The 20th century was a golden age for organised crime groups. Ryan Gingeras reveals how gangs from the Sicilian Mafia to Mexico’s cartels capitalised on political chaos, economic upheaval and mass migration to spread their tentacles around the world
In the early 1860s Sicily was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy. Soon after, visitors to the island discovered what they believed was a criminal fraternity at work in Palermo and its environs. That fraternity – the ‘Mafia’ – possessed secret rites and bylaws that governed its members. Chief among their rules was the vow of silence, omertà, when it came to their interactions with the police.
Many assumed this ‘honoured society’ was born out of the prisons of Palermo, a place where hardened criminals mixed with members of secret revolutionary organisations. Before 1900, Mafiosi distinguished themselves by a clear pattern of criminal behaviour. Brigand gangs who robbed travellers on the roads were bound to the Mafia. Large landowners and government officials abetted the murders, thefts and acts of extortion mafiosi committed.
Yet there were aspects of what Mafia was that remained difficult to pin down. Mafiosi, Palermo’s mayor told one public enquiry, could be “anyone who has self-respect and has a certain exaggerated pride, and the inclination to not be overwhelmed but to overwhelm others, the will to appear courageous, to be ready to fight, and so on”.
For people in the 19th century, what made Sicily’s Mafia significant was the threat it posed to the government in Rome. Mafiosi appeared to rule the island from the shadows. The violence associated with them was used to intimidate citizens and to demonstrate its power to the Italian capital.
In the global context, the Sicilian Mafia seemed to be a part of a pattern. Other secret organisations were challenging states and empires in the hopes of winning self-rule or overthrowing governments. By the start of the 20th century, commentators outside of Italy began characterising nationalist guerrillas, anarchists and other revolutionaries as ‘mafias’ in their own right.
The first generations
Colloquially speaking, the word ‘mafia’ is often used as shorthand for groups involved in organised crime. But not every gang enjoyed the distinction of being called a mafia. Genuine mafias possess gravitas and do not come and go. They possess a culture, history or pedigree that adds to their status. Their mythos overshadows the exploits or dangers of the common criminal.
The term ‘mafia’ is quite old. Use of the word dates back centuries in Italy, even though its meaning and significance has evolved. For Sicilians, ‘mafia’ historically meant a kind of boldness. A mafioso specifically denoted someone who was domineering or who bragged of their strength or prowess. Scholars tend to agree that the Sicilian Mafia is one of four historic mafias that endure to this day. The other three –the Camorra, which emerged in Naples, China’s Triads and the Yakuza in Japan – have similarly rich backstories. In each case, the development of these groups or subcultures speaks to their cultural roots.
The precise story of how the Yakuza came into existence is a detail lost to time. The term itself originates from the phonetics of the word ya-ku-za, meaning 8-9-3, the worst hand to hold in a Japanese game of cards. This name alone confirms that gamblers were the first to acquire a connection to Yakuza culture, which dates back as far as the seventh century.
Intimidating opponents
Unlike Sicily’s Mafia, Yakuza culture spanned much of Japan. From the Middle Ages forward, Japan’s elite relied upon clan members to manage or mitigate crime within their midst. Violence was a key to Yakuza culture, as were intricate tattoos and rituals. Later, after the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the establishment of a modern state, political operatives sought Yakuza support in the hope of intimidating opponents. Yakuza became integral to the radicalisation of Japanese politics, a process that eventually led the nation into the Second World War.
Neither crime, nor politics, gave birth to China’s Triads. Their history dates to the country’s tradition of secret mystical societies. A feature of this was the way fraternal organisations promoted folk religion and mutual aid for China’s rural underclass. With Manchu conquest in the 17th century, these organisations morphed into secret societies associated with opposition to the government.
The establishment of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) led to the creation of a group calling itself the Three United Society, from which the term ‘triad’ was coined. The number of Triad-derived groups rose as Manchu rule grew increasingly more unpopular in the 19th century. To sustain themselves, many secret societies resorted to theft, extortion and the sex trade.
Adding to the strength and mysticism of the Triads were rich customs and a hierarchical structure involving initiations. After the fall of the Qing in 1912, secret societies expanded their influence over much of China, in many cases forming de facto governments over the countryside.
Europe’s fragmented political landscape did not produce such universalised criminal societies. To understand the growth of the Camorra, we need to begin with 18th-century freemasonry.
This provided a critical model for the organisation of subversive groups. Political radicals embraced its cult of secrecy and hierarchy in building movements aimed at national liberation or revolution. In the port city of Naples, rather less idealistic figures also took inspiration as, within the main prison, inmates in the early 19th century began to mimic masonic traditions in crafting secret codes and rules.
In the shadow of nationalist revolution, Naples’ leaders relied on Camorristi as enforcers and informants
Outsiders called this budding culture the Camorra, a possible allusion to the chamarra, or jackets, they wore. Camorra culture gradually exited the prison, finding members among the impoverished of Naples. With the threat of nationalist revolution threatening the city’s establishment, political leaders in Naples relied on the Camorra as informants and enforcers. Similarly to the Mafia in Sicily, Camorristi monopolised and exploited the underworld of Naples as extortionists and smugglers. They formed alliances with business leaders, politicians and the police. They became part of the city’s elite.
