Gure Ama

(Our Mother)

By

Marie Clark

PROLOGUE

At the request of our brother Xabier, the editor of this work, with pride and
pleasure I have agreed to write a posthumous tribute to the memory of our mother. I
have devoted this essay to the most important moments of her life because of her great
influence on me. It's a complicated family history of two wars through which our fathers
lived and of which they were victims: the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
Our mother had a calm personality, with much common sense. She had what
psychologists call a well-integrated personality, and she was devout, precise, and
practical. She was not a dreamer but hard working, dutiful, caring, devoted to family
and self-renunciation and very loyal to her faith; and her faith helped her during her
many trying moments. One of her favorite sayings was "God squeezes but He does not
strangle." No matter how tired she was, she prayed the rosary with litany every night
and invited us to accompany her; and we did but sometimes not very happily. She had a
great ability to do wonders with her hands; she knew how to turn something ordinary
into the extraordinary. She mastered the arts of cooking, weaving, sewing, upholstery,
painting and gardening. Her agility with numbers was insurmountable, and she was a
great manager. She had courage and confronted situations with which our father could
not cope. She avoided giving problems to our father by hiding many of the things that
we did not do very well. The circumstances in which she lived were extremely difficult,
but she was always ready to overcome any obstacle if that brought happiness and peace
to our father and us. The absence of her second daughter was very painful all her life.
Just as our father taught us to think, to know and love Euskera and Euskadi. Ama taught
us to pray, love and work.
During seven years of my childhood, I was far away from the care of our
parents. I was under the care of ama’s siblings and her aged father. I lived in the same
village where our mother was born and raised. I went to school where she was
educated, and had the same teacher who taught her. The most precious legacy that ama
left me has been confidence in myself and her great Christian faith that did not abandon
her even in the worst moments of her life. Rather it gave her strength to be able to
make her way through different countries and in difficult circumstances. It was a cross
for our parents to bear to live far away from everything that they most loved and had to
leave behind forever.
Our father, a man of true Christian faith, was a tireless worker for the Basque
cause. His hometown of Algorta, Getxo, erected a square that bears his name as a
posthumous tribute to the great orator, writer, translator and lover of his Basque
ancestry. He was a great man and next to a great man is a great woman, who was his
wife and faithful companion all his life, our mother. On the death of aita, ama compiled
the memories of all their years together. She wrote nine notebooks later transferred to
fifteen tapes that she recorded. In those tapes she described the passage of the years they

1
lived together with the same emotion that she lived them. With her memoirs she has left
an unforgettable legacy to us, her children and grandchildren.
Aita in the twilight of his life dedicated this short poem to our mother simply
summarizing what she was for him. He gave it to her on the day of her birthday,
September 10, 1968. He would die five months later.

CONGRATULATIONS
For girlfriend
More rebonita
That was after wife
Faithful and loving
And the tender mother
Home rules
And Granny
With care and affection
The penalty takes
In each state it was in
And in every age
Used to be a paragon
Happiness!
Aita

Bibliography
1. The main source of information was "Memories of Ama: Cassettes recorded by her
with stories of her life between 1926 and 1970," the 15 tapes recorded by ama,
completed in February 1972. These tapes are an oral history of the years lived with our
father.
2. Robert P. Clark, The Basques: The Franco Years and Beyond (Reno, University of
Nevada Press, 1979).
3. Ana López Asensio, Colegio Madre Del Divino Pastor (Getxo, Getxo, 2004).
4. Don Felix Acha, Recuerdos de Las Arenas, two volumes (Las Arenas: Arenas Press,
2004, 2005).
5. Don Carlos M. Altube Zabala, Getxo, Anteiglesia del señorío (Bilbao: Editorial La
Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1968).
6. William Wiser, The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s (New York: Carroll & Craft,
2000).
7. Dorothy Legarreta, The Guernica Generation: Basque Refugee Children of the
Spanish Civil War (Rena, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1984).
8. Leon Grinberg and Rebecca Grinberg, Pyschoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and
Exile, translated from Spanish by Nancy Festinger (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989).
9. Mirentxu Amezaga, Nere Aita (San Sebastian: Editorial Txertoa, 1991).

2
THE LIFE OF MERCEDES IRIBARREN AMEZAGA
GURE AMA
TRIBUTE TO OUR MOTHER
BY
Mirentxu Amezaga

CHAPTER I
ECHOES OF THE FORGOTTEN

In the Basque language ama means mother and aita means father
Our parents were Vicente de Amezaga, a native of Algorta, Getxo, and
Mercedes Iribarren native of Las Arenas, Getxo. My siblings and I are products of two
Basque sources: one of maritime origin through aita and the other of Pyrenean origin
through ama.
The results of genetic information, taken from DNA tests that my husband and I
have done recently, tell us that in the male line our Amezaga ancestors came 10,000
years ago from what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, where they lived as people
the Greeks called Scythians, (a group of nomadic and semi-nomads with whom they
had contact in the Black Sea region). They came by water through the Mediterranean
and the Atlantic and across different European and North African countries to Euskadi
living since then in the area between mountains and sea, a dividing line that still exists
today.
From the maternal side Iribarren, we are descendants of people from the Stone
Age, the first inhabitants of Europe. About 45,000 years ago they came from the Middle
East, and entered the Baztán Valley where they remained for the past 25,000 years.
Baztán Valley is located north of Navarra in the Atlantic Pyrenees, a place of meadows
and hills, castles and stone farmhouses with large balconies, monasteries, medieval
bridges, caves and megalithic monuments that speak of their Paleolithic era. Their
culture was formed in the upper basin of the River Bidasoa which in this area is called
Baztán River, 40 miles north of Pamplona and to the east of the French Basque Country.
This is where, in the Battle of Roncesvalles on August 15, 778, Charlemagne's army
was defeated by the Basques.
In the seventeenth century the Iribarren family name begins to appear near the
province of Guipuzcoa, It is clear that the Iribarren were leaving the Pyrenees to go to
more prosperous cities and towns near the Cantabrian coast. In 1864, in the coastal town
of Motrico, our grandfather Innocencio was born. His parents were Pedro José Iribarren
(b. 1828) a native of Motrico, Guipuzcoa, and his mother Juana Egaña (b. 1837) of
Escoriaza, Guipuzcoa. Innocencio, the youngest member of the family, grew up in this
pleasant fishing village of Gipuzkoa, on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea on the border
with the Province of Biscay. Its coasts are cliffs that open into two bays; one has the
urban core and the port and the other has beaches that it shares with Ondarroa. The town
of Motrico was founded in 1294 and takes its name from the river at the mouth of which
lies the River Deva. It has a great beach which is the main tourist attraction. In another
time there was a major trading port; now is use as a recreational marina.
Our grandmother Juliana Gorostegui was born in 1872 in Deva, Guipuzcoa. The
family name Gorostegui originates in the town of Bergara, west of the province of
Guipuzcoa, probably about the seventeenth century, and it is translated in Basque as the
“place where the holly tree grows”. Her parents were José Antonio Gorostegui (b. 1829)

