Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
]]>Inspired by the simple question asked by a godchild at bedtime, Vince Juaristi ponders why the Basque have become by a multitude of measures one of the most successful immigrant communities in the United States. He identifies four key factors which explain in part the Basque success: Basque cohesion, a strong work ethic, frugality, and an independent spirit.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
(Originally published in the Elko Daily Free Press, 11 June 2016)
Basque sheepherders in the United States circa 1970 who toiled daily in the most austere conditions of the American West.
During a bedtime story, a godchild of mine interrupted with a question, "Why are Basque people good?"
How fascinating, I thought. Mother Goose quickly went by the wayside.
"It has to do with a frustrated devil," I told her. "One day, the devil climbed from the fire and smoke of hell to visit the Basque and turn them bad. With his red forked tongue, he whispered evil temptations in their ears. That's how the devil works, you see, twisting hope and light into despair and darkness. But no matter how hard he tried, or how much he wagged his devilish tongue, he could not speak Euskera, the Basque language, so he had no power or influence over the Basque people. He finally gave up and returned to hell, and that, my dear godchild, is why the Basque are good to this day."
The tale satisfied her, and I finished reading the three bears or the three pigs or some other less riveting fairytale for her proper education.
Her question had been a good one, even if it had no objective answer. Years later, I pondered it again, though I asked it differently, "Have the Basque thrived in America?"
The question really had two parts – first, the status of Basque in America, and second, their status compared to others in similar circumstances.
When I turned to the U.S. Census for something quantitative, I didn't know what I might find. If the data showed the Basque lagging others in America, it would be as disappointing for me as it was for Pinocchio learning that he had descended from a piece of plywood and not the warmth of parents. Worse, it would be a far more difficult story to tell a godchild who already believed in Basque goodness.
But what I discovered confirmed a sentiment that was already tucked away in my heart of hearts.
More than 75% of Basque age 25 years or older have some level of college education compared to only 58% of Americans overall. The contrast is starker at higher educational levels where Basque are 50% more likely to hold a graduate or professional degree than other Americans.
This propensity for education makes them 10% more likely to be in the American labor force, and 31% more likely to hold jobs in management, business, science or the arts.
Their median household income is $70,159 compared to the U.S. median of $52,176. Their poverty rate is half the national average, and they are more likely to own their own home. When they do, the home is 48% more valuable than the average American home.
Had I not studied the data myself, I might have been skeptical of such a rosy picture. Indeed, skeptical I should have been. To compare a smaller homogenous group to a larger heterogeneous group risks statistical overreach. Yet to ignore the data would be equally egregious. What the data illuminate are the pointers, like Peter Pan's northern star, showing areas where Basque excel, and confirming what I and others have witnessed anecdotally for generations.
These pointers – more education, higher wages, and better jobs – are good indicators of a thriving ethnic group. The analysis, consequently, begs a natural question – why have the Basque thrived when others have thrived less or not at all? Are the Basque, indeed, untainted by the devil's poisonous whispers, or is there another plausible explanation?
Ideally, I'd like to point to a single quality or decision that explains Basque performance, but there isn't one. Much like Little Red Riding Hood who studied eyes, nose, ears, and teeth to expose the wolf in grandma's nightie, only a combination of cultural factors can explain the success of the Basque in America. There are no doubt many, but four resonate most – Basque cohesion, a strong work ethic, frugality, and an independent spirit.
First, the Basque are a cohesive group. They hail from a narrow part of the world, practice Catholicism, revere their own flag, and speak a language that is both ancient and nearly impossible for non-Basque to understand without years of concentrated study. Equally ancient are their special dances, color patterns, costumes, games of strength, and foods that reinforce a bond with each other, their past, and their origins in the Pyrenees.
Basque in Pamplona hold up the Basque flag and raise their red scarves as a sign of cohesion and solidarity,
a strong sentiment that the Basque carried with them across the ocean to America where it only grew in strength.
This cohesion does not guarantee Basque success, but it does create a social and economic ecosystem that helps the Basque spin straw into gold. Their bond generates trust, familiarity, cooperation, business associations, and even competition among members of the group and with others outside the group. The Basque work with and for each other and often look inward for support. If one Basque needs something, another provides it.
The arrangement is common among other ethnic groups that have immigrated to the United States. What makes this tendency so powerful among the Basque is that they started as a cohesive group in Euskadi, their homeland. Amid the isolated peaks of the Pyrenees, they resisted the persistent influences of Spanish and French cultures, laws, and royalty. When they arrived as immigrants in the United States (or elsewhere), their bond only strengthened, which added to their highly productive social and economic relations.
This point recalls the fable of the father who summons his boys to his bedside. He gives them a bundle of sticks and says, "Break these if you can." Each son strains and strains to do so but fails. Then the father unties the bundle and tells the boys to break each stick and they do so easily. "You see my meaning," says the father, "there is strength in union." The Basque know this lesson and stick together.
These shared qualities would advance them little, however, if not for a second characteristic – a driving work ethic.
Measuring work ethic is not easy. Without a record showing the clocked hours of Basque and non-Basque in a day, week, month or year; a productivity curve; or a calculation of watts, it is difficult to quantify or compare the work ethic of groups.
But still valuable evidence abounds. With a relatively small sampling of 57,000 Basque-Americans, anecdotes and personal accounts can offer weighty confirmation of group habits.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the ranchers of the west, for example, petitioned Nevada's U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran to bring Basque shepherds from Spain for their herding expertise and their remarkable endurance to work from sunup to sundown with little rest and without complaint. At least 1,135 Basque sheepherders came to America and populated the West by this method.
My father and uncle were among them. I'd be negligent if I ignored their work ethic or my mom's, or the work ethic of so many Basque men and women of their generation whom I watched and admired daily and counted as friends and neighbors for so much of my life. They herded the sheep, tended the bars, made the beds, cooked the meals, and mopped the floors, often seven days a week. A hundred Basque mothers and fathers come to mind still today who have calloused hands, sore backs, and a yearning to get ahead. Their stories cannot be ignored or denied.
As they worked, the Basque earned money, but they were not spendthrifts. On the contrary, their third quality was frugality. When I was a boy, my mother pointed a finger at me and repeated words her mother had taught her. "Spend half," she said, "and put the other half away." Her words echo in my head each time I collect a paycheck or balance a budget or launch a foundation, and they always will.
Mom's advice appears common among the Basque. Annually, the average interest and dividends earned on savings by each American is $1,371. For the Basque, the average is $3,100, over 126% more.
"Oh, ant, why do you work so much?" asked Aesop's grasshopper. "Come lounge with me."
"That is not in my nature," replied the ant. "Better to work and save for the winter."
