Chile

From trade to marriage

What in Chile is called the “Castilian-Basque aristocracy” was an elite: Basque merchants and officials of the eighteenth century who married into the Creole families and left behind, more than a community, a surname that conferred standing.

They arrived at a favourable moment. In the eighteenth century, Chilean colonial society reached a stability unknown until then: a new landowning and merchant aristocracy took the place of that of the encomenderos and soldiers, and Spanish immigration kept renewing it without pause.³

A significant part of those newcomers, according to the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile (National Library of Chile), were Basques, and they devoted themselves chiefly to trade. They lived austerely, kept up their commercial ties with Spain and built up fortunes, and all of that opened the doors of the upper class to them, which they entered by marrying into the Creole families.³

Governors, judges and officials

Not all of them came to trade. There were also Basques in the administration of the kingdom, and the historians Julene Salazar and Roberto Hernández cite, among many others, the governors Juan Andrés Uztáriz (1709-1718) and Agustín de Jáuregui (1773-1780), and the regent José de Rezabal, who was interim governor in 1795-1796. And in 1772 Domingo Eyzaguirre, as assayer of the Casa de Moneda (the mint), founded a family dynasty.¹

A name that carries a judgement

That weight was real, but the name under which it has been told is not neutral. The term “Castilian-Basque aristocracy” was used by the Chilean historian Francisco Antonio Encina to set that elite, “imbued with norms of ancestral austerity”, against other classes to which he attributed extravagance.⁴ The historian Ainara Madariaga warns of the racism of those statements and of the imaginary they created, which lasted a long time: having a Basque surname went on conferring social standing in Chile in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.⁴