Category Archives: Diaspora

Hidden in Plain Sight: the Basques

As many of you might already know, the Boise Basque Museum and Cultural Center, with help from the Basque Government, has been working on a project to highlight the Basques’ contributions to the history and settlement of the United States.  I’ve received a number of recent messages updating me on the status of the project, […]

Links: Blog, Tourism, Costume, and Snow

A couple of links I’ve been sent or found in wanderings of the web. First, Louis Arriaga Jr has a fascinating story of misunderstandings and miscarriage of justice (even one of the sentencing judges felt this way, but couldn’t do anything about it).  Clearly, Arriaga is of Basque descent, though his connections to Spain are […]

Euskadi to export Mondragon’s cooperative work model to US

Joe Guerricabeitia originally posted this on the Seattle Euskal Etxea website.  I really enjoyed it and, with his permission, repost it here. America is a nation of democracy. The Founding Fathers designed it so; Alexis de Tocqueville praised it. During the last half century America solidified this democracy such that every American man, woman and […]

Egunkaria libre

About 6 years ago, Egunkaria, then the only daily newspaper published fully in Basque, was shut down on suspicions of ties to terrorists.  Between then and now, no trials had occurred and it was thought that essentially the matter had been dropped.  However, now, 6 years later, those who worked at Egunkaria are indeed being […]

New Book: Gardeners of Identity by Pedro Oiarzabal

Pedro Oiarzabal, a newly minted researcher at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, has spent his young career focused on issues of Basque identity around the world.  His newest book is Gardeners of Identity: Basques in the San Francisco Bay Area, published by the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.  (Incidentally, […]

Commemoration of the bombing of Gernika amongst the Basque diaspora

I received this request for assistance from Daniel Clarke, who needs help researching how the diaspora commemorated the bombing of Gernika.  Feel free to write Daniel directly or to post your comments here. Dear all, I am a student at the University of Cambridge, England, working as part of a project looking at memory, heritage […]

Great Basque Football Player Dies

Ok, maybe not quite what you think.  The Aug 30 edition of The Gazette reported on the death of Sam Etcheverry, one of the greatest quarterbacks of the Montreal Alouettes and the Canadian Football League (CFL).  He also coached the Alouettes to a championship of the CFL. Sam was born in Carlsbad, NM.  What the […]

Blogging about Basques in America

Koldo San Sebastian is a journalist and writer who has spent his career working in various media on themes of Basque history, including a television documentary on the Spanish Civil War in Euskadi, a book on the history of the Basque Nationalist Party, and another on the Basque exile in America. Koldo is currently writing […]

Being Basque

Last month, my family and I were up in Idaho to visit grandparents.  While visiting amuma and aitxitxa (now affectionately known as “txitxi”), a couple of dad’s buddies got together at the Txoko Ona, their Basque center in Homedale, to eat and play cards.  They’d planned it a bit, but it wasn’t an overly involved […]

Dietary customs of Boise’s Basques

You can tell the story of who people are by what they eat — stated Colleen Asumendi Fillmore, PhD, RD, LD All who know the Basques know that food is an immensely important aspect of their culture.  Colleen Asumendi Fillmore knows this better than most, having studied the dietary culture of the Basques of Boise.  […]