The earthly remains of Ilija Buljan were returned from Uruguay to his native Herzegovina and laid to rest in his father's grave at the old cemetery in Podišta, in the presence of fourteen family members from Argentina, the USA, and Italy.
Ilija Buljan was brought back from Uruguay to his homeland of Herzegovina nearly a hundred years after he left for South America, and forty-five years after his death. He was laid to rest in his father's grave at the old cemetery in Podišta, as reported by the portal Brotnjo.info and carried by ABC Portal. This emotional event brought together fourteen family members who arrived from Argentina, the United States, and Italy.
Ilija Buljan was born on August 18, 1909, in Gornji Veliki Ograđenik, the third son of Pero and Jela, née Prskalo. At just under twenty years of age, in 1929, he left his native Herzegovina and set out for the unknown lands of South America. There, he was met with unfamiliar people, language, and customs, along with a difficult life situation and dreams of returning home.
In Uruguay, he initially worked as a truck driver and later in the state service responsible for supplying the population with drinking water. On February 1, 1958, in Montevideo, he married Marija Soldo, née Juričić, a Croatian from Čitluk, who had two young children, Jela and Ivan, from a previous marriage. Together, they raised her children and their two sons, Pedro Petar and Antonio Gabriel, in accordance with the Catholic faith.
In the Buljan family, which moved to Argentina in the 1980s, a love for their native Brotnjo and Croatian identity was nurtured. Ilija's wish, expressed in his old age, to have water sent from the old cistern, a stone from Herzegovina, and a clod of earth from the land where his ancestors grew tobacco and grapevines, testifies to his connection to his homeland.
Psalm 139 states: "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." These words, as Brotnjo.info writes, resonate especially with the story of a man whose life's path was written far from his native soil.
The burial rite was led by Fra Branimir Novokmet, the parish vicar of Čerin. At the final farewell, some family members had already visited Herzegovina, while for others it was their first visit to their grandfather's and great-grandfather's homeland.
"Dear Ilija, 45 years have passed since your death on June 1, 1981, in Uruguay. Love does not cease with departure, nor do memories and recollections fade with time. Today, we bid you a dignified farewell with gratitude: humanly, with heavy hearts and tears in our eyes, and Christianly, with prayer and faith in eternal life and a future reunion. Our dear Ilija, as you wished, we return your mortal remains to your Herzegovinian karst, to your beloved land, the land of your parents, to your father's grave. May the Croatian earth rest lightly upon you, and may your soul find peace. Rest in God's peace!", conveyed by Ilija Buljan's relatives.
Ilija's hard life, which passed without a return to his native region, is just one of many examples of the fates of Croatian emigrants during the twentieth century. In numerous cemeteries around the world, people light candles in Croatian colors and pray in the Croatian language, as noted in the conclusion of the Brotnjo.info portal.
