Neresine History and Tradition History of a People Straddling Two Cultures

Giovanni (Nino) Bracco NERESINE HISTORY AND TRADITION HISTORY OF A PEOPLE STRADDLING TWO CULTURES March-September 2012 1 For our mother and father Romana, and Silvio Translation by: Leo. D. Bracco 2 CONTENTS PRESENTATION 4 PROLOGUE 6 I - PRELIMINARY HISTORY AND INTRODUCTION 8 II - THE HISTORY 15 III - THE MORE RECENT HISTORY 77 IV - CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS 86 V - THE SOCIAL LIFE 116 VI - THE POLITICAL QUESTION 131 VII - ETHNICAL ASPECT 149 APPENDIX A 153 APPENDIX B 157 BIBLIOGRAPHY 161 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 162 INDEX 163 3 PRESENTATION Neresine. Nadalina. Nadalina Massalin. My almost mythical great grandmother, the mother of my grandmother was born in Neresine, she is mythical for me because she has lived and was always only in my fantasy. I never met my bisnonna nor have I ever seen any of her appearance, there is not even a photograph of her. Nevertheless, she greatly impresses me: I like her, thinking of her I have always loved. I do not know why but, she always has a smile for me, she gives me the will, the pleasure to live: she tells me of her provenance but shields me from her fears, the injustices, the violence, the darkness and the tears of her times (above all of my mother) which I must endure and I am forced to associate with my outset every time we talk about it. Nadalina instead with innocence and happy unawareness tells me of her, “windy island” with its very beautiful Sea, the countryside, the olive trees, the quince trees and, above all the fruitful gardens so dependable for the daily meals. The garden is growing radicchio for meals, alla Neresinotta with boiled potatoes. My bisnonna entertains me with her story about her goat “capretta” the absolute fraternity with it, afterward similarly lived by her daughter (my grandmother) and my mother, I missed it all, they in their youth always had a “goat for friend”. In my imagination Nadalina comes to meet me in the way my mother told me she was: “...peasant, poor and illiterate, with her hair snug on top of her head, today we may call it chignon, bun. I wander what she called it in her dialect. She was dressed like all peasants women: with the long, down to the ground, black cotton skirt curled to the waist under the tight vest, an apron over the skirt (also black or at most, my mother used to tell me, with little bright flowers on a black background) and, always, coquetry or to better say, the joy of a fresh and fragrant carnation from her garden on her waist, to collect a draping nock of her apron...” I have tried to find her in this beautiful narrative on Neresine, that has given me so much more information than I ever had on the Island, on the Lussino of my grandmother and mother, and therefore mine: I sought for her, Massalin in the appendices roster of surnames, she is not there and it is right and normal not to find her, people like her do not and cannot objectively make history. Not even in the history of a small Quarnero Sea Island unknown to most people, more than history they are a part of geography, the nature of a place: my bisinonna Nadalina I think of I know her like the strong and slender olive trees of her island, like the fragrant carnations of her garden, like her Sea so intensely green and azure, I am really proud of her. I am proud of that which, without too much imaginative efforts, I think may have been the courage of her life, of her unexhausted working capacity that enabled her to survive the daily battle, to put together the lunches and dinners for her family, the joy with which she participated in her town’s festivities. The enthusiastic innocence void of envy with which she appreciated the wellbeing of others that, like her, were born in Neresine, in that beautiful panorama and had become rich, famous and, brought along the entrepreneurship of Neresine all over the world. Deep down I like the fact that I do not have in my fantasy to share her with anyone: never had my grandmother or mother spoken to me about a husband of her, my eventual bisnonno, of whom although, she probably bore his Venetian surname. No for me Neresine declines only through womanhood. And she, Nadalina who knows to which gender pride she associated with, as we say today in reference to “female gender”, pride to which I had dedicated much of my writings, it may have come down from her, my bisnonna Nadalina from Neresine, of her independence, of the pride with which she in her poverty lived, with her happy communion with 4 the nature of the island, of her pleasure of the beauty which, she could only express with the carnation pinned to her waist. The beautiful paper that I just