"Do what you must," said the grasshopper.
The Basque are more ant than grasshopper. They work and save; it is simply in their nature.
Tied like a bow around this cultural cohesion, work ethic, and frugality is a fourth characteristic which John Adams, an American founding father, called a "High and independent spirit." It might be the most important of all Basque qualities.
This spirit nests in the heart of every Basque and dates to ancient times. When the Romans invaded, the Basque resisted; when Isabel asked for allegiance, the Basque exacted a price; when a king imposed a tax, the Basque refused to pay and formed a militia; when Franco outlawed Euskera, the Basque defied the order. Despite these confrontations – and perhaps because of them – the Basque persevered, but not without pain or death. Their sacrifices only enriched their pride in language, culture, and an ancient heritage. Loss made what they had more precious.
They brought this independent spirit across the ocean where it blossomed in America's free soil, a land that Goldilocks herself might have said was "just right." The Basque shepherds who lived in the hills, fought coyotes and mountain lions, slept under stars, and ate by campfires each epitomized, in their own way, the self reliance that Emerson had spoken of a century earlier. They looked not to old Europe or government to shape their collective future, but to themselves and to each other.
Not surprisingly, this streak of independence makes the Basque 34% more likely than other Americans to earn their daily bread as self-employed entrepreneurs rather than salaried employees working for someone else. In my own family, mom and dad owned and operated two businesses, and two of their children are now CEOs of companies.
When my godchild, who is Danish and raised on a healthy diet of Hans Christian Andersen, asks again about the Basque, I can surely repeat the story of the frustrated devil, but I'll have another story for her that reads very much like a fairytale. Numbers have confirmed what my heart and experience already knew. I'll tell her of a people who came with nothing, worked until fingers bled, saved and stuck together, and stood independent and strong on two firmly committed legs. It's a good story and almost complete except for one ingredient – the ending.
It's too soon to say that all lived happily ever after. The Basque are still in the throes of the tale, still seeking their fortunes, and occasionally, still fighting big bad wolves. Yet all signs so far point to these Basque-American ducklings slowly emerging as swans.
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Vince J. Juaristi was born and raised in Elko, NV. He is CEO and President of ARBOLA, a technology company, in Alexandria, VA. His newest book, Basque Firsts: People Who Changed the World, will be released this year by the University of Nevada Press.
Please donate to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program attend the Smithsonian event this summer. All donations are tax deductible and you will receive a receipt. Go to:
http://www.campusce.net/gbcnv/course/course.aspx?c=246
If you would like to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program in other ways, contact Angie deBraga at Great Basin College. angie.debraga@gbcnv.edu.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
]]>In 1937, 8-year-old Kermit Mirena Iriondo was evacuated from the Basque country following the Nazi bombing of Guernica (Basque: Gernika). Along with his old sister and two brothers, he boarded the SS Habana and sailed for England with 3,840 other Basque children. American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt led a global effort to support these refugee children financially. During her 1942 visit to Britain, now 13-year-old Kermit met his benefactor and was photographed with the First Lady.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
(Originally published in the Elko Daily Free Press, 7 May 2016)
The SS Habana pulled into the Southampton port in England on May 23, 1937. The ship's capacity was only 800, but it carried 3,840 Basque children, 80 teachers, 120 helpers, 15 Catholic priests, and two doctors.
Never had a First Lady of the United States traveled to Europe without her husband. Despite the German Luftwaffe prowling the skies, Eleanor Roosevelt shrugged off the danger and flew to England in 1942. She had four sons in military service and wanted to do something for the war effort, if only to raise British spirits and carry a vital message across the pond, “America is coming.” She and Franklin had been visited by King George and Queen Elizabeth at the White House, so returning the call seemed only fitting. She also hoped to bring good tidings to the few American troops already in country and study the effects of wartime programs on average families. Additionally, a chief priority was spending time with refugee children, three in particular whom she had adopted and supported for years. Among them was a Basque boy, Kerman Mirena Iriondo.
Five years earlier in 1937, Kerman had been swept up in the aftermath of Gernika. In the first aerial assault in world history, Hitler’s Condor Legion dropped bombs for three hours on this center of Basque culture, killing men, women and children, and reducing homes and livestock to ash. Hundreds, if not thousands, died (the number remains disputed), as survivors fled to Bilbao, the last refuge against the indiscriminate onslaught. Fearful of a similar attack, the Basque parents of Bilbao pled with other nations to take their children and keep them safe. England was one of a few nations that answered the call.
Kerman’s mother and father bundled him, then only 8 years old, in a heavy jacket in spite of the warmth of May, and packed food for several days. They pinned a cardboard hexagon to his jacket that included an identification number and the words, “Expedición a Ingleterra,” and then escorted him, his older sister, and two older brothers to the harbor.
There were children everywhere, all clothed in heavy jackets with a pinned hexagon like Kerman’s. Parents hugged and kissed their sons and daughters once, twice then a third time, and loaded them on a boat. No child was older than eighteen, and others were not yet old enough to walk. There were tears, lots of tears, even wails from many children who did not want to leave, and from moms and dads who agonized whether giving up their children was foolhardiness or a supreme act of love.
As the ship raised anchor, Kerman remained stoic. A part of him looked forward to being on a ship at sea. His father had told him stories of the ocean and of men who had sailed to distant lands. It felt very much like an adventure. He waved to his mom and dad, who stood on the dock, and to his four-year-old sister, who wore a sun bonnet and sat in the crook of their father’s arm. It was a scene he’d recall well into old age.
Kerman and his older siblings found a corner of the SS Habana and settled in. The ship had a capacity of 800, but on this day it overflowed with 3,840 children, 80 teachers, 120 helpers, 15 Catholic priests, and two doctors. They covered every inch, slept above and below deck, even in lifeboats, the legs of one child touching the head of another. The choppy waters caused many to wretch until the ship pulled into Southampton port two days later on May 23, 1937. Pale and dizzy from seasickness, Kerman stepped onto English soil with his brothers and sister and never again yearned for the ocean.
Few had noticed these thousands of Basque children fleeing their homeland, but Eleanor Roosevelt had. “I noticed yesterday that the Basque children taken to England were not very happy,” she wrote in her daily column. “It makes me feel more strongly than ever that our own contribution should be in money and these children should be kept as near their own country as possible.”
Her suggestion could not have been more astutely timed. The British government had agreed to accept the refugees but not pay for their upkeep or education. To do so would have violated a non-intervention pact with the Spanish government. Encouraged by Eleanor, a group of citizens formed the Foster Parent Program for these “Tomases, Marias, and Teresas.” The program solicited $15 per month to house, clothe, feed, and educate Basque children.
