leonardo Sciascia, who proclaimed, “It hurts when I denounce the
Mafia because a residue of Mafia feeling stays with me, as it does in any Sicilian. So
in struggling against the Mafia I struggle against myself. It is like a split, a laceration.”

At least the problem is being confronted, and few Sicilians now hold any illusions
about the true nature of the Mafia, shorn of its one-time altruistic ideals – if they ever
existed. And crucially, the myth of the Mafia’s invincibility has been irreparably
dented.

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