Recording Basque Migration

This interesting article about the Basque migration to the US was published at The Augusta Chronicle:

Recordings that capture lives of Basque settlers being made available on Internet

Web posted Friday, August 23, 2002

By Dan Gallagher
Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho -- The Basque immigrants arrived in the American West from Spain and France during the early part of the 20th century, often working in boarding houses and as sheepherders, and later as ranchers.

Generations later, their descendants can hear the voices of their ancestors and see their faces on the Internet thanks to a history documenting project at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada in Reno and the Basque Museum and Cultural Center in Boise.

"They can actually hear their ancestors or relatives," said Jill Berner, a spokeswoman for the Reno center. "What a fabulous thing for a young Basque American girl to hear her grandmother talk about her experiences."

For years, the Boise museum and the Reno center have interviewed Basques and the hundreds of records are being converted to a digital format for the Internet.

The Web sites also include photographs, immigration documents and wedding certificates. The effort is called "Oroitzapenak," which is Basque for "Memories."

"They had fantastic experiences in their lives. We have social questions: Why did they leave the Basque country? What are their origins?" said Gloria Totoricaguena, an assistant professor in Reno.

The Basque immigrants came from a region straddling the Pyrenees Mountains. Today, the Boise area has the largest Basque population in North America with 15,000 people.

But the number of surviving Basque immigrants in the West is dwindling and their children are getting older.

Some lived through calamitous events including the Spanish Civil War's 1937 bombing of Guernica, their spiritual capital. German bombers flying on behalf of Francisco Franco dropped 130,000 pounds of explosives and reduced the village to rubble.

Within five years, Totoricaguena said she will travel to the Basque country to interview the people left behind by their friends and relatives who moved away.

"There's a sense of urgency to record these people," Totoricaguena said. "The ones who were old enough to remember the bombing are now almost getting too old to remember."

The immigrants tended to move to areas where friends and relatives preceded them. Many of the French Basques ended up in San Francisco. Boise's population is mainly from the Spanish province of Viscaya, which includes Guernica.

While Basques started migrating to America in the 1800s, it is this generation which is setting down their families' stories, Miller said.

"It's like many ethnic groups," Miller said. "Grandfather chooses to forget his roots. The first generation is just trying to feed their families. The second generation is playing football and eating chorizo sausages. The third generation is looking back at their history."

On the Net:

Basque Museum oral histories

Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno

.... ... .