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Friday, Oct. 27, 2000
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First Person
Between Two Worlds
Joan Manuel Oleaque, Roma journalist, Spain
Joan Manuel Oleaque, 32, is one of only three Roma journalists in Spain, despite a population of about 600,000. Since 1993, he has been a reporter on the Catalan-language weekly "El Temps" in Valencia. In 1998, he was named best journalist of the year in Catalan by the University of Valencia. His book "From the Darkness," based on an infamous triple murder in Valencia, is due out next year.
My father, who is dead, was what in Spain is called a gitano, or gypsy. My mother is what we call paya, which best translates as non-gypsy. That background hasn't always been easy, given that they are opposed cultures. Sometimes I haven't known how to react to situations. Nowadays I feel lucky in the sense that I have both worlds. It also means that, as a journalist, I have access other journalists don't.
I studied journalism, with a scholarship. I was the only gitano, but I was accepted, maybe as the exotic factor. I do remember that there were press reports we had to study that mentioned gitanos and there were horrific comments made in front of me, like "All gitanos should be dead." They would forget that I am one.
It's the way people are educated. The stereotype goes back to the arrival here from India more than 500 years ago of the people we now call Roma. There was a certain fascination with them at the beginning, their exotic clothes, etcetera. The problems began when there were attempts to assimilate people with totally different customs and nomadic ways. That was when centuries of persecution began. During General Franco's rule, for just being a gitano you could be jailed.
In the transition after Franco, the Gitano Movement began, associations that were interlocutors with the administration. It hasn't worked much, in my opinion. The present situation has led to ghettos, where you can find 500 gitano families living together. That's bad. I think gitanos also have to adjust their behavior to that of society as a whole, and to make approaches to that society. The main thing here is education, particularly for women. Gitana feminists have made advances in matters like working conditions, but elsewhere women remain enclosed within the matriarchy. Many parents still fear that if their daughters have freedom they will cease being gitanas, that they will become payas. They need to understand that living within the structures of the majority doesn't mean you stop being a gitano.
The idea of the macho gitano is very misleading. Ours is a society based upon roles. It's established that the man protects, the woman educates and cares for the house. This has changed a lot, but it's very slow. Sometimes in the street I sense what it can be like to be a woman. You have to endure stupid comments and insults. You ask yourself at times, "Why should I put up with this?" The tradition of my father says that I have to react, but I realize that doesn't lead anywhere.
Another grave problem we have here is that schools reflect life, and gitano children find themselves unrecognized in the textbooks and in classes. There aren't courses explaining our culture. In the U.S., children learn African-American and black history. We have nothing like that.
The attitude of the press is better than it was, but where there are questions of drugs, fights, people taking revenge, the word gitano jumps into headlines straightaway, out of all proportion to reality. As a journalist I think that sometimes you should specify whether or not someone is a gitano, depending on the circumstances. Two years ago in a part of Valencia called Nazaret, a payo truck driver accidentally ran over and killed a gitano boy. The parents were there. A crowd gathered. The truck driver ran away, the crowd went after him and he was killed. Nazaret is a suburb with lots of racism and conflict.
The press and television went mad with headlines about gitano revenge. Everyone lost their heads. There was enormous tension. It was one of the toughest stories I've had to cover. There was a debate on a radio station and I was invited, along with three other gitanos. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. The others insisted that it should not have been mentioned that the family of the dead boy was gitano. I argued that this was stupid. Apart from anything else, there were 600 gitanos at his funeral. How can you not say that? The discussion got really hot. But the journalist's responsibility is not to fix things, it is to inform.
You are born a gitano, but it is also a choice. In Spain there are many people with gitano blood who decide to stay camouflaged in society. Lawyers, shopkeepers, whatever. In my case, when I was a bit over 20 an uncle of mine said I had to find my place, that I couldn't be some sort of ghost. I took that decision, and I'm happy with it.
To feel it and understand it more, three years ago I went to India, to a conference in Calcutta of ethnic minorities of Indian origin. It made a big impression on me. For a start, in India, the gitano is the norm and the payo the unusual. I learned about the various tribes who left to escape first the Moguls, then Islam. At another level, I saw that the gitano sense of humor has a lot in common with the Indian one; that the Indian and gitano idea of hospitality is similar, as are relations with older people. I saw faces and said to myself, "This one could be my uncle." In India there is also this feeling that they don't know which of their traditions to drop and which to keep.
In Spain, particularly in Madrid, things gitano are trendy. People want to dress gitano, and hardly a new film appears without a "new flamenco" soundtrack. But the stereotype goes on: the gitano is good as a stud, a bullfighter or a dancer, nothing else.
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