Sicily's Mafia: Life After Decapitation

Open ambition is a dangerous thing for a mafioso. For years, Salvatore Lo Piccolo managed to mask his highest aspirations as he rose from loyal foot soldier to the upper reaches of the Mafia hierarchy. The 65-year-old Palermo native always seemed to know how to wind up on the winning side of internal feuds, a gift that eventually made him supreme boss in the Sicilian capital. But Lo Piccolo wanted more: control over the entire island of Sicily, expanded cooperation with U.S. mobsters, even the title of capo dei capi — the boss of bosses.

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That drive would spell his doom. Along with his son Sandro, 32, whom he'd been grooming for succession, Lo Piccolo was arrested on Nov. 5 after more than two decades as a fugitive. Convicted in absentia on multiple murder charges, Lo Piccolo was taken to an undisclosed prison on the Italian mainland, as was his son, also a convicted murderer. Their capture follows the April 2006 arrest of Bernardo Provenzano, the all-powerful Mafia boss, who evaded authorities for 43 years and is now also serving a life sentence for murder.

Taken together, these arrests deal a major blow to the Mafia. But this hydra-like organization, also known as Cosa Nostra (Our Thing), is so deeply woven into the fabric of Sicilian society that the Italian state is far from claiming final victory. "Cosa Nostra is built on a capacity to adapt to the time and situation, to camouflage itself and raise its head only when necessary," says a senior Palermo-based investigator who worked on the Lo Piccolo case. Lo Piccolo's takedown shuffles the deck in the organization, but hardly eradicates it.

Giuseppe Lumia, a member of the Italian Parliament's Anti-Mafia Commission, calls the Mafia "a force in movement, in transition." He says remaining bosses may do their best to "absorb" the arrests and continue Provenzano's strategy of keeping the peace within the organization. But Lumia warns that some at the top may feel forced to "impose new leadership through violence." The boss with perhaps the best chance of extending his grip across Sicily — one way or the other — is Matteo Messina Denaro, 45, of the western coastal city of Trapani. Given the historical supremacy of Palermo, that would mark a departure — or simply yet another in the Mob's endless series of creative adaptations.

The Sicilian Mafia, founded in the mid-19th century as a protection racket in Palermo, is the master template of the modern organized-crime network. Yet its success is grounded in paradox. Cosa Nostra is a multinational conglomerate based in the backwater of Sicily, an organization bred in violence that accumulates power best when it maintains internal peace. It is an association of men — sometimes men of extraordinary influence and charisma — yet the Thing is always bigger than even its most powerful bosses.

Coupled with other crime syndicates across Italy's south, including the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra around Naples, the Mob is not just murderous, but also a major drag on Italy's economic development. A recent report by the Confesercenti small-business association estimated that organized crime accounts for 7% of Italy's GDP, a larger share than any corporate behemoth, even the energy giant ENI. The Sicilian Mob is one of Italy's original multinationals, having partnered with its Italo-American cousins and gangsters around the world to traffic drugs and weapons, launder money and promote other illegal cross-border business.

Italian authorities say Lo Piccolo was working hard to rebuild those transatlantic ties, largely disrupted in the 1980s by U.S. investigations and local Sicilian turf wars. He had allowed members of a historic Mafia family, the Inzerillos, to return to Palermo in recent months from more than two decades of forced exile in the U.S. after former top boss Totò Riina tried to exterminate the entire clan. Piero Angeloni, head of Palermo's police detective unit, says Lo Piccolo's arrest is likely to stall Sicilian efforts to deepen links with the "Americani." But the contacts are sure to continue. "This relationship is essential — it always has been," Angeloni told TIME.

Before he was nabbed last year, Provenzano lasted a decade as Italy's most-wanted fugitive. He was so sure of his standing as the Mafia's unrivaled leader that he could severely limit his movements; his whereabouts were only verified when cops spotted him sticking his hand out of a boarded-up farmhouse to receive a package. In contrast, says Angeloni, Lo Piccolo's ambitions left him more exposed to capture, which occurred after he and his son showed up in a Toyota Yaris for a summit at a country house west of Palermo. "The Lo Piccolos were still in the phase of conquering territory, which required them to constantly make contacts, to be present in first person, to be operative," Angeloni explains. For too long in Sicily, the competition for territory has been fought solely among power-hungry mafiosi. Lately the state has shown tenacious ambitions of its own, but the battle is sure to go on.

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