Romani people in Colombia

There is an important community of Romani people in Colombia consisting 8,000 Colombians of Romani descent and are scattered throughout the country. In 1999, the Colombian government recognized the Romani people as one of Colombia's ethnic minorities, so they can access educational, health and legal convenience. Thus, the Romani language has remained to be recognized as a minority language.

History
Bond to their own customs and belief systems and speaking the Romani language all of which have their origins in Indian cultural and linguistic traditions, Gypsies have been identified as foreigners where they arrived and have been feared, conquered, dress and customs and exploited by Gadje who was a non-Gypsy. In the 16th century, Spain and Portugal sought to diminish the Roma populations via banishment to the newly occupied territories of the Americas and on his third voyage in 1498. Columbus took four Egyptians whose punishment was introduced by the Spanish rulers for crime of being Roma and wishing to preserve their own traditions and the Romani shib language was commuted to firm effort in the galleys.

The period of legal immigration was about to come to an end. In 1582, Spanish authorities passed a command outlawing the arrival of the Gypsies to the American colonies. Most Gypsies were deported to the Americas, but others formed rochelas, alternative societies which existed at the margins of colonial legislation and where the Roma lived in invisibility alongside escaped African slaves, indigenous peoples, and other white and mixed race fugitives and deserters.

For five hundred years, from the beginning of the 13th century until 1864, many Gypsies were enslaved and persecuted in Eastern Europe. Following independence from Spain, a law was passed in 1821 in the newly liberated territory of New Granada (present-day Colombia). The new law banned the importation of slavery to the region, and demanded that any slaves from other countries who arrived would immediately be permitted to their freedom.

As a result of the law, many Roma escaped European slavery by heading to Colombia, and the migration waves from Europe to the Americas had later continued throughout the 20th century and up to the present day. The Roma have fled the Porajmos the great devouring or the Holocaust, during which officially half a million Roma were killed, the rise of extreme rights of the white power groups, and extending incidences of racially motivated massacre of Roma in the former Soviet Union.