Structure and Composition
Cosa Nostra is not a monolithic organization, but rather a loose association of groups known alternately as "families", "cosche", "borgatas" or "clans" (despite the name, their members are generally not related by blood). Today, according to the Chief Prosecutor of Palermo, Francesco Messineo, there are 94 Mafia clans in Sicily subject to 29 mandamenti, with a total of at least 3,500 to 4,000 full members. Most are based in western Sicily, almost half of them in the province of Palermo.
Read more about this topic: Sicilian Mafia
Famous quotes containing the words structure and/or composition:
“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)