3
native of Abaltxisketa, Guipuzcoa, and Maria Josefa Urkidi (b. 1844) of Motrico,
Guipuzcoa.
The town of Deva is surrounded by mountains 800 to 900 meters high which are
within walking distance from the coast. Nearby is the Cave of Ekain, a cave with large
important equestrian paintings of Deva. Among the highlights is a group of horses that
are highly relevant in the Magdalenian period (15,000 to 12,000 BC) and make Ekain
one of the main European prehistoric sanctuaries. This cave is included in the list of
World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.
For us the history of the Iribarren begins in 1876 at the end of the Second Carlist
War. Innocencio was born in 1864 and Juliana Gorostegui in the early 1870’s. In their
youth they witnessed a monumental struggle in Spain between the forces of
modernization and centralization on the one hand, and supporters of freedom, and
traditional regions on the other.
It is important to include the history of our great grandfather Elias Iribarren, who
fought on behalf of the Carlists in the second Carlist war. After the war ended, Elias
returned to his home, but was pursued by the liberal forces which had sentenced all ex-
Carlist militiamen to exile or death. One day they came to arrest Elias, who was hiding
in the haystack. Unable to find him the soldiers had decided to leave when the
commander came up to ask the children who were playing outside where their father
was. The youngest, Innocencio, unaware that he was sealing the fate of his father
pointed to the barn and the soldiers found him and shot him right there
Deva, the town of our grandmother Juliana is three miles from Motrico. We
believe they met in one of the festivals in Deva, on the feast of San Roque on 14
August. Juliana was an attractive young woman of delicate features. After they married
they went to live to Motrico. Our grandfather was a sea engineer but the sea made him
seasick so he decided to try new career by opening a company, and since he loved the
sea he opened a business of ship-building factory. For that he went to live in Las
Arenas, Vizcaya, in 1895.

LAS ARENAS, GETXO

For many years, Las Arenas had been an undesirable backwater with little more
than a lonely beach. In 1880 the difficulties in supplying drinking water to the town
were overcome by a well with water pump and a windmill designed to drain the
marshes. An old house, called the Consulate, and an old tavern were the only buildings
that existed in 1860. The mill was in the place than later was erected the Parish of Las
Mercedes.
An important figure in the history of Las Arenas in the mid-nineteenth century
was a merchant and industrialist named Máximo Aguirre, who had been a mayor of the
city of Bilbao. Also Aguirre had been a consul in the United States and had adopted the
American and British custom of buying land as an investment. In what today are Las
Arenas, Santa Ana and Lamiako, he turned the land into a residential area where the
Basque elite could buy their second home. For that he had to channel the river courses
of Udondo and Gobela rivers, and he began the draining of the marshes and the setting
of the land by planting pine trees, tamarisk and gorse bushes. The town soon became an
important residential and tourism center because of the fashion for sea bathing. The plan
for the town was a rectangle in the center of which was the Santa Ana’s chapel and the
Establishment of Bilbaínos Sea Baths.

4
 In 1903 local leaders began to devise a new development between Algorta and
Las Arenas, which would be called Neguri, which means “winter town” in Basque. As
the name says it would be destined to be inhabited throughout the year instead of simply
during the summer vacation season. And what once was a sandy wasteland became a
modern and symmetrical town, a resort of chalets and small palaces that was inhabited
in the summer months. The rest of the year these houses were empty, giving the
impression of being a ghost town, but soon it would be filled with apartment buildings.
In 1864 the first church was built in Las Arenas, the hermitage of Santa Ana, one
of the oldest examples of the Gothic architectural style of Vizcaya. The work was done
under order of the family of Maximo Aguirre, but soon the chapel would not be large
enough for the increasing population. In 1872 the only means of transportation was a
streetcar linking the important city of Bilbao with Las Arenas. In 1887 this was replaced
by a train with the same route. In 1882 Las Arenas had only 212 inhabitants. In the next
20 years more than 120 buildings were erected. In 1887 the church of Las Mercedes
was opened; it was designed by Severino de Achúcaro according to the Gothic model.
The first private school in Las Arenas was the school of "La Divina Pastora"
now called “Colegio Madre del Divino Pastor”. It was founded by the Franciscan
sisterson June 25, 1904. It was formerly a country estate in the French style, bordered
on the north by the railway station and on the south by the Gobelas Street. I remember
from the class having heard the whistling of the train. They began offering three years
of teaching in all subjects, adding homemaking skills, painting, French, and music.
Ama stood out in the first two subjects: especially sewing, knitting, embroidery and
painting. Her teacher was Mother Maria Luisa.
On July 28, 1893, a unique attraction opened in Las Arenas, the world's first of
its kind. I refer to the “Hanging Bridge”, or “Puente Colgante”, the most notable
engineering structure for which the city is famous. Its construction was needed to link
existing resorts on both sides. The structure is not a bridge but a shuttle craft suspended
over the river. The shuttle carries passengers and vehicles across the Nervion River in a
trip that lasts several minutes. Making the trip on the ferry saves to road drive of 20
kilometers to reach the opposite bank. On July 13, 2006, the bridge was declared World
Heritage Site by UNESCO which considers it one of the most outstanding works of
architecture of the Industrial Revolution.
Ten miles from Las Arenas was Bilbao the largest city in the Basque Country
and the industrial center of Vizcaya. The city dates from 1300 but its industrial impact
dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Bilbao by 1886 had 50,000 inhabitants. It is
located on the banks of the Nervion River that zigzags through the city as it flows into
the Bay of Biscay before passing through several villages and cities that once had an
independent existence, but now it have become suburbs of Bilbao. One of these suburbs
is Las Arenas.
The town was ready to welcome our grandparents Innocencio and Juliana
Iribarren whom they arrived in Las Arenas with their two older daughters, Lola and Juli.
Shortly after, our grandfather bought a parcel of land near the village of Erandio on the
banks of the Nervion River and there he founded the factory called "Talleres Erandio"
an industry specialized in the construction of cranes and large commercial ships. Five
years after arriving in Las Arenas our grandparents went to live to "La Casa Grande"
(The Big House) on the fourth floor on the street of Las Mercedes. This large stone
building is opposite to the Parish Church of Las Mercedes (1900). It was newly built by

5
Domingo Usobiaga who also came from Motriko. In Las Arenas, our grandparents had
three more children: the only son, Ino, Mari, and Pascu.
By the early twentieth century, the society encountered by Innocencio was
booming and the Iribarren family enjoyed the comfortable lifestyle of the growing
middle class of Vizcaya. Our grandfather had a large cellar which according to family
legend he fermented solid green grapes of Vizcaya to make a thin and delicious liquid
acid called chacolí, which they consumed with gusto.

AMA’S CHILDHOOD

The year 1905 would be particularly remembered in the world because it would
see the first Russian Revolution as a preamble to its later bloody revolution. Sigmund
Freud launched his psychoanalytic hypothesis with his controversial "Three Essays on
the Theory of Sexuality." The American Wright brothers, pioneers in aviation history,
flew the first powered flight in history. But a unique detail for consideration is the
unforgettable year 1905 (known in science as the "Annus Mirabilis”, or miracle year),
was the scientific production of the then-unknown 26-year-old physicist Albert Einstein,
who published a series of research papers that transfigured modern physics with his
proposals to explain to the world the theory of relativity and quantum theory.
And in this miracle year our mother came into this world. The youngest child of
our grandparents Juliana and Innocencio was born on September 10, 1905. They
baptized her with the name of Maria Mercedes Pascuala and she was called Pascu. Later
on our father urged her to change and to use her second name Mercedes and with this
name she was known the rest of her life.
A well-known family photo shows the five Iribarren siblings, each one holding a
symbol of their favorite hobby. Lola, an avid reader with a book, the young Pascu, with
a bouquet of flowers, Juli, with a fashion magazine, and Inocencio, with a tennis racket.
His athletic skills led him to a position with the local soccer team, known the "Las
Arenas Club." The hobby of Aunt Mary was playing the piano, but obviously she could
not easily demonstrate her hobby. This photo was taken to give to their sick mother.
Mercedes lost her mother after a long illness when the child was only 13, leaving his
widowed father in charge of the 5 children and two adopted children. He got help from
two aunts in the care of the children.
Of the childhood of our mother we know little. She did not talk much about
herself. She told us that our grandfather was an avid hunter and she was in charge of
preparing the clothes early in the morning when he went hunting on his motorcycle to
Navarre. Once ama was ill with high fever that would not leave her and the family
doctor came to see her, and he didn’t know what to do, so he asked the family to bring
from the cellar the dirtiest bottle so that he could inject its filth into ama. Today we
know that that filth contained something similar to penicillin. But this concoction was
home made and although her arm swelled up, the fever disappeared. Later the doctor
when he saw her on the street said "My drunkenness saved your life" because only
under the influence of alcohol could he give such medicine. The first clinical trial of
penicillin was not until 1941 and in 1943 it began commercial production in the United
States. On another occasion, when she was little she was given a light blue raincoat that
she liked, but it was a little big, and for fear that it could be returned she stayed outside
in the rain all afternoon to keep her prized garment.

