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HAMILTON - The
face of the mob is no longer that of a man
giving orders with his eyes and a gentle nod
of his grey head. As times change, so has
the Mafia. The new face is young, brash and
usually in trouble with the law. ``When you
get older in these families the traditions
get passed on to someone younger, and it's
usually a blood relative,'' says a
Hamilton-Wentworth police officer who has
probed organized crime in
depth. ``It's like the father teaching the
son the family trade.'' There is also change
in the young men who are moving up in the
oldest organized crime group in the nation.
``They lose much of the meaning, the
original concept, of the Mafia,'' says
Antonio Nicaso,
an international authority on organized
crime.``The sons of the old mobsters are
more Americanized, thanks to John Gotti and
to the new generation that wants to copy the
mobsters they see on TV and in movies, with
fast cars and Versace clothes.'' The old
kingpins did not display ostentatious
wealth. They lived
modestly and had simple pleasures. Giacomo
Luppino, the old godfather of Hamilton,
spent much of his time on the porch of his
Ottawa Street South house or tending
tomatoes in the yard. A police officer who
watched the family for years, said of
Luppino:
``He'd rather have someone call him Mr.
Luppino than give him
$10,000.''Another local boss, Dominic
Musitano, maintained he was a retired family
man who grew fig trees as a hobby. Even the
powerful Johnny (Pops) Papalia, one of the
most powerful
Mafia bosses in the country at the time of
his murder a year ago
yesterday, kept a short street of
working-class tenements as the
centre of his empire. ``You don't find that
kind of characteristic today like you did
with Papalia or Dominic Musitano,'' says
Nicaso.
``It's not a question of desire or attitude,
it is a question of generations. The new
generation cannot deal with the standard of
their fathers.'' Mobsters, like most modern
professionals, enjoy showing the signs of
their success. ``It is an evolution,'' says
Nicaso.
``They want to use and enjoy the money. They
want to enjoy life and that is why they face
this kind of risk.'' Unlike organized crime
groups such as the Asian triads, the new
generation of Mafia leaders is generally not
much better educated than their parents,
says Nicaso.
The boss of a well-known Mafia family in
Sicily in jail for murder has two sons: one
a lawyer and the other a doctor. Neither has
anything to do with the family's criminal
activities. But many sons and
grandsons of mob legends are choosing the
old
ways. These young men -- they are invariably
males -- are redefining what the Mafia
represents. As the old Mafia dons die, many
of the traditions that forged the mystique
of the mob are dying with them. |
