Sicilian Culture: The News: Gotti Dying, But American Mafia Weakened Long Ago

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Gotti Dying, But American Mafia Weakened Long Ago
Yahoo Lifestyle, Reuters, By Brant McCool
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - - NEW YORK (Reuters) - John Gotti, the flamboyant Mafia boss who became known to the world as ``The Dapper Don,'' is dying in prison. But across the United States and especially in NewYork, his gangster lifestyle of extortion and murder is...severely weakened.
There are almost daily prosecutions and trials of mobsters from New York to Philadelphia, from Chicago to Atlanta. But law enforcement officials and old Mafiosos say times have most definitely changed for the worse for Italian-American crime families.
``La Cosa Nostra across the U.S. is much, much different, ''Keith Trace, manager of the FBI squads that fight organized crime in New York, said in an interview with Reuters...
Former Mafioso-turned-author Salvatore ``Bill'' Bonanno, said that for a short period of time in the mid-20th century, ``we were involved in every political, social and religious institution in this country...`` Just like everything else, our time came, and went.''
The infamous crime families may be faded, battered organizations, but the U.S. public's fascination with them is apparently unlimited, with demand high for books, movies, TV shows and Web sites. The most recent example is the HBO cable TV drama series ``The Sopranos' about a New Jersey mobster. It quickly developed a cult following and has been watched by millions of viewers for three straight seasons...
OLD-STYLE MAFIOSO
Bonanno, a self-described old-style Mafioso who is writing a history of the American Mafia, said that long before Gotti's brief rise, Cosa Nostra (''Our Thing'') had lost any traces of the traditions of kinship that immigrants brought from Sicily at the end of the 19th century to protect each other and their extended families.
``What's out there today is nothing more than a parody of what it used to be because the glue that held us together -- the trust, the loyalty, the obedience, the friendships, the family ties -- is not there anymore,'' Bonanno, 68, said in a telephone interview from Tucson, Arizona, where he retired from the life of organized crime 30 years ago.
His father, Sicilian-born Joseph ``Joe Bananas'' Bonanno, ran one of the five most powerful crime families in New York from 1930 to the end of the 1960s. At its height, the Bonannos had interests in New York's concrete business, Kennedy airport, the Fulton Fish Market and labor unions.
The elder Bonanno was anonymous until a police raid on a mobster's meeting in Appalachian, New York, in November 1957. He is now 97 years old and also lives in Arizona.
``People of my world, in my generation anyway, lived off the values of kinship and we had respect for one another, the recognition of power and place, yours and somebody else's,'' Bonanno said. ``We had that father figure, we had that figure of omnipotence in front of us at all times. That's no longer with us and I think that had probably more to do with it than all the force of the government.''
Bonanno, author of ``Honor Bound, A Mafioso's Story,'' published in 1999 by St. Martin's Press, said he started writing about ``my world'' because he wanted to ``unbend a twisted, bended story, much of it created by news media and much of it created by law enforcement.''
STAPLE CRIMES
The FBI's Trace, whose 17 years at the FBI have mostly been spent combating organized crime and gangs, said the Mafia was turning more and more to staple crimes -- loan-sharking and shylocking, gambling and prostitution -- after being forced out of big industry and unions...
He said the bull market on "Wall Street" saw ``wiseguys'' provide the muscle for so-called ``pump-and-dump'' schemes -- enforcing unlawful agreements among traders to manipulate stocks for profit.
A few mobster trials have made national headlines recently. In early August, the Jewish owner of an Atlanta strip club -- the Gold Club -- with alleged ties to the Gambino crime family, pleaded guilty... In July, a Philadelphia jury found a reputed mobster and six co-defendants guilty of extortion...
Trace said it was dangerous to assume (anything) from the farce and humor of mob movies, that these were benign characters...
``PSYCHOPATHS''
Retired FBI agent Bruce Mouw,... believes ...``A lot of these guys are psychopaths ...it isn't something to glamorize.'' Mouw also said today's Mafiosi differ from the mobsters of the 1920s and 1930s in a crucial way.
``There is no honor among these guys. It's not like 'The Godfather' movies where you've got the local Mafioso who settles some neighborhood dispute, and kinda rights the wrongs.'...

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