6
 When they met in the house with friends, our grandfather pushed a little bit his
youngest daughter to sing to the guests the Basque Nationalist song "Gora Euskadi" and
the girl spontaneously sang the lyrics: "Gora Euskadi bizi Bedi, Sabino Arana Goiri
gora." The whole family believed and professed the programs of that time of Basque
nationalism. Several times Inocencio was told he could not attend Mass with the logo of
the Basque flag on his lapel. Innocencio and Juliana spoke Basque as their first
language, and early twentieth century social pressure and religious doctrine discouraged
the use of Euskera. The middle class saw Euskera as a sign of rural life and the church
saw the Basque language as pre-Christian, meaning is pagan, and denied permission to
baptize children with Basque names. Later, the governments of Spain and France passed
laws explicitly prohibiting teaching the Basque language. Now it is completely
different. Today the use of Euskera is a mark of a well-educated middle class in the
Basque country, but at that time from all the children of the family the only one who
spoke only Euskera was the oldest, Lola.
The five Iribarren children were involved in the theater where they participated
in different ways. Lola was directed the productions, Juli sewed the costumes, Mari was
in charge of music, Innocencio directed the special effects like a thunderstorm, which
was done by dropping down the stairs sacks of potatoes. And Pascu was in charge of
the acting, which she did with pleasure and love.

AMA’S YOUTH

Pascu became a young woman of delicate features, graceful, intelligent, and with
common sense. She looked sweet, delicate and beautiful with her brown hair and dark
eyes. One of his many skills was mathematics; we heard her say several times that one
of her dreams had been to work on the Stock Exchange. After finishing her studies in
school administration she was helping her sister Juli in her fashion design and sewing
business. Her main hobby in her youth was acting in the theater, first in the batzoki, a
name in Basque that means "place to meet." These are political and social venues of the
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) that in addition to offices and meeting rooms had bars
and restaurants. There's one in every town, but they were closed after Franco's victory in
the Civil War. Ama later acted in the Parish Social House (Casa Social) in Las Arenas
which was a religious, cultural and recreational center. It was the home and meeting
place, education and entertainment of all youth of Las Arenas, whose lives revolved
around the parish and the youth group, Catholic Action. The beautiful room, which had
a capacity of 500 persons, was the delight of everyone with its film and theater. Here
the people of Getxo could see the latest films, and they took an active part, sometimes
simply as spectators and sometimes as actors, in many plays. There was remarkable
socio-cultural activity in conferences and lectures on current topics of the day. Pascu
enjoyed acting and did it very well, just like everything that she proposed to do. One
photo of a group of young girls from Divina Pastora dressed in Basque peasant clothes
during their performance in a play, shows Pascu standing to the left.
Some of the young men from Algorta, including Jose Antonio Aguirre, Juanito
Sarria and a young law student, Vicente de Amezaga, went down to Las Arenas often to
see the works that were presented at the Social House. The neighborhood of Algorta
consisted mostly of wealthy capitalists. In the seventeenth century Algorta had 100
houses, most of them near the port. Until 1859 Algorta was completely isolated. The old
beach of Las Arenas was the only way through for people of Algorta who wished to
take the train or a steamship. In 1853 a road was opened from the Consulate House,

7
across Portugalete, to the San Martin neighborhood. What is today the beginning of the
area known as La Avanzada is where the sandy of Las Arenas began, a town in those
days not deserving of the attention of the people of Algorta. The area between Las
Arenas and Algorta was dotted with palaces and villas inhabited only in summer
months, leaving the rest of the year closed.

Vicente de Amezaga, who had excelled in his studies at the school of San
Bernardo de Algorta suddenly lost his father at the age of 17. Shortly after that he
closed himself in the attic of his house and learned by himself Basque in six months.
He came to master the language to such a degree that he would later be the founder of
the American Institute of Basque Studies in Buenos Aires (1943), he taught Basque
Culture at the University of Montevideo (1947-1955) and Basque language at the
Advanced Institute of Culture in the same city. He was named a corresponding member
of the Basque Language Academy in 1957. In 1926 he graduated in law from the
University of Valladolid and he was now preparing for the examinations of to become a
notary public, to be held in the Canary Islands. He was appointed Municipal Judge of
Getxo in the year of 1931, and in that capacity he officiated at the wedding of his friend
Jose Antonio Aguirre, first president of the Basque Government. At the same time Don
Resurrection Mary Azkue (1864-1951) founder of the Basque Language Academy, a
priest, musician, writer and academic, and a key figure in the recovery of the Basque
language offered to our father a scholarship to send him to Germany, but the Spanish
Civil War made impossible all these projects.

COURTSHIP

On one occasion ama was starring in the comedy "Cradle Song" by Gregorio
Martínez Sierra, which is the story of a newborn abandoned at the gates of a convent
and raised by nuns. Vicente who had seen her acting several times noticed her talent and
her delicate beauty and fell in love. They went out in groups for some time until one day
he asked to meet her at La Avanzada the following day. She replied quietly, as was the
custom at that time: "Maybe if it doesn’t rain". But she went on her bike and there on
August 23 1927, Vincent declared his love for her. They got engaged. Their courtship at
the end of 1920 recalls for us the traditional world that has completely disappeared
today. Aita living in Algorta went down to Las Arenas to pick her up more or less at six
pm for a walk to Neguri. Sometimes they went to the bakery of Zuricalday and walked
through the beautiful Paseo Zugazarte, a beautiful avenue with many small palaces and
ancient lime trees along the promenade, creating a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere
near the sea. Always they were escorted from a safe distance by her sisters and her
sister’s friends, until nine o'clock at night. At this time Vicente left her and returned to
his home on train to Algorta. The weekends they went to a movie (American movies
were popular in those days) or they went on the train to the Arriaga Theatre. The Opera
House, built in a neo-baroque style, was named after Juan Crisostomo Arriaga of
Bilbao, a composer known as “the Basque Mozart". In the spring they went to France
accompanied by Juli. Visiting the casinos, the two sisters loved to play and bet, Vicente
not much, but he put up with it when he saw her happy. Also they attended football
(soccer) matches, always supporting Arenas. They ate lunch in the Hotel Continental in
front of Las Arenas’ hanging bridge, and also they went to parish movies.
By this time she had changed her name to Mercedes, which was her middle
name, because aita liked it more. She was a person of great faith. Her religious life had

