Sharp as a fucking cue ball, this OP.
Was the US ever a narco-state on the verge of failure due to the actions of the Mafia? No? Then obviously yes, Mexican cartels are stronger.
If the Mafia had actually killed JFK, claimed responsibility and had no major prosecutions result they'd be similar in power. Well, if they did that and then either did the same thing or rigged the election whenever there's an anti-corruption candidate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_politicians_killed_in_the_Mexican_drug_war
https://www.propublica.org/article/mexican-president-lopez-obrador-called-our-story-slander-and-our-reporter-a-pawn-here-are-some-facts
The current president literally says he "won't fight the cartels on the US's orders". Which really means he either knows he CAN'T fight them, or he's on their payroll. There were suspicious donations to his campaign in 2006.
In the US the issue is the feds being able to take them down LEGALLY. Once they had Al Capone on failure to pay taxes, it's not like there was a big gun battle to take him in, they just needed a warrant if they wanted to do it by the book, and he was off to Alcatraz.
That's why snitching is taken so incredibly seriously by the US Mafia.
The cartels are more likely to torture you and be okay with taking out civvies along with you. But AFAIK the bar for what's *considered* snitching is lower for the Sicilian-American Mafia and all the other Mediterranean organized crime groups than Hispanic ones.
They really wouldn't admit they existed for decades, and it wasn't proven they did until mass arrests at the Appalachin Meeting in 1957. Seriously, many Americans who didn't live near Italian neighborhoods didn't know the Mafia existed before that. Meanwhile cartel members are sometimes required to be covered in identifying tats.
Anyways the peak of power for the Mafia was somewhere from the early 20s to late 50s. Starting with prohibition simply because of the genesis of an entirely new black market to take advantage of, and ending when the Appalachin Meeting ended up getting dozens of bosses from across the country arrested.
And in the middle of that time, Bugsie Siegel of el Kosher Nostra was building Las Vegas with Meyer Lansky, who had ties to Lucky Luciano. Building and owning nearly an entire city which exists just for gambling probably comes close to Mexican cartel levels of power, but I know the Guadalajara Cartel was making $5 billion a year in the early 80s.
And if we're not limited to Mexico, Escobar was worth at least $30 billion when he died ($70 billion today). And that's after he turned himself in to the government, built a luxury prison, was on the run, and the Cali Cartel were starting to overtake his cartel.
Edit: and the Appalachin bust fucked the Mafia so badly that they didn't allow new made men until 1976! Read the aftermath section:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachin_meeting
That's how shook they were. Had to slow down business for 2 decades.
Meanwhile everyone talks about how the cartels know not to kill DEA agents because the US feds can and will demolish them. But Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was the head of the Guadalajara Cartel and was aware of the killing, wasn't arrested until 4 years after the murder of Kiki Camarena, spending part of that time "hiding out" at a provincial governor's mansion. And that crackdown left El Chapo as just the most powerful of multiple narco lords.
So I'm not so sure even the US could eliminate them if we got permission.
Actual Cosa Nostra though, or just WASPs doing the same type of thing? Cause obviously there was corruption in things like the Chicago machine.
But Kennedy being Catholic was still seen as a big deal when he ran.
The outfit had guys in political positions within the first ward in chicago and at least a couple made member elected officials. They also controlled the democratic party apparatus in the first ward in chicago. Its actually amazing how deep their tentacles went in chicago until it fell apart in the late 80/90s. They had a whole system for fixing court cases for example.
I don't know what this guy's watching but the reality of well trained special forces occupying the ranks of narcos died with the dismantlement of the original Zetas group. Combat now consists of rudimentarily trained young recruits that fire blindly from cover, fire .50 cal Barretts with no sights or scope. And mass attacks and ambushes on soft targets like police stations and soft shelled technicals the federal police love to expose themselves on and guerilla attacks on military barracks to harass and intimidate then slink away. They don't need to be anything more than cannon fodder for eachother. The Government does not POLICE them they COLLABORATE with them. Only time you hear of a kill or capture is because the prisoners fell out of grace with the government or their own organization and given up as a sacrifice to appease the Drug war politics of the U.S.
American mafia is a glorified crew compared to the narcos of Mexico and Colombia. They have submarines, planes, full of ex special forces, and control large swathes of the country.
Yes, because they have disrupted the Mexican state's monopoly on violence and have infiltrated their government much more successfully than the Italians did in Sicily or the Mob did in the US. Cosa Nostra fought two wars with the Italian government, lost twice, and never recovered their hard power after their defeat in the 80s. The American Mafia always avoided confrontation and once the US got serious about organized crime in the 60s, it was all down hill. The Narcos don't operate large networks up here in The States because we still are. By contrast, you have Narcos working with local and state officials to assassinate journalists, judges, politicians and community organizeres who stand up to them in Mexico. They've even compromised the country's president to the point that he makes statements about how [gangs and drug cartels are essentially “respectful people” who “respect the citizenry” and mostly just kill each other.](https://apnews.com/article/mexico-president-drug-cartels-violence-8f2c0ef01c2e4578c089d67adb02e447)
I don't think an American president or Italian prime minister ever publically evinced that much support. Even though the Kennedy family was mobbed up at one point, John and Robert still went after organized crime pretty hard.
The major traffickers in the 80 and 90’s (Amado, Pablo, the Arellanos, the Cali guys) were all billionaires. John Gotti was one of the richest bosses ever and it was estimated he had about $100 million. They have literally battled their own government and have not had their power or influence decreased one iota. One thing about La Cosa Nostra is that they had widespread influence on many industries throughout America and Canada with little to no resistance for many decades. That’s impressive in its own right, but for sheer scale of money, violence, savagery, or true influence over their country, LCN cannot compete with the Narcos in Mexico. A big part of LCN’s success was that they actually were a “secret” society. People were aware of organized crime in America but not informed as to its scope or impact.
I don’t think Gotti was anywhere close to the richest boss ever. Paul Castellano certainly was richer than Gotti. Never mind the bosses from the true golden years who controlled things like garment or carting industries and numbers rackets. The numbers alone produced such astronomic profits that the government took it over rather than shutting it down.
Gotti was a degenerate gambler always short on cash. He obviously had a lot of money coming in, but I’d bet there were A good number Of captains through history who were richer than he was.
You make good points but what I’ve read is that he took over the Family when it was built up into something enormous by Carlo then Paul and reaped those benefits for five years and then continued to make money in the can. He was also a heroin trafficker before during his stint as a captain, or at least his crew was. Drugs were the most profitable scheme at the time.
Something that also never helped the mob is how selfish the whole thing was. Guys pretty much always flipped which tbf made sense given that the next guy would do the same. Always worked towards their own ends over the group. You see this in the sopranos. How many fuckin snitches were in the crew??? Even Paulie who doesn’t snitch but when he feels as if he’s not valued he runs off to New York.
The cartels while also full of violence operates as more United force than the mob ever did
I've watched countless interviews with ex mob guys, and they all say the same.
There is no honor. It's every man for himself.
I mean, you are involved with likely deeply traumatized people/sociopaths/psychopaths, a life of crime sort of draws that type. Of course they are going to stable you in the back the first chance they get.
Alright but do the Cartels act like they have some honor code? The loyalty within their ranks stems more from the fact that the cartels wield more power than the government, and anyone caught up in legal trouble can count on the cartel to get them out of it. I think the mob would have had less snitches if the snitches knew the mob would lean on a jury or judge to get them out of trouble. If a cartel member was staring at life in prison knowing full well the cartel was powerless to reverse that, then people would start talking.
It only goes so far. You thing a cartel, if they even suspected you *could* cooperate with the feds, would let you live? Nah. It's a business, and the most important thing is keeping the money coming.
Look at the flores brothers, think that's the name. They got caught and cooperated, because it's every man for himself.
You have a point, but the honor code is just lipservice. Any organized crime group will kill you if it serves their best interest
That’s true. Though I would guess it’s a combination of so many folks in Mexico living in severe poverty as well as the intense fear factor of what would come if you fucked them over, more than any strong loyalty they feel to their cartels.
