Venezuela

The Basque stories of Venezuela begin with a scrivener from Bolibar who reached Caracas in 1589 and continue, almost all of them, with the exiles of 1939: songs sung before Bolívar’s tomb, a fishing company that went bankrupt, a radio station hidden in the jungle, the Venezuelan writer who eased their reception, a historian who came from Montevideo, and the intellectuals and scientists who came with the exile.

Simón de Bolívar, from Bolibar to Caracas

Simón Bolívar’s lineage has Biscayan roots. Simón de Bolívar, born on 5 March 1532 in Bolibar (Bizkaia), spent some thirty years in Santo Domingo as a scrivener and secretary, and in 1589 he reached Caracas in the company of the governor Diego de Osorio. In the city he was procurator general and alderman, and he died in 1612.⁵ The Liberator descends from him.⁵

Basque songs before Bolívar’s tomb (1939)

A week after landing, on 16 July 1939, the exiles of the Cuba took a floral offering to the National Pantheon.⁸ There, before Bolívar’s tomb, they sang Basque songs, among them the anthem, and the pro-Franco press protested.⁷

“Magnificent in honesty, unfortunate in economic terms”

The bankruptcy of Pesquerías Vascas del Caribe brought criticism down on the Basque Government, and Lehendakari Aguirre came to the defence of those in charge. In a letter of December 1941 he wrote that the record of their management was “magnificent from the point of view of honesty and morals”, and “unfortunate from the economic point of view”.¹⁰

La Txalupa: a radio station hidden in the jungle (1965-1977)

On 15 September 1965, Radio Euzkadi began broadcasting from the Venezuelan jungle.¹⁴ It was set up, some 60 kilometres from Caracas, by a group of young people from EGI, encouraged by the vice-president of the Basque Government in exile, Joseba Rezola, and led by Jokin Inza, with two transmitters, a generator and a large rhombic antenna.¹⁵ Those who were in on the secret called it La Txalupa.¹⁴ It presented itself as “la Voz de la Resistencia Vasca” (the Voice of the Basque Resistance) and broadcast until 1977, when the end of Francoism changed the scene.¹⁵¹⁶

Arturo Uslar Pietri, the friend of the Basques

The writer Arturo Uslar Pietri, the same man who as director of the Instituto de Inmigración had eased the reception of the exiles in 1939, received in 1991 the first Premio a la Excelencia Simón Bolívar (Simón Bolívar Prize for Excellence), in which the Basque Government took part.¹⁸

Vicente Amezaga, from Montevideo to Caracas

The historian and translator Vicente de Amezaga, a key figure of the Basque exile in Uruguay, moved to Venezuela in 1955 and worked with the Basque Delegation. There he devoted one of his last works to the men of the Compañía Guipuzcoana, the ones who had brought Basques to Venezuela two centuries earlier. He died in Caracas in 1969.¹⁰

Intellectuals and scientists of the exile

Among the Basques who came with the exile, Amezaga Iribarren remembers the philosopher Eugenio Imaz (1900-1950), the philosophy professor Juan David García Bacca and the doctor José María Bengoa; and Pablo Mandazain, Brother Ginés, founder of the Sociedad de Ciencias Naturales La Salle.¹