Photo: Akos Stiller for the New York Times
Vladimir Ledecky, the mayor of Spissky Hrhov, Slovakia, meets with Roma residents. The village has worked hard to better integrate Roma with the broader community.
The Roma, derided for centuries wherever they have traveled, have been seen as the ultimate “other.” But in this New York Times story, a village where they used to be unwelcome has made common cause with them — and prospered as a result.
Rick Lyman writes, “In a part of eastern Slovakia where other villages are withering, Spissky Hrhov shows signs of surprising prosperity. The houses are solid and well-tended. There is running water and electricity. A former distillery has been turned into an art space, its facade decorated with a colorful mosaic.
“But there is something even more striking about this place. About 350 of the 1,800 residents are Roma, a group commonly shunted aside, impoverished, undereducated and widely disparaged across Europe.
“ ‘Twenty years ago, this village nearly disappeared,’ said Vladimir Ledecky, 51, who has been mayor for 18 of those years.
“ ‘We were down to 700 residents, half of them Roma,’ he explained. ‘The problem for Slovak villages is that when the population becomes half Roma, the other half tends to move out.’
“That is when Mr. Ledecky decided to take what is still a novel and controversial approach to the Roma in his country — working to better integrate them with the community. …
“The situation for Roma has improved vastly in the village, said Petronela Kacova, 27, who lives in one of the Roma neighborhood’s newest apartment blocks with her husband and two young children. Until she got this new home, the family had to share one room in her mother-in-law’s house. Now, she said, relations are cordial between Roma and non-Roma residents, unlike in other nearby villages.
“ ‘The children know each other in school, so they play together,’ she said. ‘And we sometimes sit together, Slovaks and Roma, when we are at the pub.’ …
“ ‘There was nothing to do if people had no jobs,’ said the mayor, who is a former software engineer. ‘So, the only thing to do was to set up a village company, the only aim of which was to provide Roma with jobs. We didn’t want to have any profit.’
“The first product from the village company was pavement tiles for sidewalks. The business flourished. Then the village started its own construction company, for local infrastructure projects and to help local residents with home projects.
“ ‘We grew so fast and started making a profit, so we kept expanding,’ Mr. Ledecky said. …
“One by one, the former illegal Roma shanties were turned into legal brick homes and apartment blocks that the Roma either owned or rented. A new town hall was built. Wooden sculptures and colorful mosaics decorated the new town center. A village swimming pool was built with the profits from the businesses, and a new park is underway.
“ ‘The village has become so trendy, people are just coming,’ Mr. Ledecky said.
“One of the arguments Slovak mayors have made in refusing to upgrade Roma settlements is that doing so would only encourage more Roma to move in, exacerbating the problem. But that has not been the experience in Spissky Hrhov.
“For one thing, the village’s own Roma residents have proved vigilant about keeping out illegal shanties, eager to protect their own neighborhood and steady jobs.”
More at the New York Times, here.
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Photo: Michael Desmond
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