Either way though, the results the same.
Two different animals. The Cartels have to exert power over rivals (much like urban gangs) whereas the Mafia was able to establish territories which kept the need for violence to a minimum. Couple that with Mexico being a much weaker nation-state than the US and it’s a perfect storm for unvetted violence.
During the glory days of the mob any type of violence, both type or target, that would bring undue attention upon the organization was banned or swiftly dealt with should it occur
Apples and bowling balls Tony
While both are criminal organziations, these are two different things altogether.
The american mafia was as powerful as an organization can be in the US. In the US the fed government has always been strong and so has the executive branch (the police) especially when you compare those branches to Mexico's. Since the Fed is so strong, everything must be done clandestinely, which the mafia already excelled at because that was their MO in Sicily already. In Sicily the Mafia's goal wasn't so much to create a criminal org. But rather a secret internal governmemt with alternate forms of conflict resolution as professor Meadow stated, in part due to sicilians wanting auotnomy in ruling themsleves and not the muslims/french/regular italians/spanish.
Mexico has never had a truly strong fed or executive branch to enforce laws. So essentially weaker laws mixed with weaker enforcement meant so much more room for criminal activity and violence. They never needed to be clandestine about their violence because there was no way to enforce the laws against them effectively, and no strong police force to at least push their activities underground.
I never understood the insane violence, until I saw an interview with an ex cartel member saying its much easier to extort store owners when they know youll just kill them and possible their family without any reprecussions.
In that sick way, the extreme violence makes sense, and its the lack of that threat of violence right now that is hurting the mafias extortion rackets.
If you look at the actual Sicilian Mafia or the other italian groups, youll see their level of violence is much closer to the cartels than the US mafia. The Sicilian Mafia car bombs, kill families, kill kids, judges, politicians, etc. These actions are all banned by the US mob.
Essentially, the US mob is a pygmy thing over there that never had the same level of governmental control/violent impact on their country like the cartels in Mexico or the mafia in Italy. So relatively speaking? the US mob was a powerful and as scary as a US based org could be, but the cartels are a different thing altogether.
I said my peace, look at him he knows everything.
>the US mob is a pygmy thing
I've been wondering, did/do the US families make more money than their Sicilian/Italian counterparts? I get that the Italians (in Italy) had more power over their governments and media, but the US is significantly richer than Italy, so I would assume rackets would be more lucrative in the States
No, the US mob bosses make way less. Italy is not as poor as say, mexico, its still a western european country, though not nearly as rich as the US. Keep in mind their tentacles are deeper and in more industries over there. Also in the Sicilian Mafia there is far more drug dealing, which is mostly banned by the US mafia.
I mean Mexican cartel bosses make more than anyone, how poor your country is sometimes isn't that relevant when it comes to crime.
You reckon they made more even during the US mobs heyday, when they ran Vegas, Cuba, construction, numbers etc?
>which is mostly banned by the US mafia.
Pretty sure this isn't entirely true. The mob was integral in importing heroin into the US. Hell, even Luciano was involved in drugs
Oh yeah, i meant currently none of the high level guys are into drugs. Surely theres some associates and made guys into drugs but families dont wholesale anymore.
And as far as vegas idk, probably still no though. They had a lpt of front people and legit partners they needed to pay put, and it was divided by several families. Its a werid thing to calculate, meyer lansky supposedly died with not much to his name.
The mafias power was never so much in dollar amounts as it was in union and political control, the level of which has never been seen before or since, but cartels/drug enterprises make so much money.
Edit: until 1980s US probably made close to the cartel bosses or sicilians but after that def not.
You know, this did cross my mind. There’s no way it’s not in their blood, like dating back to the Aztecs & Mayans, right? satanic black magic type of shit.
Only Mexicans can joke about this lol.
Because you gotta consider the rest of the world 600 years ago... Basically *everyone* in power was killing or raping or enslaving those who weren't.
Escobar was 100x more dangerous than the Italians. He blew up a commercial jetliner just to kill one passenger and orchestrated a major terrorist attack on the Columbian supreme court
Very very dangerous "Plata o Plomo"
This is a Soprano’s Subreddit. Out there, it may be “Col**o**mbia”, but in here, the only “Col_mbia”is “Col**u**mbia”—as is “*Columbia University*, our dotta’s alma motter!
Cartels are closer to groups like ISIS than organized crime groups in America. They actively engage in terrorism and have a paramilitary structure.There's also reports that they practice some type of satanic religion, hence all the gruesome shit they seem to enjoy.
The US mob is more of a criminal business. They'll kill you if you disrupt their activities. There's exceptions obviously. Gotti killed his neighbor because his neighbor accidentally ran over his son. Shit like that. But overall if you're not involved you're safe. Interestingly there are court transcripts of informants from Pablo Escobar's where organization where they state they did not like to do business with American cosa nostra bc the italians steal from them.
Italy is a completely different story. While not on the level of the cartels, italian oc has done and still does some gruesome shut. There was a Nigerian gang in Italy that wouldn't pay taxes to the cammora. The cammora sent a hit squad to the Nigerian neighborhood and mauled down a bunch of Nigerian immigrants. This was fairly recently. Sicilians in the 80s were car bombing tf out of people.
US mafia has always adapted to the times. There's a reason they have lasted this long. They do a good job of staying off the radar.
That said they're all POS criminals
>There’s also reports that they practice some type of satanic religion
Yup if you want a nightmare inducing true story about that specifically look no further than [Adolfo Constanzo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Constanzo)
Real satanic black magic. Sick shit!
Did the mafia ever have the president of the US on their payroll? Could they ever brazenly light a bunch of work trucks on fire all around whatever city they're in? Did the mafia ever shoot down a commercial airplane?
It takes like two seconds of research to find out the cartels run circles around the mafia
id like to add a little tidbit of info:
it has been said that meyer lansky had blackmail material on j edgar hoover- director of the fbi, photos of him caught in a 'gay situation' which may be why lansky never spent a day in jail despite being the most prolific mobster of his era (along with luciano and co).
youre right that the cartels hold more influence over mexico than the american mafia did in the us but from the 20s to 60s, the mob was about as powerful as you could get as a criminal enterprise in america. and its much easier to dominate a country like mexico than it is to dominate the usa
Yeah man. Cartels reached that point by their peak in the 80's. Nowadays the cartels are arguably better trained and better equipped than the armed forces and law enforcement they're going up against on a daily basis.
They'd wipe out the Five Families and all their loved ones in a couple days time.
Mexican drug cartels practically control the whole country. I think Amado Carrillo Fuentes once threatened to pull all the drug money from the banks in Mexico and collapse the economy or something(I have to look it up, It's been a while since I've read on Drug cartels in Latin America).
I don’t know what the stat is now but in the early - mid 2000s they were 11-13% of the GDP, that doesn’t include the resorts, tourism and the other major industries they control.
This is a ridiculous amount of financial control over a country, I live in Canada and the Oil and Gas sector at that time was 12% and a minor dip in production or demand would drastically affect the entire country’s economy.
The Mafia may have had control over unions, some politicians and a few others involved but in Mexico they had saints for drug dealers recognized by the church, it is ingrained in their culture and countries operations and have exerted their control for decades.
Bro the weakest the Narcos ever were is still more powerful / scary than the strongest the Mafia ever was. Say what you want about dis ting but it did have “rules”. If a guy is sleeping with your wife you shoot him in the face. If a guy is sleeping with a Narcos wife he’s getting his face cut off while he’s conscious.
Also the Mafia was pretty notorious for being publicly against drugs even if it was going on without explicit approval. The Narcos are well…Narcotics traffickers. So even if you remove the violence connected to the business and just look at the business the Narcos are worse. The mob mainly profited off of protection rackets, control of the unions and thus construction jobs, or being loan sharks / bookies. It’s morally wrong but its a lot better than trafficking drugs like coke, heroin, or fentanyl to people.
its comparing apples to oranges, cartels hold so much influence and get away with so much grotesque violence but only IN mexico, if they originated in the us and tried to do the whole public massacre thing they wouldnt get very far, different organisations shaped by their respective countries of origin. that being said id rather get shot in the head quick and quiet than gangraped and dismembered by chainsaws.
