I've read there's a certain rivalry or a sort of animosity between Sicilians and Neapolitans? How come? What's the history behind it?

My grandmother was from Naples, my grandfather, from Sicily. She was considered a city girl, cultured and educated. Her parents thought Sicilians were uneducated inbreeding hillbillies unworthy of marrying a Napolitan. My Sicilian great grandparents felt my grandmother's family were a bunch of stuckup city snobs.
Think of it like a woman from Manhattan, engaged to a guy from the deep south who works on a farm. It's just a clash of culture and class.

as far as I know the rivalry is due to the fact that before the unification of Italy, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Naples was the capital and the King Borbone, as it was of Spanish origin, was more Neapolitan of the Neapolitans, of consequently despised Sicily, which did not even have a detailed map of the island, there had never set foot, and there are various governors who succeeded have done what they wanted in Sicily, without the king said nothing.
When first with the Neapolitan Republic and later with the French invasion the Bourbons fled in Sicily, defined savages, the Sicilian people, corrupt the clergy and the nobles and did not see the time to return to Naples.
but is a subjective fact, my cousin has got married to a Sicilian from the city of Ribera, he is a good person and also his family is made up of good people, his sister even dedicated poetry after the wedding.

Furio, 80% of all Italian Americans came from Naples down to Sicily. I believe there is some rivaly between Neapolitans and Sicilians, but there is actual animosity between Northern Italians and Southern Italians. The dialect is even more different between North and South. The Mafia in Italy has its roots in Sicily, Naples & Calabria, all in the South.
In America, there is a good mixture of American Mafioso who are from Naples down to Sicily:
Al Capone, Southern Italian
Frank Nitti, Southern Italian
Paul Ricca, Southern Italian
Tony Accardo, Sicilian
Sam Giancana, Sicilian
Joey Auippa, Sicilian
Jack Cerone, Southern Italian

Carlo Gambino, Sicilian
Vito Genovese, Southern Italian
Joe Bonnano, Sicilian
Salvatore Maranzano, Sicilian
Lucky Luciano, Sicilian
Joe Masseria, Southern Italian
John Gotti, Southern Italian

The subtle rivalries between Sicilians, Neopolitans, and Calabrians with the Mafia here in the U.S. back in the early part of the 20th century is interesting. As well as how all that sort of vanished as these groups became more Americanized and homogenized.

There was the mafia-camorra war in the early 1900s. It was morano-cammorra vs the morellos-sicilians. Morano wanted to take over the italian underworld and started chizzling
away at the morellos territories. Bodies got dropped on both sides, morano slipped up and got convicted of murder. And it wasnt to long after this that the two organization assimilated together.

Yes, but even after that, you read about subtle rivalries between the two groups; even within the same families. If I remember right, that was part of the rift between Bruno (Sicilian) and Caponigro (Calabrese?). I also remember reading in Murder Machine how DeMeo was told he could rise any higher than soldier because he wasn't Sicilian.

Gotti was neopolitan and I've heard that he did not like Sicilians

Didnt phil leonetti say that nicky scarfo didnt trust sicilians?

Here is a decent article I read some time ago...
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Letters at 3AM: A Sicilian on the Mob

We have not seen real Sicilian mobsters onscreen

When I saw The Godfather, I had no suspicion that I’d become a journalist; even so, I imagined the review I’d like to see. A spread of head shots: The top two rows are faces of the mobsters portrayed, and the bottom two, the stars’ faces. No text necessary.

Compared to the real thing, the actors look like what they are: self-conscious mama’s boys. (That’s not to dis them; I, too, am a full-fledged Sicilian-American, self-conscious mama’s boy.)

“Mafia” is the one of the only Sicilian words to be adopted into most of the world’s languages.

Sicily, by the way, is quite different from Italy in language and type. For instance, tourists to Sicily are not made to feel welcome. When my Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack visited in their 50s, Aunt Mary’s fully Sicilian visage was recognized as such. She was treated well. Uncle Jack’s people are Italians; Sicilians made it their business to make him uncomfortable.