8
always been of utmost importance all her life and also for Vicente, and now during their
courtship their religious lives were intense. Sundays were always dedicated to the
church, the Mass and later perhaps a parish event or go to support the Arenas wherever
the team was playing. The celebration of Holy Week was special to them. Holy
Thursday ama arranged the Monumento, the church altar which was decorated that day
in churches in every neighborhood. At four in the afternoon they went together to visit
the seven “Stations”, which were important local sites. They would start from the
Colegio de la Divina Pastora, the school where ama was educated, then go to the
Church of Las Mercedes, the Chapel of Santa Ana, El Hospital, the Church of San
Ignacio, the Church of the Holy Trinity, and the Church of St. Nicholas. Friday was a
day for more meditation, or they participated in religious processions. Sometimes
Vicente went as dignitary, dressed in a formal suit, and sometimes as a simple citizen.
Holy Saturday everything looked happy and the girls all wore new dresses. Ama said
"during the month of May, the month when everything was blooming and dressed for
the holidays with colorful flowers, they would perform the custom of “las Flores,”
which consisted of praying the rosary with litany and hearing songs sung by the choir of
the village. The altar was decorated daily with flowers of different colors that
parishioners gathered in the gardens, some days with red roses, others with white
jasmine, lilies, wallflowers and in the middle of the range of colors the image of the
Immaculate Conception with her blue mantle.” They both described this scene for us
with delight, but also with pain seeing that our generation did not have these views in
our spiritual lives. This religious life would ease their minds in this time of great tension
leading up to the civil war.
Our parents used to pray together various novenas, most frequently one named
for the town, the Virgen de las Mercedes, and for the Virgin of Begoña in Bilbao. For
this latter novena they had to leave the house at six o'clock and climb 300 steps to a
high point. Having thus “sanctified” themselves they ate the famous local snack,
chocolate with churros (similar to English crullers). When their relationship began to be
more formal in the mid 1930's they began to shape their future and sadly she stopped
acting. Years later she would describe to us their life was "simple, quiet and of deep
faith." Unfortunately the world they knew was about to explode and in fact they would
know little peace again.
Now they were thinking about "forming their nest" and for that they chose a
white brick house of two floors in the coastal town of Sopelana, three miles from
Algorta. The house was small but sunny. It had a nice dining room, kitchen and
bathroom. The bedroom had a balcony that opened onto the garden which was
surrounded by fruit trees. Ama dreamed of the flowers and vegetables they would plant
in the beautiful and spacious garden. They visited the house often in the company of
Grandmother Maria, aita’s mother, to add the some decoration to the building. They had
already bought furniture for the dining room and living room, and the nuns were
embroidering her trousseau and all this made them dream of a better future, full of hope.
But the war interrupted her dreams when they had to abandon everything to live in exile
for the rest of their lives. She talked about the engagement as the best time of her life

THE FIRST LEHENDAKARI

(Basque President)

The Basque Autonomous Government was installed as such on October 1, 1936,

because the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, did not give their final vote of approval

9
until then. Its first president, Jose Antonio de Aguirre y Lecube, took the oath of office
as the lehendakari in the Casa de Juntas in Guernica. The installation of the first
lehendakari was October 7, 1936. Aita was named to be the Director General of
Elementary Education in the newly formed Government of Euskadi. The Spanish Civil
War was a violent conflict that broke out after the failure of the coup d’etat of a sector
of the Spanish army against of the legal and democratic government of the Second
Spanish Republic. The war wracked the country between July 17, 1937, and April 1,
1939, finishing with victory by the rebels and the installation of a dictatorial fascist
regime, at whose head was General Francisco Franco. This act meant the end of the
democratic experiment carried out in Spain since April, 1931, and which lead to the
Spanish Civil War. This war was a precursor to the Second World War.

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

The rebel General Mola announced by radio “If surrender is not immediate, I
will raze Vizcaya to the ground until nothing is left…” And they began with the
bombardments in Vizcaya, in the town of Durango, the same day. This was the first use
in history of aerial bombardment of an undefended civilian population. In less than a
month Guernica was the target, and then Bilbao, including the neighboring towns of Las
Arenas and Algorta.
On April 26, 1937, the sacred town of Guernica, of great significance for the
Basque people with its Casa de Juntas and its legendary oak tree, was bombed from the
air, leaving a balance of one thousand dead, seventy percent of its buildings destroyed,
and twenty percent uninhabitable. Mercedes and Vicente were that day in the nearby
town of Mundaka having lunch with the mayor after inaugurating an ikastola (Basque
language school), and they saw with great concern the German airplanes fly overhead.
The mayor gave them as a gift a laying hen, a very good gift in those days of such food
scarcity. When Mercedes returned to Las Arenas the town had been bombed and all the
lights were out. Ama feared for her family. “The town looked like the entrance to
death,” ama tells us in her memoirs. When she arrived at Las Mercedes Street, she saw
their piano hanging out a hole in the wall of their apartment. She climbed the stairs
greatly distressed thinking of her elderly father. She saw the destruction of the bomb
that had entered the apartment through the balcony, burning the rug and some furniture,
but these were of less importance since her father and siblings were unharmed.
With the alarming news of the bombings so close ama and aita decided to be
married by the civil authority on May 14, 1937, a step necessary for their church
wedding, planned now for some time.
The Iron Belt, a system of fortifications formed by bunkers, trenches, and
tunnels constructed around Bilbao finally broke under the incessant bombing and
undermined by the treachery of the engineer who designed it, who went over to the
rebels and delivered the plans of the city’s defenses to the enemy.
On March 21, 1937, Palm Sunday, there were more than 100 explosions in Las
Arenas. They heard many of them while they at Mass in the chapel of the Divina
Pastora school. Two months later there were rumors of an impending bombing of the
town. On June 13, 1937, Portugalete was bombed. In June 1937 four tremendous
explosions of dynamite blew up the hanging bridge that connects Las Arenas with
Portugalete. (The bridge was rebuilt and finally placed in service again on June 19 of
1941)

10
 Mother Maria Luisa of the Divina Pastora school, our mother’s (and my) teacher
wrote about these events: “The night of the 14 and 15 we heard such terrible explosions
that it seemed as if half the town had been blown up, and the shaking was so much that
it made us fall to the floor at the same time. We went down to the basement without
lights and trembled at what had happened. They had blown up the Bridge of Vizcaya…
and some of the sisters could see the burning of the Parish.” Later in the bomb shelter
“with having eaten and frightened to death, we heard nothing except bombs and cannon
fire. Two militiamen came to the shelter carrying pistols and told us we had to evacuate
to Santander or Bilbao, and that they were going to blow up the entire town.” (Lopez,
p. 102.) By June 17 the offensive was from Portugalete and we all had to evacuate. Las
Arenas and the chalets that remained were converted into army barracks. On June 13
Portugalete was bombed by 21 German trimotor Junkers, which dropped their bombs on
the burning petroleum deposits.

