Italy "Ends" Sicily's Corleone Municipality
This is why I need an editor! |
The municipality of Corleone, Sicily, is no more. And it's the Mafia's fault, the Italian government proclaimed.
Other local administrations tied to the Camorra and Ndrangheta -- Arzano, near Naples, and Calabria's Bovalino and Tropea -- also were done away with.
The towns will be administered by a government-appointed commissioner until new elections are held, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government revealed on August 10.
It's the 21st century and Italy still battles with criminal secret societies believed to have been established centuries ago, in tandem with the Risorgimento, or the unification of Italy.
Corleone was the hometown of the fictional Godfather, Vito Corleone, but also was the birthplace to some of Sicily's most notorious real-life Cosa Nostra bosses, including Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, two chieftains who assumed control of Sicily's Cosa Nostra in the 1980s following an extremely violent and bloody war that may have caused 1,000 murders, historians estimate.
One of the greatest fictional characters ever created. |
In Mario Puzo's great novel, as well as the film he and Francis Ford Coppola created, The Godfather, "Corleone" wasn't the character's actual name; Vito's surname was, rather, Andolini. In the film, Ellis Island immigration officials renamed him "Vito Corleone" using his birthplace as his surname. This was often the case with Italian immigrants during the the early 20th century.
In the film the character later adopts "Andolini" as his middle name in a nod to his family heritage. In the novel, he takes the Corleone name to honor his origins.
Corleone means "heart of the lion."
Provenzano, 83, died last month. Riina, 85, lives on in a maximum-security prison.
From 1991 through June of this year, the Italian government dissolved 212 city governments due to Mafia infiltration. This is the first time Corleone's administration has been dissolved.
Riina's Daughter Sparked Outcry
Beauty and the Beast: Riina's daughter, Lucia. |
Salvatore Riina's daughter triggered an outcry when she proclaimed pride in her family name.
Lucia Riina, 35, apologised to her father's victims but declared her love for her father and her family name.
"I'm honoured to be named so, and happy because it's my father's surname," she told Swiss Rts television in her first interview.
"I imagine that any child who loves its parents would not change its surname. It's my identity."
She is the youngest of four children; her mother Antonietta Bagarella, is the sister of another infamous Cosa Nostra boss/convicted killer, Leoluca Bagarella, according to reports."I imagine that any child who loves its parents would not change its surname. It's my identity."
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