page 5 CARABINIERI: Originally part of the armed forces, the Carabinieri are police charged with both civil and military duties.
page 10 CAMORRA: One of the oldest and most powerful criminal organizations in Italy, originating from the Campania region and its capital, Naples.
page 16 GIOVANNI FALCONE: Palermo-born prosecuting magistrate who spent his working life trying to bring the Mafia to justice, culminating in the Maxiprocesso (“Maxi Trial”) in Sicily in the mid-1980s, which saw hundreds of defendants convicted. He was assassinated in May 1992 when a bomb was placed under the autostrada between Palermo International Airport and the city of Palermo and detonated when his cavalcade passed. Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards were killed in a blast so powerful it registered on local earthquake monitors.
page 21 DIREZIONE INVESTIGATIVA ANTIMAFIA: An office of the Department of Public Security of the Ministry of the Interior. Formed in December 1991 to curtail Mafia activity, it brings together the units of the Carabinieri, the Polizia di Stato and the Guardia di Finanza.
page 27 DANILO DOLCI: (1927–97.) A social activist, sociologist and poet who campaigned forcefully against poverty and the Mafia’s stranglehold on Sicily. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1958 and became a cult figure for Northern European and American youth, who were moved by his searing accounts of the desperate conditions of the Sicilian countryside.
page 31 ’NDRANGHETA: Criminal organization from Calabria in the far south of Italy, which became the most powerful crime syndicate in the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
page 55 TANGENTOPOLI: A term – often translated into English as “bribesville” – coined by the famous journalist Piero Colaprico of La Repubblica to describe the endemic corruption in the Italian political system revealed by the Mani pulite (“clean hands”) investigations, which ran for four years from February 1992. The wave of scandals led to the disappearance of many political parties, and a number of politicians and industry leaders committed suicide when their corruption was exposed.
page 110 BONNANO: One of the “Five Families”, the Italian-American crime families that dominated organized crime in New York from the 1930s onwards. In the wake of the Donnie Brasco infiltration, they were the first family to be forced from the Commission – a council of Mafia bosses formed in 1931 by Charles “Lucky” Luciano.
page 130 THE RED BRIGADES: The Brigate Rosse were a Marxist-Leninist paramilitary group who were responsible for a number of political assassinations during “The Years of Lead”. Their aims were to create a revolutionary state and have Italy withdraw from N.A.T.O., and their boldest move saw them kidnap and subsequently murder the former Christian Democrat leader, Aldo Moro.
page 130 CHE LA TERRA TI SIA LIEVE: May the earth lie light on you.
page 133 COUNT UGOLINO: A thirteenth-century nobleman who participated in the struggles between Ghibelline (imperial) and Guelph (papal) factions, and in the conflict between Genoa and his home city of Pisa. In 1288 he was locked up in the Torre del Muda (“Tower of Hunger”) with his sons and grandsons, where he starved to death the following year. Dante, in the account of Ugolino’s death in his Divine Comedy, has the Count’s sons begging him to eat their flesh to sustain himself; eventually Ugolino’s hunger overwhelms his grief. In 2001, a forensic investigation of the remains found in the tower concluded that Ugolino was the first to die, and could not have eaten the younger men.
page 144 F.A.R.C.: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (“Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia”) is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization based in Colombia, which is heavily involved in the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict.
page 144 ÁLVARO URIBE: 39th President of Colombia from 2002 to 2010. He was succeeded by his former Minister of National Defence, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, despite strong opposition from the Colombian Green Party led by Antanas Mockus.
page 172 FORZA ITALIA: Political party led by Silvio Berlusconi, four-times President of Italy. It was founded in 1993 and won its first election in May 1994. In 2008 it was absorbed into Il Popolo della Libertà (“The People of Freedom”), Berlusconi’s later political venture.