WEDDING AND ESCAPE

At dawn on June 14 aita startled ama with a call before 6 am to let her know that
he was coming to Las Arenas. They had to marry because it was dangerous for him to
stay and he had to escape. Ama, with her generous temperament, rushed to her small
suitcase to start packing some of the summer suits her sister Julie had finished sewing
for her, but there was no time or place to carry everything, so she had to leave behind
many things. It was hard for her to go, but with her little bag at dawn he went to
church. Aita was waiting for her and the pastor.
No flowers, no music, no family or friends, but she accepted it all without
complaint for the uncertain future beside the man she loved. At 6 am the pastor of Las
Mercedes, Father Manuel Escauriaza, married them in the sacristy of the Parish Church
of Las Mercedes, which would be bombed, burned and destroyed by a Malatesta
battalion two days later at 3 am on June 16, 1937. The newlyweds said goodbye to their
families and undertook the journey that took them into exile.
Leaving the church they rushed to Portugalete which was on fire. Her first
moments of her married life were moments of sadness and desolation around them.
Before her eyes was a desolate landscape. The beautiful village of Las Arenas was in
ashes and the famous Vizcaya Bridge now lay in ruins. On the boat, they crossed the
Rio Nervion full of twisted pieces of metal that had fallen into the river, and escaping
from the soldiers who came behind them burning houses to leave the village in flames.
On the other side of the estuary picture was not better. More than once they had to hide
in the sewers for with the dawn the air strikes were repeated. They began to climb the
slope, exhausted and hungry. On their way, they saw in the distance Juanito (aita’s
chofer) in the car the government had sent for aita. He had come for aita to bring him to
the Hotel Carlton, where the government was meeting. After leaving his brand new wife
in the Carranza hostel, in the largest valley of Biscay, aita and Juanito continued to
Bilbao to the meeting at the headquarters of the presidency of the President
(Lehendakari) with Basque Government advisers and ministers. The hotel where she
was staying was too dangerous, located at a crossroads and next to the telephone
headquarters so the guests were urged to hide in the mountains. Her sister Juli, who had
reunited with her, and ama spent two nights hiding and half lost in the mountain. This is
the way she spent the first two nights of her honeymoon.

11
SANTANDER

Two days later aita arrived with a government motorcade to pick them up and
continue on to Santander. On June 19 Bilbao fell to Franco's troops. After the fall of
Bilbao, the Basque Government and tens of thousands Basques moved to Santander, a
province controlled by the Popular Front. After so much misery that the people had
gone through in the town was added the pain of what they had lost and the shortage of
food, especially bread. Lola and her elderly father evacuated to Santander as best they
could.
The situation was chaotic in Santander. The confessionaries from the church
were being used in streets for the police to control traffic, and the chapels were used as
theaters. The hotels were full with no place for anyone. Our father had been appointed
director of a colony of Basque children. He was in charge of 500 children to provide
accommodation in Santander and search for a boat to leave with them from this city.
Aita was now acting on behalf of the Basque president. The lehendakari asked him to
speak with the provincial governor and in the meeting he asked the governor for
accommodations for the children and he got rooms in the Hotel Real. This hotel was
built in 1917 and it was located in the most privileged of the city, 500 meters from the
beach.
To our parents they offered accommodation at the convent and church of Santa
Lucia which was built between 1851 and 1868 by the Salesian Sisters Royals. Now it
was taken by the military. Although they were put in the room of the Abbess, when they
turned off the light they heard the noise of hundreds of bugs filling the walls and the bed
and made it impossible for them to stay. They went to the train station at 2 am and there
on the benches of the platform they waited half asleep as four hours later the train
would arrive bringing the children and their teachers. This is the way they spent their
dilated wedding night.
About 20,000 Basques children between 5 and 10 years had to leave their
parents and their land to go to countries like Denmark, France, England, Mexico,
Sweden, and the Soviet Union, places of different cultures and languages. The children
went to these countries as refugees from the Spanish Civil War because of the
desperation of parents after the terrible bombings of Guernica and Durango. By 1937
over 200,000 Basques went into exile because of the war. Aunt Lola, her father and
Aunt Antonia had fled with them to Santander, but ama could not find her father to give
him a final goodbye.
War brings destruction and dire consequences not only those who are struggling
and their families, but also to those fleeing from it, going into exile trying to save their
own lives. War of any kind is at a great cost, and its consequences do not end with the
last shot but remain as an echo in subsequent generations. In the case of our family
history, we became eternal migrants due to two wars, the Spanish Civil War and World
War II. Everyone in our family has been and continues to be, whether we want to or not,
a victim of Franco and Hitler.

BEGINNING OF EXILE

On June 22, 1937 our parents embarked on a small French steamship, the Plus-
Vernet, with a physician, 23 teachers, two cooks and assistants, two nurses, three priests
and other helpers, and 500 children. Thus our parents began their journey into exile.

12
Their destination was St. Jean Pied de Port (in Basque, Donibane Garazi), the old
capital of Basse Navarre, France in the Pyrenees, next to the Nive River, just 3 miles
from the border. Twenty four hours later the group arrived in Bayonne and traveled by
train to their destination.
When they got off the train and walked to the fort in Donibane Garazi, the
people shouted "Gorriak" because of the reputation of the Basques to be communists.
All of them were housed in an abandoned medieval fortress that was called The Citadel,
without lights, water, bedding or blankets. In 1628 the French government to improve
defenses constructed this fort and in 1680 added the walls to south of the River Nive.
The Citadel is on the highest ground in the city. The fort had not been open for 20 years,
since the Great War (1914-1918), and was the place where German soldiers were held
as prisoners of war. It was dirty, cold and dark, inappropriate to house 500 frightened
children. The job of the adults was made twice as difficult as they tried to make a better
place to give confidence to these children. Ama soon turned the cold and desolate place
into something that resembled their distant homes, and with their capable hands they
sewed curtains and bedspreads. Everyone had a special job. Ama was in charge of
caring for and decorating the church of the colony. She was the sacristan, in charge of
having everything ready for the priest, the altar cloth, candles, the missal, and flowers
every day. They decorated the large church, where they celebrated Mass every day. In
the afternoon they prayed the rosary outside in the courtyard. They divided the group
into two and prayed in Basque and Spanish.
In January 1938, six months after arriving in France, aita was sent to Barcelona,
but before he left the two went to Paris. Ama decided to live with her sister Juli. She
was a dressmaker and designer of haute couture, and lived in the Rue Bonaparte # 18,
District #6 in a bohemian neighborhood two blocks from the river Siena. Ama was four
months pregnant with her first child. Aita faced much hunger and danger in Barcelona,
and ama went to speak with Aguirre and Leizaola to get aita reassigned. In April our
father arrived in Aguirre’s car in Paris. He had been appointed Secretary of the
Ministry of Education and Culture, working for Jesus de Leizaola in the Basque
government delegation. The Basque president, his ministers and aides would soon form
the Basque Government in exile headquartered in Paris, at # 11 Rue Marceau.

PARIS

By 1938 when our parents arrived in Paris the city was not the sparkling global
center of culture that it had been before. Now the environment was not hospitable due
to the rapid growth of refugees. For half a decade, refugees from all Europe had
gathered in Paris: Republicans from the Spanish Civil War, Jews escaping from Poland
and Germany, Russian writers and other intellectuals, and thousands of others.
Meanwhile ama prepared with enthusiasm and love a complete wardrobe for
their first child. On May 7, 1938, at 9 pm I was born in the Clinique de Vincennes, 36
Cours de Vincennes. Ama's obstetrician, the famous Dr. Fernand Lamaze was already
waiting for her at the clinic. (Dr. Lamaze was years later (1951) the founder of painless
childbirth.) When the doctor examined her he was not optimistic and he told aita that he
would "not be able to save the child but the mother is not in danger." But it seems I had
other plans. One could speculate that in the hands of another less experienced
obstetrician my birth could have ended tragically. It was a long and difficult labor. At 9
pm Dr. Lamaze appeared sweaty and still in his scrubs to tell aita that "we have saved

