martes, 2 de diciembre de 2008

They regard Kosovo in their hearts with their uncovered hands

The cold mountains appear from distance, the blue morning sees her sons coming from long and hard times, she can see in their faces the father that is gone, the husband, de son. Eight with the hunger of millions, the frozen wind dancing with their clothes, blankets never enough. Is 1998 but times doesn’t seem to advance from the years that had passed, Kosovo is where they are but not where they will be, because they are fleeing from war, from the massacres of ethnical persecution, looking for them, looking for their blood and costumes; the times that seem not to end as their grand father’s grand father told, from sadness and solitude.

Albania is not very far away, immigrants had come from there and became an important minority, suddenly big majority between Serbs. Yugoslavia is only rich in culture because the different religions, languages and traditions contrast with poverty in the mountains and islands of the Balkan peninsula. Long time ago there was the Byzantine empire, after them the Ottomans ruled almost until Yugoslavia, or as firstly was named the kingdom of Croats and Serbs. Christians, Orthodox and Muslims live together but not for globalization, but for ancestral tradition, traditions by fortune very solid and proud of themselves, but that unfortunately war is a tradition also, were people follows its rituals of persecution.

From Albania not only had immigrants come, but also Albanians had always been from Kosovo, because when the Illyrians came to the Balkan peninsula they settled down not only in actual Albania, but also in what Kosovo will be, south Macedonia and Montenegro. These ethnical realities had generated conflicts in history, but Kosovo grew as a Serbian province and a lot of the Serbian nationalism is now at days inspired in Kosovo’s battles and ventures. That’s the reason why in actual days Serbians feared Albanians in their territory, why Serbians had treated that way to the Illyrian population. Those actions had the objective of taking control of their country, of being sure that there will not be any minority that could affect Serbia’s interests, but a greater problem was that Albanians where not a minority, so as that for each one Serb in Kosovo there are nine Albanians. That revels that behind those eight Albanian-Kosovians there is as minimum a Serb with the power of weapons after them, a power that had displaced them into desolation and reject.

We can see in this group of trekkers the big compassion and love between them, how women, elderly women and men, and children have the priority of being safe, and they in their vulnerability have the protection of heir union. A woman had lost his senses, she is at the floor being hugged by the human virtue of hope and heat. Their clothing reveals how that land is also theirs, how they are one to another. Their expression of property, hard work and fatigue as the mountain covers them as their shelter; their home. Cold wind at their uncovered hands, the leaves like the soft carpet of future presence this moment where the eyes of the child regard the past and the future from innocence, but also from the experienced heart that suffer with the blood frozen, frozen by winter, frozen by hate. At the same time the frozen hearts bump and feeds the veins, through the road where hope will never end, and faith the path will illuminate, the sunrise at the morning with other date to be awake, to walk, to feel and to dream for the next day.

lunes, 10 de noviembre de 2008

Introduction Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was formed by five actual countries: Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia, and for some countries also Kosovo (because Kosovo declared independence in 17/02/2008, but it is not officially recognized as independent for the international community, although many countries had recognized Kosovo as an independent nation). Yugoslavia was founded at the beginning as the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes in 1918 after the end of the Great War.

Yugoslavia was a republic with four different official languages, that divides very different cultures that where also divided in many religions. Also the distribution of population make Yugoslavia a conflictive nation because Montenegrins where the 2,6%, Slovenes 7,8%, Serbs 36,3%, Albanians 8% and Hungarians 2%. There are very big differences between the largest population (Serbs) and the others, giving in the Yugoslav’s democracy an important inequality, also because all those different cultures are very diverse, for their varied historical provenience. The distribution of Religion is also very diverse: Catholic 30,8%, Orthodox 45,4%, Muslim 17%. All these differences will generate terrible conflicts in Yugoslavian history, not only during the Federal socialist republic of Yugoslavia (countries formal name) but before its creation and also after its fragmentation that started in 1991. The international intervention since the foundation of the union has been decisive for Yugoslav policies and changes, from the motivation after the Great War to the Bombardments at the ends of Yugoslavia.
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