Giuseppe "Peppino" Impastato was born in Cinisi, in the province of Palermo, into a Mafia family.
According to his younger brother Giovanni Impastato, Peppino's Antimafia activity might have been triggered by the brutal murder of his uncle by marriage, Cesare Manzella, who was blown to pieces by a car bomb in April 1963 when Peppino was fifteen years old.