I am actually not a native English-language speaker, so I needed to confirm what OTD means. I must recognise I feel honoured by your atention towards my case in such an important date in your life. I actually took a look and couldn´t find which article is dedicated to your beloved father. My father for instance died in a car accident when I was 4, he was an economist but got notability as musician and despite not having an artcle here, it is mentioned in the corresponding articles. Contrary to commun sense, I always avoided editing issues directly related to me or the ones I am too much familiarised with. Not that I find anything wrong about it, but it simply happened to me from the very begining naturally. For instance, I never edited a single word in the field I work in. I guess inconsciently I am aware that I am anable to be objective and edit neutraly, so even if my edits were accepted, they would have been disregarded by myself as biased.
An aspect from this project that fascinates me the most is the potential to archive objectivness and neutrality. Ever since young I was surrounded by many editions of written encyclopedias in several languages, and after a while, what fascinated me, was to see how same events were described in different ways depending on how old and who the publisher was. Simplifiying even more, I started my studies in Mexico, then later I been at the Spanish school in Lisbon, so just by comparing the way the discouvery of the Amereicas and the relation between Europeans and native cultures was dealt in the history books of the two was quite shocking. Students depending from where they are were basically learning the same event in a two totally opposite ways.
My parents were diplomats and my life started during the 1980s still within the Cold War. I soon got the perception that despite the clear advantages and disvantages of ones against the others, this clear view was corrumpted by an exagerated surrealistic propaganda, which was unnecessary. America won the Cold War, Rambo was hero, Rocky Balboa kicked the ass of those robotic blond Russians, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Samantha Fox ruled the top music charts. I was a Yugoslav. A Westerner to the easterners and an Easterner to the westerners. My family was huge mosaic. My father family is a traditional old-Belgrade family. We had an entire 6-floor building in the city center where members of the family lived. The fortune was a mix of a Serbian wealth family on behalve of my grandma connected to stock-exchange and financial investments, while the granpa part was a traditional Czech family from Prague of engeneers and Prague University professors. In 19th century one of the main projects was the building of the Orient Exoress railroad line that would link Central Europe, trough Belgrade, to Athens and Istambul. The engeneering company my grand-grand-father owned in Prague was selected to realise the project. The entire project was created and realised by my grand-grand-father and its team. As such lenghty projects demanded direct supervision, he moved to Belgrade from where he could supervise much more closely the works done on the field. It is there that he meats a Serbian lady, my grand-grand-mother, and marry´s her. The company archives major sucess by completing the rail line, and my grand-grand-father stays in Belgrade where he lives hapily. His son, my granda, followed his steps, also became an engeneer, and further expanded the company even by internationalising it. Although at the end of WWII much of the property was confiscated on the grounds of being a burgoise class, my grandpa was allowed to keep on his activity at the company which by then had already expanded to Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Libya, Iraq and Kuwait. Althought such seemengly capitalist adventures were not seen benevolently by the new regime, Tito certainly saw a chance of offering services that could bring foreign currency cash flaw into the country, and also advertise its reputation as a country capable of making major construction projects all by itself. After a time spend supervising damm constructions in Iraq and Kuwait, my grandpa felt it was time his son, my father, to take care of the company. By then my father enjoyed life as much as he could. He collected cars, photo cameras, used to travel regularely to the West to bring everything he needed since Yugoslavia was a socialist country but not under Soviet influence, but rather persuing a neutral policy of Non-Alligmment, and this allowed him to create a few quite succesfull rock bands (we have their articles here, but I will not cite them to protect my identity) having made concerts both in East and West, having been soecially interesting the ones in the East since rock was forbidden in Soviet Union and its satellites, but it was only Yugoslav bands as representative of a socialist state that were allowed to perform there, so they got quite a sucess there. In between his concerts, car collection and photo sessions, my father graduted bussiness managment and started to spend more time with my grandoa in the company.