13
the child, a girl, healthy and strong, and almost 4 kilos." I was put in a crib next to ama
in the room. Ama had always wanted her first child to be a girl and was happy looking
at the new member of the family. The two proud parents forgot for a moment the
shadows of war. Now they felt less like immigrants with a French daughter.
The baptism took place in the oldest church in Paris, St. Germain des Pres,
which dates from the sixth century. It was a Benedictine abbey and the church was built
to save the relic of the Cross brought from Spain in 543. At the time the church was so
powerful, both religiously and culturally speaking that it became like a village within
the town. It seems Romanesque, more like a medieval fortress. Ama described it in
1938 as a wonder, but when I visited Paris with my daughter Anne Miren years later I
found it empty and dark. It seems to be used now for Sunday concerts.
Our parents wanted me to be baptized with the name Miren Escarne Joana but
they could not give me a name in Basque for both political and religious reasons, so
they named me in French. I was named after Marie Mercedes Jeanne in honor of ama
and our grandmother, but at home I was called Mirentxu.
By February 1939 the Second World War seemed imminent, but the Parisians
and the French in general seemed unworried. They felt confident in the defenses of the
Maginot Line, a line of fortifications, concrete tank obstacles, machine gun posts and
other defenses that France built along its borders with Germany and Italy before World
War II. It was the largest military defense line built in the modern world and consisted
of 108 forts up to fifteen miles away each other, many small forts, and more than 400
kilometers of tunnels.
In mid-August the Basque government sent aita to London for a few months to
inspect colonies of Basque children in England. He called ama constantly and he wrote
every day, until one day he suggested that she meet him in London. Ama got a Basque
friend who was a nurse living in Bayonne to take care of me. For my parents these two
months was their real honeymoon because they were married in the midst of bombing
and war. They returned to Paris happy to get home. Meanwhile at home we followed the
daily routine, and our parents let themselves be carried away by the optimism that
surrounded them.
Ama always liked to get up early, straighten up our house, make the lunch meal,
and then at mid-morning go shopping or walk, and in the beautiful city there was much
to see and do. In this city people worshiped babies and they stopped traffic to give way
to a mother with her infant. In stores salespersons carefully looked after the baby while
the mother was shopping; bus drivers helped her up. When ama took me to walk in
Chaillot Park close to home, aita met with us when he left the government’s offices at
noon. He had always liked babies and to have his own was very special. He spoiled me
a lot and spoke to me affectionately in Euskera, and ama said that as soon as I learned to
walk when aita got home I recognized the bell went to the door to greet him with his
slippers. He fed me every day with pleasure and wrote a poem dedicated to that task that
he had imposed on himself.
On weekends they chose to go for a walk in quiet areas, "breathing fresh air” as
aita liked to say. They frequented the gardens of the Tuileries, near home, the Bois de
Boulogne to the west of the city, with lakes, waterfalls and gardens with majestic trees
where the French monarchy went hunting. This was the place that inspired famous
painters such as Monet and Van Gogh. They also went to the Bois de Vincennes to east
of the city, to its zoo, sports fields and velodrome and racetrack. These two huge parks
are the two lungs of Paris.

14
 They visited museums. Ama was an art enthusiast. They visited the wonderful
churches that were close, like the Madeleine and the de Chaillot which was our parish.
In the latter were held elegant weddings, and ama accompanied Aunt Juli to get details
to design her dresses. Her fashion design business was enjoying a good clientele and
made them forget a little the bad news they heard on the radio. The Basques were
optimistic, although they began to talk about going to America (by which they meant
the Western Hemisphere). The government was in Paris by now, so they were not
thinking about leaving.
On the eve of World War II and ama was expecting her second child, Paris was
mobilized. Everyone fled to the countryside; no one wanted to stay, fearing tears gas
after the experience of the last war. Ama told me that when the sirens sounded they had
to flee to the shelter. They had to go with flashlights because Paris, the City of Light,
was dark and we had to put on the gas masks, but it seems that I was terrified and
crying, and I struggled to keep them from putting it on me. Inside the house they had to
install double curtains for light not to pass to the outside.
From family members left behind, they later learned that his mother Maria, our
paternal grandmother had been evicted from her home for "having criminal children
who had caused the ruin of Vizcaya." Our maternal grandfather also lost his home and
furniture, but his skillful daughter Lola found a way to replace their losses, although he
never got to live in the "Casa Grande" again and with the same luxuries as before.
In late August 1939, ama’s physician, Dr. Lamaze, told her that he had been
called to military service and they had to find another doctor and maybe another
hospital. They thought about going to Roseraie Hospital in Biarritz. The Roseraie was
the pride of the Basque government-in-exile in southern France. The wonderful
hospital, with 500 beds, located in a private villa in Biarritz. More than 800 wounded
Basque soldiers were treated at this facility. It also took care of refugees for free, and
hundreds of children were born in this hospital.
World War II started on 1 September 1939 with the invasion by Germany of
Poland and ended with the surrender of Germany and Italy on 7 May 1945. It was the
largest and bloodiest armed conflict in world history. The armed forces of seventy
countries participated in air, naval and ground combat, and killed about sixty million
people, most of them civilians. This war was a global military conflict involved most of
the nations of the world, including all the major powers and caused the mobilization of
over 100 million military personnel making this the most extensive war in history
Aita and ama bought tickets to go on the train on September 2 in early morning,
but when they got up ama began to experience labor pains. They called the hospital and
were told that it would close the next day. Aita went to street to hail a taxi while ama
was sitting on the steps of their apartment building, but no one stopped. They were all
in a wild flight to leave Paris. But a driver of the Basque government, Rafael Picavea,
who was passing through the place, took them to the clinic on time. My sister was born
two hours later. She was baptized at the clinic because of the emergency, and was given
the name Miren Begoña de la Paz, and they put her in a room covered with cork. Sirens
could be heard throughout the night, ama told us, and they were unable to rest or get
much sleep.
In the autumn, people returned to Paris, but the city was still dark, and they had
to go on the street with flashlights. Paris looked sad and people concerned about the
uncertain future.

15
 On 14 June 1940 the Germans entered Paris. The Maginot Line did not cover the
area chosen by the Germans for their attack was through a wooded and mountainous
region primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, and they then spread out into France in
valleys carved by rivers of fast currents. This was difficult terrain in which to mount
large scale military operations. However, in the First and Second World War the
Germans were successful in crossing through the Ardennes to attack the relatively
weakly defended area of France.

As the Germans occupied France, they now also built the "Atlantic Wall,” which
was like the Maginot Line. This wall was constructed around the Atlantic coastline of
France but the Germans likewise found these defenses useless when the moment
arrived, because the Allies found a way to invade France through Normandy. This was
due in part to the effectiveness of the Basque agents. From 1940 to 1945 the Basque
resistance was involved in activities to contribute to the Allies in the fight against
Germany. The American Consulate in Bilbao became the clearinghouse for intelligence
data that the Basque messengers obtained in France by submitting information about
German operations and bases. One of the most extraordinary efforts of the underground
was one in which the Basque agents cooperated with the French maquis to remove sand
from various parts of the beaches of Normandy and put it in bags and to be smuggled
across the border to Bilbao and then to England. There experts could analyze the sand
density and identify the best beaches for heavy vehicles during the invasion of France in
1944.
Paris was now a dangerous city. Jesus Leizaola asked aita to go to Bordeaux to
find a house where they could transfer the Basque government. Aunt Juli took me with
her to Biarritz; ama and aita took Begoña with them to Bordeaux
Eight million people were now on the roads out of Paris; six million of these
were French. People piled up in a chaotic manner in overcrowded villages to the south
and west. Conditions were unbearable with the heat, crowds and chaos. France was
lucky to have escaped a major epidemic. In retrospect it appears that the dangers and
problems in staying to face the Germans were less than the risks of facing the road.
Schools, hospitals and prisons were evacuated. Initially the evacuation was principally
by train but they were filled quickly and the trains were targeted by enemy aircraft. The
best way to escape was by bicycle because it was easy to avoid the crowded roads;
Bordeaux was nearly 600 kilometers from Paris. At this time conditions were total
chaos and the Germans bombed the city before occupying it. Our parents realized that
nothing could be done and they returned to Biarritz on a train. Since trains were so
crowded, there was no room for furniture, and they had to leave their luggage on the
station platform. All their other things were removed from the home of Paris. Ama
hated to leave it all there but there was no other choice.
On 1 April 1939 Franco announced "The war is over" with the victory of
nationalist side and the defeat of the Republicans. There now began one of the most
harrowing consequences of the Civil War: the exodus of thousands of people fleeing the
persecution and revenge of Franco. Forced to live in foreign lands was how our parents
faced World War II.
When they arrived in Biarritz, the city was full of Germans, and the idea of
being turned over to them was disturbing to aita. It was known that a certain Basagoiti
was sent by the Germans to Spain. Luis Companys, a Catalan politician and lawyer and
leader of the political party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (a pro-independence

