“So,” mused Kepa as he stared at the sky, “that thing he was holding, that de Lancre put in that box, was one of these zatiak, one of your pieces of magic.”
“Bai,” answered Marina.
“And we got in the way. We stopped you from stopping him.” Kepa turned to face Marina. “Sentizen dut. I’m so sorry. Because of us, de Lancre has one more of the zatiak.”
“Ez,” replied Marina. “I mean, yes, he does. But, actually, I didn’t come here to stop him, not this time. I came here for you two.”
Maite spun. “You what?” she exclaimed.
Buber’s Basque Story is a weekly serial. While it is a work of fiction, it has elements from both my own experiences and stories I’ve heard from various people. The characters, while in some cases inspired by real people, aren’t directly modeled on anyone in particular. I expect there will be inconsistencies and factual errors. I don’t know where it is going, and I’ll probably forget where it’s been. Why am I doing this? To give me an excuse and a deadline for some creative writing and because I thought people might enjoy it. Gozatu!
Marina sighed, her gaze lingering at her feet. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t stop de Lancre. I’ve been able to collect a few zatiak, but he’s found more. At this rate, he will claim our magic for himself and who knows what he’ll do then. And I can feel my mind… It’s very hard to keep my mind in one piece when I’m constantly jumping from one body to another, from one personality to the next. So many lives, so many worlds, each so different. I can’t keep track and I fear my mind is starting to slip, starting to fragment.” She looked up, first at Maite and then Kepa. “I need help.”
“What does that have to do with us?” asked Maite.
“I need your help,” answered a frustrated Marina. “I need you to help me stop de Lancre.”
Maite laughed. “Assuming for a moment that I believe your story — and I don’t — how would we even be able to help you jump through time and stop a crazy French bastard from destroying the world?”
“Actually,” Kepa interjected, “de Lancre was — is — part Basque.”
Marina nodded. “De Lancre’s aitxitxe, Bernard, was from Nafarroa. His original surname was Rostegui. I suspect it was through him that de Lancre learned about the magics that infuse the Basque Country.”
“It doesn’t matter!” exclaimed Maite. “I don’t care if de Lancre was the most Basque person that ever lived! That’s not the point!” She turned away from Kepa and Marina, staring into the forest. Her hands were clenched by her side, her knuckles white. She took a few deep breaths before turning back to the others. “Look,” she said, forcing her voice to be calm. She looked at Marina. “I simply don’t believe your story, that you are jumping around time, chasing this guy, trying to find God-knows-what before he does. It goes against everything we know about how time works.”
“I understand your frustration,” said Marina plaintively. “I can’t explain any of this. I didn’t create the zatiak, exactly, they created me, created this ghost. I don’t know how they exist, I don’t know how I jump through time, I don’t know how de Lancre does either. All I know is that I can, that he can, and I have to get these zatiak before he does.”
“Don’t you already know how it all turns out?” asked Maite. “If you can jump through time, can’t you just go into the future and see what happens in the end?”
Marina shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. The zatiak create bubbles in time. When I jump to when and where one of them is, I’m not aware of anything that happened before. I know my history, of course, but I don’t know the history of the moment I’m in. If you showed me a newspaper from today, I would forget anything it said once I left this time.”
“Is that what keeps you and de Lancre from messing with history?” asked Kepa. Maite glared at him.
“Uste dut, bai; I think so,” replied Marina. “The bubbles protect time and history from anything that de Lancre and I might do. We really can’t disrupt history exactly. We interact with the people we meet — like you two — but once we are gone, time somehow forgets we were there.”
“How are we supposed to help you then?” asked Maite. “Even if I believed you, the moment you leave, we won’t remember you.” She shook her head. “None of this makes any sense.”
“Because, I would give you these,” replied Marina. Kepa and Maite watched as a point of light appeared in Marina’s chest, between her breasts, and then proceeded to grow until it was about the size of a saucer. Two small balls of light emerged from the glowing hole in Marina’s chest, hovering for a moment in front of her before they settled down into her outstretched palms. “These two zatiak would let you help me.”
