Sicily is one of the poorest, most chaotic and least visited regions in Italy. People have been living on the island since 8000BC, and it has been invaded and fought over so many times, for so many different reasons, that its architecture, language and even its food are a bewildering amalgamation of various cultures.

I was staying in the African quarter of Palermo, in a hostel that turned out to be a converted Catholic convent, complete with crumbling mosaics and an adjoining cathedral. On my first day I met up with a friend who had organised for us to do some work at Addiopizzo, an anti-mafia organisation based in Palermo. After walking through hectic street markets, stopping for a very black 40 cents espresso and munching on a cannolo — a delicious Sicilian pastry filled with sweet ricotta — we arrived at Addiopizzo. We knew nothing about the organisation, only that it worked against the mafia. Thankfully a friendly man called Edo collected us, took us into a large room that looked like a comprehensive museum of Sicily’s mafia history, and started explaining that their organisation campaigned against the mafia by fighting the pizzo.

“Pizzo is something cultural, something fundamental, almost like a tax but one that we pay to criminal organisations, not to the government. It’s more than protection money or extortion; it is how the mafia marks its territory, how they assert their dominance over ordinary people.” Edo went on to tell us how, back in 2004, some friends in their 20s had tried to open a shop but immediately came up against people trying to extort money from them. This made them realize how integrated paying pizzo was in society — the amount was even factored into the business plan. And it was the same for everyone in the city. One of them had an idea for a slogan, which roughly translates as “A people who pay pizzo are a people without dignity”. The slogan was soon being graffitied all over the city or scrawled on sheets and hung from motorway bridges.

It’s more than protection money or extortion; it is how the mafia marks its territory, how they assert their dominance over ordinary people.

I asked what they’d been doing in the nine years since then and he smiled, suggesting we go get lunch so he could show me. We walked through the streets, us two foreigners panting slightly in the sun, and re-entered the maze of little lanes, every now and then seeing another rickety church. After passing Bar Garibaldi (where you get plied with Sicilian wine by cheerful communists) we reached our destination, the Antica foccaceria San Francesca. Edo told us how this eatery had been one of the first places to sign up to Addiopizzo’s collective. The idea is to have businesses publicly declare that they do not and will not pay pizzo. The public in turn is encouraged to support these businesses through a campaign of ethical consumerism, therefore depriving the mafia of influence and rewarding the enterprises which are brave enough to take a stand. By making the businesses part of a larger collective, Addiopizzo makes sure they are not alone and isolated in their defiance; the network gives them a support system. Edo pointed out a house next to the focacceria where, about 80 years previously, “Lucky” Luciano had had his shop. From this base he exported confetti to the United States, with a fortune in cocaine smuggled through in each shipment.

When I asked how effective Addiopizzo’s network has been, Edo reeled off what the organisation had achieved: they now have over 500 businesses on their network in Palermo, a tourism arm and parallel organisations in other cities. Even the office I had visited was an apartment confiscated from the Mafia by the government and given to Addiopizzo to use. And all based on the concept of ethical consumerism.

Over the next week we worked at Addiopizzo, translating the website for their tourism section which lets people travel around Sicily pizzo free. It was a bizarre feeling, working in an apartment confiscated from Toto Riina, one of the bloodiest Mafia bosses in Sicily’s history, surrounded by laughing Addiopizzo volunteers who would blare the Godfather theme tune over the office speakers to shock us newcomers.

On our fourth day one of the volunteers, Pico, decided he was going to take us on a field trip. He whisked us off to was Corleone, a small but infamous town located an hour and a half drive inland. The town’s richest family became the biggest Mafia syndicate in Sicily in the early 20th century. Not without reason did Coppola choose this name for The Godfather. Sitting in the middle of the arid and undulating plains the town hugs a small hill and certainly looks like it belongs in a movie. Whilst there we attended a debate, chaired by Pico, about the way Sicilians should approach the role of the Mafia in tourism and whether or not it is ethical to use the romance of its history to attract tourists.

The next day Pico took us to Cinisi, a town just outside Palermo where one of the first anti-mafia activists, Peppino Impastato, came from. He was killed in the 70s, tied to a railway track with two sticks of dynamite stuffed in his mouth. We met Peppino’s brother in his old house, which has become a museum dedicated to his memory. Pico turned to me on the balcony and pointed at the stunning Sicilian coast in front of us, and then to the ugly developments that scar the landscape: the unnecessary motorways, abandoned hotels and misplaced airport — all products of Mafia bribery, which ensured that construction contracts went to their companies. In an uncharacteristically serious voice he told me that you have to confront the problem and try to understand it in order to fight it. Avoiding the issue is no use; and it does seem that the resentment and outrage of people in Sicily about this ongoing and debilitating part of their culture has been growing steadily for years, for decades even, and is manifesting itself in organisations like Addiopizzo. Considering that the Mafia is widely accepted to be the biggest business in Italy their defiance is all the more impressive.

Edoardo Zaffuto, cofounder of grassroots movement Addiopizzo, will speak on “Addiopizzo. An ethical consumerism campaign against the Mafia” on March 12 at 7.00pm in the Synge Theatre