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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
A fantasia of styles, from villa to temple to castle, lines the main street of Buzescu, population 5,000. Men are often away on business; women, wealthy or not, stay to cook, clean, and raise the kids.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Zaharia Bureata greets Easter morning in a tie spun from solid gold thread, its front spelling out his name and the brand of his car, a Hummer. Others in town have copied his style. “People think all Roma are poor and filthy,” declared one mansion dweller. “They should see us.”
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Six-year-old twins Gelu and Edi Petrache wait for the parties to start on Easter Sunday. They live in one of the more than a hundred extravagant houses that have gone up since communist rule ended in 1989. The Roma’s wealth in Buzescu, on the books and off, comes mostly from trade in silver and other metals.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Stylish Romani teens hang out on the town’s main drag. Odds are good that few will make it through high school. Schooling isn’t stressed in the Roma community: Parents want sons to earn money as soon as possible and daughters to help raise younger siblings. Roma throughout Eastern Europe are the frequent target of discrimination in the classroom, hastening early departures.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Buzescu’s well-to-do have a thing for flamboyant decor. Vandana Ispilante sits with her 13-year-old daughter, Edera, in a bedroom that looks like a honeymoon suite—except for a picture of the Virgin Mary on the headboard. Odds are Edera’s closet will never hold head scarves and long flowered skirts, the traditional Romani dress.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Parents seem intent on giving children everything they themselves lacked, from fast cars to the heaps of toys and stuffed animals that keep teenager Madalina Ion company.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Appearances matter inside the big houses. Casi, 13, wants to look good for husband-to-be Sami, 14, pictured on a closet door. Arranged marriages between children are common among Buzescu’s wealthy families. Already Casi lives with Sami’s family; they’ll officially wed when both reach 17.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Many grand spaces are used only on holidays and for weddings and funerals. To prepare for Easter, Simona Iancu shines an entrance hall.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Doru and Valeria Constantin seldom entertain in their glittery, marble-floored dining room.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Old-timers in black hats break up after gossiping on a street corner. Marin Nicolae (foreground) says the men usually talk about money, family, and how they miss traveling by caravan to sell their wares.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
On Easter Sunday Roma feast on the street, spending big on food, drink, and song. Here a band member accepts money—often it’s hundreds of dollars—for calling out the donor’s name and playing a request. Local families belong mostly to the Kalderash group, known for making copper stills.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
In a backyard in the wealthy quarter, traditional village habits maintain a hold. On the day of a baptism, men send off a gift pig to the godparents. Some affluent Roma, especially older ones who grew up traveling in horse-drawn caravans, are uneasy in the mansions and still use outhouses and outdoor kitchens.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
A scrap dealer rides his cart past the mansions of Buzescu. After the collapse of communism in Romania in 1989, many Roma in town began selling metal they scavenged from shuttered factories. Some families grew wealthy, trading in horses and caravans for sports cars and mansions.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Genica Stan cleans out a copper still, or cazane, that has been repaired by her husband. For generations the economy of the Buzescu Roma revolved around the making of cazane, widely used in Romania for distilling brandy from plums and other fruit. But since Romania’s admission to the European Union in 2007, regulations and taxes governing homemade liquor have diminished demand for the stills, which once sold for hundreds of dollars apiece. Today only a handful of Buzescu Roma make the stills.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Florea Radu, 29, electrocuted while stripping copper from power lines in Spain, returned home in a casket. After a procession through town to the sound of tolling bells and car horns, friends prepare to move the body into a church for a funeral Mass.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Beyond Buzescu’s mansion district, a kitchen belonging to a hard pressed Romani family serves as a dance hall for Iasmina Iancu, six, twirling for her grandfather Ion, who raises her. Iasmina’s mother works in Spain. Many households contain only old and young, the rest scattered across Europe to earn money.
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Photograph by Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky
Chores start early in Buzescu as women sweep and water the sidewalks in front of stainless steel gates. Soon the main street, National Highway 70, will buzz with truck and car traffic, many drivers slowing down to stare at the sights.
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