Cose all’ Siciliani from After Laughing Comes Crying Joseph L. Cacibauda
The writer Luigi Barzini writes in The Italians “...the Sicilian can reach unbelievable heights of fortitude, generosity, and fearlessness. He can even accept death with open eyes or deal death impassively, without hesitation or regret, whenever he thinks there is nothing else to do, in the defense of his particular, strictly Sicilians ideals." Later he continues to write that a Sicilian “must defend his dignity at all costs and never allow the smallest slights or insults to go un-avenged... [He] must keep secrets, and always beware of authorities and laws. These principals are shared by all Sicilians...” Little matter what socio-economic class, education or profession, Barzini further writes, the Sicilian upholds these principals wherever he resides in the world. These cose all’ Siciliani were displayed time and time again in relationships between American nationals and Sicilians. They shaped Americans’ wary characterizations and mistrust of these particular European immigrants.Inseparable, inborn and everlasting, Sicilian memes were continuously ingrained into these island-people to arm them with the characters and means to survive the centuries of subjugations by brutal regimes that governed with unique laws. When these victors doled out the spoils of conquered Sicilian treasures, properties and estates to their political confreres, many of these favored allies hoarded the lands and estates while continuing to live in other parts of the world, uninterested in doing anything with their newly acquired properties but flaunting it as part of their wealth.
To maintain controls, large absent landowners, latifondisti, were obliged to hire men to guard their holdings and to manage them. When Sicilian peasants were allowed to work and live on the lands, they were scrupulously monitored to insure landowners got their share of money from the sale of animals and crops raised on the property. It is generally believed that these gabelotti, money collectors and estate overseers, could have been the genesis of the latter day Mafia. They were often from the ranks of the peasant farmers, turning against their own to pursue a more lucrative collector’s livelihood. Their methods were often forceful and violent and it is believed they may have banded together to protect themselves from retributions from victimized farmers. While the rich landowners were able to manage and protect their interests, through laws and overseers, the peasant Sicilians did not have the same privileges. They had no officials to uphold their rights and protect their welfare, nor were there codified rules and laws on the books to address misdeeds and injustices. With no law enforcement forthcoming, the aggrieved parties had to take responsibility to redress a wrong through vendetta.
The Norman conquest of 1070 had introduced a code of chivalry to the island that was passed on through stories and deeds of Charlemagne’s knights. In the spirit of chivalry, Sicilian peasants were duty-bound to protect their interests and those of the weak. Men from lupaisi were apt to quickly try and prosecute crimes so that, for example, they might break a thief’s hands or legs to punish him for a theft or run him out of town after a sound beating. A seducer might be forced to marry and adequately provide for the woman he seduced; failing to do this, he would face physical injury and banishment. Other ruled injustices often resulted in violent penalties, including death. The scope of an insult, a perceived wrong, or the value of a property denied was besides the point to a Sicilian. Any affront to his dignity through grievous actions and threats to his well-being had to be avenged regardless of the risks. The saga of Sicilian immigrants in the early days of their arrival to the United States abound with accounts of deaths over what appears to be trivial disagreements and monetary pitances.
In 1906 Pellegrino Cacciabaudo immigrated to Louisiana to work on the sugar plantations and to eventually work a plot of land in a little community called Fordoche with his brother, Giovanni. A few years later, Pino suffered the death of his young son, John, in a drowning. The child had fallen into an open well.He could no longer bear to live on the land that claimed his son, so he moved his family to Dequincy, Louisiana to live on his father-in-law’s farm to help cultivate and grow crops there.
