The mafia (Cosa Nostra) is a criminal organization, unitary and vertically structured, which is distinguished from any other by its characteristic of “territoriality”.
It is divided into “families”, connected to each other by their common dependence on a common management, which tend to exercise the same sovereignty over the territory that the State should and must exercise legitimately.
This implies that Cosa Nostra tends to seize the wealth that is produced or flow into the territory mainly through the imposition of bribes and the hoarding of public contracts, while providing a series of services of justice, public order, work, etc. that should be provided exclusively by the state.
The inevitable conflict with the State with which the Cosa Nostra is in substantial competition (they have the same territory and are assigned the same functions) is resolved by conditioning the State from within, through infiltrations into public bodies that tend to influence the decision making. This means they’re directed towards satisfying the interests of the mafia and not those of the entire social community. ”
Taken from the last letter of Paolo Borsellino, dated 19 July 1992. Brother Salvatore says that the magistrate wrote it at five in the morning, twelve hours before his killing, to the principal of a high school in Padua to explain his absence to a meeting with the students.
Together with the ESC volunteers of Apice – Agenzia di Promozione Integrata per i cittadini in Europa who live in our hostel Il Paguro in the past months, we have organized a serie of training meetings on the subject of legality. At the end of these meetings we decided to create a social campaign to present the knowledge we gain. So we made the campaign both in English and in Turkish, to spread our message to all the people around the world.
