An­na­bel­la Gec­se: From the hard-­work­ing vil­lage to the vir­tu­al Bara­ca

The goal of the study is to ana­lyze the life of a vil­lage, as a com­mu­ni­ty – that from dif­fer­ent aspects is strong­ly li­mi­ted -, in time includ­ing hun­dred years. The first, short part (broad­ly) sum­ma­rizes the basic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the vil­lage’s com­mu­ni­ty in the first third of the 20th cen­tu­ry. This intro­duc­tion show­ing con­crete meas­ur­a­ble results is nec­es­sary because the rea­sons of the phe­nom­e­na that the non-Roma res­i­dents of the vil­lage in the sec­ond part of the 20th cen­tu­ry moved to the neigh­bor­ing cities, stem from this peri­od of time. In the sec­ond part the author deals with exter­nal polit­i­cal inter­ven­tions in 1920 and their effect that strong­ly influ­enced the life of the vil­lage. In the third part deals with the for­ma­tion of the pres­ent eth­ni­cal pic­ture of the set­tle­men­t, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the co-ex­is­tence of the both eth­nic group­s. Accord­ing to the study the effect of mo­re fac­tors is where the rea­son of the vil­lager­s’ mov­ing away stems from.

There is only a small com­mu­ni­ty con­sist­ing of 61 peo­ple now liv­ing in Bara­ca. Their fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships are rather towards those who moved away and the Ro­ma peo­ple liv­ing in their neigh­bor­hood do not mean a com­par­a­tive point to them. Their val­ues, life style have no effect on the vil­lager­s.
On the other hand, it is true for the Ro­ma peo­ple that they are influ­enced by the val­ues of non-Roma peo­ple. It is evi­dent not only from their non-Roma peo­ple-­like lifestyle, decreas­ing num­ber of chil­dren, but they empha­size it dur­ing their dis­cus­sion­s, meet­ings. It can be explained by the effect of decades of co-ex­is­tence – in con­trast with the Ro­ma inhab­i­tants of other vil­lages – that they dis­avow, they do every­thing in order not to wel­come for­eign Ro­ma peo­ple.
Decades spent in one set­tle­ment – in case of Bara­ca – have not led to open eth­nic con­flict­s. In the pic­ture of each other of the two eth­nic group not the neg­a­tive motives have been strength­en­ing, but their mutu­al knowl­edge. This, obvi­ous­ly, does not mean an idyl­lic pic­ture with no prob­lem­s, it only means that every­body knows where are the bor­ders and nobody wants to cross them.
It seems that it is not acci­den­tal­ly that some of the ideas of solv­ing the Ro­ma issue by the state are „gone“ from Bara­ca. He­re we are faced with such a fine­ly elab­o­rat­ed prac­tice of co-ex­is­tence, and with such a vers­ion of „not solved, but still func­tion­ing“ that can­not be moved (ei­ther to a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive direc­tion) with­out phys­i­cal force of exter­nal inter­ven­tion. The inhab­i­tants of the vil­lage – that is from the point of view of an exter­nal view­er con­sid­ered to be in an immense­ly dis­ad­van­ta­geous posi­tion – are well aware, know, and feel the dif­fi­cult and al­most help­ful sit­u­a­tion of their vil­lage. Nev­er­the­less, it is unique that they have com­mu­ni­ty expe­ri­ence unreach­able for oth­er­s, and this is why nobody can say about them that they have prej­u­dice in con­nec­tion with anoth­er eth­nic group. Their more-decade long expe­ri­ence in co-ex­is­tence excludes this.