Gypsies of Catemaco

Gypsies (gitanos) are called hungaros (Hungarians) in Mexico because the first large group of gypsies arrived in Mexico from Hungary. Gypsies began their westward migration out of India around 1000 AD possibly because of tribal mercenary commitments. Like many other migrant ethnic groups they faced discrimination, including 500 years of slavery in Romania and extermination in Nazi Germany and lately ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.



Although the Gypsies call themselves Roma, their commonly used name derives from Egypt, actually Little Egypt, which is what the Spaniards called the Balkan states in the Mediterranean. They usually speak Spanish as well as their tribal dialects, practice Christian religions about as well as Mexican campesinos and their idols, probably hold Mexican Voter registration cards and are stereotyped as fortunetellers and swindlers just like in the USA.
Their nomadism is legendary and commemorated in operas (Carmen), movies, and folktales mothers use to scare their children.

Their first appearance in the Americas began with several Gypsy companions of Columbus, and continued in waves of immigration to countries like Brazil in 1574, the US, (more than 1 million by now) and also Mexico. During the French escapade in Mexico, the allied Austrian emperor exported numerous Gypsies to Mexico to help the French war effort.

In the early 1890´s another large tribe mostly from Hungary arrived intent on settlement. A few years later a second group of gypsies, known as Ludar, arrived intending to cross the US border but apparently preferred the Mexican climate. By 1993 an estimate placed 53,000 hungaros in Mexico mostly in Mexico City and Guadalajara. Zapoapan in Jalisco seems to be their largest community with upward of 50 families living there. In 2001, the Ludar tribe of Gypsies published its memoirs, La lumea de noi. Memoria de los ludar de México.

Hungaros discovered Catemaco, Veracruz in the early 1990's. Other Mexican tourist communities also have influxes of panhandling hungaros (mostly women) and practice the same alarmist counter tactics to evict them as Catemaco has tried various times in the past.

Considering the Catemaco reputation as a haven for brujos (sorcerers), I think it´s kind of nice to see troops of hungaras (women Gypsies) in their long colorful beachwear (or maybe that is traditional costume) accosting tourists on the Malecon to read their palms and peddle chintzy good luck amulets. After all, you never see an identifiable Catemaco brujo walking down the street casting spells.

Update: In early 2010 the "hungaros" left Catemaco, supposedly because of extorsion and kidnapping threats by so called local "zetas".  In late April, a few seem to have returned to challenge their lucrative turf. I wish them luck.