:EMIGRATION
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The emigration
of the Warholas was nothing unusual for Miková. Ruthenians, men in particular, emigrated into the U.S.A. early in the twentieth century to work in the coal pits around Pittsburgh. They send money back home, so some of those in this poorest region of Slovakia were comparatively rich and able to build large, modern, two-storied houses. When Julia Warhola went to America, she took Miková with her, as the Ruthenian culture would contain so much of it, and kept it alive in her new home. So Andy grew up in deeply religious circumstances, surrounded by the language (he spoke Ruthenian with his mother most of the time), the food, and the customs of Ruthenia without ever having set foot on Ruthenian soil. He in a way, too, became a Ruthenian in exile, and that influence on his work is surprisingly large. |
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| Today it's increasingly women who are trying to migrate to the U.S. to work as cleaners, babysitters, and nurses, yet most of them arrive as illegal immigrants, since practically everybody can travel these days, but few receive visa. The Iron Curtain seems replaced by a new one made of paper in as much as visa and immigration quotas block the way. |
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Thus, most of those who fancy immigration do remain in Miková and just keep dreaming of a better life far away. Emigration here only takes place in the minds of the people, and on the TV screens with their steady, day for day trickle into the living rooms of the world out there everybody dreams of - an imaginary emigration. Miková, where time seems to have frozen into the era of immediate post-communism, constitutes a sharp contrast to the electronic escapism of television. Miková is a ‚Global Village', where the world can be seen from afar, and the world itself does see there's Miková, yet both are solely connected via the channels of the media. |
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