Tears Over Trieste

Five years ago the Italian Tricolor flapped proudly in a fresh sea breeze from thousands of windows and rooftops of Trieste. Quick-marching into the Piazza dell' Unit`a, beplumed Bersaglieri were hard put to it to clear a path through the delirious crowd of 250,000 that shook the vast square with endless roars of "Viva l'Italia! Viva Trieste Italiana!" Thus, after nine postwar years as a "free territory," the citizens of the Adriatic port city of Trieste deliriously greeted their reunion with Italy.

With justice, the agreement to return Trieste to Italy was widely hailed as a triumph of U.S. diplomacy--the happiest feasible outcome of a territorial dispute that had long poisoned relations between Italy and Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia. But this week, as the fifth anniversary of the great day approached, no one felt like putting out more flags. When Trieste's Mayor Mario Franzil laid a wreath in the piazza in memory of pro-Italian rioters killed during the Allied occupation, only the pigeons looked on. After five years of Italian rule, once flourishing Trieste is dying economically.

Beautiful Head. Twenty years ago, Trieste was second only to Genoa among Italian ports; today it is eighth. Trieste's maritime traffic has dropped 25% in the past two years, and rail traffic is less than half the 1957 rate. More than 17,000 Triestini (12% of the labor force) are unemployed, and the number of "disguised unemployed"--their livelihood provided by government make-work projects--is steadily increasing.

Trieste, says its mayor, has become "a beautiful head without a body or bloodstream." Under the 1954 agreement, almost all the city's Istrian hinterland went to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavs have worked hard to build up nearby Fiume (now called Rijeka) as a rival port. By keeping labor costs at coolie levels, Rijeka offers shippers rates running 20% to 50% below Trieste's. The nations of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, for which Trieste used to be the prime port, are mostly Communist now, but even non-Communist Austria has diverted so much of its business to Rijeka that this year, for the first time in history, Rijeka is handling more maritime traffic than Trieste.

Overflowing Heart. In their first flush of enthusiasm over regaining Trieste, Rome's bureaucrats floated a national bond issue to help compensate the city for the economic loss it suffered with the departure of the 6,000 U.S. and British troops who had garrisoned the free territory. But since then, Rome has turned a deaf ear to proposals that some of Italy's innumerable state-owned enterprises be moved to Trieste and that the city be granted the privilege of importing raw materials and exporting finished goods duty-free. Triestini complain that Sicilian-born Giovanni Palamara, Italy's prefect in Trieste, shrugs off their troubles by saying, "My own island suffers more."

Grumbled Mayor Franzil: "Trieste, of course, is a city close to all Italian hearts, and Roman politicians are so moved when they come here that their eyes fill with tears. Maybe that's why they can't see our problems."

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