Cesare Mori

The 'Iron Prefect' Cesare Mori

Cesare Mori (Pavia, December 22, 1871 – Udine, July 6, 1942) was a prefect (prefetto) before and during the Fascist period in Italy. He is known in Italy as the Iron Prefect (Prefetto di Ferro) because of his iron-fisted campaigns against the Mafia on Sicily in the second half of the 1920s.

Early years

Mori was born in Pavia and grew up in an orphananage and was only recognised by his natural parents in October 1879 at the age of seven. He studied at the Turin Military Academy. However, he married a girl, Angelina Salvi, who did not have the dowry stipulated by military regulations of the time, and had to resign.^[1] He joined the police, serving first in Ravenna, then Castelvetrano in the province of Trapani (Sicily) – where he made his name capturing the bandit Paolo Grisalfi – before moving to Florence in 1915 as vice-quaestor.^[2]

At the end of the First World War, the situation of Sicilian criminality got worse when war veterans joined gangs of bandits. In 1919 Mori was sent back to Sicily as the head of special forces against brigandage.^[3] In his roundups, Mori distinguished himself for his energetic and radical methods. At Caltabellotta he arrested more than 300 people in one night.^[4] The press wrote of a "lethal blow to the Mafia", but Mori said to a member of his staff :

"These people haven't understood yet that brigands and the Mafia are two different things. We have hit the first, who are undoubtedly the most visible aspect of Sicilian criminality, but not the most dangerous one. The true lethal blow to the Mafia will be given when we are able to make roundups not only among Indian figs, but in prefectures, police headquarters, employers' mansions, and why not, some ministries" ^[4]

In 1920, he returned to the mainland and served in Turin as quaestor, followed by Rome and Bologna. In 1921 he was prefect of Bologna, and was one of the few members of the forces of law and order to oppose the organised thuggery (squadrismo) of the Fascist movement. Mori was removed and sent to Bari. He retired with his wife to Florence in 1922, when the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini took over the government after the March on Rome.^[5]

Appointed in Sicily

Due to his reputation as a man of action, he was recalled to active service in 1925 by the Minister of the Interior, Luigi Federzoni. He was appointed prefect of Trapani, arriving there in June 1925. He stayed there until October 20, 1925, when Mussolini appointed him prefect of Palermo, with special powers over the entire island of Sicily and the mission of eradicating the Mafia by any means possible. In the telegram, Mussolini wrote to Mori:

"Your Excellency has carte blanche, the authority of the State must absolutely, I repeat absolutely, be re-established in Sicily. If the laws still in force hinder you, this will be no problem, as we will draw up new laws."^[6]

Mussolini’s drive against the Mafia, the story goes, followed an official visit to Sicily in 1924 during which he felt insulted by the Mafioso Francesco Cuccia, who publicly proclaimed that Mussolini did not need a police escort because the mere presence of Cuccia would protect him. Mussolini felt humiliated and outraged.^[7][8] However, according to scholar Christopher Duggan, the reason was more political rather than personal: the Mafia threatened and undermined his power in Sicily, and a successful campaign would strengthen him as the new leader, legitimising and empowering his rule.^[9]

The fight against the Mafia

He took up his post in Palermo in November 1925 and remained in office until 1929. Within the first two months Mori arrested over five hundred men, a number that would only grow in the following years.^[10] In January 1926, he undertook what was probably his most famous action, the occupation of the village of Gangi, a stronghold of various criminal gangs. Using carabinieri and police forces he ordered house-to-house searches, picking up bandits, small-time Mafia members and various suspects who were on the run. He did not hesitate laying siege to towns, using torture, and getting women and children as hostages to oblige suspects to give themselves up. These harsh methods earned him the nickname of "Iron Prefect".

Mori understood the basis of Mafia power. In order to defeat the phenomenon, it was necessary to "forge a direct bond between the population and the state, to annul the system of intermediation under which citizens could not approach the authorities except through middlemen..., receiving as a favour that which is due them as their right."^[11] Mori’s methods were sometimes similar to those of the Mafia. He did not just arrest the bandits, but sought to humiliate them as well. If he could exhibit a strong central authority to rival the mafia, the people would see that the Mafia was not their only option for protection.^[10]

Mori's inquiries brought evidence of collusion between the Mafia and influential members of the State apparatus and the Fascist party, and his position became more precarious. Some 11,000 arrests are attributed to Mori’s rule in Palermo.^[12] That led to massive amounts of paperwork in order to prepare for the trials, which may have been partially responsible for his dismissal.^[13][14]

Mussolini had already nominated Mori as a senator in 1928, and in June 1929 he was relieved of his duty. The Fascist propaganda proudly announced that the Mafia had been defeated.^[15]

Final years

As a senator, Mori continued to follow Sicilian affairs closely, and made sure he was always well informed. However, he no longer had any influence and was essentially a marginal figure. He wrote his memoirs in 1932. He retired to Udine in 1941 and died there one year later, a forgotten figure in a country by then in the throes of the Second World War.

