Mara Buneva

Mara Buneva (1902 – January 13, 1928) was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary, a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, who assassinated Velimir Prelić, a former Serbian Chetnik commander and Yugoslav legal official of the Skopje Oblast. She shot herself in the chest, and subsequently died in a hospital a few hours after the attack, while Prelić died a few days later.

Today, in general Buneva is considered a heroine in Bulgaria, while in North Macedonia she is regarded as a controversial Bulgarophile. Her death is commemorated annually at the place where she shot herself on Vardar in Skopje.

Biography
Buneva was born in 1902 in Tetovo, then in the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (present-day North Macedonia). Her family originates from the village of Setole. Between 1915 and 1918, Vardar Macedonia which after the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) was turned into a Serbian province called South Serbia, was under Bulgarian occupation. Her father Nikola Bunev became then the mayor of Tetovo. At that time Buneva studied at the Skopje's Girls' High School.

In 1919 Buneva moved to Bulgaria. There she studied at the Sofia University, and married a Bulgarian officer. In 1926 she divorced, and under the influence of her brother Boris, also a Bulgarian officer, Buneva joined the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). Later on direct order by the leader of the IMRO, Ivan Mihaylov, she was trained in Sofia for fulfilling of a future terrorist actions. In 1927 she went back to Yugoslavia and opened a shop in Skopje with a conspiratorial mission.

There she managed to acquaint herself with Velimir Prelić, the legal adviser of the Serbian governor of the Skopje district. Prelić was instrumental in arrests of young local students, members of Macedonian Youth Secret Revolutionary Organization. The organization was discovered by the authorities in May 1927 and its leaders were arrested. On a trial in Skopje against 20 of them, most were sentenced in December to long-term imprisonment. As a result, IMRO ordered the execution of Prelić. At the appointed time on January 13, 1928, Buneva intercepted him on his way to lunch and shot the official after which she committed suicide. On the next day, the Serbian police buried Buneva's body at an unknown place. Prelić also died in hospital a few days later and was buried in Skopje.

Legacy
Her act echoed as in Bulgaria and Europe, as well as among the Macedono-Bulgarian emigration in America. The first Macedonian Patriotic Organization ladies auxiliary branch was created in Toronto in 1928 and named after Mara Buneva. In Bulgaria she was celebrated as a martyr for the freedom of Macedonia. Today, streets in Sofia and Blagoevgrad are named after her, as well as the Buneva Point in Antarctica has been named after Mara Buneva by the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute. During the Second World War Bulgaria annexed Vardar Macedonia and on the place of the death of Mara Buneva a commemoration plate was mounted. However, later it was destroyed by the new Yugoslav communist authorities.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, almost every year on the day of her death, Bulgarians from North Macedonia and Bulgaria, particularly VMRO-BND activists, have begun illegally mounting new commemoration plates. However, the plates are quickly removed or destroyed. In January 2007 the celebration ended with a fight in Skopje. Former Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubčo Georgievski claims that to be against Buneva means, not to have adequate knowledge of the history, and to defend the Serbian chauvinism. According to Bulgarian officials, the repetitive incidents in Skopje are part of an ongoing anti-Bulgarian campaign there.

Her memory has not been honored by the official authorities in Skopje. However, some Macedonian nationalist associations in the 2010s have declared Buneva as an ethnic Macedonian heroine, claiming she was allegedly appropriated by the Bulgarians. In 2015, even a commemorative plaque in Macedonian was placed on her deathplace by them. Such a rendition of history is one example of misinterpretation of the historical past. A wax figure of Buneva was set up in the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle opened in 2011 in Skopje. According to Macedonian historians, placing wax figure of such controversial figures like her, only causes further confusion among museum visitors. On January 16, 2024, a film about her called The Avenger (2023) was screened at the Bulgarian Culture and Information Centre in Skopje.