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Basque Studies Program Newsletter · Issue
54, 1996
Robert Laxalt’s Sweet
Promised Land: A Place to Come
To
by David Río Raigadas Universidad del
País Vasco
This article was originally presented by the
author as a paper at the II International Conference on
Regional Literatures (Space and Place: The Geographies of
Literature), Liverpool John Moores University, April 11-13,
1996.
Sweet Promised Land (1957)(1), the first and
possibly best-known of Robert Laxalt’s books, appears
to be a personal and rather simple story about the journey
of the author’s father, Dominique, to his Basque
homeland after forty-seven years as an immigrant sheepherder
in the American West. In fact, the book has been often
described as an intimate biography or as an affectionate
memoir of a son to his father. Even Laxalt himself has
emphasized to me the personal quality of this
story:
“I couldn’t write it as a novel because
something was missing. I thought that the poignancy of this
trip moved me very much. It was a story of discovery for me,
too. [..] It was a book written from the
heart.”(2)
The intimate approach taken by Laxalt to portray his
father’s life pervades the whole book and contributes
to its success. Readers feel attracted by Laxalt’s
personal and direct statements on his father and the fact
that it is the true story of a man viewed through the eyes
of his son, though some incidents in the book may have been
a little fictionalized. Laxalt himself felt that the work
meant an invasion of his family’s privacy and was
particularly apprehensive of his father’s reaction
toward it:
“When I told him about it, I thought I was
running a risk of getting shot, but he accepted it well and
even a little detachedly.”(3)
However, Sweet Promised Land must be read as
the story not only of Dominique Laxalt, but of many Basque
immigrants in the American West. The book goes beyond its
personal level to embody the experience of Basque immigrants
in the United States and even becomes a metaphor for
American immigration in general.
Laxalt wrote this story about his Basque father at a
time in which Basques were neither well-known nor popular in
America. As William A. Douglass has pointed
out,
“...the Basque-Americans were few in number,
scattered lightly over the vastness of the American West and
[...] their ethnic success as sheepherders par
excellence identified them closely with the region’s
most denigrated occupation.”
(1986:xiii)
Set against this particular background, Sweet
Promised Land constituted a vindication of the role of
the immigrant Basque sheepherder in America, represented by
the figure of Dominique Laxalt and his capacity to endure
hardship in the New World. Basques in America identified
themselves with Dominique’s story and felt encouraged
to show their ethnic pride. At the same time, the wider
public in the United States discovered Basques, “they
discovered this romantic sheepherder thing,” in
Douglass’ words.(4)
Although the book deals mainly with the way of life
of Basque sheepmen in the American West, their experiences
can be regarded as a symbol of the struggle of American
immigrants in general. In fact, Laxalt himself agrees with
this point and he even, in all modesty, refers to his lack
of a deep knowledge about the Basques to support this
idea:
“Sweet Promised Land became an
immigrant book, not particularly a Basque book, because I
didn’t know so much about the
Basques.”(5)
The truth is that the story works as a classic tale
of immigration, where the immigrant’s experience is
portrayed by Laxalt as a process divided into three basic
stages: the immigrant’s decision to abandon his
homeland, his fight for acceptance in the new country and
his impossible return to his native land once the
assimilation process is over. Throughout these different
stages Laxalt shows his deeply felt concern with the modern
individual’s need for meaning, for a sense of place and
identity.
Although Sweet Promised Land emphasizes primarily the
challenges that immigrants must face in America and their
often fruitless attempts to recapture the past, it also
explores the main reasons that lie behind their decision to
seek their future in America. Thus, immigration is presented
as the only way to escape from poverty for many European
youths, symbolized by Dominique. He, as most immigrants,
regretted leaving his native land, but he was well aware
that he had to find an opportunity in life somewhere
else:
“What chance was there if I stayed? There was
no money for anything. I wanted stock and the land to move
in, [...] and we didn’t even own the property
where we lived.” (1986: 35)
At first, the journey to America was viewed by people
like Dominique just as a temporary experience, as a way to
earn enough money to return home. However, most of these
immigrants soon realized that their way to success was in
America, a raw new land that could provide them with a
chance in life if they were ready to suffer and work hard.
Thus, America represents for Dominique and many other
immigrants the land of opportunity, the place to make their
fortune. Nevertheless, Sweet Promised Land also describes
the decline of America as a land of opportunity since the
mid-century, particularly for new groups of immigrants like
the Puerto Ricans, who are shown leaving for Brazil in
search of another America.
Although Laxalt stresses the importance of the
economic reasons in the immigrant’s decision to abandon
his native land, he also refers in the book to the lack of
freedom of these people in the Old World. Thus, for
instance, one of the characters in Sweet Promised Land,
Michel, escapes from France in order not to be imprisoned
after running away from the seminary where he was to be
ordained. Besides, there are other references to the
restrictions imposed by the French authorities on one of the
main symbols of the Basque culture: the Basque language.