16
party, declared illegal by Franco in 1939), was delivered by German agents and sent to
Spain and there was arrested and executed on October 14, 1940.
Faced with this news aita decided to leave France and go to England, but after
waiting for several nights for a boat and getting nothing he decided to take the train to
Marseille and wait for a ship to get out of France. But for this he first had to report to
the German Kommandatur, the German military headquarters in Biarritz, for
permission. In the words of ama, "aita was scared to death," but they gave him the pass
without problems and he could get a train to Marseille. Meanwhile ama, my Aunt Juli,
my sister and I stayed in Biarritz.

MARSEILLE

Arriving in Marseille aita soon learned that a boat would soon be coming, but
only men could embark, and aita wanted to be with the ama at that time while he
waited. Communications between aita and ama in those days was almost impossible.
The phone lines were cut and the mail was intercepted and read by the Vichy
government. Soon aita met a Basque who delivered messages clandestinely between
Biarritz and Marseille and he sent him an urgent message to ama, saying said "Leave
everything and come, there may have a boat and I can go, you can be with me until it
leaves, it will take only men."
Ama had no way to communicate with him because the messenger was killed
"As a spy." Ama was torn between the alternative of leaving "two girls so small and
helpless,” or to leave her husband alone in the weeks before he left for America. Aunt
Juli resolved her doubt. She encouraged her not to leave her husband alone. She would
take care of us, and ama, thinking that maybe it would be a matter of weeks, decided to
join our father in Marseilles, leaving us with Aunt Julie. Although it was a very painful
choice, encouraged by her sister Juli she decided to go to be with our father. She waited
for my sister and me to take our naps to say goodbye. She covered us with kisses, and
crying left us asleep. She worried about leaving us as small as we were in occupied
France where everything was rationed. She later noted that in the plight of the moment
"one reacts like a robot and doesn’t think." Begoña was thirteen months old and I was
29 months. At two in the afternoon she went by train to Marseille. She said repeatedly
that this decision would affect and weigh on her all her life.
During her trip on the train to Marseille from Biarritz she cried. It broke her
heart to think of the moment that we would wake up and she was not there with us, and
she knew that I would notice her absence more than my sister and ask for her. Ama tells
us of the "very bitter years I spent separated from the girls.” Once again she was
heading into the unknown
In Marseille they went hungry with food rations of condensed milk carrots, figs,
bread, eggs, and no salaries. The Mistral wind, a strong, cold wind from the northwest,
made for a most distressing situation. There were rumours now that ship could take
wives and families. Ama tried to convince Aunt Julia to come to Marseille with us to
leave all together to America, which had always been the dream of his sister Julie. They
already had passports for us and for her, but she preferred to return to Euskadi to see
their father, who was old and sick, and she would take us with her as she believed that
the boat trip was dangerous for us and we would be safer and well looked after with her.
And she did so to the dismay of ama, who did not want to leave without us.

17
 A few days before boarding the ship, ama went for a walk alone on the beach.
Watching the sea reminded her of her days on the beach at Biarritz with us two. She
took out of her pocketbook the tiny black and white photograph of us on the beach and,
upon seeing a painter; she asked to have the small photo transformed into a large
painting to hang on the wall. And the painter, moved by the grief of the mother, painted
a color version of the photo. She kissed and hugged her painting give her some
comfort. This painting was placed at the head of their bed in the cabin of the boat and in
their homes it was always given a proud place. Even so, after her death the painting
disappeared.
But there is another picture also taken in Biarritz and it is my favorite, perhaps
because of her sensitive maternal gesture to me that I needed, both during our separation
in my childhood and later in my worst moments of doubt and inner struggle of my
memories of these times. The photograph helped me to reconnect with that dear little
girl in Biarritz.
On a cold January day in 1941, after they had been waiting for three months in
Marseille, a ship appeared on the horizon. It was French, the Alsina, built in 1921 with a
weight of 8,043 tonnes. Its itinerary was Dakar-Bahia-Rio de Janeiro-Santos-
Montevideo-Buenos Aires. The ship sailed on 15 January 1941 with 150 Basque adults
and 38 children from one month to 14 years old. It was very painful for ama to see the
families with young children on the ship and she being without us and knowing how
much we needed her, and much she needed us too. She locked herself in her cabin to
cry. She did not want aita to see her suffer to not give him more grief. For several days
she was sick with an unexplained fever. The ship would take them and 188 Basques
from that bloody war they would be safe in fifteen days. Our parents said goodbye to
European soil very sad to leave behind two young daughters and their old Europe.

SECOND EXILE

Meanwhile in Spain Franco and his Falange party imposed the law that children
of Spaniards abroad were to be repatriated to Spain because they had a special interest
to retrieving the children of the defeated enemies. They were called "children recovered
for the country," where they underwent a process of ideological reeducation. France, as
the refuge of most of the Basque children was immediately the traget. A Basque
evacuated to England at the age of fourteen commented in his home in Begoña, in
Bilbao, 43 years later, "I guess the fascists thought prolonging our stay in democratic or
socialist countries would ripen the seeds of future enemies.” Another boy from the
Citadelle colony at St. Jean Pied-de Port said "None of us wanted to go, but we were at
their mercy. At the Citadel we felt like we were home and now going into the unknown.
At the border, the Guardia Civil tried to make us salute the flag of Franco, but we only
looked at them." Every time war erupts it is the children who suffer most because in
addition to separating them from all they know and need, they do not understand why
what is happening around them.
Most children, who were six or older, who had left during the Spanish civil war
were repatriated, but many of them never returned from exile. Our case was different.
In the midst of World War II our parents emigrated, leaving us in Biarritz, France, and
we both suffered from the maternal deprivation from the tender age of 1 and 2 ½ years
old respectively. We were both too young to be separated from our parents, but
especially from our mothe. The painful decision brought sadness to ama and to us for