The children desperately needed the help. Soon after their arrival, Kerman and the other kids were taken to North Stoneham Camp in Eastleigh where rows of white tents stood ready to receive them. Each tent was designed for five but ended up housing 10 to 15, food supplies ran short within a couple of weeks, and septic overflowed. Despite these conditions, the children made the most of the ordeal, dressing in Basque costumes and dancing jotas on Sundays.
The camp at Stoneham proved temporary as children moved into foster homes throughout the country. Kerman and his brothers were separated from their sister and transferred to a convent in Darlington. He found the experience miserable, and it only worsened when, shortly after, he was separated from his brothers too and moved 250 miles south to Barnet, a borough of London. He was 8 years old, alone in a foreign land, separated from parents, brothers and sisters, and living among people he could not understand.
No one can say what Kerman might have felt at this moment, but fair guesses would include isolation, desperation, and profound sadness. But then a kind of other-worldly news reached him. He was told that he had been selected for adoption by a woman in America named Eleanor, and she was the president’s wife. He did not know the full import of the news, or even what the word adoption meant in this context, but he came to know her as the American Queen.
By supporting a Basque child financially, Eleanor wanted to set an example and encourage others to do the same. The motivation succeeded. Housewives across America dug into sugar and flour jars for quarters and dimes that had been squirreled away, churches passed extra collection plates, and schools and civic clubs knocked on doors for nickels and pennies. Her example fired up Hollywood, attracting contributions from Bing Crosby, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, and Helen Hayes.
By the time Eleanor flew to England in 1942, her on-going efforts had inspired multiple programs in several countries, all raising money for Basque children and orphans from World War II. Most of the Basque children had already been repatriated to Spain, although 250 or so remained in England, including Kerman. His parents had died shortly after the Spanish Civil War, so at a young age, he had made a very adult decision to stay in London rather than return to the country of his birth with its terribly painful memories.
He was then 13-years-old and waited anxiously to meet the American Queen who had supported him all these years. He followed her in the London Times which reported her arrival on October 24, 1942, her stay with King George and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, her lively conversations with Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street, her visit to the bombed wreckage of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Nelson’s Tomb, and her review of American soldiers on bases around the country. To think that in a few days he would be in her presence set his heart aflutter.
Kerman was a shy, quiet boy, who struggled still with English. It gave him some relief to learn that he would not be meeting the American Queen alone. Two other children whom Eleanor had adopted would be present as well – Janina Dybowska, a 17-year-old Polish girl who had been orphaned after Germany’s invasion in 1939; and Tommy Maloney, a 4-year-old son of a London stoker who had been orphaned during the Blitzkrieg.
When Eleanor entered the warm living room at Hertford Heath, a children’s colony where the three had gathered, she greeted them in a stately black suit with a fur collar. In Kerman’s eyes, she lacked only a crown to finish her regal impression. Had any of the children been nervous, her toothy smile quickly soothed them, and a few toys from her bag drew their smiles. Janina was dressed in a traditional Polish outfit with beads and flowers braided in her dark hair. Little Tommy climbed on Eleanor’s lap as he might a grandmother’s. Not sure what to say or do, Kerman stood stoic, though clean and groomed with slicked-back hair and pressed clothes. Their conversations were not recorded, but the foursome sat for a portrait and seemed at ease in one another’s company. The meeting lasted no more than an hour, yet he would recall the encounter and “Auntie Eleanor,” which she had asked him to call her, until his dying breath.
Eleanor left England two days later. She continued to nurture the Foster Parent Program, and others that had evolved from it, through the war and beyond. With her guidance, several of the programs coalesced after the war into the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, which the world still knows today as UNICEF.
Kerman would not see Auntie Eleanor again, but she continued supporting him until his 18th birthday. During his teen years, he boarded in Carshalton London where he befriended and later married Manolita Abad, another Basque child from the SS Habana. He completed his studies at commercial college and entered the import-export and international banking business. His skills in Basque, Spanish, and English served him well.
The work took him back to Spain for the first time, back to Bilbao and Basque country, back to the memories of an eight year old waving goodbye to a mother and father crying on a dock. There he was welcomed by his little sister, the one in the sun bonnet, who had sat in the crook of their father’s arm.
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Vince J. Juaristi was born and raised in Elko, NV. He is CEO and President of ARBOLA, a technology company, in Alexandria, VA. His newest book, Basque Firsts: People Who Changed the World, will be released this year by the University of Nevada Press.
Please donate to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program attend the Smithsonian event this summer. All donations are tax deductible and you will receive a receipt. Go to:
http://www.campusce.net/gbcnv/course/course.aspx?c=246
If you would like to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program in other ways, contact Angie deBraga at Great Basin College. angie.debraga@gbcnv.edu.
Elko Basque Festival Programs: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/collections/show/27
Intertwined: Basques and Americans Crossing Paths: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/collections/show/26
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
]]>The efforts of Nevada Senator Patrick McCarran to pass an amendment to his Displaced Person's Act to allow Basque sheepherders to emigrate to the United States in 1948 through 1952. As a result, the McCarran-Walters Act (1952) adopted similar principles for all American immigration policy, many of which remain in effect to today. The story combines debates about the Basque to the flagging American sheep-herding industry in the post-war West, the question of refugees and their legal status as immigrants, and the calculations of international relations in the developing Cold War.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
(Originally published in the Elko Daily Free Press, 9 April 2016)
Sheepherding is the world's second oldest profession according to Genesis.
"Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil."
Then Cain killed Abel and received the mark, and his brother became the good shepherd whose namesake appeared a million times thereafter in scripture, mythology, nursery rhymes, literature, film, and economics. But it was not until the legislative maneuvers of U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran that Basque sheepherders, who followed Abel in his profession, ignited a fracas in American politics.
Senator McCarran of Nevada presided as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 1948 when millions worldwide lacked food and shelter, and yearned for a life of peace, economic security, and hope. They eyed America as their promised land. It was McCarran who determined if they could walk through those "golden doors" which the poet Emma Lazarus had written about in the "New Colossus" sixty-five years earlier.
At age 71, McCarran was a dour man with wavy silver hair, fleshy jowls, and a piercing squint. By seniority, he stood fourth in the Senate, though some of his colleagues whispered near the cloak room that he was first in power, and no one dared say otherwise.
Although he represented only 140,000 souls spread mostly in the rural countryside of Northern Nevada where sheep outnumbered people, he wielded nearly exclusive authority over America's immigration laws. One of his earliest bills, the Displaced Person's Act, granted residency to 200,000 refugees from Germany, Austria, Italy, and Czechoslovakia.