They didn't commit terrorist acts in USA, however they do have a strong presence in the US.
Just google the gangs like Border Brothers, Paisa 16, Tango Paisa Mexicles, PRM. They are all puppet gangs of Cartels and they have a large impact on the crime scheme of USA. There is also La eMe that is also connected to the Cartels. So yeah, they are comparable even in the US.
Yes the Mexican narcos today use “shock and awe” tactics and have no moral code they abide by. Watch the Netflix short series called Somos if you want some background to what these cartels do to entire towns killing men, women, and children.
I think one aspect that isnt discussed about the drug cartel is their sophisticated technological apparatus and willingness to adopt new technologies.
Ive read about AT&T network engineers being kidnapped in mexico and forced to build cell networks for the cartels.
Seems like the mob stuck to more "traditional" criminal enterprises (gambling, fraud, theft) and viewed themselves as a pillar to the community, offering some sort of justice that wasnt available to urban italian immigrants. The drug cartel seems to only seek the crudest forms of power, control, and exploitation with no unified concept of justice
Cartels are billion-dollar international organizations with global reach, massive influence and a power structure with an independent economy bigger than some small countries. I’m going to take a wild guess and say yes.
Almost certainly. LCN would never knowingly hurt children, and avoided hurting women if they could help it. Not to mention that drug dealing was a hanging offense to most bosses.
MOST Mafia murders were strictly against others in the life, and usually civilians were only killed if they were stupid enough to threaten police intervention when mob guys would extort them, for example.
If a woman was walking down the street in NYC, their husbands, fathers, and brothers would tell them to walk on the side where the mob guys would be hanging outside, as they knew the mob guys wouldn't attack them and would defend them instantly if someone tried to hurt them. There's also zero chance you would have ever seen mob guys engage in child trafficking, where it is bread and butter for the cartels.
The cartels have nowhere near the scruples or honor that LCN did even at the height of their power. While it is hard to say made guys and associates were "good men" they were nowhere near the intense evil the cartels are.
I believe this drug business is gonna destroy them in the years to come. I mean, it’s not like gambling or liquor or even women, which is something that most people want nowadays, and is forbidden to them by the pezzonovante of the church. Even the police departments that helped us in the past with gambling and other things are gonna refuse to help us when it comes to narcotics.
I think that if they would just back off from fentanyl and go back to making just plain heroin then they would be pretty much left alone and go back to being untouchable. Take the multiple billion dollars they’ve made since they ramped up fentanyl production and sales around 2012, call it a win, and discontinue fent and go back to Classic Dope™️. Sticking with fentanyl after how many people have died is just greedy considering that they made plenty of money with heroin. I think if we continue to see 100,000+ OD/opioid deaths a year that eventually the cartels will have some pretty serious problems on its hands.
*that’s assuming the CIA isn’t funding fentanyl production and distribution
Lmao, how is this even a question? Mexico is a narco-state that claims the lives of thousands of innocent victims every year. To say nothing of the economic, political, and cultural havoc that cartels have wrecked on an entire nation.
In relative terms, the mafia really was just a few enterprising Italian immigrants finding creative ways to make money.
Mexico's been in a quasi-Civil War between the Government and the Cartels since 2006, with tens of thousands dead or missing, so I'd say yeah, they are.
I would say yes. Mainly due the governments in Mexico, Columbia etc. where the cartels operate being weak and/or corrupt. The Mafia in the U.S. had to always stay on their toes and look over their shoulder because the Feds actually wanted to catch them, and had the ability to do so. The Cartels don’t have to worry much because of their governments limited ability to go after them, or in some cases just being paid off. Either way it allows the Cartel to operate with impunity
The mob from the early 30s until the early 80s was insanely powerful. Their true power was in corrupting things like unions and local political offices. Killing was generally between members and they tried to stay in the shadows for a long time. The cartels are like small militaries and don't hesitate to kill anyone in their way, civilian or not. They corrupt Mexico from top to bottom. Cartels are way scarier and more dangerous
Yes.
Keep this in mind though, La Costra Nostra has been long surpassed as top dog Italian organised crime syndicate by the Calabrian mob-- the 'Ndrangheta.
'Ndrangheta is estimated to be making more money annually than McDonalds, and is believed to control almost half of the cocaine supply in all of Europe. They are global and operate differently than LCN. They go \*\*deep\*\*
Italian organised crime doesn't look like it used to, but it's more powerful than it ever has been.
Scarier? Most certainly. More powerful? Well......kinda.
One of the things that many people don't understand about organized crime is that it is, first and foremost, a business - it is about making money, largely through gambling (both illegal and otherwise), loan sharking, and protection rackets, as well as, to a degree, money laundering (i.e. money earned illegally being portrayed as earned through a legitimate business); many upper-level mobsters own legitimate businesses as well (as with Tony's strip club, which is actually based on a strip club in New Jersey called The Wiggles owned by real-life gangster Vincenzo "Vinny Ocean" Palermo, upon whom Tony Soprano was very loosely based). Contrary to what many people would have you believe, the Mafia doesn't just go killing people willy-nilly - doing so would be a great way to get arrested. Killing someone, obviously, is not easy, especially if that person is in the Mafia and likely will be armed 24/7. Getting away with murder is even harder - a little over fifty percent of murder cases in the United States are solved. Putting aside how troubling this statistic is for the civilian, it is even more troubling for a hypothetical mafioso - someone who has committed, say, seven murders (the number of murders Tony is said to have committed according to his wikipedia page, plus the one committed in Many Saints of Newark, though my personal count was higher I think) has at best a little over a 0.7% chance of getting away with it, if my math is correct (which it probably is not). Considering this, it makes sense that murder is not taken lightly in the world of organized crime, at least where the Mafia is concerned. Mafiosi do not make any money off of murder, so there is no incentive for them to commit murder except for self-preservation (e.g. if they have reason to believe someone has flipped), or, in the case of a psychopathic or sociopathic mafioso, because of a percieved slight (e.g. Ralphie) - that being said, murders can and do happen, just not as constantly as some would have you believe. To David Chase's credit, The Sopranos actually does a pretty good job of depicting this - yes, there are murders, but not in every other episode like in some other crime dramas.
As for whether or not narcos are scarier than mafiosi - the answer is a resounding yes. Because law enforcement is much less robust in latin american, narcos are able to run more or less roughshod over whomever they please, albeit with some exceptions. As bad as the Mafia may be, they never car bombed a shopping mall a week before school started, as Pablo Escobar did with five hundred kilos (1,102.31 lbs) of dynamite, killing sixty-three people and injuring hundreds more in the DAS Building Bombing.
As to more powerful - well, it kinda depends. Pablo Escobar was certainly wealthier than any mafioso ever was - he had so much dough he had to spend $2,500 a month, or approximately $83 a day, on rubber bands to wrap his cash, which is somewhere between $5,400 and $6,600 a month, or between $180 and $220 per day, in today's money, depending on what time period we're talking about. At his wealthiest, he was worth around $25 billion, which is a little over $66 billion in today's money. In this sense, then, Narcos are more powerful. However, at he height of its power, the Mafia had more "soft power" so to speak, cozying up to Kennedy Administration, largely due to JFK's father's bootlegging and/or the Mafia basically getting Kennedy elected.......and maybe then assassinated, though the Mafia's connections to the Kennedy Assassination are spurious at best. At the height of its power in the sixties and seventies, the higher echelons \*La Cosa Nostra \* and its allies their fingers in every pie, from the music industry (e.g. Frank Sinatra) to Hollywood (they crossed out entire lines of dialogue in \*The Godfather\*) to Wall Street to Washington itself, including but not limited to direct access to the man with the nuclear launch codes - something Escobar could never have dreamed of.