The Basque language is what is called an isolate — it has no known living relatives. Contrast that with the other languages of Europe, almost all of which are Indo-European languages, and you can see why Basque has attracted so much attention from linguists. However, just because the Basque language has no living relatives doesn’t mean it came out of nothing. Today, the scientific consensus seems to be that the language of Aquitaine was an ancestral form of Basque.
Not much is known about the people of Aquitaine. Some time around the start of the common era (29 BCE-18 CE), Strabo, the Greek geographer, described them: “The akytanoi are completely different, not only because of their language but also because of their physical appearance, looking more like the Iberians than the Gauls” adding that “there are more than twenty Akytanoi peoples, all small and dark, most of which live on the shores of the Ocean…”
The idea that the language of these people was a form of Proto- or Pre-Basque comes from inscriptions containing the names of people and gods that can be directly related to modern Basque equivalents. As Larry Trask said, “Aquitanian is so closely related to Basque that we can, for practical purposes, regard it as being the more-or-less direct ancestor of Basque.”
Some examples of Aquitanian words that have clear Basque cognates include cis(s)son, gison –> gizon (man), belex –> bele (crow), corri, gorri –> gorri (red), nescato –> neska, neskato (girl, young woman), and sembe –> seme (son).
The Vascones were another pre-Roman tribe that resided to the south of the Aquitanians who spoke a similar language. While it seems very likely that these two groups of people were related, what that relationship was, exactly, is unclear.
In the 600 and 700s, there was an attempt to create a joint Aquitaine-Vascones duchy, which grew out of Charibert II‘s kingdom of Aquitaine. The first ruler of this duchy was most likely Felix of Aquitaine, though it reached its peak under the rule of Odo the Great, who ruled until 735 and earned the epithet “the Great” after defeating Umayyad forces. However, by 781, Charlemagne had installed his son as ruler, essentially bringing to an end the independence of the joint Duchy.
Rate of activity in the primary sector (e.g. agriculture, mining, forestry, grazing, hunting and gathering, fishing, and quarrying). Source:http://atlasa.net/en/society/provinces
Maite glared at him. “You believe all of this? None of this is even possible. Magical stones thrown through time? An evil French judge trying to collect them?” She turned to Marina. “Why would he come here, to the Basque Country, in the first place?”
Marina gave a wan smile. “I know how fantastic it seems. If I wasn’t living it, I wouldn’t believe it myself. From what I can tell, the world used to be filled with magic, but the influence of that magic waned with time as people turned to other beliefs. In Europe, much of that happened with the spread of Christianity. As the Church spread, the belief in and, more importantly, practice of magic shrank until there was nothing left but one little alcove…”
Buber’s Basque Story is a weekly serial. While it is a work of fiction, it has elements from both my own experiences and stories I’ve heard from various people. The characters, while in some cases inspired by real people, aren’t directly modeled on anyone in particular. I expect there will be inconsistencies and factual errors. I don’t know where it is going, and I’ll probably forget where it’s been. Why am I doing this? To give me an excuse and a deadline for some creative writing and because I thought people might enjoy it. Gozatu!
“The Basque Country!” exclaimed Kepa. He turned to Maite. “Don’t you see? The Basque Country was one of the last parts of Europe to really embrace Christianity. It’s because they still held on to the older beliefs.”
Marina nodded. “That’s right. The Basques held on to magic longer than other Europeans. De Lancre realized this, and saw the potential for using that magic for more than healing one another, for changing the course of storms. He thought that if he could consolidate it, capture it for himself, that power would make him a god amongst men. There is no limit to his ambition. He truly believes he could rule the entire planet. All starting with that seed in the Basque Country.”
“If you are the Marina who died at the stake all those centuries ago, how are you here now then?” asked Maite, her disbelief clear in her words.
“I honestly don’t know,” replied Marina. “When I ‘died,’ somehow my spirit survived. I’m able to inhabit the bodies of blood relatives, of ancestors and descendants of my blood line. I didn’t have any children of my own, but my mom’s sister did, and I’m able to jump to any woman descended from her. So, I can follow de Lancre as he searches for the zatiak — the pieces of magic — but only if I have an iloba, a niece, or amuma in the same time and place. I’ve been lucky, so far, that most of the time there has been someone nearby, but that’s not always the case.”