Less than a year after Truman had signed the bill, McCarran quietly pushed through a one-page amendment to grant residency to 48 Basque sheepherders. It went largely unnoticed. The request had come from ranchers in Nevada, Idaho, and California. Herds were shrinking; wool production was down. Ranchers believed that the able hands of "sturdy Basque sheepherders" could help staunch the decline of herds from a peak of 705,000 in 1935 to 321,000 in 1948.
Heartened by this success, McCarran put forward a bolder bill two months later that admitted 250 Basque sheepherders from Spain. "Unless skilled and competent sheepherders are promptly made available," he said, "it will be necessary for the herds to be progressively reduced."
But this bill did not go unnoticed, not because his fellow senators doubted the skill of Basques as shepherds, or because the country could not absorb 250 hard working men. They balked because more than a year had gone by and McCarran's Displaced Person's Act had restricted, not assisted, refugees into America. Some of his senate brethren suspected that he had poisoned the act on purpose with labyrinthine regulations to reduce the flow of refugees to a trickle, if not a drip. Until McCarran loosened the restrictions, his colleagues planned to delay his shepherd bill.
There was merit and a twist of irony to their suspicions. The war had been replaced in America with a fear of foreign and domestic communism, the great Red Menace. McCarran had become one of the most ardent crusaders, along with Joseph McCarthy, against allegedly ubiquitous communist sympathizers hiding among immigrant populations or lurking in the diplomatic corps of the State Department. He fancied himself always vigilant of communists and communist sympathizers. Yet as much as he tossed up roadblocks to the foreign born or launched witch hunts for men and women of questionable character, he ironically made special accommodations for Basque sheepherders born in a country ruled by a Fascist.
When challenged, he simply retorted that "communism is worse than fascism." Even if Franco's regime had purged thousands of Basque and other opponents after the Spanish Civil War, McCarran saw Spain as an ally against the Soviet Union. Moreover, cordial relations with Franco ensured a constant flow of Basque sheepherders for the ranchers of his state. "I am nothing without serving Nevadans," he said.
In September 1949, he decided to investigate the refugee camps in Europe and evaluate for himself (some would say validate) the extent of communist influence. "Since I am defending the economy of the country," he said, "I want to find out how many of these people should come in and why. I want to find out what they'll do once they get here." He also stopped in Madrid to visit Franco.
After his return, McCarran did not loosen the restrictions on refugees, but he did back a $100 million loan to Spain, and even threatened the Secretary of State with a budget cut unless the department warmed diplomatic relations with the fascist country. "Until that policy is changed," he said, "I'm going to look into this appropriation with a fine-tooth comb."
All the while, his shepherd bill languished and the ranchers of Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and California pressed him for action. Not until the summer of 1950 was he able to craft a compromise. He agreed to loosen restrictions on refugees if his colleagues accepted the 250 Basque sheepherders, and in a second measure, granted legal residence to 163 Basque sheepherders who had arrived in the United States between 1943 and 1949. The deal was struck, the House concurred, and President Truman signed both bills.
This matter had hardly settled when McCarran decided to rewrite America's immigration laws. "Today, as never before," he said, "untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain." He warned that America's porous borders and weak immigration policies had allowed 5,000,000 illegal aliens into the United States including "militant communists, Sicilian bandits, and other criminals." Although he offered no proof of this claim, his fiery speeches riled the public and stoked fears inside and outside of government. "We have in the United States today," he said, "hard core indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary, are its deadly enemy." He joined with Congressman Francis Walter of Pennsylvania to introduce the McCarran-Walter Act.
The bill was an overhaul of America's immigration policies. It retained a quota system for nationalities and regions and codified a system that gave preference to different ethnic groups based largely on labor qualifications. It defined three types of immigrants: immigrants with special skills; average immigrants, governed by quotas, not to exceed 270,000 per year; and refugees. Every immigrant had to be of "good moral character," which prevented entry of anyone with ties or affiliations to "communist or other subversive parties." The bill eventually passed, though drawing a veto from President Truman, which was quickly overridden. The bill became law on June 27, 1952. Many of its provisions remain intact today.
Under the new law, the once paralyzing scrutiny of refugees expanded to all immigrants. Basque sheepherders were considered immigrants with special skills, giving them preference over average immigrants. That they hailed from a fascist country no longer mattered. In fact, by cooperating with Franco's government, McCarran was able to open a special immigration office in Bilbao to expedite the flow of Basque sheepherders from the Pyrenees to America. McCarran pressed the State Department to admit the annual quota of 250 Basque sheepherders immediately and another 250 in 1953.
With ranchers in Nevada and other western states rejoicing, he proposed legislation in 1954 to bring in another 385 Basque sheepherders which exceeded the quota in his own law. He declared wool production "essential to national security" and the work of Basque men vital for the preservation of America's economic vitality in the world. He was riding so high that even Franco decorated him in Spain with the Grand Cross of Isabel Catolica, a rare honor for a foreigner.
Many senators did not share Franco's admiration for McCarran, one in particular, Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, who blocked the bill. "This bill," he said, "is for the benefit of one small group and one region of our country." He sympathized with the need for sheepherders, he said, but "what about the American citizens who have mothers and fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, foster-parents or foster children in Italy, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary and Czechoslovakia? Are they not deserving of the same consideration as the sheep of Nevada?"
Restrictions on refugees had tangled into such a draconian noose, Lehman maintained, that more Basque sheepherders had entered America in the past five years than "all refugees, escapees, persecutees, orphans, and surplus population in Europe and Asia." The claim was an exaggeration, but not by much. He then questioned McCarran directly, asking, "Would you raise your voice in behalf of special bills to admit some Swiss watchmakers, some Czech tailors, some Greek goat herders, some Italian farmers, and some Polish boot-makers in a non-quota status?"
Whether rhetorical or not, the question went unanswered.
The bill seemed doomed. Yet a day after blocking it and posing his question, Lehman lifted his opposition and voted for the measure. He gave no explanation, nor did the congressional record provide insight to his change of heart. Whatever argument, promise, swap, threat or special deal caused Lehman to flip his vote will likely stay buried in history. The bill passed and became law.
By 1954, McCarran had opened America to 1,135 Basque sheepherders. No other group of immigrants enjoyed such preferential treatment, or expeditious attention. If a Basque sheepherder in the Pyrenees applied for a visa, he received an interview at the American consulate, a physical, and a plane ticket. Within a month, he found himself with a dog at his side and a willow in his hand herding a band of 1,000 sheep in Nevada or another western state, sleeping by a campfire, and eating beans from a can.
The pace of Basque immigration would never be greater than during these controversial years, though the Basque would continue to settle western states during the rest of the decade and well into the 1960s.