In the meantime, my father got married. My mother family are originally Serbs from Sarajevo. They were landlords known for producing a special kind of horses and also for having large ammounts of cultivated land with all sort of fruits, vegetables, marmelade, wine and licour production. My grand-grand-father was a chief of Sarajevo post office. He had 2 wives and 8 children of whom my grandmather was the oldest one. All of his children had a job, while the land was intended intentionally to provide work for the less fortunate locals. As the oldest one, my grandma became the right-hand of her father at the post office, however, shortly after, WWII started, and Germans and Italians invaded Yugoslavia. Still working at the post office, this is when my 18-years old young grandma meats my grandfather, a rebel who went to the Partisans to resist German occupation. Despite most of my grandma family being Chetniks, monarchists, in this times of war all help was welcome. My grandma used her position at the post office to secretly help the resistance. Both, my granma and granpa played an important role in Axis forces defeat in Sarajevo, and after the war were condecorated and moved to the capital Belrgade where my granfather became an high ranking officer first in the Interior Ministry, then Exterior Ministry, and finally in the Diplomacy. He even menaged to be part of the entourage of Tito when he travelled around the world, and oh did he travelled. After being in charge of several important internal affairs sfter the war, he was sent to numerous diplomatic missions to Yugoslav embassies, many of them in quite a hot spots (Israel for exemple). Hardly anyone of todays generation knows, but after WWII and during Cold War, Yugoslavia was quite an influential country. Not only it had a charismatic leader which was Tito, but it was a country that defied both East and West, and started convincing countries around the world not to adhere neither no NATO nor to Warsaw Pact, but to join the Non-Alligned Movement, an organisation of countries that promoted independence, respect, autodetermination, and the stop of all forms of exploration. Tito charisma and his constant travells propagating this ideals, the fact that Yugoslavia was a European country and that it took the initiative, made Yugoslavia sort of a lider of this "Third way". Yugoslavs were proud. The country worked because benefited from the advantages of capitalism, while having the political stability of a dictatorship which enabled the country to make long term projects without wondering what will happened in a few-years time elections. Young people lived happy, entertainment industry was at its hight, people had jobs, yearly hollyday, free social and health care, free travelling, even without leaving the country you could go from the Alps to the sandy beaches. People from Belgrade, Zagreb and other cities used to have summer houses at the Adriatic coast, or also mountain houses at several winter sports resorts.
All my granpas had great lives. My mother spent her youth travelling a lot following the diplomatic missions my grandpa was sent to. She eventually graduated economy and had several jobs. The mid 1980s however were very unfortunate. My momms granpa had already died, and now it was my daddy´s granpa. Shortly after, my father died in a car accident. We were in Mexico, and Mexico 1985 earthquake stroke us. We decided to return to Europe, to Yugoslavia. It was the late 1980s, Yugoslavia was at its peak, everyone even talked how we were the next ones to enter the European Community. I grew-up studying in international schools getting along with people from all around the world and I remember proudly displaying my Yugoslav flag at international days. Mentioning Yugoslavia produced a sense of respect. My childhood in Belgrade was the best time of my life. Life was very dinamic, we had a country in which comparativelly earnings/cost of living was quite high, we produced cars, we produced jet planes, our airliner JAT was 9th in Europe with projections of further growing (sort of what happend with Turkish Airlines), we hosted the 1976 UEFA European championship, the 1986 Winter Olympics, our sports teams were winning it all, even Red Star became European champion in 1991. Our music, although hated by many, was being a sucess in neighbouring countries with people feeling stadiums prefering to see our stars than Samantha Fox. We had an aparment in a exclusive area of Belgrade and a summer house build by my grandpa near Dubrovnik. My mother remaried to a doctor, famous in his speciality beyond Yugoslav borders. After a numerous conferences he was invited as special guest, a proposal for him to come to work in Portugal where they still lacked technicians in the field he was master at, so after thinking we accepted (him, my mother, and me). After geting used to Belgrade and life in Yugoslavia, moving to Portugal in late 1980s was like leaving Europe and returning to Latin America. As exemple a stupid kiddo cares about, in Belgrade I had over 20 TV channels. In Portugal, I had 1 and a half (because the second one had only like 3 hours of programm at afternoon and were sort of religious programs). Education? I didn´t needed to study at all for entire two years because I had it all in Serbia at schooll.