“So,” interrupted Maite, “you are a mamua, a ghost, that jumps through time and possesses the bodies of your relatives?”
Marina shrugged. “Yes, I guess.”
“And Ainhoa is in there? Does she know what is going on?”
“Not really. She has a vague recollection that mostly manifests itself in her dreams. She won’t really recall being out here or talking to you. But, she’ll have dreams about me and about de Lancre…”
“That explains her song!” exclaimed Kepa. “That song about witches. It was about you!”
The Basques have always been known for their adventurous spirit. Their search for fishing grounds took them to Iceland and beyond, reaching the coast of what would become Canada, where they established whale processing sites and developed a pidgin with the local Native Americans (and the Icelanders too). However, they also played a big role in the Castilian conquest of the Americas. Their expertise as seamen made them valuable to both France and Castile. Much of the current shape of the Americas is due to the actions of the many Basques who were part of the conquest.
From the beginning, Basques were there. Christopher Columbus’ expedition contained Basque seamen. The first Castilian colony in the Americas, Fort Navidad (created from the wreckage of the ship Santa Maria), had a number of Basque settlers, including the Santa Maria‘s boatswain, a Basque from Leikeito nicknamed “Chachu.”
In the early stages of the conquest and colonization of the Americas, that time between 1492 and 1520 referred to as the “Great Explorations,” Europeans didn’t tend to conquer large regions but rather made expeditions to trade with the local inhabitants. In this setting, Basque shipowners such as Sancho Ortiz de Urruela and Juan de Urrutia obtained permission for such expeditions along the Cumaná coast of modern Venezuela in 1519.
Dominion over the Americas began with the conquest of the Aztec empire and other parts of what became Mexico. Starting from the newly-formed Mexico City, built upon the ashes of the former Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, expeditions sought to expand the empire. Basques were central to this expansion, with the modern cities of Guadalajara and Zacatecas founded by Cristobal de Oñate (from Gasteiz, 1504-1567). Many other Basques came with him, including Santiago Aguirre, Juan Anuncibay, Alfonso Gaztañaga, Miguel Landeta, and Martin de Renteria.
As the empire expanded to the north, Basques were there. In 1563, a group led by Francisco de Ibarra, native of Eibar, who set out in search of the mythical land of Cíbola and founded the city of Durango, as the capital of a vast territory that received the name of Nueva Vizcaya. Juan de Oñate, the American Creole son of Cristóbal, followed in his father’s footsteps and conquered New Mexico in 1598. He is infamous for his actions in the Aroma War, where he was said to have cut off one foot of of every male 12 years and older for punishment. Juan de Montaño (Portugalete) took part in the expedition that reached the California peninsula in 1535.
To the south, Pascual de Andagoya from Andagoia, Araba, captained the first attempt to conquer Peru and the Incan empire. While his attempt in 1522 would end in failure, the news he spread about that kingdom led to its fall a few years later
After the fall of the Incas, the conquest entered a third phase, distinguished by expeditions to explore and conquer the rest of the Americas. Pedro de Ursua (Baztan, Nafarroa) led an expedition up the Amazon in search of the mythical El Dorado. There were many Basques who joined this expedition, among them the infamous Lope de Aguirre “El Loco” (Oñati, Gipuzkoa). Alonso de Ercilla, of Bizkaian origin, distinguished himself in the conquest of Chile.
In the Rio de la Plata region, Domingo Martinez de Irala (Bergara, Gipuzkoa) was involved in the founding of Buenos Aires in 1536. Years later, in an effort to link Peru to the Atlantic Ocean, Juan Ortiz de Zarate (Orduña, Bizkaia) led an army to establish such a route. His forces were defeated by the Charrúa in present-day Uruguay, and he had to be rescued by Juan de Garay, who may also have been from Orduña. Garay founded, amongst several cities, the second founding of Buenos Aires.
This is just a brief overview of some of the Basque who were involved in the conquest of the Americas. Stephen Bass has pulled together an extensive and outstanding history, documenting all of the Basque involvement in the Americas he could find. His Basques in the Americas From 1492 to1892: A Chronology is truly impressive.
