Zanea
Encyclopedia
Zanea or Zanya is a neighborhood/village in the commune
Communes of Romania
A commune is the lowest level of administrative subdivision in Romania. There are 2686 communes in Romania. The commune is the rural subdivision of a county .There is no clear restriction on the population of a commune, even though when a commune...

 of Ciurea
Ciurea
Ciurea is a commune in Iaşi County, Romania, part of the Iaşi metropolitan area. Situated 7 km south from the county seat of Iaşi, it is composed of seven villages: Ciurea, Curături, Dumbrava, Hlincea, Lunca Cetăţuii, Picioru Lupului and Slobozia...

, Iaşi County
Iasi County
Iași is a county of Romania, in Moldavia, with the administrative seat at Iași.-Demographics:As of 1 July 2007, Iași County had a population of 825,100, making it the second most populous county in Romania after Bucharest, with a population density of 150/km².*Romanians - 98.1%*Roma -...

, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. It is on the eastern side of the Ciurea train station and is inhabited by Roma from the Churari and Kalderash
Kalderash
The Kalderash are a subgroup of the Romani people, from the Roma meta-group. They were traditionally smiths and metal workers and speak a number of Romani dialects grouped together under the term Kalderash Romani, a sub-group of Vlax Romani.-Etymology:The name Kalderash The Kalderash (also spelled...

 castes (on the western side there is the main village
Ciurea
Ciurea is a commune in Iaşi County, Romania, part of the Iaşi metropolitan area. Situated 7 km south from the county seat of Iaşi, it is composed of seven villages: Ciurea, Curături, Dumbrava, Hlincea, Lunca Cetăţuii, Picioru Lupului and Slobozia...

, inhabited by Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

 and Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

-speaking Roma).

History

The neighborhood appeared in the decades 1950s-1960s as a result of the forced settlement of Roma nomads by the Communist
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

 authorities (similar Kalderash and/or Churari communities in the geographical proximity are in Grajduri
Grajduri
Grajduri is a commune in Iaşi County, Romania. It is composed of seven villages: Cărbunari, Corcodel, Grajduri, Lunca, Pădureni, Poiana cu Cetate and Valea Satului.-References:...

 or in the northern side of Vaslui
Vaslui
Vaslui , a city in eastern Romania, is the seat of Vaslui County, in the historical region of Moldavia.The city administers five villages: Bahnari, Brodoc, Moara Grecilor, Rediu and Viişoara.-History:...

). These communities were already hard hit by the Porajmos
Porajmos
The Porajmos was the attempt made by Nazi Germany, the Independent State of Croatia, Horthy's Hungary and their allies to exterminate the Romani people of Europe during World War II...

 (the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

 of the Romani people); in 1942-1944 they were deported in Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...

, where many of them died.

Additionally to the forced settlement, the savings (in gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

, as is traditionally among Roma) were confiscated by the authorities. Combined with the fact that the Communist system forbade any private business (all the economy was nationalized), thus being impeded to profess the crafts that supported the livelihood, these Roma became poorer during those decades.

After the 1989 Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...

 that brought democracy in Romania, it became again legal to profess the crafts. The confiscated gold was partly returned and with that capital in the 1990s there were started businesses, mostly with metals. In the same years, they began to build roomy houses (with more floors, for the traditional extended Romani families), having a very different architecture from that usually employed in Romania, soon dubbed by the local mass-media as palate ţigǎneşti ("Gypsy palaces" in Romanian language).

Their different style is usually presented by this media and most of the non-Romani population as expressing lack of culture, while (lacking yet a public Romani point of view about this issue) some architects point out to their spontaneity, freedom of the style. Mostly the old-generation non-Roma dislike them, while the younger people and those from outside Romania (without the anti-Romani prejudices from the local context) appreciate their vitality . Acad. Constantin Bǎlǎceanu-Stolnici, a reputed anthropologist from Romania, declared that their different style is explained because in fact they are similar to the architectural style from North India
North India
North India, known natively as Uttar Bhārat or Shumālī Hindustān , is a loosely defined region in the northern part of India. The exact meaning of the term varies by usage...

, expressing the survival of the Desi
Desi
Desi or Deshi refers to the people, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent and, increasingly, to the people, cultures, and products of their diaspora. Desi countries include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh...

cultural archetypes even after centuries of nomadism.
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