Mafia Upstart
In the 1950s and 1960s, Torretta together with other upstart Mafia bosses like the La Barbera brothers and their henchmen formed the so-called ‘New Mafia’ which adopted new gangster techniques. Other smaller cosche came to recognize the supremacy of these bosses – a supremacy achieved by sheer violence. Men who were starting their ‘careers’ in their shadow were forming into new generation of mafiosi; they had initiative, and the road to leadership of a cosca had suddenly become quicker and available to those who were fast with their tommy-guns. One of the other upstarts was Tommaso Buscetta, another was Gerlando Alberti.
Torretta actively participated in what is called the Sack of Palermo. In 1959, the Christian Democrat Salvo Lima became mayor of Palermo. That became the peak period of Palermo’s controversial building boom and of warfare among the capital’s cosche making money in the real estate business. Mafia bosses were granted building licenses through contacts with politicians. The construction boom destroyed the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks.
Read more about this topic: Pietro Torretta
Famous quotes containing the word upstart:
“Jean Jacques Rousseau ... is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)