I remember when I first started studying the Roma. I began asking around town about gitanos, or Gypsies. I thought that would be the best way to identify them. A lot of people just looked at me like, “You silly tourist. You’ve got the wrong country,” and simply replied, “We don’t have Gypsies here. They’re only in Spain.”

So I started being a bit more vague. I asked instead, “What do you know about the ladies who read palms in the downtown area?” That got more responses like, “Oh, the Hungarians (húngaros)…” But still, no one really knew anything about this cultural group. When speaking with other people about my research, I am often asked, “Does Mexico even have any Gypsies?”

There are thousands of people who see Romani women in the marketplace every day. The majority of these people have never wondered who these women are, how they came here or what their traditions are. This astounds me. This is a portion of the Mexican population that is virtually unstudied and highly misunderstood.

This is when one realizes that racism is not just blatantly offending a person or a specific cultural group. It is also ignoring that it exists. This is what happens to Roma in Mexico, as well as in many other parts of the world.

When gaje speak of the language of the Roma, they refer to it as a “dialect.” This is so widespread that even the Roma use this term. A dialect? Of what? Of Spanish? Of Nahuatl? That’s absurd. And so too is referring to the Romani language as a dialect, as a derivation of a greater language. This attitude does not come from hate, but rather from ignorance.

That is where my work comes in. Mexico is a culturally rich country. Thanks to the Roma, it is even richer than many have previously imagined.