By the looks of it, Bonventre and Amato came over voluntarily from Sicily (probably with their families) and were naturally drawn to the Bonannos due to their common geographical origin with many of the Bonanno soldiers. In addition, Bonventre had blood relations to Bonanno members. Sal Catalano, on the other hand and by the looks of it, seems to have first been connected with the Gambinos but for some unknown reason later ended up with the Bonannos. In mid 1960s, a group of Castellammaresi gangsters were brought over from Sicily by Giuseppe Buccellato to fight Bonanno loyalists in the Bananas war. After the war, some of these men remained in the US. And then there was the group who came over later in the 1970s illegally to handle the drug trade for the Sicilian bosses. These groups were not necessarily originally connected to eachother. Then of course we have the group of Gambino zips too (the Gambino brothers, Adamitas, Inzerillos etc). These guys were probably brought over by Carlo Gambino, or at least they had his approval to come over and join his network of Gambino soldiers and associates.

At the time of Pete Licata´s murder, I don´t think that the Bonanno Family was fragmented. I believe all the Bonannos were loyal to the boss, Rusty. The split came later when Galante took liberties running the Family as it pleased him. Anyway, I haven´t seen anything indicating that Licata was either a Rusty loyalist or a Galante loyalist.

Mike Sabella is interesting. At the end of Galante´s life, he and Marangello were clearly "with" Galante. Their demotion (a bunch of Bonanno skippers were actually demoted) to a soldier´s rank after the Galante hit points to this. Mike Sabella was in a similar situation already during the Bananas war. He may have been one of those who sat on the fence. Back then, he was promoted to skipper by DiGregorio but demoted back to soldier a year later when DiGregorio felt that Sabella wasn´t loyal enough. Also interesting is the fact that Sabella and Marangello had originally been Galante crew members.