finished reading, among other things it tells me that the language of the autochthonous people was the Slav (that anyhow, had nothing to do with the Croat), but my bisnonna Nadalina, who knows and why spoke Italian (naturally, in the Istro-Veneto dialect version) as spoke Italian my maternal grandmother and mother. My grandmother fled Lussino as the many that is told in this book, which did not have the opportunity of an option: when she returned to Lussino, in her small stone house by the harbor, she looked from its windows the same outspread of Sea that saw her own sky-blue eyes. Of bisnonna Nadalina I don’t know, there is nothing left of her, no concrete evidence that she had lived there, could be that in the time of the 1947, Istrian tragedy, there was nothing left already and, no one after, could tell me which was her house, the garden she kept, or the paths she habitually followed. It belong to a “first” confident and healthy to which in my fantasy continues to belong her whole island. Neresine, of which just for this I like to think, for as much as it is unlikely, that the name wants to signify “the island, the bay of Nereo, God of the Sea”. Because I like the idea of committing to the myth, to poetry, both of them together, Nadalina and her Neresine. Anna Maria Mori 5 PROLOGUE This story has been written with the intent to satisfy the ever present curiosity of knowing ones ethnic, historic and cultural roots, of which the present generations of Neresinotti and of its descendants, by now scattered all over the world, manifest an ever increasing interest. The work therefore, does not intend to rewrite a history never written before, nor to interpret or to give support to any political side, but to tell the origin and the evolution of the town with the events, as they really happened through the centuries. It cannot be considered a “history of the town” in fact that book already exists Neresine Na Otoku Lusinju (Neresine on the island of Lussino) by Enver Imamovich, a Bosnian citizen, who arrived in Neresine as a tourist in the nineteen seventies. Published in 1979, the volume was financed by Government funds from the Cultural Department of what was then called the Federated Republic of Bosnia. Its author was liege to the political regime of the time, and he could not avoid, nor could he have been able to do it, being restrained by the political-nationalist scheme to which his work was responsive. Not by chance, an entire chapter titled “Dolazak Harvata na otok” (The arrival of the Croatian in the island) is dedicated to a Croatian ethnicity in the island of Lussino, which never happen in the way described. Furthermore, the author not being personally involved, relied on the sayings of Domenico Rucconich (Limbertich), known in town as one of the most inflamed Croatian nationalist. Given these conditions, the book by default became a gathering of inaccurate historical inventions in which the history is distorted, and in part ignored. While it is amply described what happens starting in 1945... It omits the exodus and persecutions against the “Italians”. Among the most comical inaccuracies for example, was an old photograph full of people in the main square taken from the concrete paved street saliso by the church, during one of the usual oceanic speeches by Mussolini, it was broadcasted at full volume. In the photo, you see the radio together with the flag on the window of Casa of Fascio the Fascist House (the actual Beluli house). The image was called a usual “Yugoslav socialization meeting of the people” in the main square. The book by Imamovich, given the source, is after all a true testimonial of how, and by whom the town was actively governed, after the establishment of the communist regime of Tito. In the reconstruction of the history of Neresine, we have drawn the information from original documents found in various official archives, from documents, and manuscripts of our ancestors kept here, and there among the descendants, and above all from the oral tradition of past generations. Unfortunately, it was not possible to consult the archives of the town of Neresine, because, all the papers it contained – certainly those prominent to the last one hundred years of the town existence, but, also ancient ones – have been intentionally burned in 1945, by the members of the just established Narodni Odbor (Popular Committee) to erase all past history. In the process of destroying the documents, the Odbor members availed themselves, the help of “povero” (town fool) Mauro, who gifted with a good memory, and his own particular intelligence, managed to save from the flames, maybe unknowingly, some papers of enough interest.

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