Note: The article in the Enciclopedia Auñamendi states “Juan de Ibarra” was the founder of the city of Durango, Mexico, but everything else I can find says it was “Francisco de Ibarra.” Also, some say he was from Eibar, but other sources say he named Durango after his home town.
“Anyways,” continued Marina, “I was alone. I couldn’t go back to my home, since the other villagers were always watching, afraid that some new evil would rise from it. At one point, the fear became so great that they burned it down. I made a new home in the woods, but those that needed help, needed a healer, soon found me. I tried to be as discreet as possible, not wanting to draw any attention to myself, but my only skills were those my ama and aita had taught me and I had no other way of supporting myself. Not to boast, but I was very talented, much more so than my own ama, and my fame, despite my best efforts, grew.” Marina looked down. “And, I admit, my own ego got the best of me. I reveled in the attention, in the powerful abilities I had cultivated, and I forgot the lessons of my parents.
“It wasn’t long before my name was on the lips of the local authorities. They brought in Judge de Lancre to settle some dispute about the Lord of Urtubi being a witch, a sorgin.”
Buber’s Basque Story is a weekly serial. While it is a work of fiction, it has elements from both my own experiences and stories I’ve heard from various people. The characters, while in some cases inspired by real people, aren’t directly modeled on anyone in particular. I expect there will be inconsistencies and factual errors. I don’t know where it is going, and I’ll probably forget where it’s been. Why am I doing this? To give me an excuse and a deadline for some creative writing and because I thought people might enjoy it. Gozatu!
“De Lancre?” interrupted Kepa. “As in Pierre de Lancre?”
“The very same,” confirmed Marina. Kepa looked at Maite, his eyes wide, as she simply shook her head at him.
“As the Judge began investigating,” continued Marina, “he saw sorginak and sorcerers — agents of the devil — everywhere. It wasn’t long before I was hauled before him, some poor client having given up my location when he had been confronted, and likely tortured, by the Judge. I was held in a dark cell, interrogated repeatedly, tortured to reveal my secret association with the devil. I was forced to watch as others, ones I knew were no sorgin and had no special abilities, were burned at the stake. Even so, I never said a word to that evil man. Eventually, exasperated, he condemned my body to death and my soul to damnation.
“I was dragged to the burning place, where they had burned the others. I was helpless as they pulled me up the pile of wood and tied me to the stake. I watched with horror as the flames caught and rose around me. But, in the background, I could see de Lancre, his eyes on me and his smile penetrating the smoke.
“My anger grew. You see, the Judge didn’t care about who was a sorgin or not. He was after something else. He wanted our power, our magics, for himself. His destruction of untold numbers of lives was all about his own quest for power. He had tortured me, often smiling in my face as they turned the screws that stretched my arms from their sockets. While he told his superiors that he found thousands of witches that needed purging to keep the Church pure, he was really trying to learn our secrets, learn where our power came from.
“As I hung by the stake, the flames rising around me, licking at my skin, I lashed out. New-found power grew within me. I could feel it flowing into my body from literally everything around me. All of the magic of the country, all of the power that de Lancre was searching for, coursed through me. I could feel it almost crystalize inside of me. In my last act before the flames consumed me, my body literally exploded, shattering that magic into little crystallites, fragments of our magic — zatiak — sending them across space and time so that the Judge could never find the magic, never claim it as his own. I threw them to wherever and whenever we Basques have been, with the hopes that he could never find them. The last thing I saw was de Lancre’s face filled with horror and rage as he realized that everything he had searched for, had killed for, was suddenly right in front of him and then, just as suddenly, was gone.
“Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him as I hoped, it only delayed him. That’s why he was here. He found a way to find the zatiak I had thrown across the millennia. I’m doing my best to stop him, but he is often just one step ahead.”
María B. Rementeria graduated from San Francisco University for Women with a degree in nursing education. At the end of her career in the Public Health Service she would go on to hold the rank of Colonel in the Army (1950 Yearbook).
This article originally appeared in Spanish at El Diario.You can find all of the English versions of the Fighting Basques series here.
