Gecse Annabella: Az etnikai és társadalmi átrendeződés folyamata egy gömöri falu 20. századi életében - Interethnica 10. (Komárom-Somorja, 2007)
Irodalom
tlement. This difference can be seen in the use of public and private places. The everydays of the living together can be characterized by not only definite ethnic classification and self-classification, but we can feature it if we have a relatively thorough knowledge of each other. In the relation of the two ethnic groups we can experience the influence of the ethnic rates of fifty years back, namely the traces of the influence of the strong peasant community. The insignificant number of mixed marriages mark that the experiences of several decades resulted in not only the cognition of the other ethnic group but resulted in awakening to the consciousness of the margin between them. It could be the reason of the living together with the lack of ethnic conflicts so far. Today the 61 persons in Baraca form a truncated community and this community is not even able to „create” their own elite which is necessary for the viable administration. Ties of family and kindred not necessarily link them each other, rather they link to the already moved off persons this way. However the gipsies living next to them do not mean base of comparison. Their scale of values and manners do not affect the peasants at all, and it can be seen even in the case of populous peasant community. On the other hand it can be remarked on gipsies in general that they are slightly affected by peasants’ scale of values. It can be clear not only by their „peasanting" manners, not only by the decreasing number of gipsy children, but they declare in the course of interviews and meetings. It can be also explained by the many-decades coexistence - on the contrary to the gipsy inhabitants of other villages - that they mark themselves off from stranger gipsies, and they do their best not to accept them. The gipsy -peasant relation can be named asymmetrical even in the frames of today ethnic ratio (or despite that). The peasants deal with gipsies the very same way as it became fixed 50-60 years ago, when the gipsy population consisted less than 10% of the entire population of the village. The question may arise, whether the expression asymmetrical fit to that relation, because gipsies themselves accept this point of view. During the decades of coexistence, in the forming a notion of each other of the two ethnic groups not the negative features increased, but the knowledge of each other. Naturally this does not mean idyll without friction, but everyone knows where is the border and no one wants to cross it. I am of opinion that not accidentally effectless the governmental ideas of solving the gipsies' problems in Baraca. Here we face a finely wrought practise of coexistence, the form of „not to solve, but yet operating”, which can be hardly shifted (to positive or negative direction) without outside interference, physical force. The village seems to be in cumulatively disadvantageous position for the outside spectators, and its hard, nearly hopeless condition and estimation are accurately known and felt by its inhabitants. However they have the possession of the unique, unreproducible, inaccessible „treasure” of communal experience: no one can state that they have prejudice against the other ethnic group. It is absolutely excluded by the experience of several decades of coexistence. Translated by Nándor Szebenyi 191
