Corleone wrote, "There is no Mafia, it does not exist anymore"
EXCUSE ME ??? Where do you live ? In a Disney World ?!!! Just a few days ago the Sicilian police arrested a bunch of mafiosi who had gathered to elect a new capo, haven't you heard the news ??? Never heard abt the maxi-trials nicknamed "mano pulite" (clean hands) in the 90's ???
If you mean that the Mafia (with a capital M) as it first started doesn't exist anymore, well, it's not entirely true either 'cuz if the "official" reason usually given for its creation was to protect the islanders against invaders, the REAL reason was to extort money or goods from poor peasants, 'cuz there's no free lunch, you know ! Criminals got organized to be more powerful but without fees from the peasants they would provide no protection. As the years passed, it turned into extorsion, robbery, abductions, cigarette smuggling, etc. And murders of course. Many Italian judges who tried to erradicate the Mafia were killed (Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 for example).
A lot has been written abt the rituals performed upon entering the organization and they differ from one "cosca" (family) to another.
There are different organizations : the Mafia is typically Sicilian (West-Sicilian to be precise), the Camorra comes from Campania, the N'Drangheta from Calabria (they specialize in children kidnappings), the Sacra Corona Unita from the Pouilles.
Nobody knows for sure the origins of the word "mafia", etymologists still have different theories abt it.
As Corleone said, the first public spreading of the word appeared in a play in Sicilian dialect in 1863 : 'I mafiusi della Vicaria", so far the word was used only in Palermo and its vicinity.
The word then appear as a neologism in a Sicilian/Italian dictionary in 1868 with several definitions describing several behaviors, from courage to insolence, from arrogance to bragging, and only the last definition says "collective name of all the mafiosi".
On April 25, 1865 the word mafia first appears in an administrative paper, a report from Palermo's prefect Filippo Gualterio who worries abt the power of the criminal organization.
We usually associate the word "mafia" with Sicily, yet it was used in the Piemont (Northern Italy) by the end of the XIXth century where it was synonymous with "camorra" (=bandits); there is a via Maffia in Florence near the Palazzo Pitti; and an island called Mafia is to be found near Tanzania.
As far as Sicily is concerned, today most etymologists and philologists agree on Arabic origins but does it come from "Maafir", the name of the Arabic family who occupied Palermo ? Or from ""mahias" which characterizes an insolent behavior ? Or from "Maha" which means a marble quarry like the one near Marsala and which served as a refuge for those who were on the run from the police ? Does the word come from the language spoken by the invaders of Western Sicily in the IXth and Xth c. or was it introduced by the Spanish settlers who occupied the island for over 4 centuries ?
A last point : some Sicilians started to worry abt the reduction of the meaning of the word to criminality and Giuseppe Pitré for example wrote several articles/pamphlets to underline that the word first meant noble qualities, strength, pride, perfection, courage and manliness.
Today "mafia" also works as an adjective to designate international criminal organizations : the Japanese mafia, the Columbian mafia, the Russian mafia, etc.
