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Basque Studies Program Newsletter · Issue
60, 1999
For the Bookshelf
by William A. Douglass
The recent release of the Basque Book Series of the
University of Nevada Press, Portraits of Basques in the
New World, edited by Richard W. Etulain and Jeronima
Echeverria, tells the “big story” of the history
of Basque immigration and settlement in North America
through the cameos of the representative “little
stories” of individual immigrants themselves, their
descendants and their interpreters. Obviously, a
single-volume, thirteen-essay biographical approach to five
centuries of settlement of an entire continent can scarcely
be comprehensive, however, it is to the editors’ credit
that they have selected well. Were the book a box of
chocolates it would qualify as a sampler of high
quality.
The book opens with treatment of Basque involvement
in Hispanic North America, including essays on Fray Juan de
Zumárraga, first archbishop of New Spain in the early
sixteenth century (Ralph Virgil), Juan de
Oñate’s explorations and travails in the
borderlands of present-day New Mexico at century’s end
and the beginning of the seventeenth (Marc Simmons), and the
illustrious career of Juan Bautista de Anza, and his fellow
Basques, on New Spain’s northern military frontier
during the first half of the eighteenth century (Donald T.
Garate). The historical section concludes with the
pioneering brothers Pedro and Bernardo Altube, whose
activities in eastern Nevada during the 1870s made them
prominent founding figures in the history of Basque
settlement in the American West (Carol W.
Hovey).
The essay on John B. Achabal, founding figure in his
own right of the Idaho Basque colony, provides transition to
the shifting sands of twentieth-century Basque immigration
in the western region (John Bieter), as does a photo essay
of recent and contemporary Basque-American life (Robert
Boyd).
At this juncture the book acquires an intensely
personal and contemporary air as Rene Tihista
“confesses” his life as a Basque sheepherder, but
really details the dilemma of a first-generation,
American-born descendant of a sheep-ranching family with
little interest in continuing in the business. There is
Santi’s story which is the account of a former,
Old-World-born herder who left the range to pursue different
opportunity as a construction laborer, truck driver and
property owner in Reno (William A. Douglass). There is the
tale of the Basque hotelkeeper Lyda Esain, which captures
graphically the challenges and drudgery of owning and
operating that most emblematic ethnic enterprise of the
Basque-American experience (Jeronima Echeverria). There is
Jay’s story, the life of the extraordinary woman who
half a century ago in Boise refused to let her vision of
Basque culture die and did something about it by pouring her
enormous energies into teaching, choreographing and
displaying Basque dance (Angeline Kearns
Blain).
Then there are the essays on, arguably, the three
most prominent Basque-Americans alive today. Pete Cenarrusa,
Idaho’s perennial secretary of state and political
kingmaker has long been a Basque cultural advocate (J.
Patrick Bieter). Novelist Robert Laxalt is unchallenged as
the literary spokesman of the Basque-American experience, as
well as one of the American West’s most esteemed
authors (Richard H. Etulain). Robert Erburu, former
publisher of the Los Angeles Times and son of a
Navarrese father and Piemontese mother, personifies the
predicament of most American (“mixed”) descendants
of immigrant forebears interested in their Old-World ethnic
heritage(s) (William A. Douglass).
In sum, Basque Portraits is both an enjoyable
and educational read. It is the type of work that makes its
reader long for more - possibly a
sequel?
Available from:
University of Nevada Press / 166
Reno, NV 89557-0076
Toll-free phone: 1-877-NVBOOKS
Web site: www.nevada.edu/press
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