Corleone: Town can't refuse past

CORLEONE, Sicily — Decades before Mario Puzo borrowed its name for his novel about a ruthless Mafia family and Marlon Brando brought "The Godfather" to life with a throaty voice, Corleone — the town, not the don — had its own bloody story.

For generations, this medieval mountain town overlooking fields where sheep and horses graze has been home to the murderous Corleonesi crime clan.

The capture this month of Bernardo Provenzano, reputed chieftain of the Corleonesi crime family and No. 1 boss of Cosa Nostra across Sicily, ended one shameful chapter in the town's life.

While breathing a sigh of relief over the arrest of "The Phantom of Corleone," many townspeople who share the steep, stony alleys with the wives, sons and daughters of Mafiosi expect another chapter in the town's real-life crime saga will inevitably be written.

But young people say they have grown up without the everyday terror of slayings in the streets.

"In our basic, everyday lives, absolutely nothing changed" with the arrest, said Maria Laura Di Palermo, 23, a Corleone native and university student.

"I grew up with an anti-Mafia culture," she said, referring to a rebellion, mainly by young people, against the sway of Cosa Nostra — a movement sparked by the 1992 killings of Sicily's two top investigators of organized crime.

She was 10 in 1993, when Provenzano's predecessor as "boss of bosses," Salvatore "Toto" Riina, another Corleone native, was captured after 23 years as a fugitive. Then, students at Corleone's high school joyfully ran into the streets.

Her mother, Maria Concetta Pinzolo Ventura, runs a bookstore filled with books about Sicilian food and the Mafia, including one volume with a photo of Brando on the cover.

At 53, she is old enough to remember the warnings of parents to come straight home after school. In the 1950s and '60s, Mafia rivalry in Corleone meant a killing nearly every day.

"You can image how happy we are" about Provenzano's capture after 43 years on the run, Pinzolo Ventura said. "We are very normal people. The name Provenzano only gave an ugly image to our town.

"If you lived here in town, you'd see we are normal people. The Mafia mix among us honest, kind, open people with a heart."

The son of a Corleone couple, Gino Felicetti, who grew up in England and returned some 15 years ago after marrying a woman from Corleone, said residents generally live in peace with the families of Mafia bosses.

"Provenzano's son, Angelo, is a very bright guy, very, very affable," said Felicetti. Both Angelo and his brother, Paolo, who teaches Italian in Germany, are respected in town.

Felicetti works at Corleone's International Center for Anti-Mafia Documentation, which is associated with an anti-Mafia museum that opened in 2000.

Twice a week, Felicetti, 40, takes U.S. tourists to see some of Corleone's 101 churches. In one hall decorated with photos of Mafia slayings, he speaks about Mafia folklore and reality.

His most recent tour group wanted to know if Provenzano's April 11 capture ended an era of Mafia domination here.

"Absolutely not," he said he told them.

"When the pope dies, you can always make another, and that way, the church stays on its feet," said a former Riina bodyguard, Gaspare Mutolo, who turned state's evidence.

Investigators say Cosa Nostra will eventually anoint a new "boss of bosses," and for the first time in more than 30 years, the new don may not be from Corleone. One contender is Matteo Messina Denaro, who comes from western Sicily and is considered the mob's No. 2. The other is Salvatore Lo Piccolo from Palermo, a fugitive who has been convicted of murder.

Felicetti estimated 10 to 15 percent of Corleone's population has Mafia ties. A smaller percentage, mainly Corleone's young people, are active and outspoken in the anti-Mafia movement.

But "it's not about numbers. It's about power, a power to intimidate that basically forces people into a corner," Felicetti said.

Many townspeople lead lives that would be of little benefit to the mob. "The Mafia can't take advantage of them, they don't need them," and so these Corleonesi largely don't overlap with Cosa Nostra, Felicetti said.

According to Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, Provenzano was able to stay in his latest countryside hideout, receiving food and clean clothes, because he had connections in town, including family and friends.

For many older people, the influence of the Mafia runs deep in Corleone, although few are willing to talk freely.

"If the Mafia were simply a criminal organization, it would have been already defeated," said Dino Paternostro, an author and labor organizer. "The Mafia has insinuated itself" into economic and political power, he said, sitting on a shady bench outside the town hall.

One traditional moneymaker for Cosa Nostra has been extorting money from shopkeepers and other business owners, but people in Corleone said the town, likely because it is the Corleonesi clan's power base, was an exception.

"A lot of elderly people in Corleone think the era of protection is finished" with Provenzano's arrest, Felicetti said.

In Corleone's public gardens, old men, many wearing traditional Sicilian caps, filled the benches in a thicket of palm trees. They frowned at teenage boys and girls walking by arm-in-arm, sometimes kissing.

Asked how Provenzano's arrest might change life in Corleone, they wagged their fingers and refused to give their names.

Brando's face stares down from "Godfather" movie posters in bars in Corleone. In one, out-of-towners sipped water and coffee and the barman pressed a button to blast out music from the film.

"At your request," he said, though no one had asked for the music.

"Don Vito Corleone destroyed us," said Di Palermo, referring to Brando's character. "It's a stereotype which ruined us a little and will be difficult to eradicate."

One of the bloodiest rounds of mob warfare in Corleone dates to the 1940s, after the Allied landings in Sicily broke the grip of fascists on the island. Another explosion of murders was triggered by the slaying of Michele Navarro, a Mafia don who was one of the town's leading physicians.

From that warfare emerged Riina's predecessor, Luciano Liggio, who died in prison.

Provenzano believed the Mafia should keep a lower profile to avoid police crackdowns like the one that followed the killings of investigators Giovanni Borsellino and Paolo Falcone, whose names have been given to Corleone's main square.

A few years ago, another intersection in town was renamed: "Victims of the Mafia Square."