Greeks founded a civilization on our savage island, and their golden age died there. Carthage had a shot. Moors ruled for centuries. Normans, French, Spanish – all tried and failed. The island, since the time of Garibaldi, is nominally part of Italy, but there are Italians who curse Sicilians much as some whites in America curse blacks. Sicily is the only place in Europe with a holiday that has startling parallels to Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

Its gene pool may be muddy, but, as the whore of the Mediterranean, raped by every rising and falling civilization, the Sicilian character is not at all Italian. Italians have a knack for joy (oh, their opera!), a flair for grandiosity, and a what-the-hell shrug toward life’s dilemmas. Sicilians, it is said, are “born old.” We are suspicious, clannish, and have equal passions for loyalty and betrayal. Our greatest literary works: Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, depicting the psyche as inherently chaotic and family life as a snake pit, and Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, a portrait of pride and fatalism, summed up by its great line, “Everything must change so that everything may stay the same.”

Early last century, some tough, young, smart Sicilians made a tight alliance with some tough, young, smart Jews, and, with the help of the ladies of America who were responsible for Prohibition, they created the American mob, which held the shape of their mold from 1920 to the early 1970s.

Growing up Sicilian (we rarely call ourselves Sicilian-Americans – another of our ethnic traits is fierce stubbornness) in New York City from the mid-1940s until 1969 was to grow up with a close-up knowledge of the mob (if one choose to look).

One day I looked too closely.

I was 18, a messenger boy in Manhattan. I delivered a large manila envelope to an Upper East Side townhouse and was surprised to find two elevators in the building. The “soldier” must have temporarily left his post because I boarded the wrong elevator. It made just one stop. When it opened, the lettering on the wall informed me that I was at the front door of the “connected” political boss Carmine De Sapio.

De Sapio and two soldiers faced me and got on the elevator. I was in no danger. To them, I was a bug.

I have my fears, like anybody. Flying, dogs, heights, storms, failure. But, since boyhood, I have tended not to fear human beings.

I never feared as I feared in that elevator. Those three men radiated what I call capital “N” Nothing. A scent of mercilessness – Joe Pesci in Goodfellas or Casino, but without Pesci’s charm.

I’d seen such men before; years later, in Las Vegas, I saw their kind again, up close and personal. But never in a smallish elevator from which, during its slow descent, I could not escape.

That is the face of the mob. Pacino never quite gets there in The Godfather trilogy. Brando and De Niro don’t come close. James Woods, in Once Upon a Time in America, is nearest to the real deal. (The Sopranos was, for me, a laughable spoof. Those palookas couldn’t efficiently manage a pizzeria.)

Al Capone was not Sicilian. Sicilians didn’t trust him. That’s why they shoved him out of New York and let him have Chicago. They did, however, respect him. Not because he was more brutal than they – he was not – but because of his startling intelligence.

Capone is always portrayed as oafish; his success is attributed to the qualities Pacino exemplified in Scarface: ruthless, crazy, a clever bully, and the agent of his own destruction.

At the age of 26, Capone achieved mastery of the crime and legal systems of Chicago and northern Illinois – the second most populous and economically important area in the United States of his day. He could not do that if he were not as brilliant as he was brutal – and if he didn’t have a cold, clear understanding of human nature: what people want, from mayors and judges to street guys and gals; what people fear; what people need; what many cannot help but do if you make them believe they can get away with it.

Capone’s crimes were numberless and of stunning variety, but he was convicted only of tax evasion. That takes the brains of a great general.

Here’s the kind of wiseguy you’ve not seen onscreen: “What is organized crime?” asked Meyer Lansky. “Your answer will be, ‘When people sit down to talk of committing an illegal act.’ But what about the acts that should be illegal?” he asked, listing licensing, banking, and tax sheltering. “I could go on and on. If the rich didn’t use the poor for their selfish interest, organized crime could never exist.”

Lansky was a tiny Russian Jew. He cared nothing about money or living high. For decades, his word was law in the mob, yet he had a hell of a time controlling his relatives. He loved the game they call The Life, and he despised capitalism so much that he needed to beat it at its own game. And he did. A tough kid, he met Sicilian “Lucky” Luciano in what was almost a street fight but did not become one because, as Luciano later said: “We both had a kind of instant understanding. It was something that never left us.”