Coming to America
Each of these cultures initially operated as provincial conspiracies. Yet in the late 19th century, an era of mass migration, this changed. Like the millions of other people leaving Asia and Europe, Triads, Camorristi, Yakuza and Mafiosi sailed abroad. Many settled in the United States where they fell into familiar patterns of behaviour.
This was a phenomenon Americans recognised almost immediately. In the run-up to the new century, newspapers took a keen interest in what they believed were vast immigrant conspiracies. Urban areas appeared to develop new underworlds as the vice trade came under the control of Chinese fraternal lodges (often referred to as Tongs). Japanese gamblers formed violent gangs on the west coast. Italian extortionists, known as Black Hands, became the scourge of communities across the USA.
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Tabloids feasted on these revelations and fanned anti-immigrant sentiment. An occasional offence could be forgiven but, as one Mississippi editor put it, “When foreign groups transport and carry on here their Tongs, mafias, vendettas, class enmities and hostilities, it is a disturbance of such alien… and bloody character that America is not obliged to endure it and should not.”
Like activists in other parts of the western world, crusaders in US cities grew fearful of the effect gambling and prostitution had on society. Increased use of alcohol and narcotics similarly concerned advocates for women’s rights and child welfare.
Dispensing these goods and services were ‘organised crimes’ in so far as each required an illicit chain of suppliers, dealers and consumers. With the west in the lead, lawmakers around the world agreed to take more stringent steps to combat vice at home. As the world’s biggest economy and a country left largely unscarred by both the First and Second World Wars, America assumed a leading role in this movement.
Domestically, attempts to clamp down on the use of alcohol and narcotics catalysed huge changes within the American underworld. Early beneficiaries of the Prohibition era were individuals who shared connections to the Mafia and Camorra traditions. They created a system of ‘families’ that held sway over bootleg liquor and vice across swathes of the country. Newspapers and newsreels captured their ascendency, as did early talkies such as Scarface (1932). Al Capone embodied this moment in his dress, cant, swagger and flair for publicity.
Newspapermen loved him. “His whole demeanour,” one journalist noted, “is that of an overgrown child.” Capone could easily persuade a know-nothing stranger that he was as “harmless as a big St Bernard dog”. If the modern mafioso has a father, it would be him.
Al Capone embodied this moment in his dress, cant, swagger and flair for publicity
Dope goes global
It was only in retrospect, however, that American authorities conceived of bootleggers as a part of a distinctly American mafia. This crucial turn occurred after the Second World War, when peace brought a dramatic surge in narcotics trafficking. Heroin streamed across both the Atlantic and Pacific into a newly prosperous USA, a trade led by both old and new syndicates.
Triad-linked groups traded in heroin cultivated in Burma and processed in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Corsican syndicates, as well as Sicilian mafiosi, exported even larger amounts of dope from Turkey and Lebanon. This latter ‘French Connection’ drew the attention of Washington’s top narcotics official, Harry Anslinger.
In the 1950s, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) had long lived in the shadow of J Edgar Hoover’s FBI. This fact roiled Anslinger so much that he went on the offensive. Amid a climate of growing paranoia, Anslinger’s FBN seized the national spotlight with a series of fantastic revelations. Through televised senatorial hearings, government witnesses testified to a criminal conspiracy extending in and beyond the USA. At its heart were the rites and tradition of Sicily’s Mafia. American crime families, in coordination with syndicates abroad, dominated the global narcotics industry.
In 1963, Anslinger’s star witness, Joseph Valachi, added explosive touches to proceedings. Valachi, a one-time New York gangster, confirmed the existence of a singular criminal culture. Members, he claimed, called it ‘cosa nostra’, our thing. Valachi’s story reverberated worldwide. America, it seemed, had its own mafia, one that led the world in a host of nefarious dealings.
Meanwhile, older mafias abroad were experiencing their own renaissance. The rise of fascism and the outbreak of war in 1939 inflicted devastating losses upon the gangsters of Naples and Sicily. Similarly, Triads and Yakuza gangs suffered at the hands of invading armies and collapsed governments. Yet with the restoration of peace, a new generation took advantage of the emerging postwar environment.
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They formed partnerships with local politicians charged with organising reconstruction efforts. Yakuza and mafiosi found common cause with rightwing political parties that feared the growing popularity of leftist movements. Above all, Italian, Chinese and Japanese gangsters realised unprecedented opportunities to profit from the narcotics trade.
This changed the character of these older criminal fraternities. Mafiosi of an earlier time, as one Sicilian don saw them, were “dignified people, gentlemanly and inherently good”. Narcotics trafficking, and the riches that came with it, often warped and diminished the character of those involved.