In September 1954, not long after McCarran had won passage of his last shepherd bill and prepared another for 1955, he returned to Nevada to campaign for fellow Democrats. He left Reno in the early afternoon for a speech in Hawthorne. He stopped in Fallon for a haircut, but finding a line at the barber shop, and not wanting to be late, he paid a man so he could jump ahead. In Hawthorne, he gave his speech to rousing applause, and then, leaving the stage, he collapsed. McCarran had suffered his third heart attack in three years.
He left his mark on the state: an airport in Las Vegas, a boulevard in Reno. The good shepherds continued to thrive after him. Some worked for the rest of their lives in the sheep camps during spring and summer and lived solitary lives in nearby towns during the off-seasons. Others moved to town permanently, worked 9-to-5 jobs, raised families, and returned to the sheep camps only for a weekend to hear the bleats of lambs, or help deliver or dock or sheer.
After two generations, many of the 57,000 Basque who now populate America can trace their origins to these early sheepherders who left the Pyrenees for America's western states. Today in the hills of Nevada or Idaho or California, a few Basque men still tend flocks like Abel before them. To see them work is to witness an ancient craft that is simple, wonderful and older than scripture.
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Vince J. Juaristi was born and raised in Elko, NV. He is CEO and President of ARBOLA, a technology company, in Alexandria, VA. His newest book, Basque Firsts: People Who Changed the World, will be released this year by the University of Nevada Press.
Please donate to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program attend the Smithsonian event this summer. All donations are tax deductible and you will receive a receipt. Go to:
http://www.campusce.net/gbcnv/course/course.aspx?c=246
If you would like to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program in other ways, contact Angie deBraga at Great Basin College. angie.debraga@gbcnv.edu.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
]]>The story of Florentino Goicoechea (Basque: Florentino Goikoextea), a Basque resident and occassional smuggler living in the Pyrenees between France and Spain who operated the Réseau Comète or "Comet Line", an escape route for downed Allied airman shot down over Europe during World War II. Florentino Goicoechea would assist airmen in hiding in occupied France and smuggle them across the border to neutral Spain for return to the Allies.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
(Originally published in the Elko Daily Free Press, 5 March 2016)
Florentino Goicoechea (Basque: Florentino Goikoextea) lived in a 24-mile stretch of land between Hernani, Gipuzkoa, Spain, and Ciboure, France. He grew up in a small farm house without electricity or plumbing, hunted antelope and big-horned sheep in the hills south of San Sebastían, and fished the Bidassoa River that traced the Spanish-French border. He knew the Pyrenees that ran like a zipper from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean with more than 50 alternating teeth peaking above 10,000 feet. He knew the sounds of night and day and the animals that growled, chirped, snarled, or hissed in the dense foliage and jagged rock along the high mountain passes. He had no formal schooling, only the knowledge afforded by these 24-miles, but it was this familiarity most of all that came to serve America and the Allies during World War II.
Florentino began to apply his knowledge and skill as a smuggler against Franco during Spain's Civil War in 1936. Wearing a black beret not a helmet and carrying a walking stick or fishing pole not a gun, he crisscrossed the border to deliver secrets between commanders in the field and Basque exiles in France. If Franco's soldiers, the Guardia Civil, spotted him, he smiled and passed as a harmless peasant in search of a meal; the soldiers would nod and go back to their patrol.
Despite his skullduggery, the Republic fell to Franco's forces by 1939. Wary of going home, he settled in Ciboure, where he happily took up a quiet solitary life of hunting, fishing, and hiking on the French side of the Pyrenees.
Months later, his calm was shattered as it was for all Europeans when Germany's invasion of Poland sparked World War II. The effects of war did not reach him for six months, and then only as reports in newspapers filled with shocking details of massacre and tragedy. Later, when food shortages forced rationing of eggs, cheese, potatoes, and wine, he smuggled supplies for himself and neighbors.As a Basque man from Spain, a neutral country during the war, he was never called into military service. Still he felt he had to fight. His few words on the matter suggest that opposing Germany would vindicate the earlier loss to Franco, though no one may ever know his true motivation.
After France surrendered to Germany, Florentino found his calling. He learned of a kind of underground railroad called Réseau Comète
– the Comet Line – that held as its motto, "Fighting Without Arms." It smuggled downed Allied pilots safely from Brussels to Paris, but once Germany occupied France, it had to escort a pilot beyond Paris, across the Pyrenees, into neutral Spain to get him home.The first guide for this dangerous journey had been caught and arrested. Who, then, would fill the vacancy? Who would escort these American, British, Canadian, and Australian pilots over the treacherous Pyrenees and deliver them safely home? Who would dare defy these Nazis and the Guardia Civil?
Only one man had the knowledge, skill, and cunning to pick up the cause – Florentino Goicoechea.
Every day Florentino walked across a bridge that connected his new home of Ciboure with St. Jean de Luz, and then drank wine or ate a meal at the Euskalduna Hotel. A mother-daughter pair worked there whom he had known since the Spanish Civil War. He marveled still at their sneaky talents. They hovered near tables to watch, hear, absorb, and convey secrets while serving drinks or clearing dishes. As much as Florentino was master of the Pyrenees, these two were masters of subterfuge which turned the Euskalduna into a kind of central nervous system for the French resistance in the south.
Florentino did not know when the pair talked with operatives of Comet, or when a downed pilot might require escort. In truth, he knew little of a pilot's difficult journey up to the point he met him.
A pilot typically traveled by train or bus from Paris to Bayonne and then pedaled a bicycle sixteen miles to the St. Jean de Luz railroad station. He waited inside a bathroom stall until nightfall and then slipped out a side-door that opened to an alley. Concealed by the shadows for about 500 feet, he entered Euskalduna where the mother and daughter whisked him to a room or another safehouse.
The next day while drinking his wine or sipping his soup, Florentino would hear a whisper, "Expect a package."
He watched the Ciboure Bridge at midnight for the unmistakable signs of a foreigner, usually a nervous man all alone or two men anxiously whispering and white-knuckling the rail of the bridge. With the stealth of a cat, Florentino sneaked up and quickly drew the one or the pair off the bridge into the shadows.
With the spryness of a younger man, he led them along the N10 road and then uphill into the tall grasses and thick pine and spruce around Ciboure. "It was everything I could do to keep up," said one flier from Ohio. For nearly three miles, the pace never slowed until they arrived at one of three safehouses in Urrugne - Tomásénéa, Bidegain Berri, or Yatxu Baita. Florentino knew the farmhouse owners. A wife of a French POW ran the first, a widow the second, and a single father with twelve children the third. Each risked all they had to help him. He alternated his visits to reduce suspicion on any one.
