Angelo La Barbera

Angelo La Barbera (July 3, 1924 – October 28, 1975) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia.

Together with his brother Salvatore La Barbera he ruled the Mafia family of Palermo Centro.

Generous and charming, he assumed the life style of a Chicago gangster of the 1930s, with new cars, luxurious clothes and frequent visits to Milan and Rome, where he stayed in the best hotels, surrounded by beautiful women.

Buscetta remembers Angelo La Barbera as "arrogant and haughty".

The La Barbera brothers together with other upstart Mafia bosses like Pietro Torretta and their henchmen formed the so-called ‘New Mafia’ which adopted new gangster techniques.

Other smaller cosche came to recognize the supremacy of these bosses – a supremacy achieved by sheer violence.

Men who were starting their ‘careers’ in their shadow were forming into new generation of mafiosi; they had initiative, and the road to leadership of a cosca had suddenly become quicker and available to those who were fast with their tommy-guns.

One of these upstarts was Tommaso Buscetta, another was Gerlando Alberti.

The new generation of mafiosi like La Barbera needed to create a new political base of their own, pushing forward new politicians through which they could influence control over regional corporations, credit banks and circumvent building regulations.

They started with petty larceny and murder and raised themselves to become prominent leaders of a new generation of mafiosi in the 1950s and 1960s who made their fortune in real estate transactions, cigarette smuggling and heroin trafficking.

The brothers were bent on transcending the indignities of their poverty.

Angelo la Barbera became the protégé of a local Mafia boss, and by 1952 they had organized a building supply company.

They then murdered the right-hand man to the contractor Salvatore Moncada, so that they could become the construction entrepreneur’s lieutenants.

By 1955 Angelo La Barbera had become the vice-boss and de facto head of the Palermo Centro cosca.

The La Barbera brothers were present at a series of meetings between top American and Sicilian mafiosi that took place in Palermo between October 12–16, 1957, in hotel Delle Palme in Palermo.

Joseph Bonanno, Lucky Luciano, John Bonventre, Frank Garofalo, Santo Sorge and Carmine Galante were among the American mafiosi present, while among the Sicilian side there were Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco and his cousin Salvatore Greco "The Engineer", Giuseppe Genco Russo, Gaetano Badalamenti, Calcedonio Di Pisa and Tommaso Buscetta.

One of the issues at the meetings was the organisation of heroin trafficking to the United States.

Salvatore La Barbera sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission that was set up in 1958 as the capo mandamento for Mafia families of Borgo Vecchio, Porta Nuova and Palermo Centro.

Gaia Servadio, an English/Italian journalist who wrote a biography on Angelo La Barbera, described him as the symbol of the quick, clever gangster.

The new post-war mafioso who in the end became the victim of the many politicians he himself had built.

He represented the proletariat who tried to become mafioso, middle class, and ultimately did not succeed.

Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera were born in the slums of the neighbourhood of Partanna-Mondello in Palermo.

Their father was an itinerant charcoal burner and vendor.

Angelo La Barbera had connections with local politicians of the Christian Democrat party (DC - Democrazia Cristiana) – in particular with Salvo Lima, the mayor of Palermo from 1958-1963.

Salvatore La Barbera became a member of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission when it was set up somewhere in 1958.

However, the La Barbera’s soon ran into trouble with the Commission, when the contractor Moncada (formerly La Barbera’s patron) complained before the Commission that the La Barberas overcharged him on building supplies.

The Commission decided in Moncada’s favour and ordered Angelo La Barbera to give up the leadership of the Palermo Centro family—which he refused to do.

Angelo La Barbera refused to recognize the authority of the Commission over his family altogether.

In 1960 Angelo La Barbera was spotted in Mexico City and subsequently expelled from the United States and Canada for allegedly organising trafficking in heroin.

According to Buscetta, La Barbera tried to smuggle heroin from Mexico into the US, but was stopped by Carlo Gambino, the boss of the powerful Gambino crime family in New York City, who threatened to kill him if he would proceed.

In 1964, during an investigation, Lima had to admit that he knew Angelo La Barbera.

According to Buscetta, Lima’s father, Vincenzo Lima, was a "man of honour" of the Palermo Centro Mafia family that was led by the La Barbera brothers.

Lima's election was supported by the La Barbera clan.

Their candidate in the national parliament was Giovanni Gioia.

Lima’s period as mayor of Palermo was later referred to as the "Sack of Palermo" because the construction boom led to the destruction of the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks.

In the meantime Palermo’s historical centre was allowed to crumble.

The La Barbera's were connected to the leading construction entrepreneur Francesco Vassallo.

In five years, 4,000 building licences were signed, more than half of them in the names of three pensioners who acted as front men and had no connection with construction at all.

One of the La Barbera’s hitmen was Tommaso Buscetta, who subsequently became a pentito (collaborating witness) in 1984.

Still in his thirties, Angelo la Barbera began acting like a man of affairs, acquiring bulldozers, trucks and other construction equipment as well as apartment buildings.