The struggle of women for equal participation in American society – from the right to vote, achieved in 1920, and women advancing in equality with men in terms rights and responsibilities derived from their full citizenship, to social and labor rights (access to the labor market or equal pay) – had a certain push (certainly short-lived) during the Second World War (WWII). It is here, and beyond their roles in office, hospitality or cleaning jobs, when a large number of women entered the labor market for the first time or, also for the first time, found jobs reserved until then exclusively for men, who were mobilized by the war efforts. The war economy desperately needed the labor of women and they proudly participated, just like the fictional character of Rosie the Riveter, in all kinds of jobs – whether as drivers of ambulances, buses, trains or trams, mechanics or engineers and/or in factories dedicated to war machinery, building ships, airplanes or manufacturing weapons or ammunition, among other materials. Often, however, they worked conditions that were deficient (dangerous, hard, and unhealthy) and unequal compared to their male partners (for example, with much lower wages) and in a context in which some men treated them with harassment and resisted the presence of their new partners.
The propaganda of the United States government to increase morale (“We can do it!”) and recruit women was displayed in the now cultural icon of “Rosie” (National Archives, 1942-1943).
The Basque-American community, like the rest of American society, took an active part in the war effort. As we have seen, women were a key element in the war economy, both in its civilian and military dimensions. Among the first we have the Californian Benita Serrano Cartago, born in 1923 on a sheep ranch in the town of Huron, owned by her parents, who had emigrated from Nafarroa. At the age of 19 she moved to Stockton, California, where she worked until the end of the war as a welder, living, as she said, “some of the best moments of her life” (1). Benita received the ‘NAVY E’ Award for her excellent work at the shipyard. She passed away at the age of 95 in 2019 in Fresno, California. Similarly, during the war, Felisa Caballero Errotaberea – born in Chino (California) in 1920 to Navarrese parents – worked both as an assistant at a gas station and rivetinag parts for the aircraft construction company Douglas Aircraft in her hometown. She passed away at the age of 96 in 2016 in Spokane, Washington.
“Echoes of two wars, 1936-1945” aims to disseminate the stories of those Basques and Navarrese who participated in two of the warfare events that defined the future of much of the 20th century. With this blog, the intention of the Sancho de Beurko Association is to rescue from anonymity the thousands of people who constitute the backbone of the historical memory of the Basque and Navarre communities, on both sides of the Pyrenees, and their diasporas of emigrants and descendants, with a primary emphasis on the United States, during the period from 1936 to 1945.
THE AUTHORS Guillermo Tabernilla is a researcher and founder of the Sancho de Beurko Association, a non-profit organization that studies the history of the Basques and Navarrese from both sides of the Pyrenees in the Spanish Civil War and in World War II. He is currently their secretary and community manager. He is also editor of the digital magazine Saibigain. Between 2008 and 2016 he directed the catalog of the “Iron Belt” for the Heritage Directorate of the Basque Government and is, together with Pedro J. Oiarzabal, principal investigator of the Fighting Basques Project, a memory project on the Basques and Navarrese in the Second World War in collaboration with the federation of Basque Organizations of North America.
Pedro J. Oiarzabal is a Doctor in Political Science-Basque Studies, granted by the University of Nevada, Reno (USA). For two decades, his work has focused on research and consulting on public policies (citizenship abroad and return), diasporas and new technologies, and social and historical memory (oral history, migration and exile), with special emphasis on the Basque case. He is the author of more than twenty publications. He has authored the blog “Basque Identity 2.0” by EITB and “Diaspora Bizia” by EuskalKultura.eus. On Twitter @Oiarzabal.
Josu M. Aguirregabiria is a researcher and founder of the Sancho de Beurko Association and is currently its president. A specialist in the Civil War in Álava, he is the author of several publications related to this topic, among which “La batalla de Villarreal de Álava” (2015) y “Seis días de guerra en el frente de Álava. Comienza la ofensiva de Mola” (2018) stand out.
Other women in the Basque community chose to join the armed forces, the undisputed prototype of masculinity. About 350,000 American women served voluntarily, both at home and abroad, in the (auxiliary) military bodies created ad hoc at the beginning of the conflict and which were assigned to the different military branches. The objective was to free the soldiers from all non-combatant jobs (from administrative jobs to radio operators or airplane pilots) so they could be transferred to the front. These new military corps joined the traditional Navy and Army nursing corps, made up of a large number of women. However, this incorporation followed the same patterns of discrimination and inequality seen in civil society at the time, in accordance with the notion that the most appropriate place for women was the home. The female soldiers had to overcome the resistance and disdain of family, friends and society in general and the view that they were a threat to the status of men as soldiers.
