Page 54 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

entire Muslim villages that have been abandoned bouring region and is undoubtedly a witness of
since the departure of their inhabitants in 1944- the transmission of a still disputed memory.
45, which are present on old maps and whose ru-
ins are still visible in the landscape, but which Changing Narratives
are, on the contrary, completely absent in re- in Tune With Our Times
cent signage or cartography (see Figure 4 and 5). The key features of these narratives, and the
For example, while the former Orthodox village marks they leave on the territories, are the prod-
of Sagiada is indicated by a makeshift sign, the uct of an eventful history. They were forged at key
nearby abandoned Muslim village of Liopsi are moments, when antagonisms were asserted, or
not mentioned in the signage; other villages that when they were revealed. They have been trans-
are still populated have been renamed, leaving mitted from generation to generation through
only Greek-sounding names. If “history is writ- family histories and official narratives. However,
54 ten by the victor”, as the bookseller in the small the form of these narratives should not be seen as
town of Paramithia placidly told me during the inert material, frozen from the moments when
survey, he also writes the names of the places and the events took place. It must also be understood ti
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2
selects the victims to be commemorated. To find in relation to the dynamics of the present and
a different version of this story, it is necessary to the characteristics of the moments when these
cross the border. Just a few kilometres away, in memories are expressed. This is why it seems im-
the central square of the small Albanian town portant to examine them in the light of the gen- ta
of Konispol, stands another monument, built in eral context of this survey, and the trajectory of
the 1990s. It bears no name, just the words Me- a region undergoing rapid transformation at the
moriali i kushtohet martirizimit të shqiptarëve të beginning of the 21st century.
çamërisë prej gjenocidit të shovinizmit grek (“Me-
morial dedicated to the martyrdom of the Al- The Border and the Issues of the 2000s di
banians of Chameria whose genocide was per- When discussing relations between Greece and
petrated by Greek chauvinism”). Unlike the Albania in the 2000s, it is impossible not to men-
stelae described on the Greek side, this monu- tion the strong migratory flows that have linked
ment serves as a memorial to a group of anony- the two countries since the early 1990s. Having
mous victims: those of the “Cham genocide” as long been a country of departure, Greece has
officially recognized by the Albanian state since gradually become a host country for many inter-
1994. However, as it stands in the last Albani- national migrants. At the time of the 2001 pop- here
an town before the border, it also acts as a land- ulation census, international migrants account-
mark, activating the representation of a space ed for more than 760,000 people, or 7% of the
crossed by a front line. The decorations that country’s total population, compared with less
flank it also tell stories of victims: the styliza- than 1.5% in 1991. Such a figure is enough to un-
tion of a traditional female headdress character- derstand that this period marked the beginning
istic of the Chameria and stuck to the top of the of a new phase in the country’s history. It was the
monument, or the representation of a woman ly- fall of the Eastern European regimes in the early
ing next to her child on a bas-relief, take up the 1990s that was the main cause of Greece’s trans-
stories of murders that are found in descriptions formation into a land of immigration. Large
of the massacres of the Muslim populations of groups of migrants from Eastern Europe came to
Thesprotia in 1944-45 (Kretsi 2007). This mon- Greece. Albanians are by far the most numerous
ument goes hand in hand with the introduction foreigners in the country (over 57%), followed by studiauniversitatis
in Albania in 1997 of a day of commemoration Bulgarians (5%) and Romanians (2.9%). These
of the memory of the Chams every 27 June. Its migratory flows affect every region of Greece,
discourse contrasts with that of Greece’s neigh- from the smallest village in Crete or Argoli-