Until the 1970s, the mob was largely the creation of Lansky and Luciano. Lansky died in 1983. I’d give lots to know what he thought of The Godfather: Part I and Part II – not what he said, but what he thought. Late in life, he said that, were he young circa 1980, going into crime would be stupid. I don’t remember his words exactly, but his gist was: Corporations today can do everything we used to do. Why break the law when you can write the law?

I knew a favorite of Lansky’s fairly well: the late Susan Berman, daughter of the least famous, important, 20th century gangster, Davie Berman. “A man of respect,” as the old Mafia phrase has it. She said Lansky always returned her calls and gave her sound advice.

Susan was murdered, mob-style, in her home, for what someone thought she knew. It was during the Christmas holidays. I was called by a family member and paid respects at her funeral.

By then, I’d written extensively about Las Vegas and the mob. That’s how I met Susan. When she told me my work was accurate – well, that was one of the top accolades of my writing life.

I was married when Susan died. My then-wife and I often partied in Las Vegas. She feared for my safety when we heard the news. I said: “If they thought I knew what Susan knew, I’d be dead by now. But our New Year’s trip to Vegas – let’s put it off for a couple of years.”

See, once I started publishing stuff about Vegas and the mob, no matter what hotel I checked into, “the boys” knew I was in town. Sometimes I’d get a call comping me to restaurants and shows. Only suckers and marks are comped. I rarely gambled; I went for research, romance, and trouble. It was their cold, polite, Sicilian-Jewish way of telling me: Be careful – we know you’re here.

http://mafiatoday.com/general-breaking-news/letters-at-3am-a-sicilian-on-the-mob/

BRAVISSIMA CUMARE...;) My Mom used to say..."I've met many Italians that I didn't like, but I've NEVER met a Sicilian I couldn't respect." lol...There is indeed something different about us. I married a Mexican girl. When she went to get fitted for her wedding dress it was at this little bridal shop on Harlem Avenue in Chicago that was run by some off the boat Sicilians. When she told them she was marrying a Sicilian the woman who owned the store went across the street to the bakery and came back with cannoli, sfigliodell (SP), and biscotti for her..;) These people didnt know us from Adam-it was just because I was Sicilian..Carmela I love your signature too by the way...:) Yeah the mama of the foolish always seems to be pregnant LOLOLOL

There is indeed a rivalry between Sicilians and Neapolitans. Now it's more subtle than anything else at least in this country as each group has gotten Americanized. The Barise talk fast like chickens, the Neapolitans are "Mariols" or thieves, the Calabrese are "Capo Dost" or hard headed and stubborn, the Sicilians are hot heads, and ALL the Southern Italians talk ish about the Northern Italians for thinking their ish doesn;t stink lol and the Northerners look down on all the Southern Italians as peasants. Italy was not a unified country until the mid 19th Century. It's kind of like how before the American Civil War people saw themselves as New Yorkers or Virginians as opposed to as Americans. There is that famous statement with Sophia Loren when she was asked by an interviewer if she was proud to be Italian and she said basically 'I am not Italian, I am Neapolitan that is something different'....

Glad you like the sig. I find it to be very true.
Good story that you shared, too. Sicilians are old souls and like article says, "very clannish". Which couldn't be more true. If you know any sicilians that have moved to the US, you'll notice they always find their own kind. They don't blend in very well like other nationalities do. They'll always seek out other sicilians.
They have a funny way of calling northerners... polentoni, meaning polenta eaters and the northerners refer to the sicilians as terroni, meaning southerners, but when they say it they are calling them "terrorists".
Ah, could go on and on, but the bottom line is, the title of this thread could have been rivalry between sicilians and....anyone else. lol
They dont care for the calabrians either. If you ever hear a sicilian say, "testa di calabrese" he's saying you have a hard head like a calabrian, and it's not compliment but it is calling the kettle black.

