Venezuela

The Basque exiles in Venezuela organised themselves in the reverse order to Argentina or Uruguay: first they helped one another, then came the Delegation of the Basque Government, and only later the Basque centre, which built its clubhouse in El Paraíso in Caracas. Over the years, that community became the financial mainstay of the Basque Government in exile.

First, helping one another (1939)

On 6 August 1939, less than a month after the Cuba arrived, the exiles founded the Asociación Vasca de Socorros Mutuos, a mutual aid society which in 1943 had 217 members and in 1952 opened a Basque burial vault.⁷

A Delegation before a centre (1940)

The Delegation of the Basque Government in Caracas was officially created in November 1940, on the instructions of the Consejo Nacional de Euzkadi (Basque National Council) in London, and was set up in the Ávila building, in the centre of the city. It came before the first local Basque centre,¹⁰ and the Delegations of Colombia, Ecuador and Central America were also coordinated from it.¹⁰ According to Sanz Goikoetxea and Álvarez Gila, in forty years it was held by five delegates: Jesús María Gárate (1940-1948), Luis Bilbao (1948-1951), Ricardo Maguregui (1951-1955), Lucio de Aretxabaleta (1955-1967) and Fernando Carranza (1967-1980).¹⁰

In Argentina, Uruguay or Mexico, the Delegation had to make itself known and win over the Basques who were already living there. In Venezuela there was no need, because the Delegation and the community were, from the start, almost the same thing.¹⁰

Its first big project failed. To give the exiles work a fishing company was set up, Pesquerías Vascas del Caribe, with two boats built in the French Basque Country, the Donibane and the Bigarrena, which were sent out in 1939. But the boats were not suited to fishing in the Caribbean, the catches found no market and the exiles were professionals rather than fishermen. The company went bankrupt.¹⁰

The Centro Vasco de Caracas and its premises in El Paraíso

The Centro Vasco de Caracas (Eusko Etxea) was born in 1942.¹⁰ Its great work was the premises in El Paraíso, built on a plot of some 10,000 square metres in that Caracas neighbourhood. To buy the land and build the house, the Compañía Inmobiliaria Euskalduna was set up, financed with registered shares of 500 bolívares.¹²¹³ The design was by the exiled architect Miguel Salvador Cordón.¹³

The clubhouse was opened in March 1950, and the opening was attended by the lehendakari (president of the Basque Government) José Antonio Aguirre, the Basque delegate in New York, Jesús de Galíndez, and the harpist Nicanor Zabaleta.¹²¹³ According to Arantzazu Ametzaga, some 3,000 people attended the opening Mass.¹²

The mainstay of the Basque Government in exile

From the end of the fifties, Venezuela was for the Basque Government in exile the centre of many of its political initiatives and its financial mainstay.¹⁰ In 1960, eighteen Basque bodies in the country signed a document addressed to the Government of Euzkadi and to all the Basque-American associations.¹⁰ Lehendakaris Aguirre and Leizaola visited the country often, and in 1951 Aguirre also toured the Basque colonies of the interior.¹⁰

Propaganda, on the other hand, did not depend on the Delegation but on the Centro Vasco and the PNV exiles: the magazine Euzkadi and, from 1965, Radio Euzkadi, a clandestine station set up in the jungle, whose story is told in Basques in Venezuelan history.¹⁰