Around 100 participants gathered at Casa Croata, the community’s cultural centre in the Argentine capital, to mark Croatia’s Statehood Day and the Week of Croats Abroad, observed this year by Croatian communities worldwide.
More than 90 costumes from different regions of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other areas with Croatian populations were presented. “It would be impossible to understand Buenos Aires without that small part of Croatia,” Gaston Juan Santos, a Buenos Aires official responsible for immigrant communities, told Croatian public broadcaster HRT.
Croats migrated to Argentina during the 19th and 20th centuries for economic and political reasons. Around 300,000 people of Croatian descent now live in the country, making it home to South America’s largest Croatian community.
“If people forget their roots, they can't move towards the future,” Santos said.
The idea for the event originated within the Proljeće folk ensemble, whose younger members will travel to Croatia this summer to attend folklore festivals and workshops. Organisers aimed to raise funds for the trip while also bringing costumes that had remained out of public view for decades back into the spotlight.
“We have always known there was a large number of original Croatian folk costumes. Many had been stored away in chests for years,” organiser Pablo Soto said.
Preparations took months as organisers sought out costume owners, traced their origins and gathered information about the regions they came from. Members of Proljeće worked alongside families, the Croatian embassy in Buenos Aires, the Jadran and Croactivas associations, and volunteers.
“We felt this would be an event of great importance. Embroidery, tailoring and the costumes themselves are part of what makes us recognisable,” said Mateo Pulfer, head of Proljeće.
Lucia Borhi said costumes had been collected from numerous families who had kept them at home.
“We contacted them to see whether they could lend them to us and whether they would like to wear them themselves and take part in the show,” she said.
“Families made a tremendous effort to help us and to give Croatian culture in Argentina greater visibility,” Milagros Zorić said.
Some costumes had previously found their way into folklore groups and cultural centres.
Particular attention was drawn to garments whose exact origins could no longer be established with certainty.
Organisers are considering turning the event into a regular tradition and holding similar shows in other cities with sizeable Croatian communities, including Rosario, Córdoba and Mendoza.