Tough Pasta

Salvatore Riina, aka 'The Beast' ('La Belva'), was known to have ordered the murders of magistrates, policemen and scores of rivals (numbering several hundred) throughout the two decades he was the head of the Corleonesi faction of the Sicilian Mafia ....

Salvatore Riina aka 'The Beast'

..... he was alleged to have personally killed 40 men. He was captured after 23 years on the run near Palermo in May 1993

 

This capture left the Italian Government with the problem of what to do all the land and properties he had accumulated in 23 years at the top of the corruption chain in Italy. They eventually seized the property under a law passed in 1996 .... but all was not well. The locals refused to have anything to do with the seized the properties."We all still know who the local bosses are right now," says one local. "They're just not the brutal gangster types of the olden days".

So people from the north were invited to come and turn the properties into 'Ethical "Mafia-free") businesses'  ... the locals still won't go in to them, and so its left to tourists who book via a new brand of Sicilian travel agency offering Mafia-free holidays at establishments that refuse to pay protection money, or "pizzo".

Bernardo Provenzano, aka 'The Tractor'

Typical of these new mafia free businesses is the former home of Bernardo Provenzano, aka 'The Tractor'  for his ruthless trait of mowing people down, which is now a co-operative shop known as "Bottega della Legalita" or "Shop of Legality".... local custom is sparse "because it's absolutely impossible to shop here unseen," although it sells pasta, sauces and wine produced by co-operatives now farming former Mafia land.

Bottega della Legalita

Most goods are sold in the North of Italy .... ah well, as a wise man once said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" ... Big changes start with small steps.