Felisa Caballero, first from the right, in a photograph with her sister Bernice, her mother Cristina and her brother Víctor during World War II. Bernice was married to Frank Apesteguia, who passed away on the European front (courtesy of Anita Maisterrena).
For example, within the Basque community of the State of Idaho, predominantly of Biscayan origin, there was an important group of women who served in the different military branches. In the women’s reserve corps of the Navy, officially called Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), we find Lidia Magdalena Uranga Sabala, born in Boise, Idaho, in 1918 to Biscayan parents. She studied at Boise Junior College, where she obtained a teaching certificate. Some 84,000 women enlisted in the WAVES during the war, receiving from the beginning of its creation in July 1942 the same status as male reservists. Lidia enlisted in 1943 and was sent to train at Hunter College in New York and from there to the Naval Air Station in Atlanta, Georgia, where she graduated as an instructor for the ‘Link’ aerial simulator. Finally, Lidia was assigned to the Naval Air Station of Bunker Hill, in Indiana, where she worked as a Specialist (Teacher) Second Class, forming part of Patrol Squadron 19. She taught others to operate flight instruments as an instructor of the ‘Link’ aircraft control simulator, a job that consisted of giving advice to an officer who was conducting checks on the simulator. Lidia graduated in 1945 and passed away in her hometown at the age of 80. Women became a permanent part of the army in 1948.
Photograph of Lidia Uranga (second from left) in the Boise Junior College yearbook, 1938. At the age of 25, she joined WAVES.
In the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), we have identified Beatrice Mendiola Ostolaza and Mary Osa Echevarria, both born to Biscayan parents in 1921, in Ontario, Oregon and Twin Falls, Idaho, respectively. They were two of the roughly 150,000 women who enlisted in the WAC, established in May 1942, and which provided the same military status and benefits as men – but with less pay until September 1943 when they finally received equal pay. This was a great advance considering that, in civilian industry, women received a much lower salary than men for doing the same job. Beatrice enlisted in 1943 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was one of the first Basque women in Boise to do so, while Mary did so in San Francisco, California, in 1944. After receiving an intensive training course at Camp Ruston in Louisiana, Beatrice was sent to Camp Breckinridge in Kentucky and finally to Columbus, Ohio, where she graduated with the rank of sergeant. Mary passed away in 1991 in Santa Rosa, California, at the age of 69. Beatrice died at the age of 94 in 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1978, the Army abolished the WAC and fully integrated women into its ranks.
Beatrice Mendiola (right) at the Pearl Harbor Day meeting in Cleveland (Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 22, 1944).
In the Army Nurse Corps (ANC), created in 1901 – originally without the military rank, pay or benefits of her fellow soldiers until June 1944 – we have Angelina Landa Portillo, born in 1914 in Merced, California, of a Navarrese father and Californian mother, and María Benita Rementeria Llona, born in 1917, in Hagerman, Idaho, of Biscayan parents. The ANC had more than 57,000 women in its ranks during WWII. Angelina, a nurse since 1938 at Fresno General Hospital, joined the ANC in 1941. According to her personal military file, she was first sent to Fort Ord, Marina, California, (Hospital Service Command Unit), staying there until December 26, 1942. From early January 1943 to February 1944, she worked at the Pendleton Air Force Base hospital in Oregon, primarily as a surgical nurse. Due to her excellent performance, Angelina was sent to the 81st Army General Hospital, based in Rhydlafar, Cardiff, Wales in mid-1944, where she treated the casualties of the Battle of Normandy. She was discharged with honors in January 1945 with the rank of Lieutenant. She passed away in 1981 in San Francisco at the age of 67.
Angelina Landa poses in a military nurse uniform during a visit to her family. (Courtesy of the Landa family).