Mori’s impact

At the time and since, the general perception was that Mori had smashed the Mafia. The Mafia turncoat Antonio Calderone said the crackdown of Mori had hit the Mafia hard.^[16] Some Mafiosi escaped and moved abroad (especially to the United States), such as Joseph Bonanno. Other remained in Sicily and either turned their fellow Mafiosi (or low-level bandits) over to the police or simply went quiet seeking accommodation with Fascist authorities until the end of the Fascist regime in Italy.^[17]

With the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and the collapse of the Fascist regime, the Mafia restored itself, sometimes with the help or ignorance of the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT). AMGOT needed the support of local elites in order to govern. Because of their local authority, their record of persecution under the Fascist regime, and their willingness to cooperate with the Allies, noted Mafiosi – such as Calogero Vizzini and Giuseppe Genco Russo – were appointed to head local administrations in many of the towns in western Sicily.^[11]

According to the post-war journalist Michele Pantaleone: "By the beginning of the Second World War, the Mafia was restricted to a few isolated and scattered groups and could have been completely wiped out if the social problems of the island had been dealt with ... the Allied occupation and the subsequent slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the Onorata Societa the weapons which Fascism had snatched from it."^[18]

In Leonardo Sciascia's novel The Day of the Owl ("Il giorno della civetta"), published in 1961, the main character, a captain of the Carabinieri, recalls the great popularity of Cesare Mori's results among Sicilian common people, and the widespread nostalgia of Fascism among Sicilians at the time.^[19]

However some writers today have questioned the effectiveness and value of the methods used by Mori against the Mafia. While his methods were certainly effective, at least in the short term, Newark has written that they mainly targeted the small-time criminals of Sicily and left the big-timers, the real Mafia bosses, relatively unscathed, driving the Mafia underground, but not stamping it out.^[20] Judith Chubb says, “Fascism succeeded in stamping out the Mafia as a criminal organization by providing a more efficient substitute. It succeeded in monopolizing political power and the use of violence without, however, transforming the social and economic conditions in which the Mafia had flourished. It was thus no surprise that the Mafia re-emerged as soon as Fascism fell.”^[11]

In popular culture

Mori's campaign against the Mafia was the subject of a 1977 film, Il prefetto di ferro, directed by Pasquale Squitieri, starring Giuliano Gemma and Claudia Cardinale, with music by Ennio Morricone.^[21]

Biography

• Mori, Cesare (1933), The last struggle with the Mafia, London/New York: Putnam

References

1. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, p. 28
2. ^ Dickie, Cosa Nostra, pp. 176-78
3. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, p. 17
4. ^ ^{a b} Petacco, Il prefetto di ferro, p. ?
5. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, pp. 20-21
6. ^ Petacco, L'uomo della provvidenza, p. 190.
7. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, p. 23
8. ^ Dickie, Cosa Nostra, p. 182
9. ^ Duggan, Fascism and the Mafia, p. 119
10. ^ ^{a b} Governmental Floundering and the Survival of the Mafia, by Dominica Tarica, The Florence Newspaper
11. ^ ^{a b c} The Mafia and Politics, by Judith Chubb, Cornell Studies in International Affairs, Occasional Papers No. 23, 1989
12. ^ Duggan, Fascism and the Mafia, p. 245
13. ^ Duggan, Fascism and the Mafia, p. 225
14. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, pp. 45-46
15. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, pp. 47-48
16. ^ Dickie, Cosa Nostra, pp. 175-76
17. ^ Duggan, Fascism and the Mafia, p. 189
18. ^ Pantaleone, The Mafia and Politics, p. 52, quoted in The Mafia Restored: Fighters for Democracy in World War II, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred W. McCoy.
19. ^ Sciascia,The Day of the Owl, p. ?
20. ^ Newark, Mafia Allies, p. 203
21. ^ Il Prefetto di Ferro (1977), New York Times Movies

• Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet, ISBN 0-340-82435-2
• Duggan, Christopher (1989). Fascism and the Mafia, New Haven: Yale University Press ISBN 0300043724
• Newark, Tim (2007). Mafia Allies. The True Story of America’s Secret Alliance with the Mob in World War II, Saint Paul (MN): Zenith Press ISBN 0-7603-2457-3 (Review)
• Petacco Arrigo (2004). L'uomo della provvidenza: Mussolini, ascesa e caduta di un mito, Milan: Mondadori.
• Petacco, Arrigo (1975/2004). Il prefetto di ferro. L'uomo di Mussolini che mise in ginocchio la mafia, Milan: Mondadori ISBN 8804532750
• Sciascia, Leonardo (1963). The Day of the Owl (originally published as: Il giorno della civetta, Turin: Einaudi, 1961)

External links

• Sicily And The Mafia: Part Four - Mussolini Takes On the Mafia, by Mike La Sorte, AmericanMafia.com, April 2004
• Hail Cesare! The Life and Times of Cesare Mori, the Scourge of the Mafia, by Mike La Sorte, AmericanMafia.com, June 2005

Persondata
Name	Mori, Cesare
Alternative names
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Date of birth	1872
Place of birth
Date of death	1941
Place of death