“I’d love to transcend and leave something useful for humanity”, says Anna Beatriz Scavino (48). She’s a dreamer who perseveres and always tries to see the good. She moved from Buenos Aires to Zagreb during Covid and is building a new life. Her favorite lyric is: ‘Just be yourself, nothing more. You will save the world’, from the song Sé Vos by Almafuerte. “I heard it when I was young and thought: what a powerful message.”
“The polical-economic situation in Argentina is probably the reason why my husband, children and I emigrated to Zagreb. The instability was very hard to live with: the uncertainty, not knowing if what I have today will be enough tomorrow.”
She takes a deep breath: “When my daughters were born, we went through two extremely traumatic incidents at home involving burglars. At one point, we were all lying on the floor in my house while my three-year-old daughter had a gun held to her head. And then, a year later, another robbery happened. That was when we said, “This is not the kind of life we want for our children.” You always want to stay, you always do everything possible to survive in the place where you want to be: where you were born, where your roots are. But there comes a point when you say, ‘enough’, you’re tired, you can’t do it anymore, you know”. So they moved to Zagreb.
New beginnings
“We moved to Croatia precisely because my husband and our daughters already had Croatian citizenship, since my husband’s father was Croatian.”
“Being a migrant teaches you humility, because for new people you are nobody. You may have had a beautiful house, a nice car, and a stable life before, but when you migrate, none of that matters anymore.”
Looking for belonging
“One of the biggest problems was renting an apartment. Since we were abroad, we had to contact landlords by phone, and that was the first barrier: the moment you say ‘hello,’ they immediately realize you’re a foreigner from the way you speak. We would ask, ‘Could we please speak a little in Spanish or English?’ and we would get responses like, ‘I don’t rent to tourists,’ or ‘I don’t rent to foreigners.’”
“Of course, not everyone is the same, but because of the actions of some people, everyone gets lumped together. I understand that they may have their reasons, but what feels wrong is not even being given a chance.”
Finding a safe place
One day they found out about the Jesuit Refugee Centre. “JRS focuses on integrating people in the Croatian community. They give workshops for young people here. They helped me with socializing and with finding the places where you can study, where you can take your daughters for an activity, or where you can get information and know where you might get better results or responses. Personally, I think that’s been the biggest help for me.”
“I believe in God. In life you’re going to encounter many situations that are inexplicable, and if you don’t have the humility to say, ‘I leave this in Your hands, solve this problem because I can’t,’ it doesn’t work. And when you do, things get solved. It’s a matter of faith and truly understanding that we’re just passing through, that we’re in a transition, in a test. Maybe we’re more evolved beings, but in this life, at this moment, we are human beings with limitations.”