María Benita Rementeria Llona graduated as a nurse from St. Alphonsus Hospital in Boise in 1938. From the early 1940s until probably 1943, she worked as a nurse at the Marine Hospital in Seattle, Washington, serving war veterans, merchant sailors and the Coast Guard, among others. In 1943, Maria enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps. In March 1944 she was sent to Australia, serving as a lieutenant in the New Guinea campaign until the end of the war. Both the tropical climate and the diseases that accompany it made the work of María and her companions even more difficult. Malaria or dengue produced more casualties than enemy fire. The Idaho Sunday Statesman of August 13, 1944 reported how Maria “was living in primitive conditions to save the lives of the wounded.” In a letter sent to her parents, Benito and Luciana, María welcomed the advance of the war: “The news of the invasion was received here with great joy. And now our dazzling advances in the theater [of operations in the Pacific] keep our hopes high. But when I hear from patients how cautious and cunning the Japanese are, there is still a hard and constant struggle to be made.” At the end of WWII, María, with the rank of captain, continued her military medical career in the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service – the uniformed federal service of the United States Public Health Service, made up only of non-combatant commissioned officers. Maria retired with the rank of Colonel in the Army. As of today, she is the woman of Basque origin with the highest military rank that we have identified in our investigation into the Basque presence in the US armed forces of WWII. She passed away in Boise in 2000 at the age of 83. Her brother David had lost his life in England in 1944 when his “Flying Fortress” crashed while taking off for a combat mission.
María Rementeria obtained a degree in nursing education from the San Francisco University for Women (1950 Yearbook).
Symbolically, the ‘Rosies’ of WWII and those incorporated into the different branches of the armed forces demonstrated to the whole of American society as well as to the political and socioeconomic elites of the country that they were as capable as men to carry out every type of work outside the home, both in times of war and peace. The ‘Rosie the Riveter’ generation briefly caused society to rethink their preconceived ideas about gender, stereotypes and roles assigned to men and women by society and tradition. Still, other factors such as skin color, ethnicity, class, or religion continued to deeply divide American society and the labor movement itself. Sadly, the 1950s soon obliterated the crucial participation of women in the labor market of just a few years earlier, as they were once again relegated to a purely domestic role away from the “unconventional” jobs of the war. Seventy-five years later the struggle continues.
Through this article, the Sancho de Beurko Association wants to honor and recognize the contributions of women in the success of the Allied victory in World War II. This article is in itself a first step in the visibility of American women of Basque origin during this crucial period in our contemporary history.
(1) Obituary of Benita Serrano, published in the Fresno Bee on January 13, 2019.
If you want to collaborate with “Echoes of Two Wars,” send us an original article on any aspect of the WWII or the Spanish Civil War and the Basque or Navarre participation to the following email: sanchobeurko@gmail.com
Articles selected for publication will receive a signed copy of “Basque Combatants in World War II”.
Looking back at the history of Europe, it is amazing how what we view today as solid political borders and national identities often grew out of random happenstance. If Joan of England had made it to Castile to wed Peter the Cruel, instead of succumbing to the Black Death at the age of fourteen, how would the history of the Iberian Peninsula have changed? So it is with the history of the Basque Country, where political intrigue and treachery shifted the fortunes of the country and the people.
Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales and almost the Lord of Bizkaia. Image from Historical Portraits.
Pedro the Cruel, sometimes also called the Just, ascended to the throne to become the king of Castile and León at the age of sixteen, reigning from 1350 to 1369. He gained a blood-thirsty reputation, notorious for “monstrous cruelty” that led to his cognomen “the Cruel.” The son of Alfonso XI of Castile and Maria of Portugal, he had a number of half-siblings through Alfonso’s relationship with Eleanor de Guzmán. The rivalry between Pedro and his half-brother Enrique of Trastámara played out over many years and shaped the future of the peninsula.
The two half-siblings engaged in numerous battles as Enrique and his other brothers tried to dethrone Pedro. Enrique often appealed to anti-Jewish sentiment to rally support to his side. These fights ultimately led to the Castilian Civil War, which saw Pedro defeated and fleeing to Bordeaux.