Carmela, my Uncle used to say that Sicilians built the trench/waterway to get the f*ck away from the Calabrese lol...Yes, Sicilians always seek each other out. Ivy is right when he says that Americanization has eradicated most of those rivalries as there are fewer and people who are of one regional Italian origin, however. I'm a 100%er though...:)

Clean cut and dry. Neopolitans are the wealthy and yuppies in Sicilians eyes, and Sicilians are poor and dirty in Neopolitans eyes. I for one am happy that I am Calabrese. My Nona and Papa(Moms parents) are from Caraffa do Catanzaro. I'm proud to be Calabrese. But I don't discriminate against Sicilians or Neipolitans because I have no reason too I guess. However, my Nona and Papa for some reason hate Sicilians. No idea why? Haha

Carmela & 12th ST.,


Among all the Italians in the South, The Sicilians were the most inclined to intermarry. In other words, it was not uncommon for Cousins some times to marry.
My wife is Sicilian and her parents were first cousins.

Also, I know of some cases where two brothers married 2 sisters and a brother & sister married another brother and sister. It makes the children double first cousins.

Sicilians are very clannish. That's why the Sicilian Mafia clans were successful. Each clan was mostly all related by blood or marriage.

*Caraffa di Catanzaro. I hate spell check on iPhone....

I believe barney bellomo has a double first cousin who also happens to be named barney bellomo.

True. I understand all that. My husband moved here at 20 years old from Sicily. Of course they intermarry. Sometimes? lol His entire family over there are first cousins practically. Then there's my dad who moved here from Sicily as a small child and he's also got first cousins that married. You have to understand, they don't get out much from their own town/province. Things are changing more today, but Sicily is the last to make it to 21st century.

Dellacroce you are right. I think his cousin actually took a murder charge for him. Same exact name.

My Uncle-a full-blooded Sicilian- was married to a Calabrese woman for 40 years...The way they would go back and forth and break each others balls was HYSTERICAL lol...

I've also heard some Italians say that there are even slight genetic differences not only between Northern and Southern Italians, but even between Calabrians, Sicilians, Neapolitans or Apulians. Apulians for one have a large amount of Illyrian blood ( related to Albanians and modern Northern Greeks), Calabrians are said to have substantial old Greek ancestry (related to Mani Greeks and Cretans) and also Jewish ancestry, Sicilians are a mix of different elements such as native Sicili tribes, Greeks, Normans, Arabs, Berbers and Spanish, Neapolitans seem to have the biggest amount of Italic ancestry with some Spanish. I'm not an expert on genetics, but it's clear that not many other European people seem to divide themselves between regional lines as the Italians do. In the region I live are a lot of people of 'Italian' descent. Rarely do they describe themselves as 'Italian'. In most cases they see themselves as Calabrese or as Sicilian (there aren't many Neapolitans or Apulians over here).

That attitude is also evident with some other groups of people. Albanians for instance seem to divide themselves on a linguistic as well as genetic base between Kosovars, Northern Albanians (Ghegs) and Southern Albanians (Tosks).
Corsicans in France would never (and I do mean NEVER) describe themselves as 'French'.
Regional differences exist in England: people in Merseyside and in turn in the whole Northwest of England describe themselves as 'Scousers' and take pride in being a mix of Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Welsh, Scandinavian and even African elements.
Formerly only people from the East End of London described themselves as 'Cockney' but the 'Cockney-heritage' also spread to the South of London and areas surroundin Greater London. 'Cockneys' seem to come from a mix of Anglo-Saxons, Irish, French (Huguenot), Jews and Romanis who settled in the 18th century industrial area of the East End. Cockney families spread to the South of London, Essex, Kent,...and other nearby areas.
In Greece the regional Macedonian Greeks, Maniots and Cretans also claim to have different ancestries.

What all of these people do have in common however, is the family-oriented structure.

Napoli, Sicilia, been there love it all embrace it all....From guagliooo to amunini, from offra to carusi, from cchiamme to chiamu, from una cassata to un baba. Man south of Italy so rich in history and culture you all should go.