This meant, as Dominique says, “to be made to feel that
it was a crime to be born a Basque.” (1986:76). Being
unable to display their ethnic identity in their own land,
these people feel constricted in the Old World and they set
their heart on America, which symbolizes for them not only
the land of opportunity, but also of
freedom.
The integration experience of the immigrant in
American society is described by Laxalt as a gradual process
in which the immigrant’s desire for acceptance and his
reluctance to lose his ethnic identity often act as opposing
forces. He particularly focuses his attention on the
challenges that the newcomer must face during his first
years in America. Thus, he gives in his book a detailed
description of the hardships endured by his father when he
first arrived in Nevada. Although Dominique’s struggle
for integration presents some specific characteristics
related to his condition of Basque sheepherder, the tests he
must undergo during this process illustrate the hard lessons
the ordinary immigrant usually has to learn in the new
land.
One of the first challenges that the immigrant must
face in America is the adaptation to a new setting, often
completely different from that of the Old World. Laxalt
particularly emphasizes the deep impact that the Nevada
desert produces on Basque sheepherders like Dominique, who
longs for his green land:
“You would have to see the beauty of the
Basque country before you knew what I meant, but I remember
going out into that cruel desert when I first came, and
nights when I cried to sleep in my tent.” (1986:
50)
Thus, on their way to integration, these immigrants
will inevitably have to adjust themselves to a harsh
landscape, with a devastating climate, and gradually they
will have to overcome their nostalgia for the old country,
too.
Laxalt also portrays isolation and loneliness as
common trials for the immigrant. Besides, in the case of the
Basque sheepherders the challenge becomes especially
arduous. Their loneliness is not simply the result of their
condition of newcomers, their ignorance of the language or
the bad reputation of their job, as was often the case with
other immigrants. The loneliness of the Basques is also
produced by the utter solitude in which they find themselves
as sheepherders on the open range. In the most desolate
corners of the American West they long for human company,
for the sound of a human voice, and the monotony of their
lonely life exposes them to potentially severe mental
strain. Related to this, it is worth mentioning that, even
though the Basques had a special reputation among all
nationalities in America for their capacity to endure
solitude,(6) Laxalt includes in Sweet Promised Land a Basque
sheepherder, Joanes Ergela (or Crazy John), who loses his
mind from loneliness in the mountains. This example works as
a symbol of the serious nature of the ordeals that the
immigrants must undergo in their new
country.
Another major challenge that immigrants must face is
economic survival, a subject that plays an important role in
Sweet Promised Land. Laxalt shows that immigrants, apart
from suffering hard working conditions, as in the case of
the Basques mentioned above, usually have a difficult start
making their living in the New World. America may be the
land of opportunity, but working hard is not enough there.
The newcomer must be ready to fight competitors, even
resorting to violent means. In addition, he must resist the
temptation of wasting his money, even if that means staying
away from town for a long period. Last but not least, his
economic success often depends on a volatile market. All
these features are perfectly represented in Sweet Promised
Land by the struggle experienced by Dominique and
Basque-American sheepherders in general. Thus, these
immigrants are shown in open conflict with the cattle
ranchers for the feed and the water. Besides, the book
describes their obsession with saving and their difficulties
in resisiting the temptation of wasting their money in town.
Finally, Laxalt also introduces the livestock crisis of the
1920s as an example of the uncertain economic conditions:
the sheep market began to go and immediately most of the
Basques lost everything for which they had worked so
hard.
Apart from the different challenges mentioned
throughout this paper, immigrants must sometimes confront
hostility, fun-making or contempt from the host community.
In some cases this hostile atmosphere is closely related to
economic reasons, as we saw in the conflict with the
cattlemen described above. However, in many cases this
situation is simply due to the cultural and ethnic
distinctiveness of the newcomers. They do not fit into the
standard patterns of the American society because they are
outsiders, who speak a different language and have a
different culture. And at that time in America, as Robert
Laxalt remembers, “it wasn’t fashionable to be
ethnic.“(7)
As a result, the Basques, as other groups of
immigrants with special ethnic features, will experience
some bullying, fun-making, and rejection. Laxalt does not
wish to exaggerate the importance of these incidents and
consequently he does not include any episodes of violent
discrimination against the Basques in Sweet Promised Land.
However, he shows how two young Basques are made fun of just
because of their speech and clothes and he also refers to
the shame suffered by Basque-American children when they
speak Basque in public. These examples illustrate the
intolerance of the American society in the first half of the
twentieth century toward expressions of cultural or ethnic
diversity. As William Douglass has pointed
out,
“persons who clung to their native language
and who continued to manifest Old World lifeways were
suspect.” (1986:x)
So, these immigrants, in spite of their reluctance to
lose their original identity, will often have to hide their
ethnic heritage or to renounce it in order to become
Americans.