There, he enlisted the help of Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales, also known as the Black Prince. On April 13, 1367, in the the Battle of Nájera, Edward’s troops defeated those of Enrique, and Pedro was reestablished on the Castilian throne. To gain Edward’s help, Pedro had promised not only large sums of money and command of his vanguard against any campaign against the Moors, but also the province of Bizkaia. Pedro also left his three daughters as hostages to guarantee fulfillment of these terms.
Upon the defeat of Enrique, the Black Prince demanded payment, including the province of Bizkaia. Pedro responded that “Soon all of the castles and villas of Bizkaia would recognize him as sovereign.” Ultimately, however, the decision resided in the hands of the Junta General of Bizkaia. Several ambassadors were sent to Bizkaia to convince the Junta to surrender to the English, but they resolutely refused to do so. The Prince of Wales, without payment and without the Lordship of Bizkaia, eventually returned home.
“Like I said,” began Marina, “I was born in 1583, in a small village in Lapurdi called Sara — the French call it Sare. It’s just across the border from…”
“Zugarramurdi,” interrupted Kepa. “I’ve been there. It’s a cool little town.”
Maite just shook her head at him.
“Yes,” continued Marina. “My parents lived in a small baserri just a few kilometers from the center of the village. My ama, Clara, was known for her skills with herbs. People from the neighboring villages would come for poultices to cure wounds, for love potions, and, most of the time, for advice. She became quite well known in the area as a sendatzaile, a healer. My aita, Vicente, spent his time tending the gardens and gathering the ingredients that my ama needed for her work. I was an only child, very rare at that time, and I helped them as I could, slowly learning my ama’s craft, the secrets of which herbs and ingredients were needed to heal a cold versus the ones needed to mend a broken heart. My ama taught me the recipes while my aita showed me where to find the most prized mushrooms and how to raise the toads used in the most powerful potions. I soon became their apprentice. We had more work than we could handle, even with my help. There was always someone knocking on our door. We weren’t rich by any material measure, but we were comfortable and, most importantly, we were happy.
Buber’s Basque Story is a weekly serial. While it is a work of fiction, it has elements from both my own experiences and stories I’ve heard from various people. The characters, while in some cases inspired by real people, aren’t directly modeled on anyone in particular. I expect there will be inconsistencies and factual errors. I don’t know where it is going, and I’ll probably forget where it’s been. Why am I doing this? To give me an excuse and a deadline for some creative writing and because I thought people might enjoy it. Gozatu!
“One day, my ama sold a love potion to the wrong client. A young man in the neighboring village of Azkaine was infatuated with the girl next door and bought a love potion from my mother so that the young woman would return his affections. One evening, he stopped by his neighbor’s house on the pretence of delivering some extra bread that his ama had made. The etxekoandre, the young woman’s ama, invited him in for a glass of wine, as she also hoped that the two would find a spark. The young man, when the two women were busy in the kitchen, poured the potion into one of the wine glasses. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong one, and he watched in horror as the ama picked up the tainted glass and drank down the potion. As her eyes gazed upon the young man, her heart skipped a beat and immediately belonged to him. The young man was petrified as the ama sat next to him, her hand on his chest, her voice whispering in his ear. The daughter, who had also been secretly in love with the young man, fled the house in despair. The aita of the family returned home to find his wife in the protesting arms of the young man. As he confronted the two, his wife declared that she had stopped loving him and was now in love with the young man. Of course, the young man wanted no part of the woman’s advances and rejected her in the strongest possible terms. Shattered, the woman also fled the house. The aita tried to follow, but lost his wife in the woods. It was a few days later when the bodies of both women were found, the young woman at the bottom of a ravine and the ama, seemingly drowned by her own hand, floating in the river.
“The aita, besotted with grief, nearly killed the young man in his rage. As blow after blow fell on the young man, he revealed that he had slipped the aita’s wife a potion, claiming it was only meant to cause the woman to fall asleep so he could talk in private with the daughter, claiming he must have been given a love potion by mistake. He of course blamed my parents for the mistake. We soon found the aita, in the company of several of his neighbors, at our door, literal pitchforks in hand. I’ll spare you the details, but I escaped to a cave in the woods my aita had shown me as he held back the mob for a few moments.”
Marina’s voice cracked as she continued. “Unfortunately, my ama and aita were not so lucky.”
