Second Mafia War

The Second Mafia War was a conflict within the Sicilian Mafia, mostly taking place from 1981 to 1983, although the first shots had been fired in 1978, and some killing continued until the end of the 1980s. It involved over a thousand homicides.

Sometimes referred to as The Great Mafia War or the Mattanza (Italian for The Slaughter), it involved the entire Mafia and radically altered the power balance within the organization. In addition to the violence within the Mafia itself, there was violence against the state, including a campaign of deliberate assassinations of judges, prosecutors, and politicians.

In turn, the war resulted in a major crackdown against the Mafia, helped by the pentiti, Mafiosi who collaborated with the authorities after losing so many friends and relatives to the fighting. In effect, the conflict helped blow the lid of secrecy off the Mafia.

The instigators of the Second Mafia War were the Corleonesi, the Mafia Family from the town of Corleone, although they were helped by a number of other Mafia Families. Hailing as they did from a small rural town, the Corleonesi were often referred to as "the peasants" – i viddani in Sicilian – by other Mafia Families, especially by the powerful urbanized bosses in the capital of Palermo. Things began to change in the 1960s as the Corleonesi grew in power and prestige under the leadership of the brutal and ambitious Luciano Leggio, who had become the Mafia boss of Corleone via the crude but effective method of simply shooting the old one, Michele Navarra.

During the 1970s the Mafia in Sicily resumed its normal illicit business after the Mafia Trials of the 1960s had ended with few convictions. The Corleonesi's primary rivals were Stefano Bontade, Salvatore Inzerillo and Gaetano Badalamenti, bosses of various powerful Palermo Mafia Families. The Sicilian Mafia Commission was re-established in 1970, with Bontade and Badalementi making up two of the three leaders of the Commission. The third was Leggio, although he was represented by Salvatore Riina as Leggio was in hiding on the Italian mainland. When Leggio was captured in 1974 and imprisoned for murder, Riina soon took over as boss of the Corleonesi with Bernardo Provenzano.

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