However, I soon started to have to watch the news constantly. The prosperous country I left and was said to be the next one to join EU, was clearly being thorn appart. I grew up in Mexico so I clearly knew what democratic election were. But I immediatelly sppoted that the elections being not held nationally but instead in eacg republic, was clear sign the country was not going to be an unit anymore. I went there on hollyday in summer 1990 and after a while in Belgrade where everyone was waving Yugoslav flags and cheering "Jugoslavija!!!" because of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in which Yugoslavia was doing good, we then went for the second part of the vacation to our summer house near Dubrovnik in Croatia, and the first thing I noteced was that there were no Yugoslav flags, it was all full of pro-independence posters, and many of the locals by hearing our Serbian accent (they had no problems with for hundred years) were now suggesting they were not understanding us. At the beach there was a big group of scandinavian turists and a group of local youngsters was explaining to them that that was not Yugoslavia but Croatia. You may think I am biased, I dont want to impose to anyone this story, but what happened is that after that week at Croatian coast, we returned to Belgrade, and in Belgrade it was all the same athmosphere, with Yugoslav flags, people chanting for Yugoslavia, and everyone almost had a collapse when we lost on penalties against Argentina in the 1/4 finals.
So I returned to Portugal, Portugal started receving tons of monney from the EU funds, while my country suffered war, economic sanctions, total devaluation of the currency and subsequent empuverishment, propagandistic campaign in a pure "good guy/bad guy" fasion, etc.
I haven´t partici+ated in the war, haven´t even been there. But just because I am a Serb:
A) My family summer house near Dubrovnik, which was known by locals as being property of Serbs, was vandalised several times, everything worth was stolen, the rest was destroyed (all this reported via telephone by a nice neighbour friend of our family for generations), and finally, a Croatian army war veteran took possession of the house and brought his family and setled in. In an environment in which we were advised not to go there and reclaim our property by any means because of a life threatening danger (it was still during war), my family accepted selling the house my grandgrandfather bouth more than 6 decades earlier, which consisted of a two floor house with big garde, garage, space for pool (projected, never finished) in a noble area of the town just 50 meters from the main beach. The price we receved for the house was less than the normal value of only the content which was inside.
B) During Bosnian War, the property which was located near the center of the city of Sarajevo, right on the bank of the Miljacka river, was occupied by Bosnian forces. The house and all auxiliary constructions were destroyed to the ground, and without any legal substance, the construction of the King Fahd Mosque (Sarajevo) was started. That was the house where my grandgrandfather who worked at the post office and his children lived. As the children were getting older each found its own place (my grandma for instance moved to Belgrade), grandgrandpa died and his second wife stayed there to live. The pressure on her to leave was so great that she spent her last years under huge stress and died under unclear circunstances. As soon as she died, heavy machinery came into the property and started building the mosque. When was was over the mosque was already in an advanced stage, Unfortunatelly, years of wars and suffering left family of mine too vulnerable and they needed the monney despite being ridiculously low for what it is.
C) Before obtaining Portuguese passport, I only had a Yugoslav one. When economic sanctions were imposed against FR Yugoslavia, one of the points was that no Yugoslav citizens could move, touch, transfer, or even use, the monney we had in our accounts. Me and my family had major problems because of it and menaged to survive just thanks to friends we had. What if we didn´t had them? People failed to pay their credits, lost properties, cars...
D) Certain number of more distant part of my family from Bosnia suffered casualties and some are permanently wounded. An entire campaign was made worldwide to make the public opinion believe Serbs were heavily armed bastards fightng woman, children and ender people.