Already exhausted, fliers received warm milk at the farmhouse. Then each was outfitted as a Basque peasant with chord-roped espadrilles, blue workman's clothes, and a black beret. He also received a Benzedrine pill to boost his energy. As soon as the milk bowls were licked clean, Florentino handed each flier a walking stick, and then he squinted and thrust his chin, for he was a man of few words, and they returned to the night.
In complete darkness, they climbed Mont du Calvaire. It was not high, but steep, burning thighs and calves with each step. At the peak, they collapsed, but Florentino pushed them beyond their limits, up a steeper mountain that the Basque call Xoldokogaina. They climbed for more than two hours, sometimes on all fours over sharp rock, through pines and across shallow brooks, falling into holes, stumbling over branches, scraping arms and legs. A foot or two ahead were Florentino's heels and if a flier lost sight of them and panicked, a sudden strong hand pulled him up and forward moving him on.
"There was a kind of peace at the top," said one Ohio flier surveying the landscape from 5,200 feet. In the calm of this blackest night, they could hear the Bidassoa River in the distance and see the hazy glow of Fuentarabia, Irún and San Sebastían.
Yet between this high tranquility and the lights of freedom were German patrols and Franco's Guardia Civil.
Florentino crouched with the pilots on Xoldokogaina to catch his breath and rest his legs and wipe sweat from his cheeks. They waited for the guards to change shifts at about 3 a.m. which opened gaps in the security. Then they descended as quickly as they could, sometimes in a slide, to the footpaths of Col des Poiriers.
Here was the most dangerous point in the journey. The terrain afforded little passable ground besides the trails, so they had to jog in the open, breathing heavily, risking exposure and capture. "I was scared as hell," said a flier from Washington.
The exposure lasted only a few moments until they dipped into the winding Lantzetta Erreka creekbed that ended at San Miguel near the river separating France and Spain.
The Bidassoa River was unpredictable. In winter, it froze over for easy crossing, or froze enough that a man could hop from floe to floe. In summer, it rose in places to the knees. But in spring, it often swelled its banks, forcing Florentino and the fliers to strip and swim with clothes in a plastic bag or held over their heads as the water lapped their armpits. If they heard barking, they had to swim fully clothed.
Up the opposite bank they scrambled on to Spanish soil. By 5 a.m. a crisp dawn had cracked the horizon behind them. Lying on their bellies in the tall grasses, they listened for the Guardia Civil that had barracks only 1,200 feet downstream. Florentino expected the soldiers to be sleeping, not patrolling, and sure enough several fliers reported hearing snoring nearby.
They crept past the slumbering guards over a railroad and across the Irún-Pamplona road. It was a "steep and exhausting climb to Erlaitz," wrote one flier. Every step was taken in stealth, yet every kicked pebble or snapped limb sounded like a pistol shot.
The terrain eased after Erlaitz and so, too, their anxiety. Florentino led them along old mining tracks to the Sarobe Farm, and for the first time in hours, they felt cautiously safe. The farmer served eggs and cheese, wine and bread. The fliers untied their espadrilles to air their bruised and blistered feet and soak them in salt water.
After resting an hour and pulling on new socks and shoes, they walked two hours over meadow and quiet pasture and well-kept roads.
In Renteria, Florentino bought tickets for the tram and he and the fliers boarded like ordinary commuters. None of the riders that morning knew how treacherous the last 10 hours had been for these dirty-faced, haggard strangers.
In twenty minutes, the tram stopped in Hernani, Florentino's birthplace, where he took the fliers to a safehouse owned by an old friend of the family. Then he bid them goodbye.
He never knew their names, nor they his. His daring acts were carried out anonymously – to know a name presented undue risk. He continued escorting fliers across his 24-mile stretch of land until D-Day and the liberation of France in August 1944. He never lost a pilot nor was any pilot captured under his care.
From the Hernani safehouse, the fliers traveled easily to San Sebastían and then to the British Consulate in Bilbao. Under Allied protection, the men made their way to Gibraltar in the south for passage home.
The Comet Line saved over 700 American, British, Canadian, and Australian pilots. Of those, Florentino Goicoechea had a hand in leading 207 over the Pyrenees to safety. While some hung up their wings to enjoy the comforts of home, others returned to the fight. Even though they did not know his name, the fliers wrote thank you notes, never forgetting the kind and quiet man who guided them over the mountains.
After the war, Florentino remained a wanted man by Franco's Guardia Civil, so his deeds went unrecognized for most of his life. Yet when Franco died in November 1975, Florentino emerged from the shadows of Ciboure to receive widespread recognition in both France and Spain. He was also honored in England at Buckingham Palace, where he received the George Cross for gallantry and bravery. During the ceremony, he was asked, "What is it that you actually do?" In broken English, he replied, "I am in the import-export business."
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Vince J. Juaristi was born and raised in Elko, NV. He is CEO and President of ARBOLA, a technology company, in Alexandria, VA. His newest book, Basque Firsts: People Who Changed the World, will be released this year by the University of Nevada Press.
Please donate to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program attend the Smithsonian event this summer. All donations are tax deductible and you will receive a receipt. Go to:
http://www.campusce.net/gbcnv/course/course.aspx?c=246
If you would like to help the young people of the Great Basin Basque Program in other ways, contact Angie deBraga at Great Basin College. angie.debraga@gbcnv.edu.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
]]>Vince J. Juaristi's experiences and pride as a member of the Basque community and looking forward to Basque celebration as part of the National Folklife Festival.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.
Used by explicit permission of author; VHC Archive Deposit Agreement on file: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/7be251bbb6b73065a4187dcad994ffbf.pdf [administrator access only]
(Originally published in the Elko Daily Free Press, 23 January 2016)
Sprawled between the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol, the Smithsonian hosts the National Folklife Festival each year. It's really something to see with all the care and detail one expects of a Smithsonian exhibit. In the July swelter, hundreds of thousands attend to study and learn about unique cultures from around the country and across the globe. From June 29-July 4 and July 7-10, this year's festival will showcase the Basque.
When I learned this news last year, I felt a bit of pride; well, not a bit, a lot. I thought about dad's journey from Spain to America, and the journey of so many Basque like him during the 1940s. I marveled at how far the Basque had come as a people.
Their story is courageous, maybe heroic. In Spain after World War II, a boy or girl born with nothing grew up with nothing and died with nothing. That was the way of most things. It was a cold life, as it still is in much of the world. You got nuthin', dad said in broken English.