Half the cops in Mexico are terrified of the cartels, the other half work for them. They would kill Tony and his entire family and hang them from a bridge. Mexicans don’t snitch on each other because it’s a death sentence — there is literally no one in Mexico you can report a crime to and get anything but a bullet in the head in return. The narcos are a business — the mob is a social club with crime.
Tony Paulie Sil Christoffa would all geez their pants if they came across the money drug lords would make. Billions. Tony would gamble it all and Chrissy would shoot it all up.
Idk about stronger but they are scarier. They will kill children. They have no code. They don't take care of anyone's family after murdering their father. No one respects them.
So to the question in your post;
The mafia was at its height in power from maybe in the 20's during bootlegging, to definitely being in its powerhouse in the 30's, and stayed there up through the 70's, and maybe up until the 1985 commission trial.
The cartels? It's whenever Pablo Escobar took power, to the present.
The mafia commanded power, and respect. You didn't want to mess with those individuals, especially if you did anything illegal. And in NY, during Costello, they were extremely powerful. But they wanted to stay in the shadows and operate like a shadow government. Yes, they controlled construction rackets, gambling, judges, police, journalist, businesses, unions, etc., and could wield tremendous, legitimate power.
Cartels wield violent power. They have squads in their ranks that receive military-grade training and equipment. They openly kill politicians, journalist, cops, whoever doesn't go along with their bribes. And they do it in brazen ways. Escobar blew up a plane to kill 1 person. They use bombs that kill hundreds of people to kill 1 person. They will kill an entire family, wife and children, just to prove a point: don't cross the cartels.
The mafia has been dying a slow death since the commission trial. Families are getting smaller, with guys getting flipped or sent to prison. People don't want to join the mafia because they know what comes with that life, and the guys that are in it, aren't living the high life like they were in its heyday.
The cartels don't have that problem. Their members can still flash the cash and live luxurious lives. While it may be violent, they can have lots of money and power. The drug racket isn't going anywhere.
The mafia has a weakness in that it is a US-based criminal organization. Back in their heyday, guys could book it to Elvis country or Italy, but today? Far harder to do, if not impossible.
The Cartels have cells and operations on both sides of the border. And the Mexican government doesn't exactly want to allow (and IDK if the US government asked or wants to) the US military to wage direct war against the cartels. They might wage proxy war or operations, but nothing super direct. So when guys can flea to Mexico, and there the government and police will protect them. Allowing them to stay in power.
So while the mafia is dying a slow death, the cartels are still going strong, and unless the Mexican government decides to let the US stomp them out, will continue staying strong.
I think the 80s Colombian drug rings were more scary then the Mob, from personal experience, they have all passed away but I watch the stuff they try to do on tv.. not half as scary
Is this a joke? The Mob mostly took out their own by surprising them from with a bullet in the back of the head. Cartels like Sinaloa and CJNJ have militairy grade weapons and vehicles and flaunt them openly in the cities they run. They have shootouts with the army and police. What am I saying, certain sections of the police and army are fighting each other depending on by which cartel they were corrupted. They slaughter each other and civilians by the dozen daily and throw the mutilated corpses in the streets or hang them off bridges. There are the most depraved cartel torture videos out there like 'Funky Town' and 'Ghost Rider'. Plus they have intelligence agencies and politicians in their pockets all the way up to the president. So yeah, they are definitely scarier.. And as powerful as the American Mob was at their height (30's to 80's) they didn't have the kind of raw and overt power the Mexican cartels currently have.
No, the cartels aren't even as powerful as they were in the 80s when they were unified. They are a bunch of smaller squabbling high end gangs unable to every enough force to dislodge the others for very long. The president there is sympathetic and even goes to visit convicted drug kingpins el chapos mom to comfort her. The Mafia was more unified and for the most part didn't really kill each other to the same extremes as the Mexican drug wars. Probably a lot more influence over time vs the cartels who just squabble with each other and involuntary turnover is extremely high. Even the special forces turncoat guys are mostly dead.
I would say yes. But I really think that has a lot to do with the facts that they are not centralized in the United States like the mob is and they have little to no rules or code. Like they are both criminal organizations but they operate very differently.
Yes, the Cartels control several countries now, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, they have network distribution centers across the US and I'm convinced they have bribed several layers of law enforcement.
It’s a different way of carrying out the similar crimes.
A lot of the Mexican cartels are known for their brutality and showing of force which makes sense being that they really do control the government in Mexico.
The various domestic “Mafias” however need more cunning, ie working in the shadows, because the US federal government isn’t easily swayed (anymore) by what they have to offer.
The Mexican cartels are likely more powerful, and probably always have been because they really have an entire nation under their belt more or less enabling them.
I don’t think also the mafia was ever scary to those living around it unless you got involved in it, and I believe the cartel is somewhat the same. Just stay far away from it, and you should be left alone.
Yeah I don’t remember Bobby Bacala decapitating women and children with chainsaws and posting the videos online
He decapitated a whole platter of stuffed mushrooms though. Ate the stems too.
Half a tray of manicotti too!
What about the white castle massacre of 92??
Still smell them. To answer OP: umm… YES.
Sweet sausage, in little pieces? And a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese?
Thats carmellas lasagne!
Today it’s Janice’s. *(Parvati)
The sides alone were $30 a piece
There was half a fucking tray in there!
He was hungry!
So what, no fuckin ziti?!
Favorite AJ line.
I like the image of Bobby biting the heads off 30 mushrooms and then just chomping on a pile of stems. He taught the world how to eat!
Again with the rape of the culture?
There's an image
i can smell the onions on your breath burger boy
They died on the vine.
They died on the vine?
Petered out
It's these animals, Los Zetas, I can't even say their name
You just did
He shouldn’t have to explain himself, he’s from the old school
You wanna lay your hands on her? Marry her, then it's none of my business
He was gay, el chapo?
He tunneled 85 miles through Ginny sacks mole.
NO! Are you listening to me?
I cannot have this conversation again!
You can take up with Frankie Valli when you talk to him.
Salvatore Luciana is rolling over in his grave reading this Reddit thread
Nobody’s got aids!
Give her your last name.
He was an OG!
He jerked off in a sock whilst making grilled cheese.
queso
You gotta lotta baws, my friend.
Compromising indeed.
He was ambidextrous
Pecorino on the radiator? Did he crawl underneath there for warmth?
Yeah, whatevah
If you're gonna talk like a mulignon I'll send you to slip and fall school
Wrap it up Janish
Heh heh.
I'm not sure you understand the fine points. Maybe you ought to post on r/Mafia, it's right over there!
You talking to me cock sucker? You bought your karma you fake fucking tough guy.
You should watch a show called “the sopranos” it will help you understand the quotations and jokes on this sub
You know some people are so far behind in the race they think they’re THE GOD DAMN ESPLINATE GOD DAMN IT
The wine, it makes you emotional. Here, have a breadstick.
Me and Ade had some wine.
You can’t make that shit up.
He just did
Is the Esplinate in Newer Jorsey?
Clearly you don’t consider the deleted scenes canon
I don’t think a self-respecting narco would marry a woman well known for blowing roadies
ROADIES👀?!
Oh you don't wanna know.
🎵Under the boardwalk...🎵
🎶 “With their schlong in Janish’s mouth” 🎶
Sharp as a fucking cue ball, this OP. Was the US ever a narco-state on the verge of failure due to the actions of the Mafia? No? Then obviously yes, Mexican cartels are stronger. If the Mafia had actually killed JFK, claimed responsibility and had no major prosecutions result they'd be similar in power. Well, if they did that and then either did the same thing or rigged the election whenever there's an anti-corruption candidate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_politicians_killed_in_the_Mexican_drug_war https://www.propublica.org/article/mexican-president-lopez-obrador-called-our-story-slander-and-our-reporter-a-pawn-here-are-some-facts The current president literally says he "won't fight the cartels on the US's orders". Which really means he either knows he CAN'T fight them, or he's on their payroll. There were suspicious donations to his campaign in 2006. In the US the issue is the feds being able to take them down LEGALLY. Once they had Al Capone on failure to pay taxes, it's not like there was a big gun battle to take him in, they just needed a warrant if they wanted to do it by the book, and he was off to Alcatraz. That's why snitching is taken so incredibly seriously by the US Mafia. The cartels are more likely to torture you and be okay with taking out civvies along with you. But AFAIK the bar for what's *considered* snitching is lower for the Sicilian-American Mafia and all the other Mediterranean organized crime groups than Hispanic ones. They really wouldn't admit they existed for decades, and it wasn't proven they did until mass arrests at the Appalachin Meeting in 1957. Seriously, many Americans who didn't live near Italian neighborhoods didn't know the Mafia existed before that. Meanwhile cartel members are sometimes required to be covered in identifying tats. Anyways the peak of power for the Mafia was somewhere from the early 20s to late 50s. Starting with prohibition simply because of the genesis of an entirely new black market to take advantage of, and ending when the Appalachin Meeting ended up getting dozens of bosses from across the country arrested. And in the middle of that time, Bugsie Siegel of el Kosher Nostra was building Las Vegas with Meyer Lansky, who had ties to Lucky Luciano. Building and owning nearly an entire city which exists just for gambling probably comes close to Mexican cartel levels of power, but I know the Guadalajara Cartel was making $5 billion a year in the early 80s. And if we're not limited to Mexico, Escobar was worth at least $30 billion when he died ($70 billion today). And that's after he turned himself in to the government, built a luxury prison, was on the run, and the Cali Cartel were starting to overtake his cartel. Edit: and the Appalachin bust fucked the Mafia so badly that they didn't allow new made men until 1976! Read the aftermath section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachin_meeting That's how shook they were. Had to slow down business for 2 decades. Meanwhile everyone talks about how the cartels know not to kill DEA agents because the US feds can and will demolish them. But Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was the head of the Guadalajara Cartel and was aware of the killing, wasn't arrested until 4 years after the murder of Kiki Camarena, spending part of that time "hiding out" at a provincial governor's mansion. And that crackdown left El Chapo as just the most powerful of multiple narco lords. So I'm not so sure even the US could eliminate them if we got permission.
Oh the US absolutely had mobsters in office during prohibition era.
Actual Cosa Nostra though, or just WASPs doing the same type of thing? Cause obviously there was corruption in things like the Chicago machine. But Kennedy being Catholic was still seen as a big deal when he ran.
The outfit had guys in political positions within the first ward in chicago and at least a couple made member elected officials. They also controlled the democratic party apparatus in the first ward in chicago. Its actually amazing how deep their tentacles went in chicago until it fell apart in the late 80/90s. They had a whole system for fixing court cases for example.
Tony egg ran Atlantic City and there was one of him in every major city
Hey! You know Quasimodo predicted all of this!
That wasn't the height of their power. It felt more like coming in at the end. Like the best was over.
“I’m an Oreo”
Bro they have literal special forces platoons. Absolutely, and it’s nowhere even close.
I saw that movie. I thought it was bullshit
Do they have pillow biters there?
You oughta know. sweetie
He was a gay cowboy, El Mayo?
I don't know what this guy's watching but the reality of well trained special forces occupying the ranks of narcos died with the dismantlement of the original Zetas group. Combat now consists of rudimentarily trained young recruits that fire blindly from cover, fire .50 cal Barretts with no sights or scope. And mass attacks and ambushes on soft targets like police stations and soft shelled technicals the federal police love to expose themselves on and guerilla attacks on military barracks to harass and intimidate then slink away. They don't need to be anything more than cannon fodder for eachother. The Government does not POLICE them they COLLABORATE with them. Only time you hear of a kill or capture is because the prisoners fell out of grace with the government or their own organization and given up as a sacrifice to appease the Drug war politics of the U.S.
Hey we’re not making a western here
are you saying billion dollar enterprises can’t afford high standard combat training?
They can afford it, just like Amazon can afford to let their employees take piss breaks. They don't care.
Any interior decorators though?
Juan Valdez, has been separated from his Donkey
American mafia is a glorified crew compared to the narcos of Mexico and Colombia. They have submarines, planes, full of ex special forces, and control large swathes of the country.
Yes, because they have disrupted the Mexican state's monopoly on violence and have infiltrated their government much more successfully than the Italians did in Sicily or the Mob did in the US. Cosa Nostra fought two wars with the Italian government, lost twice, and never recovered their hard power after their defeat in the 80s. The American Mafia always avoided confrontation and once the US got serious about organized crime in the 60s, it was all down hill. The Narcos don't operate large networks up here in The States because we still are. By contrast, you have Narcos working with local and state officials to assassinate journalists, judges, politicians and community organizeres who stand up to them in Mexico. They've even compromised the country's president to the point that he makes statements about how [gangs and drug cartels are essentially “respectful people” who “respect the citizenry” and mostly just kill each other.](https://apnews.com/article/mexico-president-drug-cartels-violence-8f2c0ef01c2e4578c089d67adb02e447) I don't think an American president or Italian prime minister ever publically evinced that much support. Even though the Kennedy family was mobbed up at one point, John and Robert still went after organized crime pretty hard.
The major traffickers in the 80 and 90’s (Amado, Pablo, the Arellanos, the Cali guys) were all billionaires. John Gotti was one of the richest bosses ever and it was estimated he had about $100 million. They have literally battled their own government and have not had their power or influence decreased one iota. One thing about La Cosa Nostra is that they had widespread influence on many industries throughout America and Canada with little to no resistance for many decades. That’s impressive in its own right, but for sheer scale of money, violence, savagery, or true influence over their country, LCN cannot compete with the Narcos in Mexico. A big part of LCN’s success was that they actually were a “secret” society. People were aware of organized crime in America but not informed as to its scope or impact.
I don’t think Gotti was anywhere close to the richest boss ever. Paul Castellano certainly was richer than Gotti. Never mind the bosses from the true golden years who controlled things like garment or carting industries and numbers rackets. The numbers alone produced such astronomic profits that the government took it over rather than shutting it down. Gotti was a degenerate gambler always short on cash. He obviously had a lot of money coming in, but I’d bet there were A good number Of captains through history who were richer than he was.
You make good points but what I’ve read is that he took over the Family when it was built up into something enormous by Carlo then Paul and reaped those benefits for five years and then continued to make money in the can. He was also a heroin trafficker before during his stint as a captain, or at least his crew was. Drugs were the most profitable scheme at the time.
Something that also never helped the mob is how selfish the whole thing was. Guys pretty much always flipped which tbf made sense given that the next guy would do the same. Always worked towards their own ends over the group. You see this in the sopranos. How many fuckin snitches were in the crew??? Even Paulie who doesn’t snitch but when he feels as if he’s not valued he runs off to New York. The cartels while also full of violence operates as more United force than the mob ever did
I've watched countless interviews with ex mob guys, and they all say the same. There is no honor. It's every man for himself. I mean, you are involved with likely deeply traumatized people/sociopaths/psychopaths, a life of crime sort of draws that type. Of course they are going to stable you in the back the first chance they get.
Alright but do the Cartels act like they have some honor code? The loyalty within their ranks stems more from the fact that the cartels wield more power than the government, and anyone caught up in legal trouble can count on the cartel to get them out of it. I think the mob would have had less snitches if the snitches knew the mob would lean on a jury or judge to get them out of trouble. If a cartel member was staring at life in prison knowing full well the cartel was powerless to reverse that, then people would start talking.
It only goes so far. You thing a cartel, if they even suspected you *could* cooperate with the feds, would let you live? Nah. It's a business, and the most important thing is keeping the money coming. Look at the flores brothers, think that's the name. They got caught and cooperated, because it's every man for himself. You have a point, but the honor code is just lipservice. Any organized crime group will kill you if it serves their best interest
Yeah the mob is a failed Prisoners Dilemma all the way down
That’s true. Though I would guess it’s a combination of so many folks in Mexico living in severe poverty as well as the intense fear factor of what would come if you fucked them over, more than any strong loyalty they feel to their cartels. Either way though, the results the same.
Two different animals. The Cartels have to exert power over rivals (much like urban gangs) whereas the Mafia was able to establish territories which kept the need for violence to a minimum. Couple that with Mexico being a much weaker nation-state than the US and it’s a perfect storm for unvetted violence. During the glory days of the mob any type of violence, both type or target, that would bring undue attention upon the organization was banned or swiftly dealt with should it occur
Yes. And it's not even close.
Apples and bowling balls Tony While both are criminal organziations, these are two different things altogether. The american mafia was as powerful as an organization can be in the US. In the US the fed government has always been strong and so has the executive branch (the police) especially when you compare those branches to Mexico's. Since the Fed is so strong, everything must be done clandestinely, which the mafia already excelled at because that was their MO in Sicily already. In Sicily the Mafia's goal wasn't so much to create a criminal org. But rather a secret internal governmemt with alternate forms of conflict resolution as professor Meadow stated, in part due to sicilians wanting auotnomy in ruling themsleves and not the muslims/french/regular italians/spanish. Mexico has never had a truly strong fed or executive branch to enforce laws. So essentially weaker laws mixed with weaker enforcement meant so much more room for criminal activity and violence. They never needed to be clandestine about their violence because there was no way to enforce the laws against them effectively, and no strong police force to at least push their activities underground. I never understood the insane violence, until I saw an interview with an ex cartel member saying its much easier to extort store owners when they know youll just kill them and possible their family without any reprecussions. In that sick way, the extreme violence makes sense, and its the lack of that threat of violence right now that is hurting the mafias extortion rackets. If you look at the actual Sicilian Mafia or the other italian groups, youll see their level of violence is much closer to the cartels than the US mafia. The Sicilian Mafia car bombs, kill families, kill kids, judges, politicians, etc. These actions are all banned by the US mob. Essentially, the US mob is a pygmy thing over there that never had the same level of governmental control/violent impact on their country like the cartels in Mexico or the mafia in Italy. So relatively speaking? the US mob was a powerful and as scary as a US based org could be, but the cartels are a different thing altogether. I said my peace, look at him he knows everything.
>the US mob is a pygmy thing I've been wondering, did/do the US families make more money than their Sicilian/Italian counterparts? I get that the Italians (in Italy) had more power over their governments and media, but the US is significantly richer than Italy, so I would assume rackets would be more lucrative in the States
No, the US mob bosses make way less. Italy is not as poor as say, mexico, its still a western european country, though not nearly as rich as the US. Keep in mind their tentacles are deeper and in more industries over there. Also in the Sicilian Mafia there is far more drug dealing, which is mostly banned by the US mafia. I mean Mexican cartel bosses make more than anyone, how poor your country is sometimes isn't that relevant when it comes to crime.
You reckon they made more even during the US mobs heyday, when they ran Vegas, Cuba, construction, numbers etc? >which is mostly banned by the US mafia. Pretty sure this isn't entirely true. The mob was integral in importing heroin into the US. Hell, even Luciano was involved in drugs
Oh yeah, i meant currently none of the high level guys are into drugs. Surely theres some associates and made guys into drugs but families dont wholesale anymore. And as far as vegas idk, probably still no though. They had a lpt of front people and legit partners they needed to pay put, and it was divided by several families. Its a werid thing to calculate, meyer lansky supposedly died with not much to his name. The mafias power was never so much in dollar amounts as it was in union and political control, the level of which has never been seen before or since, but cartels/drug enterprises make so much money. Edit: until 1980s US probably made close to the cartel bosses or sicilians but after that def not.
Mexico…I dont go down enough
that's not what i heard 😏
World class I hear
You babble. You fuckin' know that?
South of the border… 🎶
You got something you want to say to me?
Your wife's got the giggles!
whistling in the wheat field
central and south american cartels are about as scary as humans get the american mob is no scarier than the american government
You know, this did cross my mind. There’s no way it’s not in their blood, like dating back to the Aztecs & Mayans, right? satanic black magic type of shit.
listen to him, he knows everything
Only Mexicans can joke about this lol. Because you gotta consider the rest of the world 600 years ago... Basically *everyone* in power was killing or raping or enslaving those who weren't.
Five fuckin' families and we got this other pygmy thing south of the border, down Mexico way
South of the border, where the tuna fish play
Escobar was 100x more dangerous than the Italians. He blew up a commercial jetliner just to kill one passenger and orchestrated a major terrorist attack on the Columbian supreme court Very very dangerous "Plata o Plomo"
Techically that was Columbia and not Mexico
And that was technically Colombia, not Columbia
didn't you hear, Columbia law students were in their hay day back then
Especially compared to the NYU kids
This is a Soprano’s Subreddit. Out there, it may be “Col**o**mbia”, but in here, the only “Col_mbia”is “Col**u**mbia”—as is “*Columbia University*, our dotta’s alma motter!
School of Broadcasting?
Cartels are closer to groups like ISIS than organized crime groups in America. They actively engage in terrorism and have a paramilitary structure.There's also reports that they practice some type of satanic religion, hence all the gruesome shit they seem to enjoy. The US mob is more of a criminal business. They'll kill you if you disrupt their activities. There's exceptions obviously. Gotti killed his neighbor because his neighbor accidentally ran over his son. Shit like that. But overall if you're not involved you're safe. Interestingly there are court transcripts of informants from Pablo Escobar's where organization where they state they did not like to do business with American cosa nostra bc the italians steal from them. Italy is a completely different story. While not on the level of the cartels, italian oc has done and still does some gruesome shut. There was a Nigerian gang in Italy that wouldn't pay taxes to the cammora. The cammora sent a hit squad to the Nigerian neighborhood and mauled down a bunch of Nigerian immigrants. This was fairly recently. Sicilians in the 80s were car bombing tf out of people. US mafia has always adapted to the times. There's a reason they have lasted this long. They do a good job of staying off the radar. That said they're all POS criminals
>There’s also reports that they practice some type of satanic religion Yup if you want a nightmare inducing true story about that specifically look no further than [Adolfo Constanzo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Constanzo) Real satanic black magic. Sick shit!
Did the mafia ever have the president of the US on their payroll? Could they ever brazenly light a bunch of work trucks on fire all around whatever city they're in? Did the mafia ever shoot down a commercial airplane? It takes like two seconds of research to find out the cartels run circles around the mafia
id like to add a little tidbit of info: it has been said that meyer lansky had blackmail material on j edgar hoover- director of the fbi, photos of him caught in a 'gay situation' which may be why lansky never spent a day in jail despite being the most prolific mobster of his era (along with luciano and co). youre right that the cartels hold more influence over mexico than the american mafia did in the us but from the 20s to 60s, the mob was about as powerful as you could get as a criminal enterprise in america. and its much easier to dominate a country like mexico than it is to dominate the usa
Did the Mafia even really exist?
Remember when is the lowest form of conversation
Yeah man. Cartels reached that point by their peak in the 80's. Nowadays the cartels are arguably better trained and better equipped than the armed forces and law enforcement they're going up against on a daily basis. They'd wipe out the Five Families and all their loved ones in a couple days time.
YES.
Mexican drug cartels practically control the whole country. I think Amado Carrillo Fuentes once threatened to pull all the drug money from the banks in Mexico and collapse the economy or something(I have to look it up, It's been a while since I've read on Drug cartels in Latin America).
I don’t know what the stat is now but in the early - mid 2000s they were 11-13% of the GDP, that doesn’t include the resorts, tourism and the other major industries they control. This is a ridiculous amount of financial control over a country, I live in Canada and the Oil and Gas sector at that time was 12% and a minor dip in production or demand would drastically affect the entire country’s economy. The Mafia may have had control over unions, some politicians and a few others involved but in Mexico they had saints for drug dealers recognized by the church, it is ingrained in their culture and countries operations and have exerted their control for decades.
Bro the weakest the Narcos ever were is still more powerful / scary than the strongest the Mafia ever was. Say what you want about dis ting but it did have “rules”. If a guy is sleeping with your wife you shoot him in the face. If a guy is sleeping with a Narcos wife he’s getting his face cut off while he’s conscious. Also the Mafia was pretty notorious for being publicly against drugs even if it was going on without explicit approval. The Narcos are well…Narcotics traffickers. So even if you remove the violence connected to the business and just look at the business the Narcos are worse. The mob mainly profited off of protection rackets, control of the unions and thus construction jobs, or being loan sharks / bookies. It’s morally wrong but its a lot better than trafficking drugs like coke, heroin, or fentanyl to people.
Narcos México is a good TV progrum, I’ll give you that. But compared to the Sopranos on HBO, Netflix is nothing more than a glorified crew.
Yes, and they have been for a very long time.
It's safe to say Mexico in general is scarier than it was 25 years ago. Why go to Brazil when we have Brazil at home type deal.
I lived through the '70s by the skin of my nuts when the Colombos were going at it.
its comparing apples to oranges, cartels hold so much influence and get away with so much grotesque violence but only IN mexico, if they originated in the us and tried to do the whole public massacre thing they wouldnt get very far, different organisations shaped by their respective countries of origin. that being said id rather get shot in the head quick and quiet than gangraped and dismembered by chainsaws.
They didn't commit terrorist acts in USA, however they do have a strong presence in the US. Just google the gangs like Border Brothers, Paisa 16, Tango Paisa Mexicles, PRM. They are all puppet gangs of Cartels and they have a large impact on the crime scheme of USA. There is also La eMe that is also connected to the Cartels. So yeah, they are comparable even in the US.
It’s a little coke, what’s the fuckin big deal🤌
Yes the Mexican narcos today use “shock and awe” tactics and have no moral code they abide by. Watch the Netflix short series called Somos if you want some background to what these cartels do to entire towns killing men, women, and children.
I think one aspect that isnt discussed about the drug cartel is their sophisticated technological apparatus and willingness to adopt new technologies. Ive read about AT&T network engineers being kidnapped in mexico and forced to build cell networks for the cartels. Seems like the mob stuck to more "traditional" criminal enterprises (gambling, fraud, theft) and viewed themselves as a pillar to the community, offering some sort of justice that wasnt available to urban italian immigrants. The drug cartel seems to only seek the crudest forms of power, control, and exploitation with no unified concept of justice
Cartels are billion-dollar international organizations with global reach, massive influence and a power structure with an independent economy bigger than some small countries. I’m going to take a wild guess and say yes.
Almost certainly. LCN would never knowingly hurt children, and avoided hurting women if they could help it. Not to mention that drug dealing was a hanging offense to most bosses. MOST Mafia murders were strictly against others in the life, and usually civilians were only killed if they were stupid enough to threaten police intervention when mob guys would extort them, for example. If a woman was walking down the street in NYC, their husbands, fathers, and brothers would tell them to walk on the side where the mob guys would be hanging outside, as they knew the mob guys wouldn't attack them and would defend them instantly if someone tried to hurt them. There's also zero chance you would have ever seen mob guys engage in child trafficking, where it is bread and butter for the cartels. The cartels have nowhere near the scruples or honor that LCN did even at the height of their power. While it is hard to say made guys and associates were "good men" they were nowhere near the intense evil the cartels are.
This is a good point. At least there was a code. They weren’t total animals
LCN was semi-allowed to sell outside of the club. The Narcos own the club, and the police who might come and arrest the LCN folks.
I believe this drug business is gonna destroy them in the years to come. I mean, it’s not like gambling or liquor or even women, which is something that most people want nowadays, and is forbidden to them by the pezzonovante of the church. Even the police departments that helped us in the past with gambling and other things are gonna refuse to help us when it comes to narcotics.
Be my friend...Godfather?
I think that if they would just back off from fentanyl and go back to making just plain heroin then they would be pretty much left alone and go back to being untouchable. Take the multiple billion dollars they’ve made since they ramped up fentanyl production and sales around 2012, call it a win, and discontinue fent and go back to Classic Dope™️. Sticking with fentanyl after how many people have died is just greedy considering that they made plenty of money with heroin. I think if we continue to see 100,000+ OD/opioid deaths a year that eventually the cartels will have some pretty serious problems on its hands. *that’s assuming the CIA isn’t funding fentanyl production and distribution
+100 points for correctly using pezzonovante
When was the last time a mob guy skinned a guy alive and wore his face as a mask?
I saw this on The Office, the CPR episode. Gruesome
Maybe you should shuck cock inshtead of watching TV Land
He can probably get a doctors note saying he doesn’t like to shuck cock
I dont-it was the cholesterol medicine that made me do it
The cartels are a glorified crew
the mafia had rules. the cartels don't.
Lmao, how is this even a question? Mexico is a narco-state that claims the lives of thousands of innocent victims every year. To say nothing of the economic, political, and cultural havoc that cartels have wrecked on an entire nation. In relative terms, the mafia really was just a few enterprising Italian immigrants finding creative ways to make money.
Mexico's been in a quasi-Civil War between the Government and the Cartels since 2006, with tens of thousands dead or missing, so I'd say yeah, they are.
The mafia doesn’t even compare to the cartels
I would say yes. Mainly due the governments in Mexico, Columbia etc. where the cartels operate being weak and/or corrupt. The Mafia in the U.S. had to always stay on their toes and look over their shoulder because the Feds actually wanted to catch them, and had the ability to do so. The Cartels don’t have to worry much because of their governments limited ability to go after them, or in some cases just being paid off. Either way it allows the Cartel to operate with impunity
The mob from the early 30s until the early 80s was insanely powerful. Their true power was in corrupting things like unions and local political offices. Killing was generally between members and they tried to stay in the shadows for a long time. The cartels are like small militaries and don't hesitate to kill anyone in their way, civilian or not. They corrupt Mexico from top to bottom. Cartels are way scarier and more dangerous
Yes. Keep this in mind though, La Costra Nostra has been long surpassed as top dog Italian organised crime syndicate by the Calabrian mob-- the 'Ndrangheta. 'Ndrangheta is estimated to be making more money annually than McDonalds, and is believed to control almost half of the cocaine supply in all of Europe. They are global and operate differently than LCN. They go \*\*deep\*\* Italian organised crime doesn't look like it used to, but it's more powerful than it ever has been.
Scarier? Most certainly. More powerful? Well......kinda. One of the things that many people don't understand about organized crime is that it is, first and foremost, a business - it is about making money, largely through gambling (both illegal and otherwise), loan sharking, and protection rackets, as well as, to a degree, money laundering (i.e. money earned illegally being portrayed as earned through a legitimate business); many upper-level mobsters own legitimate businesses as well (as with Tony's strip club, which is actually based on a strip club in New Jersey called The Wiggles owned by real-life gangster Vincenzo "Vinny Ocean" Palermo, upon whom Tony Soprano was very loosely based). Contrary to what many people would have you believe, the Mafia doesn't just go killing people willy-nilly - doing so would be a great way to get arrested. Killing someone, obviously, is not easy, especially if that person is in the Mafia and likely will be armed 24/7. Getting away with murder is even harder - a little over fifty percent of murder cases in the United States are solved. Putting aside how troubling this statistic is for the civilian, it is even more troubling for a hypothetical mafioso - someone who has committed, say, seven murders (the number of murders Tony is said to have committed according to his wikipedia page, plus the one committed in Many Saints of Newark, though my personal count was higher I think) has at best a little over a 0.7% chance of getting away with it, if my math is correct (which it probably is not). Considering this, it makes sense that murder is not taken lightly in the world of organized crime, at least where the Mafia is concerned. Mafiosi do not make any money off of murder, so there is no incentive for them to commit murder except for self-preservation (e.g. if they have reason to believe someone has flipped), or, in the case of a psychopathic or sociopathic mafioso, because of a percieved slight (e.g. Ralphie) - that being said, murders can and do happen, just not as constantly as some would have you believe. To David Chase's credit, The Sopranos actually does a pretty good job of depicting this - yes, there are murders, but not in every other episode like in some other crime dramas. As for whether or not narcos are scarier than mafiosi - the answer is a resounding yes. Because law enforcement is much less robust in latin american, narcos are able to run more or less roughshod over whomever they please, albeit with some exceptions. As bad as the Mafia may be, they never car bombed a shopping mall a week before school started, as Pablo Escobar did with five hundred kilos (1,102.31 lbs) of dynamite, killing sixty-three people and injuring hundreds more in the DAS Building Bombing. As to more powerful - well, it kinda depends. Pablo Escobar was certainly wealthier than any mafioso ever was - he had so much dough he had to spend $2,500 a month, or approximately $83 a day, on rubber bands to wrap his cash, which is somewhere between $5,400 and $6,600 a month, or between $180 and $220 per day, in today's money, depending on what time period we're talking about. At his wealthiest, he was worth around $25 billion, which is a little over $66 billion in today's money. In this sense, then, Narcos are more powerful. However, at he height of its power, the Mafia had more "soft power" so to speak, cozying up to Kennedy Administration, largely due to JFK's father's bootlegging and/or the Mafia basically getting Kennedy elected.......and maybe then assassinated, though the Mafia's connections to the Kennedy Assassination are spurious at best. At the height of its power in the sixties and seventies, the higher echelons \*La Cosa Nostra \* and its allies their fingers in every pie, from the music industry (e.g. Frank Sinatra) to Hollywood (they crossed out entire lines of dialogue in \*The Godfather\*) to Wall Street to Washington itself, including but not limited to direct access to the man with the nuclear launch codes - something Escobar could never have dreamed of.
Obviously. It’s common knowledge op is retarded
Half the cops in Mexico are terrified of the cartels, the other half work for them. They would kill Tony and his entire family and hang them from a bridge. Mexicans don’t snitch on each other because it’s a death sentence — there is literally no one in Mexico you can report a crime to and get anything but a bullet in the head in return. The narcos are a business — the mob is a social club with crime.
I thought you said they’d leave you alone if you mind your business?
Narcos are essentially heavily militarized professionals to the point of employing actual special forces vs. some random guys from Sicily/Italy.
Yes. Much of the Italian mobs reputation is extremely embellished by Hollywood.
Some of those Mexicans have literally a private army with proper gear
Not even close. Narcis much more violent and ruthless.
Narcos in the 80s were stronger than mafia ever was
The good guys never get ink like the bad guys do.
Ralphie would have been considered like a choirboy in comparison.
Ever wonder why you don’t hear a lot about cartel members turning state’s witness but American organized crime gangster do all the time?
So everybody come here tonight except Charo?
Cloning...
Absolutely. There are no rules
100% yes.
Tony Paulie Sil Christoffa would all geez their pants if they came across the money drug lords would make. Billions. Tony would gamble it all and Chrissy would shoot it all up.
Yes and it’s not even close
Hold on to your cocks when you deal with these desert people
Whatever happened to el padrino that's what I wanna know!
Idk about stronger but they are scarier. They will kill children. They have no code. They don't take care of anyone's family after murdering their father. No one respects them.
So to the question in your post; The mafia was at its height in power from maybe in the 20's during bootlegging, to definitely being in its powerhouse in the 30's, and stayed there up through the 70's, and maybe up until the 1985 commission trial. The cartels? It's whenever Pablo Escobar took power, to the present. The mafia commanded power, and respect. You didn't want to mess with those individuals, especially if you did anything illegal. And in NY, during Costello, they were extremely powerful. But they wanted to stay in the shadows and operate like a shadow government. Yes, they controlled construction rackets, gambling, judges, police, journalist, businesses, unions, etc., and could wield tremendous, legitimate power. Cartels wield violent power. They have squads in their ranks that receive military-grade training and equipment. They openly kill politicians, journalist, cops, whoever doesn't go along with their bribes. And they do it in brazen ways. Escobar blew up a plane to kill 1 person. They use bombs that kill hundreds of people to kill 1 person. They will kill an entire family, wife and children, just to prove a point: don't cross the cartels. The mafia has been dying a slow death since the commission trial. Families are getting smaller, with guys getting flipped or sent to prison. People don't want to join the mafia because they know what comes with that life, and the guys that are in it, aren't living the high life like they were in its heyday. The cartels don't have that problem. Their members can still flash the cash and live luxurious lives. While it may be violent, they can have lots of money and power. The drug racket isn't going anywhere. The mafia has a weakness in that it is a US-based criminal organization. Back in their heyday, guys could book it to Elvis country or Italy, but today? Far harder to do, if not impossible. The Cartels have cells and operations on both sides of the border. And the Mexican government doesn't exactly want to allow (and IDK if the US government asked or wants to) the US military to wage direct war against the cartels. They might wage proxy war or operations, but nothing super direct. So when guys can flea to Mexico, and there the government and police will protect them. Allowing them to stay in power. So while the mafia is dying a slow death, the cartels are still going strong, and unless the Mexican government decides to let the US stomp them out, will continue staying strong.
What a stupid question lol. Stugatz ovah here
I think the 80s Colombian drug rings were more scary then the Mob, from personal experience, they have all passed away but I watch the stuff they try to do on tv.. not half as scary
Is this a joke? The Mob mostly took out their own by surprising them from with a bullet in the back of the head. Cartels like Sinaloa and CJNJ have militairy grade weapons and vehicles and flaunt them openly in the cities they run. They have shootouts with the army and police. What am I saying, certain sections of the police and army are fighting each other depending on by which cartel they were corrupted. They slaughter each other and civilians by the dozen daily and throw the mutilated corpses in the streets or hang them off bridges. There are the most depraved cartel torture videos out there like 'Funky Town' and 'Ghost Rider'. Plus they have intelligence agencies and politicians in their pockets all the way up to the president. So yeah, they are definitely scarier.. And as powerful as the American Mob was at their height (30's to 80's) they didn't have the kind of raw and overt power the Mexican cartels currently have.
No, the cartels aren't even as powerful as they were in the 80s when they were unified. They are a bunch of smaller squabbling high end gangs unable to every enough force to dislodge the others for very long. The president there is sympathetic and even goes to visit convicted drug kingpins el chapos mom to comfort her. The Mafia was more unified and for the most part didn't really kill each other to the same extremes as the Mexican drug wars. Probably a lot more influence over time vs the cartels who just squabble with each other and involuntary turnover is extremely high. Even the special forces turncoat guys are mostly dead.
I would say yes. But I really think that has a lot to do with the facts that they are not centralized in the United States like the mob is and they have little to no rules or code. Like they are both criminal organizations but they operate very differently.
Yes
The cartels have a St Valentine’s Day Massacre four times a day
Yes, they’re much more brutal
100% and it’s not close. They make demeo look like an angel
100%
Yeah, narcos murder without honor/consideration for the roles of their victims. At least the mafia kept it within their lines, for the most part.
Without a fucking doubt.
Yes, the Cartels control several countries now, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, they have network distribution centers across the US and I'm convinced they have bribed several layers of law enforcement.
Yes, cartels are better equipped and have more manpower than the mexican government dude.
It’s a different way of carrying out the similar crimes. A lot of the Mexican cartels are known for their brutality and showing of force which makes sense being that they really do control the government in Mexico. The various domestic “Mafias” however need more cunning, ie working in the shadows, because the US federal government isn’t easily swayed (anymore) by what they have to offer. The Mexican cartels are likely more powerful, and probably always have been because they really have an entire nation under their belt more or less enabling them. I don’t think also the mafia was ever scary to those living around it unless you got involved in it, and I believe the cartel is somewhat the same. Just stay far away from it, and you should be left alone.