The War of Numbers and its First Victim: The Aromanians in Macedonia (End of 19th – Beginning of 20th century)
Our long-time responsibility has been to count ourselves, to know how many of us there are. –N. Batzaria At present, we know that the latest battles for conquering Ottoman Macedonia in 1912/13 were led with heavy artillery and that weapon power had the final say in the allocation of the Ottoman heritage in Europe. However, ...
Read More →
The Aromanians and Imro
The Macedonian revolutionary national-liberation movement, organized and led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) has long provoked the interest of contemporaries and scholars of the modern Macedonian history. The interest shown by the numerous diplomats, historians, journalists and analysts has produced an enormous historiographic work which examines IMRO and the Macedonian revolutionary movement from ...
Read More →
Titsi Shi Cum Eara Internats Armãnjlji Di Crushuva Tu Chiroli a Protlui Polim Mundial?
Tu mesi a etãljei XIX Crushuva s-developã tu un di nai ma avutili locuri tu Machidunii. Di ispeti ca s-afla aproapea di metropola a Vilaetlu di Bituli, ma ninti tut, di ispeti a spiritlui di biznismenj (emburlãchi) a crushuveanjlor, ti ma niheam di unã etã, di njicã hoarã, Crushuva criscu tu mari tsentru comertsial shi di ...
Read More →
My Immigration to America
To be or not to be an Aromanian?! To hide or to openly declare your Aromanian nationality?! To help a little bit for the recognition of nationality, heritage, history, language, religion, traditions, and other ethno-cultural aspects of Aromanian people, or to go out unnoticed?! To work that the arumanism, as an important principle of Aromanians, ...
Read More →
The Aromanian Question: Lessons of a Bloody History
Mastermind of the systematic persecution of the Aromanian population of Albania was himself the leader of the Communist Party of this country: the communist dictator, Enver Hoxha (1908-85). The bloody sharp sword of social-political system of communist dictatorship—the Secret Service of the Albanian Communist State (Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with the Branches of Internal ...
Read More →
Aromanian Traditional Music: An Introduction
Aromanian traditional music is just my music! When I was a kid, the first songs I heard from my parents, were exactly Aromanian traditional songs! When I grew up, the songs that filled the house, and her yard, were also precisely Aromanian traditional songs! When I die, I am sure I will be buried accompanied ...
Read More →
Connecticut Premiere of First Feature Film Ever Made in Aromanian
Connecticut Premiere of First Feature Film Ever Made in Aromanian The Society Farsarotul was proud to sponsor this event on June 7, 2014, at the Roger Ludlowe Middle School in Fairfield, CT. “I’m Not Famous, but I’m Aromanian” was created by Toma Enache, an actor and director from Romania who is of Aromanian descent. Click ...
Read More →
Preserving Aromanian (Vlach)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article is a reflection of many journeys taken to dozens of Vlach villages in Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia. It is not concerned with Vlach origins or history, but solely with the preservation of an endangered two-thousand year old language. Nor does it attempt to discuss any political conflicts in which the Greek Vlachs have ...
Read More →
Romanian Parliament: Vlachs Are Romanians, Not Vlachs
In April 2005, the Aromanian Community in Romania (ACR) started the procedure for obtaining the status of a national minority for the Aromanians in Romania. After three years of administrative red tape, the ACR decided to file suit against the Romanian Government for cancelling parts of Government Resolution no. 589/2001 concerning the founding of the ...
Read More →
The Recent History of the Aromanians in Romania
EDITOR’S NOTE: Of all the Newsletters we have published in our 24 years, this issue may very well be the most important, because it contains 3 remarkable contemporary documents that show the situation of the Balkan Vlachs today as THEY see it, not as self-styled Vlach leaders in the West see it… (see Editor’s Note) The request ...
Read More →
The Recent History of the Aromanians in Southeast Europe
The aim of this article is to draw an identification “map” of the Aromanians in Southeast Europe. In so doing, we have tried to take an anthropological approach by assuming the analyzed person’s perspective, to understand his or her options and motivations as much as possible. Irina Nicolau (1993) highlighted the difficulty in identifying the ...
Read More →
Vlach-speaking Vocal Music in the Western Balkans: An Introductory Note
Vlach speaking vocal music participates in the wider context of the musical tradition of the Pindus mountain range in Western Greece and generally in the musical context of Western Greece (Epirus, Western Macedonia, Western Thessaly, and mountainous Roumeli) and Southern Albania (Northern Epirus). What will be presented here is a brief note of the results of research ...
Read More →
From the Editor: The End of an Illusion
Of all the Newsletters we have published in our 24 years, this issue may very well be the most important, because it contains 3 remarkable contemporary documents that show the situation of the Balkan Vlachs today as THEY see it, not as self-styled Vlach leaders in the West see it. Several generations have grown ...
Read More →
Panhellenic Federation of Cultural Associations of Vlachs: Letter of Information to the Council of Europe
PANHELLENIC FEDERATION OF CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS OF VLACHS FOUNDED IN 1985 http://www.vlachs-popsv.gr/ e-mail: panhellenicfeder.vlachon@gmail.com Larisa 16 November 2009 Ref. No.:44 LETTER OF INFORMATION TO THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE To: The Council of Europe The Honourable Secretary-General Cc.: The Honourable President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ Deputies of the ...
Read More →
Haunted by the “Enemy” Within: Brigandage, Vlachian / Albanian Greekness, Turkish “Contamination,” and Narratives of Greek Nationhood in the Dilessi / Marathon Affair (1870)
[Reprinted, with minor line editing changes, from the Journal of Modern Greek Studies 20, no. 1 (2002): 47-74, with permission of the author and the Johns Hopkins University Press. © 2002, 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press] Abstract This essay explores Greek and British observations on the phenomenon of brigandage in Greece following a major Anglo-Greek ...
Read More →
A Trek through Greece, Macedonia, and Albania
Bitola bus station in the rain is not the most romantic of spots, and only the most devoted of wives would have tolerated this halfway stop in our wet wild whirlwind Balkan tour. There was an hour to wait before the bus to Ohrid arrived. She had a book, and I settled down as so ...
Read More →
The Poetry of Traditional Languages
The Neapolitan linguist-historian Giambattista Vico said in 1744 in his New Science, “We find that the principle of [the] origins both of languages and of letters lies in the fact that the first gentile peoples, by a demonstrated necessity of nature, were poets who spoke in poetic characters.” This grand discovery enabled Vico to outline the ...
Read More →
Aspects of Language and Identity in the Greek Peninsula since the Eighteenth Century
My aim in this paper is to comment on certain texts written in Greek around the years 1800 and 2000 on the subject of the populations and languages that make up the cultural mosaic of the south Balkan peninsula. The introduction to a work by Asterios Koukoudis entitled Studies on the Vlachs, first published in ...
Read More →
Update on the Vlachs: A Visit to Uma
It is twenty years since I published The Vlachs. When I did so Yugoslavia was still an entity, Albania a closed book, and the Iron Curtain still shrouded much of Eastern Europe. Vlach ha survived these difficult years quite well. There is oddly an increased interest in minority languages, and increased efforts to preserve them. Vlach ...
Read More →
An Istrian in New York
The moment I saw the familiar sadness in my mother’s eyes as she looked out over the land she helped her grandfather farm, my experience of being a daughter of Istrians—and more specifically, Istro-Romanians—crystallized. Tears came to her eyes as she looked upon the topola (poplar) trees her grandfather had planted with his son when he was ...
Read More →