Super Mario
The idea of a life of crime impacting on gang members themselves was popularised in the work of the Italian-American novelist Mario Puzo. By his own account, Puzo had no particular affinity for crime stories but, when he was looking for a subject with wide appeal, he remembered Valachi’s testimony and began researching mob history.
Puzo’s novel The Godfather (1969) sold millions of copies. A then ailing Paramount Studios bought the rights and head of production Bob Evans took a chance in hiring a young Francis Ford Coppola to direct the cinematic version. The film, released in 1972, took the Academy Award for Best Picture and racked up millions at the box office.
At no point do characters in The Godfather utter the word ‘mafia’. Viewers and critics, however, understood the film offered a close dissection of the phenomenon. The movie fulfilled the audience’s expectations. “Consciously or not,” as one French critic said, “people are inclined to believe that the true princes who govern us are hidden masters, all-powerful [but] anonymous.”
The Godfather and its 1974 sequel changed how gangsters talked and how they went about their work. Even before 1972, mafiosi in Sicily began to refer to their secret society as ‘La Cosa Nostra’. After The Godfather, they also began calling their betters ‘padrinos’, a term used in the film. Around the world, criminal groups started referring to their leaders as godfathers (or some translation of the word) and began to mimic the organisational structure from the film. Life imitated art.
Coppola’s opus arrived in cinemas at a time when the international drug trade was growing rapidly. Heroin consumption began to peak in the US and started to rise in western Europe. Cocaine, previously a boutique drug, began to appear in greater amounts in US cities.
Newer criminal groups emerged too. Before the end of the 1970s, two cocaine trafficking coalitions took shape in the Colombian cities of Medellín and Cali. Parallel developments in Mexico also gave birth to a similar alliance of drug smugglers run from Guadalajara. Some in the press initially referred to these groups as mafias. Law enforcement officials instead took to calling them cartels due to their perceived similarity to the petroleum consortium, OPEC. It was the latter name that took hold.
A key figure was Pablo Escobar of Medellín. Having dabbled in smuggling as a youth, his reputation for violence sealed his close ties to landowners and drug runners. He drew inspiration from The Godfather and mimicked the “slow manners and long silences” of Marlon Brando’s performance.
Escobar, however, was far more brutal than the fictitious Vito Corleone. His cartel murdered thousands, including some 200 judges and 700 police officers. Escobar’s death at the hands of Colombian security forces in 1993 marked the end of the Medellín Cartel. The cocaine trade, however, lived on.
Cases across the Pacific spoke to increased activity among the Yakuza and Triads. In the wake of The Godfather, exposés in western media took particular interest in how Japanese and Chinese gangsters compared to western crime syndicates. For many journalists, Asia’s ‘mafias’ appeared more malevolent and exotic.
Escobar’s cartel murdered thousands, including 200 judges and 700 police officers
The secret rites of the Yakuza and Triads made their involvement in the drug trade seem more difficult to police. No enquiry into the world of the Japanese gangster failed to mention their intricate tattoos, the katana swords with which they often fought or the severing of their pinkies as acts of contrition. The press made much of the supposed Triad penalties of “death by 5,000 thunderbolts” and the “flowing of blood from the body’s five openings”.
Meanwhile, the sheer number of supposed mafias surged during the 1980s and 1990s. Increased cocaine production in Latin America touched off upheaval in Colombia and Mexico, leading to unprecedented waves of violence and, as governments pushed back, the fragmentation of existing cartels. As smuggling routes grew more complex, Jamaican and Nigerian groups grew in influence. Street gangs such as the Bloods and Crips metastasised across the USA, specialising in the retail trade in drugs.
Unholy alliances
The dissolution of the eastern bloc had even more dramatic consequences. The sudden liquidation of state-owned industries across the former Soviet Union forged a series of unholy alliances between presumptive oligarchs and gangs.
Other syndicates comprising Chechens, Albanians, Kurds, Serbs and Turks came to cast a shadow over different parts of Europe. The emergence of these groups led political leaders across the world to see their collective security in a new light. As the new century dawned, the United Nations formally adopted a convention dedicated to combating transnational organised crime. To mark the occasion, signatories assembled for a ceremony in Corleone, the Italian birthplace of Puzo’s fictional Godfather.
Throughout this period, ‘mafia’ became a byword for describing new groups emerging in the west. The ease with which commentators referred to Russian, Albanian, Nigerian or Turkish mafias obscured the fact that no single group anchored their creation. Popular culture helped cement the impression that mafias were a global phenomenon.
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During this process, the narrative around organised crime moved far beyond the four historic mafias. Indeed, you could plausibly argue that such terms as gangsters, organised crime and the mafia have become interchangeable. So does the term mafia still have a special meaning and power?
Yes, in that it encompasses a world where gangsters don’t just operate in the criminal sphere, somehow separated from the rest of society, but influence politics, commerce, culture and even international affairs. Without mafias, history since the late 19th century would have been very different. Mafias may operate in the shadows, but shining light on them helps us to see the past more clearly.
Ryan Gingeras is the author of Mafia: A Global History (Simon & Schuster, 2026)
This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine