The early Mafia leaders in this country tried to maintain Sicilian criminal traditions in a new country and society. Younger Italian gangsters considered this impossible, preferring instead to cooperate not only with Italian criminals, but also with other ethnics—especially the highly organized Jewish gangsters. In time, the Mustache Petes—as the young mafiosi not-so-lovingly dubbed the old Sicilians—were considered an obstacle in “Americanizing” crime.
In New York and other cities, the Mustache Petes were eliminated from power, usually through assassination. But often, the younger generation of criminals, fattened by huge bootlegging profits, used political force and the police to isolate and so take the Mustache Petes out of circulation.
Among the younger gangsters were Lucky Luciano (always much more comfortable working with Jewish gangsters than with many of his own kind), Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Tommy Lucchese and others.
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Even Joe Bonanno, a young mobster perhaps more steeped in “tradition,” “honor” and “respect,” saw the need to modernize and so opposed the Mustache Petes. After the bloody Castellammarese War—which eliminated the old Mafia as a force in the United States—a far wealthier, healthier and more powerful “Mafia” emerged in organized crime.
Luciano and his cohorts found they could work well with such Jewish gangsters as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Louis Lepke, Cleveland’s Mayfield Road Gang (later Nevada’s Desert Inn Syndicate) and Detroit’s Purple Gang.
The Mustache Petes, they felt, were too set in their ways to see the true riches and power a crime syndicate could bring. Besides, the old guard—the Morellos, Lupo the Wolf, Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano—were interested primarily in exploiting fellow Italians and not the public at large.
