Bluelabel Radioweb 27 ottobre 0.47.27 This is a touching article from the NY Time reguarding my hometown. Its interesting reading that the journalist talks about reunion with Italy, while in the Memorandum of London of 1954, its written Italy will take over the Temporary administration of the Free Territory. For any reason they make it look like it was a reunion, maybe because in the article they merits US for their triumphal diplomacy? In the article its written that Italy killed the economy, didnt allow the free zone to develop and make profits, but subsidized the dying city. Contraddictory, who knows why they did so? In the next decades 70.000 Triestinos migrated, mostly to Australia. In 2013 the migration is still going on, 60 years after! Have a quick look below, its interesting. Ciao ITALY: Tears Over Trieste Monday, Nov. 09, 1959 -- Five years ago the Italian Tricolor flapped proudly in a fresh sea breeze from thousands of windows and rooftops of Trieste. Quick-marching into the Piazza dell Unità, beplumed Bersaglieri were hard put to it to clear a path through the delirious crowd of 250,000 that shook the vast square with endless roars of Viva lItalia! Viva Trieste Italiana! Thus, after nine postwar years as a free territory, the citizens of the Adriatic port city of Trieste deliriously greeted their reunion with Italy. With justice, the agreement to return Trieste to Italy was widely hailed as a triumph of U.S. diplomacy—the happiest feasible outcome of a territorial dispute that had long poisoned relations between Italy and Marshal Titos Yugoslavia. But this week, as the fifth anniversary of the great day approached, no one felt like putting out more flags. When Triestes Mayor Mario Franzil laid a wreath in the piazza in memory of pro-Italian rioters killed during the Allied occupation, only the pigeons looked on. After five years of Italian rule, once flourishing Trieste is dying economically. Beautiful Head. Twenty years ago, Trieste was second only to Genoa among Italian ports; today it is eighth. Triestes maritime traffic has dropped 25% in the past two years, and rail traffic is less than half the 1957 rate. More than 17,000 Triestini (12% of the labor force) are unemployed, and the number of disguised unemployed—their livelihood provided by government make-work projects—is steadily increasing. Trieste, says its mayor, has become a beautiful head without a body or bloodstream. Under the 1954 agreement, almost all the citys Istrian hinterland went to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavs have worked hard to build up nearby Fiume (now called Rijeka) as a rival port. By keeping labor costs at coolie levels, Rijeka offers shippers rates running 20% to 50% below Triestes. The nations of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, for which Trieste used to be the prime port, are mostly Communist now, but even non-Communist Austria has diverted so much of its business to Rijeka that this year, for the first time in history, Rijeka is handling more maritime traffic than Trieste. Overflowing Heart. In their first flush of enthusiasm over regaining Trieste, Romes bureaucrats floated a national bond issue to help compensate the city for the economic loss it suffered with the departure of the 6,000 U.S. and British troops who had garrisoned the free territory. But since then, Rome has turned a deaf ear to proposals that some of Italys innumerable state-owned enterprises be moved to Trieste and that the city be granted the privilege of importing raw materials and exporting finished goods duty-free. Triestini complain that Sicilian-born Giovanni Palamara, Italys prefect in Trieste, shrugs off their troubles by saying, My own island suffers more. Grumbled Mayor Franzil: Trieste, of course, is a city close to all Italian hearts, and Roman politicians are so moved when they come here that their eyes fill with tears. Maybe thats why they cant see our problems.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 10:38:03 +0000
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