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Fascinating Facts About the Birth of the Italian-American Mafia

Khalid Elhassan February 13, 2025 17 min

Mafia - Lucky Luciano, who midwifed the birth of the modern Italian-American Mafia — Lucky Luciano, who midwifed the birth of the modern Italian-American Mafia. The Mob Museum

18. Italian Immigration to South America Branched Off to the American South

The favored destination of southern Italian immigrants in the nineteenth century was not America, but Argentina and Brazil. The latter countries’ Latin culture, Romance languages, Catholic religion, and warmer climes were more hospitable and easier to adapt to than the US. New Orleans became a secondary destination because of its extensive trade with those southern locales. By the 1870s, Sicilian immigrants Carlo and Alberto Matranga had established the Matranga crime family in New Orleans, operating out of a salon and brothel. They expanded their activities from prostitution to labor racketeering and a lucrative extortion racket known as the Black Hand. They also collected “tribute” from Italian laborers, as well as from a rival Italian crime family, the Prozenzanos, who monopolized South American fruit shipments.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.