Tired, desperate, and poor, the Basque came to America to start anew. Most arrived with five dollars in the pocket, and others arrived with even less. They did not speak the language. They had little education. They boasted no special contacts or prominent pedigrees. Their titles were sheepherder, laborer, waitress, maid, cook, or seamstress.
With strong backs and a thirst to do better, they worked until sweat dripped and muscles ached. For dad, as for most Basque, what had been nuthin' grew more optimistic. You got nuthin', you make sumthin', he said. The Basque worked harder still, learned English, and gained citizenship.
They raised families and pressed education for their kids. Those children soon graduated from the finest colleges in the land, and then branched far and wide into business, politics, medicine, law, and science. The parents nourished the oak, the children enjoyed the shade.
The news about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival did indeed swell me with pride, but it was not for me. It was pride for dad and mom, and for all Basque who had crossed an ocean and then a continent to settle in the American West. These were men and women with courage and unbridled determination. They herded the sheep and farmed the fields, waited the tables and tended the bars, made the beds and mopped the floors, kept the language and honored the traditions.
The pride was for Ana Marie Arbillaga's dancing lessons, for Bernardo Yanci's accordion playing, for Gene Irribarne's brilliance on the clarinet, for Chapo Leniz's steak and beans, for Juan Juaristi's sheepherding, for Nick Fagoaga's castanet playing, for Pete Ormaza's craftsmanship, for Jess Lopategui's mastership of ceremony, for Felicia Basanez's famous flan, and for so many others. Some are no longer here, only in spirit, but the pride is for them too.
This story is not a new story in America's legacy as a beacon for the downtrodden and oppressed. But it is an important story. Dad's optimistic words – You got nuthin', you make sumthin' – epitomize the spirit of his generation, and in a real sense, describe our country's unique role in the world better than any statement I've heard.
Few groups have lived the story as well as the Basque. Few have worked so hard and achieved so much in so short a time. Fewer still have balanced a unique culture and language with the duties and obligations of being fully American.
Now even the Smithsonian recognizes the achievement. When the folklife festival kicks off this summer, I hope the Basque attend in great numbers. I hope the mothers and fathers come, and the children too. I hope they remember their personal journeys and share their stories. I hope they see where they're at, amid the stone architecture, pomp, and democratic cradle of a great nation, and feel themselves an important part of history.
When Gernikako-Arbola, the Basque tree of freedom, is planted on the national mall, or a band of sheep grazes near the White House, I want the Basque to know that their story is a good story, and the work of a generation has been worth it. Out of nothing, the Basque have made something.
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Vince J. Juaristi was born and raised in Elko, NV. He is CEO and President of ARBOLA, a technology company, in Alexandria, VA. His newest book, Basque Firsts: People Who Changed the World, will be released this year by the University of Nevada Press.
Anyone wishing to support the Elko Basque Program at the Smithsonian should contact Angie deBraga at Great Basin College - angie.debraga@gbcnv.edu.
Account of John Adams visit to the Basque country in Spain in 1779. The visit was the result of delays in Adams travelling to Paris to begin the peace process in the American Revolution.
Part of the Intertwined series of articles celebrating Basque and American Encounters in conjunction with the Smithsonian's 2016 Folklife Festival.(Originally published in the Elko Daily Free Press, 8 February 2016)
"Providence has favored me, with a very unexpected Visit to Spain," wrote John Adams to his friend, James Lovell, on December 16, 1779. Over the next month, this landing on Spanish soil would test Adams like few journeys in his life, and yet afford him a surprise glimpse of the Basque, a people with such "a High and independent spirit, so essentially different from the other Provinces" that he would recall them years later during America's struggle for a new constitution.
Weeks earlier, as battles raged along America's eastern seaboard, Adams had left Boston harbor for Paris to begin dialogue for a peace accord. His ship, the Sensible, had run into a nor'easter two days out and sprung a terrible leak that forced all aboard to man the pumps day and night. After three thousand miles of winter weather on the Atlantic, the water-logged and rotting Sensible, manned by a desperate and exhausted crew had put into port at El Ferrol off the northern tip of Spain.
With peace possible and the fate of American, English, and French lives resting on his shoulders, Adams could not spare several months for ship repairs, so he decided to travel the nearly 900 miles over land to reach Paris. All the Spanish officials at El Ferrol assured him that his plan was a prudent course. The hospitality on the way was the finest in the world, they told him, the journey an easy excursion through lush countryside, even in December. It sounded very much like a vacation.
Determined and confident, Adams gathered his sons, John Quincy and Charles, and a few escorts, and headed out a day after Christmas 1779 in a caravan of thirteen mules like Don Quixotes from the New World.
Much of Spain at the time resembled what Adams had spent a lifetime fighting in Boston and then Philadelphia. Nearly all of the country fell under a trident of power. First, a monarchy levied taxes, drafted fathers and sons into Spain's never-ending wars, and ruled by royal decree without election or the consent of the people.
A second prong was the clergy who had erected in town after town massive cathedrals, and then collected heavy tithing for their upkeep. Failure to tithe, warned the clergy, condemned a commoner to perdition's flame. Most paid, and had paid for centuries, keeping peasants as peasants, destitute and powerless. Though a devout man, Adams saw through this ruse commenting, "Nothing appears rich but the Churches, nobody fat, but the Clergy."
The noblemen comprised the third prong. They commanded vast lands and ships that kings and queens of the past had bestowed on their ancestral lines in exchange for political loyalty and obedience. The nobles imposed fees for the privilege of using their lands or ships to grow bread, catch cod, or build homes for families.
This trident of king, clergy, and nobles acted like a devil's fork to draw life and blood from the people much like King George of England and the noblemen under his reign plagued the American colonies. "I see nothing but Signs of Poverty and Misery," Adams wrote. "A fertile Country, not half cultivated, People ragged and dirty, and the Houses universally nothing but Mire, Smoke, Fleas and Lice....No Simptoms of Commerce, or even of internal Trafic, no Appearance of manufactures or Industry."
Along the path, mile after mile, this gloom did not let up, not for a moment. From El Ferrol through Galicia, León, and Castille, the scarcity of terrain and the poverty of people weighed on Adams, his sons, and his party. The taverns offered little accommodation, so each man carried his own blankets and sheets, food and water, flint and steel.
In the December chill, he hoped only for a comforting fire at night, but even that simple luxury eluded him. "I have not seen a Chimney in Spain," he wrote. Whenever a fire was lit, the room filled with smoke and soot, causing everyone around the small flame to cough and wheeze. With watery eyes, they turned gray as shadows and then black as coal, their faces "looking like Chimney Sweepers."