All these hardships that immigrants must endure to
achieve their integration in American society are symbolized
in Sweet Promised Land by boxing, a sport whose rules
Dominique and other immigrants understand perfectly well.
The comparison between boxing and the immigrant experience
enables Laxalt to enhance the sacrifice of these newcomers
in America:
”Like the men in the ring, they too had stood
alone and fought alone, with their only weapons the hands
that God gave them, and the fight was everything they had
ever done and seen and felt.”
(1986:65)
The struggle for acceptance of the immigrants also
extends to their descendants, for whom boxing works as a
useful model, too. As Laxalt knows from his own experience,
second- generation Americans often must fight harder than
the rest, just because they “were born of old- country
people in a new land.” (1986:66)
Although Laxalt’s interest is mainly focused on
the obstacles that the immigrant finds on his way to
integration, he also shows how the newcomer gradually
becomes familiar with the host country and its people and
even identifies himself with them. This process has its
origin in the immigrant’s capacity to adapt himself to
the new environment without questioning
it:
”...afterward it wasn’t suffering,
because it was the way things was, and a man couldn’t
do anything about it, and maybe that’s why he
didn’t spend the time thinking about it, either.”
(1986:50)
However, the self-identification of the newcomer with
American society is accelerated by a series of elements that
represent the progressive acceptance of the immigrant by the
host community. As an example of this, Laxalt describes the
first time that his father did not feel like a stranger in
America. It was an encounter with a group of bandits, where
he discovered that even the cruel people who inhabited the
harsh land were capable of kindness toward a foreigner like
him. This incident shows him that the new country is not
only a place of disillusionment and brutality, but also of
generosity and love.
In Sweet Promised Land, Laxalt also pays close
attention to the last stage of the immigrant experience: the
impossible return of the native. The book shows the return
to the homeland as an unrealistic idea for most immigrants.
Certainly, Laxalt provides the reader with the examples of
two Basques (Nazario and the innkeeper) who come back to
their native land after a few years in America and decide to
remain in their country of birth. However, these two cases
can be regarded as exceptions because most of the Basque
immigrants in the story fail to return to their homeland. In
addition to this, the main character, Dominique, who manages
to see the Basque Country again, prefers in the end to go
back to America.
Although a lot of immigrants in Sweet Promised
Land talk about going home, their return is nearly
always postponed and in most cases it never takes place. Two
opposite reasons may be argued to account for this
situation: the failure of the integration process, and its
overwhelming success. Actually, the book describes a group
of Basque immigrants who are unable to overcome the
challenges of the new land, but have to remain in America
because their return has become physically impossible. They
have failed to save money or they have been defeated by
adversity, age, or loneliness. As one of the characters in
the story says,
”...they were lost souls, and they did not
even have the good fortune to be lost in their own hell.
They were foreigners when they came and they will always be
foreigners.” (1986:107)
As a contrast to these immigrants, Laxalt focuses his
attention on the figure of his father, who symbolizes the
success of the assimilation process. After forty-seven years
in the New World, Dominique is so integrated in the American
society that his early wishes to return to the Basque
Country and settle there have vanished. We can even see how
he hesitates when his family encourages him to go back to
the old country for a short visit to his sisters. His
nostalgic trip to the Basque Country is portrayed by his
son, who accompanies him, as a shocking and ambiguous
experience. In particular, Robert Laxalt emphasizes the deep
impact produced on his father by his sudden return to the
old country after forty-seven years of absence. Besides, the
return becomes a catalyst for very opposite feelings. On the
one hand, it is a moment for joy, reward and fulfillment.
Dominique has the opportunity to meet his relatives again
and these welcome him as a hero, as “the youth who had
gone out into the world in beggar’s garb and come back
in shining armor.” (1986:122) On the other hand, the
return makes Dominique feel sad and old because he realizes
that too much time has gone on and nothing can be the same
again. His parents and some of his old friends are dead and,
in spite of the joyous reunion with his relatives and the
recall of youthful memories, he cannot avoid feeling like a
stranger in his own land.
Robert Laxalt ends his tale of immigration by
stressing the impossibility of returning to the past. To
illustrate this point, he uses the example of his
father’s nostalgic trip to the Basque Country.
Actually, Dominique’s final decision to leave again for
the United States shows that once the assimilation process
is over and the old land has become only a dimming memory,
the return of the native is nearly always a chimerical idea.
As Dominique says at the end of Sweet Promised
Land,
“I cannot go back. It ain’t my country
anymore. I’ve lived too much in America ever to go
back.” (1986:176)
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