Angelo La Barbera

Angelo La Barbera
Angelo La Barbera
Born	(1924-07-03)July 3, 1924 Palermo, Sicily, Italy
Died	October 28, 1975(1975-10-28) (aged 51) Perugia, Umbria, Italy
Cause of death	Stabbed to death in prison by rival Mafia factions
Known for	Protagonist in the First Mafia War
Criminal charge	Murder
Criminal penalty	22 years at the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968
Allegiance	Sicilian Mafia

Angelo La Barbera (July 3, 1924 – October 28, 1975) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Together with his brother Salvatore La Barbera (Palermo, April 20, 1922 – January 17, 1963) he ruled the Mafia family of Palermo Centro. Salvatore La Barbera sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission that was set up in 1958 as the capo mandamento for Mafia families of Borgo Vecchio, Porta Nuova and Palermo Centro.

Gaia Servadio, an English/Italian journalist who wrote a biography on Angelo La Barbera, described him as the symbol of the quick, clever gangster. The new post-war mafioso who in the end became the victim of the many politicians he himself had built. He represented the proletariat who tried to become mafioso, middle class, and ultimately did not succeed.

Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera were born in the slums of the neighbourhood of Partanna-Mondello in Palermo. Their father was an itinerant charcoal burner and vendor. They started with petty larceny and murder and raised themselves to become prominent leaders of a new generation of mafiosi in the 1950s and 1960s who made their fortune in real estate transactions, cigarette smuggling and heroin trafficking. The brothers were bent on transcending the indignities of their poverty. Angelo la Barbera became the protégé of a local Mafia boss, and by 1952 they had organized a building supply company. They then murdered the right-hand man to the contractor Salvatore Moncada, so that they could become the construction entrepreneur’s lieutenants.

By 1955 Angelo La Barbera had become the vice-boss and de facto head of the Palermo Centro cosca. One of the La Barbera’s hitmen was Tommaso Buscetta, who subsequently became a pentito (collaborating witness) in 1984. Still in his thirties, Angelo la Barbera began acting like a man of affairs, acquiring bulldozers, trucks and other construction equipment as well as apartment buildings. Generous and charming, he assumed the life style of a Chicago gangster of the 1930s, with new cars, luxurious clothes and frequent visits to Milan and Rome, where he stayed in the best hotels, surrounded by beautiful women. Buscetta remembers Angelo La Barbera as "arrogant and haughty".