Colombia

The Basques who came to Colombia in the twentieth century did so by two roads: that of the religious orders, which sent missionaries to frontier territories, and that of the exile of the Spanish Civil War, which also left in Bogotá a Delegation of the Basque Government that lasted almost forty years.

Basque Carmelites in Urabá (1918-1941)

The missionaries came first. In 1918 the apostolic prefecture of Urabá, in Antioquia, was placed in the care of the Discalced Carmelites of the province of San Joaquín de Navarra, who ran it until 1941. The Colombian State had delegated to the Church the incorporation of those frontier territories, and the missionaries built up an image of the territory as a space that they had to “civilise”.⁷

The exiles of the Spanish Civil War

The exiles who came later did not find the country empty of Basques: they joined small groups of immigrants who were already living in Bogotá and Medellín.⁶ They were taken in by the government of Alfonso López Pumarejo.⁶ One of them, the politician and writer Jon Andoni Irazusta, wrote in exile the Basque-language novel Bizitza garratza da, a bitter view of Basque emigration to Colombia after the war that mixes invented characters with real people, such as the Carmelite missionaries of Urabá.¹⁵

A Delegation in Bogotá (1942-1980)

The Delegation was born of a visit. Lehendakari (president of the Basque Government) José Antonio Aguirre was in Colombia in 1941 and laid a floral tribute in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, and after his visit, in 1942, the Delegation of the Basque Government in Colombia was made official. Its first delegate was the exile Francisco de Abrisketa, and among its first tasks was keeping the United States embassy informed.⁶

In 1945 Abrisketa moved to the Oficina Interamericana de Estadística (Inter-American Statistics Office), and he was replaced by the architect Andrés Perea Gallaga, from Araba, who was delegate until 1980.⁶ The Bogotá Delegation reported to the one in Caracas.⁶