Italian, Argentine, Yugoslav and Slovene: The Many Identities of Rudi Guštin

The essay addresses the trajectories of Rudi Guštin and his siblings Marija and Ferdinand, who migrated from the Julian March, a region with a sizable Slovene and Croat population that was annexed to Italy after World War I, to Argentina. While Rudi relocated first to Argentina, returned to Yugoslavia, and eventually remigrated to South America, his siblings settled in Argentina and retained regular contact with the family left behind. Drawing on personal correspondence, interviews and institutional documents, this essay examines Rudi’s affection for Yugoslavia and the lack thereof in the case of his siblings.