Uruguay

The Basque stories of Uruguay are stories of war and of the printing press, of government, of science and even of genetics: Basque battalions on either side of the siege of Montevideo, the first Basque newspapers in America, two presidents who were sons of Basques, the lehendakari’s diary on the day he crossed the border, scientists and artists from Basque families, and a DNA study that its authors titled Vascos pero no tanto, Basques, but not so much.

Basque battalions in the siege of Montevideo (1843-1851)

During the Guerra Grande, the Basques of Montevideo formed battalions of their own, and not all on the same side. The historian Alberto Irigoyen distinguishes three.³

The first, Los Aguerridos, the Battle-Hardened, was formed in May 1843 from Basques of the Spanish side, under the command of Colonel José Guerra, in the besieged city, and it did not live up to its name: a few days after it was formed it deserted en masse and went over to the besiegers. On the besieging side fought the Batallón Voluntarios de Oribe, commanded by Colonel Ramón de Artagaveytia: 689 men. And inside the city remained the 3rd Battalion of Basque Chasseurs, the Cazadores Vascos, made up of Basques from the French Basque Country who did not want to join the French Legion; it began with 659 men and kept some 600 throughout the war.³⁴

The Cazadores Vascos stood out in the taking of Paysandú in 1846: of the 460 casualties of the victorious army, 78 were theirs. There they also earned a bad name. Their looting was such that other battalions were ordered to fire on them to hold them back, and General Rivera sent them straight back to Montevideo.⁴

In the middle of the war, on 5 May 1843, the Montevideo newspaper Le Patriote Français published a short article in Basque, the first text in that language to appear in the American press.⁷

The first Basque newspapers in America

Uruguay also holds two firsts in the Basque press. The Laurac Bat (1877-1888), of the Laurak Bat of Montevideo, was the first Basque newspaper in America.⁷ And in 1887 the society Euskaldunak Bat of San José de Mayo published the first periodical in America written entirely in Basque.⁷

Two presidents who were sons of Basques

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the thirties, two descendants of Basque immigrants were presidents of Uruguay.¹ Juan Idiarte Borda had been born in Mercedes, into a well-off family of Basque origin, and had been president since 1894 when, on 25 August 1897, as he came out of the Independence Day mass in the cathedral of Montevideo, he was shot dead: he is the only president assassinated in the history of Uruguay.²⁰ The other, Juan Campisteguy, governed the country between 1926 and 1930.¹

To them can be added Juan José de Amézaga, a descendant of Basques from Algorta, who was president in 1943 and opened the Gran Semana Vasca.⁵

“They take me by the arm and pass me to the other side”: Aguirre’s arrival

On 9 October 1941 lehendakari Aguirre recorded in his diary the day on which he entered Uruguay from Brazil. On the last stretch a fellow Basque came out to meet him, Father Irizar, whom he recognised by the ikurriña, the Basque flag, that he wore on his lapel. The Uruguayans who were waiting for him got him across the border “without further preamble, or searches, or stamps”. Before that he had shaved off his moustache, “my inseparable companion in so many adventures”. In Treinta y Tres “many people, flowers, speeches” were waiting for him, and in Montevideo, “many compatriots, microphones, handshakes”.⁵

Scientists and artists from Basque families

Basques and their descendants appear in every field of Uruguayan life, in science and the arts as well.¹ The naturalist José Arechavaleta (1838-1912), the same man who in 1883 broke away from the Laurak Bat to found the Centro Vascongado, was a leading figure of Uruguayan science in the nineteenth century.¹⁵ The musicologist Lauro Ayestarán (1913-1965), son of parents from Ataun, gathered a collection of four thousand field recordings of native Uruguayan music.¹⁵ María Orticochea directed the Instituto Normal, the teacher training college, and the painter Carmelo de Arzadum stood out as a landscape painter.¹

“Vascos, pero no tanto”: a genetic study in Trinidad

In 2009 a team of anthropologists analysed the mitochondrial DNA, the kind inherited through the maternal line, of 62 descendants of Basques in Trinidad, in Flores. Of them, 82% had European lineages, but 16% carried Native American lineages, and one, an African lineage. Its authors titled the work Vascos pero no tanto.²¹