In 1922, on a sunny weekend day, Pino discovered that one of his hunting dogs, a puppy, had gone missing. Seeing a hunting party out and about, Pino assumed that the group had taken his pup. He rode out to the hunt scene astride a mule with a double barrel 20 gauge shotgun cradled across his lap. He was out to demand the men return his dog. The lead hunter professed to know nothing of his missing dog, informing Pino that the dogs he had with him were not his, but were on loan from a co-worker. He urged Pino to talk to the co-worker, to address his accusations and demands. Pino’s resolve to reclaim his dog would not be assuaged by denials. When he abruptly turned his mule back and rode away, it seemed to the group that their role in the matter was finished, although they all would testify later that they heard the Sicilian say he would get his pup or die. The truth was that Pino had ridden away to load both barrels of his shotgun out of sight of the hunters. When he returned, according to sworn testimonies of those present, he made a movement that looked as though he was leveling the shotgun at the leader. The leader was holding a weapon himself and later testified to have lifted the weapon and fired involuntarily as a reaction to being drawn upon. Pino was blown off the mule by the double-barrel charge and immediately died there in a field where hunters gathered. He left behind a wife and three children.
Another case took place in the small town of Tallulah, Louisiana 25 years earlier.
A Sicilian storeowner, Frank Defatta, had a herd of goats that he allowed to freely roam the area. One of his neighbors was a prominent doctor who had been menaced by the unfettered goats tramping across his porch with a few sleeping on it during the night. The doctor had spoken to Defatta about his animals, but Defatta seemingly ignored the doctor’s requests to keep his goats on his own land. On a July night in 1899, the doctor had had enough of the animals disturbing his sleep and encroaching on his property so he made a decision to remedy the problem by shooting the first goat he saw trod onto his porch. Apparently the wounded goat made its way home to show it had been shot and to die in the presence of its owner. Defatta stormed into the doctor’s office the next day to protest the murder of his goat. The doctor ordered him to leave, which he did as he left mumbling unintelligible Sicilian curses and threats. The next day the doctor and a friend were walking past the Defatta store when Frank approached them cursing the doctor and then physically assaulting him. The doctor went for a pistol he carried, but was stopped from using it when Defatta’s brother Joe, watching the altercation from the store, fired two shots at the doctor with a double-barrel shotgun, hitting him in the hands and stomach. As the doctor lay mortally wounded, his friend ran for help, and the Sicilians ran from the scene to hold up in another store with guns and knives to await the law.
A large crowd attending a nearby court session joined the sheriff to surround the store and arrest the Sicilians. As the sheriff neared the courthouse square, a large mob overpowered him and his deputies and took away Joe and Frank Defatta and hanged them in a slaughter pen. They then went to the jailhouse where other Defatta associates were imprisoned and overpowered the jail keeper. They removed three other men who were not involved in the shooting and hanged them on an oak tree.
The Defatta brothers had earned a reputation of being brutal themselves over the years they lived in Tallulah. Frank had shot and killed a black man who he accused of trying to steal a watermelon Frank had for sale. Then a few years later, Joe had killed a man who he quarreled with over an issue of the cost of freight. Neither man was tried for the killings, each dodging indictments through legal technicalities. Many in the town suspected that the brothers, very successful grocery store owners, had paid the officials to avoid being prosecuted.
These disputed causes of puppies, goats, watermelons, freight, and owed money were not mere properties of puppies, goats, watermelons, freight, and money owed. These possessions embodied the fruits of these peasants’ hard labors and the due diligence that enabled them to acquire them. Once earned, these possessions added dignity and worth to these men’s lives by serving as symbols of their progress in the new land. To meddle with one’s holdings was to tamper with a crucial aspect of his being that held sacred the principles of not only acquiring possessions, but protecting and holding on to them. A Sicilian’s self-esteem and his neighbors opinions were predicated on how successful he managed these. To endure losses, never mind the range, was to suffer failures to protect and control property entrusted him—failure to control his own life, the major impetus for his immigration. Wrested possessions meant usurped control, the ultimate insult only assuaged through vengeance. Any notions of powerlessness could only be redressed with a forceful response to regain power even at the risk of death. Their Sicilian history taught them this and they were not likely to forget these lessons in the new world.