The grime and filth wore down the whole party and by the new year, every one of them had come down with some kind of respiratory illness. The humid chill froze them to the bone. Adams admitted in a letter home to Abigail that reaching Paris by land may have been a grave error in judgment. "The Church, State, and Nobility, exhaust the People to such a degree," he wrote, "I have no idea of the Possibility of deaper wretchedness."
This glumness felt uncharacteristic for a revolutionary such as Adams. He was renowned for optimism, an undaunted fighting spirit, and intellectual vigor that had infused America's revolutionary cause with philosophical underpinnings and legal reason. His was a character that would serve as Vice President to George Washington, and later the second President of the United States. Dejection felt ill-suited for someone cut of his sturdy cloth.
Yet by the time the mule train reached Burgos, his heavy feelings had turned to dark despair. "In short, I am in a deplorable situation indeed," he wrote on January 11, 1780. "I know not what to do. I know not where to go."
With heavy heart, he climbed into his mule-drawn carriage the next morning, and plodded through Bribiesca, Pancourbo, and Ezpexo. Sitting across from him were his children, John Quincy and Charles, listlessly rocking back and forth, each shivering, coughing, and sneezing. He worried for their safety, health, and proper schooling.
The carriage descended from a mountain peak, round and round, as if riding the back of a coiled snake, before it finally came into the valley of Biscay where the party would overnight in the town of Orduña.
No signs or landmarks delineated the boundary between the Spanish lands and the Basque territory, but Adams knew he had crossed an important line that stretched from craggy cliffs across a valley and north to the sea. His diary and the writings of others grew cheerful and upbeat almost immediately, like sunshine burning off the gray and cold of suffocating clouds.
In this new land, everyone rose before the dawn. The air had warmed, the chill had broken. "It is a beautifull, a fertile and a well cultivated Spot, almost the only one We have yet seen," wrote Adams. Riding north, they met merchants on the path with salted fish, sardines, cod, and horse shoes, an assortment greater than any they had seen since Boston Harbor, and "the Mule and their Drivers look very well, in comparison of those We have seen before."
On January 15, the mule train entered Bilbao, a city half the size of Boston, smelling of sea air and gutted cod, and buzzing with trade. Burly men, some in black berets, loaded and unloaded goods, dealt in the street and shook hands, dangled trinkets for trade, and marketed fruits and vegetables. Women sold yards of cloth and linen and hand-made scarves. Shops lined the road selling books, glass, china, toys, and cutlery. Most impressive of all, Adams beheld a splendid sight – a chimney! The hustle and bustle, all vibrant and freewheeling, felt so familiar to him. "In riding through this little territory," he wrote, "you would fancy yourself in Connecticut."
He and his party settled at a "respectable inn" where they could warm fingers and toes without breathing in ash. Hardly an hour had passed when a knock came, and there at the door stood a Basque merchant, Joseph Gardoqui, with an invitation to dinner. With a courteous bow, Adams happily accepted.
Gardoqui and his sons had built a thriving business that traded between Bilbao and the American colonies. He had sympathy for these revolutionary fighters, calling them "patriots," and doing his small part, he believed, for their cause. Funneled through Basque territory and ports, his secret cargoes would include 30,000 muskets; 30,000 bayonets; 51,314 musket balls; 300,000 pounds of powder; 12,868 grenades; 30,000 uniforms; and 4,000 field tents.
At dinner, Gardoqui recounted with wild swings of arms and hands several Basque achievements. He spoke of the academy at Bergara, unlike any in Spain, where children of Biscay, Gipuzkoa, and Álava learned trade and the customs and cultures of Europe and America. He spoke of townships electing councils for decentralized governance and described how the Basque collected revenues in a common formula transparent to all. Adams listened with rapt attention, drinking wine of Gardoqui's own vintage.
The two walked the streets of Bilbao after dinner to see the Board of Trade, a Basque institution that had been 150 years in the making. Merchants by lot and election chose members of the Board to settle all disputes of trade on land or at sea. Neither foreigners nor appointees of the King could serve.
Adams marveled how this Board had blossomed outside the King's reach, writing of it in letters home and in his diary. Its origin mirrored events in Adams' colony of Massachusetts that had sparked the American Revolution. In 1632, the King of Spain levied a tax on salt. The citizens of Bilbao refused to pay and then killed the officers who tried to collect it. The King dispatched three thousand troops to put down the rebellion, but the Basque organized, fought back, and killed or drove out the soldiers. Consequently, the King lost much of his authority over the Basque to collect duties or confer lordship over lands and ships.
That night Adams wrote in his diary, "The Lands in Biscay are chiefly in the Hands of the People – few Lordships." He also dispatched a letter to Samuel Huntington, President of Congress in Philadelphia, saying, "It may seem surprising, to hear of free Provinces in Spain, but such is the Fact,...that a Traveller perceives it even in their Countenances, their Dress, their Air, and ordinary manner of Speech, has induced the Spanish Nation and their Kings to respect the Ancient Liberties of these People, so far that each Monarch, at his Accession to the Throne, has taken an Oath, to observe the Laws of Biscay."
Adams might have stayed in Bilbao weeks longer to satisfy his profound curiosity, but he was eager to reach Paris. The next morning, he bundled John Quincy and Charles into the mule-drawn carriage, and assembled the rest of his party to leave Bilbao. They crossed into Bayonne three days later, and then Bordeaux two days after that. Paris came into view on February 9.
A year later in America, a defeat at Yorktown ended any hope England had of retaining her thirteen colonies. The Treaty of Paris brought the American Revolution officially to a close in 1783, due in no small part to Adams' brilliance. The founding fathers then turned their attention to the long, painstaking challenge of forging a new constitution. They asked Adams to research and study the best political philosophies, the best models of history, and the best examples of the day, if he could find any, to illuminate their debate after so much sacrifice and miserable bloodshed.
In May 1787, he published his findings. Even though more than seven years had passed, and he had spent only eight days among the Basque, he remembered the people fondly and wrote of them with eloquence. "While their neighbors have long since resigned all their pretensions into the hands of kings and priests," he wrote, "this extraordinary people have preserved their ancient language, genius, laws, government, and manners, without innovation, longer than any other nation of Europe."
Adams declared the Basque a republic. Then abiding the example of these remarkable people in the Pyrenees, the wise men of Philadelphia with studious care crafted a republic of their own.
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Vince J. Juaristi was born and raised in Elko, NV. He is CEO and President of ARBOLA, a technology company, in Alexandria, VA. His newest book, Basque Firsts: People Who Changed the World, will be released this year by the University of Nevada Press.
Anyone wishing to make a donation for the Elko Basque Program at the Smithsonian should contact Angie deBraga at Great Basin College - angie.debraga@gbcnv.edu.