Mexico

The exile was an arrival unlike the earlier ones. It was set in motion not by relatives or trade but by war, and with it came evacuated children, a football team, intellectuals and ships of refugees, and a delegation of the Basque Government that lasted from 1939 to 1980. It was made possible by a country that refused to recognise Franco: Mexico was the only Western country that never diplomatically recognised Franco’s government, and from the early forties it took in the institutions of the Republic in exile.⁷

Those who came

The first were children. In June 1937, 163 girls and 291 boys, refugees, arrived on the steamer Mexique, the children of Morelia, and among them were Basque children evacuated from Gipuzkoa.⁴ Also in the middle of the war the Euzkadi football team came to Mexico, raising funds for the Basque refugees, and it was received by Francisco de Belausteguigoitia, a leader of the Centro Vasco.⁷⁴ In 1938 the intellectuals arrived who formed the Casa de España, from 1940 El Colegio de México, and among them was the Bilbao art critic Ricardo Gutiérrez Abascal, Juan de la Encina.⁴

The end of the war brought the ships. In March 1939 the yacht Vita reached Tampico with thirty Basque crew members, and on 13 June of that year the largest group of refugees disembarked from the Sinaia.⁴

The delegation

The man from the Centro Vasco who had received the team was also the first to represent the Basque Government. The Basque delegation in Mexico was established in 1939, and its first delegate was Belausteguigoitia. At the end of 1941 he was replaced by Telesforo Monzón, until then secretary to lehendakari Aguirre, with Julio de Jáuregui as secretary, and a sub-delegation was opened in Veracruz. Almost all the parties of the Basque Government also opened delegations in Mexico City. In 1946 Monzón and Jáuregui went back to Europe.⁷

In practice, the home of the delegation was often the Centro Vasco: the lunches, the receptions and the Aberri Eguna were held there. The visits of the lehendakaris also served to raise money: Aguirre was in Mexico in 1950, 1953 and 1954, and Leizaola in 1960. From the late fifties, moreover, the Basque Government in exile came to depend on the money of the diaspora. The delegation lasted until 1980, with Alberto Azúa as the last delegate.⁷

Euzko Deya

The exile also had its newspaper. On 1 March 1943 the first issue of Euzko Deya. La voz de los vascos en México came out. According to Garritz and Sanchiz, it was edited in turn by Francisco Turrillas, Julio de Jáuregui, Jesús de Garritz together with Antonio Ruiz de Azua from December 1946 and, finally, Ruiz de Azua alone, and it was published until March 1973, with 393 issues.⁴ The Auñamendi dates it between 1943 and 1961.¹ Besides politics, it covered the social life of the community and had a section in Basque.⁴