18
the rest of our lives. She relates "I spent very hard years separated from the girls ... A
constant resentment, why didn’t we bring them?" was mixed with the anxious questions:
"What is waiting for us and where would we go?" And before that unknown she thought
it was better that we were not on the ship.
Because the Germans did not allow Vichy French ships to cross the Atlantic,
Hitler bombed from the air the ships that dared such a feat. So when the Alsina
passengers got to Dakar, Senegal, twelve days later they had to wait to get aboard a
neutral vessel. In the long wait in Dakar, a child died of malaria and another person of
yellow fever else, and it was at times like these that our parents consoled themselves,
thinking that it was a blessing not to have us both of us with them.
They celebrated Easter on the ship using barrels of wine as an altar, and singing
in Basque and French. Preparing for it they made their confessions took communion on
the kneeler that ama covered with her red coat. The diva Doña Maria, dressed in a long
black dress, gave them concerts. Aita taught Basque classes during this time and ama
tried to learn, but her soul, aching over our absence, didn’t let her mind concentrate very
well to learn as well as she would have wanted. She knew that for aita it was important
that she learn. The chief of police of Dakar was French Basque and spoke Basque. He
came aboard and invited about thirty of them to his home and he gave them a good meal
and they sang into the night.
After five months anchored in Dakar, they returned to Casablanca. When they
arrived there, they were taken to a concentration camp, called Sidi-el-Ayachi, in a bus,
and there, with wet towels on their heads and their feet in water they spent some very
bad times as far as food, heat and hygiene were concerned. There were forty persons in
a shed or storehouse with a tin roof, a stone floor, and sacks filled with hay on the floor
to sleep. The walls were covered with limestone and rats chewed at the clothes they
hung up. Horse flies flew around, drawn by the nearby stables. Outside there was no
shade because there were no trees. They were given sardines and hardboiled eggs to
eat. A scorpion stung a child in the night and his cries were alarming. Ama says that
their thoughts were constantly with us.
After a while, perhaps because of good conduct, they sent them to live in
Casablanca until they could sail. Months passed, and even though they lived better here
than in the concentration camp, the days still passed slowly. They had nothing to do
except try to survive on the little food they were given.
Ama learned that some ships with Basque crews were arriving in Casablanca,
and she asked the crew members to take to us two plastic dolls dressed by her in
complete beautiful outfits. One she dressed as a new-born for Begoña and the other like
a little girl for me. The seamen were happy to fulfill their promise, and I remember
receiving my doll, which I baptized Nicole, and I carried her everywhere with me. It
seems that I asked for ama and aita, and my aunt tole me “they are going far away, to
America.” And I replied “and why don’t they come here to be with me?” My Aunt
Lola simply held me without saying anything else. Later ama told us that the pain she
felt at not having us at her side was intense, and more when she saw around her other
exiled couples with their small children, who ran and played. Dressing the dolls
softened somewhat her pain; doing it, she felt closer to Begoña and to me.
Finally a ship appeared in the port. It was the Quanza, a Portuguese ship that
could cross the Atlantic because it was from a neutral country. Aboard this ship ama
assisted with the birth of the third child of their friends, the Bilbaos. The seasick doctor
lying on his bunk gave instructions to our mother how to handle the birth. Everything

19
went well and a girl was born who was called Aintzane. This ship took them to
Bermuda, Vercruz (in Mexico), and Havana.
They left the ship in Havana and there they had to wait three months before they
could leave on an Argentine ship, the Rio de la Plata, which would take them to
Montevideo, Uruguay, and finally to their destination, Buenos Aires, Argentina. A
submarine intercepted their ship but allowed them to proceed. They left the ship on
April 15, 1942 in Buenos Aires. A trip of 15 days had become an odyssey of 15
months.
These three ships were witness to the pain of our parents and other European
immigrants from the Second World War. The fate of the three ships that took our
parents from the sad and bloody Europe to the young, free American land is the
following. From the time the Second World War began until it ended, the Atlantic
Ocean was the principal theater of operations.
The first was the French ship, the Alsina, which took them from Marseille,
France, to Casablanca, Africa. It was sunk in an aerial bombardment by German
airplanes on November 13, 1942, near the coast of Algeria.
The second ship, the Portuguese Quanza, which took them from Casablanca to
Havana, Cuba, was the only one of the three ships that ended in a natural way, but sill
full of history. The Quanza has legal and historical roots in America because it brought
nearly a hundred Jews escaping Hitler’s claws. Arriving at New York, they were not
allowed to disembark not because they were Jews but because they did not have a visa.
It was decided that the ship would return to Europe with its Jewish passengers, who
would certainly be executed. To refuel before crossing the Atlantic they had to make a
stop in Norfolk, Virginia. With the ship anchored in port, the wife of the president,
Eleanor Roosevelt, learned of what had happened and intervened with her husband,
Franklin, to let them disembark there, and so on August 19, 1940, eighty Jews were
saved. The grateful Jews sent a bouquet of roses to the Roosevelts with a card that read
“With eternal gratitude for your humane gesture toward the refugees of the Quanza”.
This happened 14 months before ama and aita embarked on this ship. The library of the
Law School of the University of Richmond, the capital of Virginia, is a repository of the
history and culture of Virginia. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this event there
was a commemoration, and among other things they exhibited a model of the ship itself.
The ship was sold for demolition on October 12, 1968, in Castellon de la Plana, Spain.
Bob and I visited the university to see the reproduction of the ship. And I took
along the photo of our parents taken on this ship. There in the glass case was the ship
that took our parents away from the hot African continent. It was very moving to see it
because we have a photo of ama and aita in front of the life preserver that indicates the
name of this ship. The designer of the model, a builder of naval models, told me that
when they chose him for the job it was not easy because he had to base his work
entirely on old photos and on designs of merchant ships of the era. But for me it was
perfect. Bob could locate our parents on the stern of the ship between three and four
o’clock in the afternoon by placing the photo and the model of the ship together.
The third ship, the Argentine Rio de la Plata, which covered the last part of the
trip from Cuba to Buenos Aires, was burned on August 18, 1944, with a total loss of the
ship, which now lies on the bottom of the bay at Acapulco, Mexico.

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CHAPTER II
LAS ARENAS, GETXO

Countries and parents suffer the effects of war intensely, but so do. Children are
one of the sectors of the population who suffer most in wars as there are deaths,
malnutrition, disease and psychological trauma by being forced into continuous
displacement. For our parents it was a cultural mutilation, added to the pain of having
left two so young daughters so far away and. For the Basques, the Spanish Civil War
and then World War II tore from Euskadi a large number of its most prominent and
prestigious intellectuals.
While our parents left for America, Aunt Juli left with us from Biarritz. By train
she crossed the border with the two of us without documentation or authority to take us
out of France. The new law of Franco helped such a plan since our return to Spain
recovered the daughters of the defeated. But Begoña recently explained to us that Aunt
Juli could do it because she designed and sewed clothes for the wife of the ambassador
of Spain to France, José Félix de Lequerica Erquiza, when they lived in Paris. Now his
intervention made it possible for our aunt to cross the border with two French girls and
14 trunks of fabrics, clothes and designs, enough to start her haute couture business in
San Sebastian
Lequerica went to France as ambassador in 1939, and later was ambassador to
the Vichy regime allied with Nazi Germany. As Ambassador he was noted for his
relentless persecution of the exiles from the war in Spain. He got arrested Lluis
Companys and other Republican leaders, who handed over to the Francoist authorities,
as well Julian Zugazagoitia and Joan Peiro who were also shot. He was a staunch enemy
of Basque nationalism.
Across the border Uncle Ino and Aunt Lola waited for us. Aunt Juli decided to
stay and to live in beautiful San Sebastian and opened a tailoring shop here. She stayed
with Begoña and they took me to Las Arenas, about 120 miles away to live with uncles
and my grandfather. They separated the two sisters without thought of the terrible loss
we had already suffered.
Our maternal grandfather had lost his apartment and belongings from the "Casa
Grande" and went to live in a modest apartment in the district of Santa Ana, a first-floor
apartment at #24 Gobelas Street in Las Arenas. The house was sunny and open as all the
rooms opened onto the outside. It had three bedrooms, large living and dining rooms,
huge bathroom and a kitchen with wood and coal stoves and a large crisper in the
window. Grandpa lived with his eldest daughter, Lola, and his only son Ino. Ino
managed the shares of stock that he and his sisters still owned in their father’s factory,
and he was also Vice President of the “Talleres Erandio” corporation. His other
daughter Mari had gone to France and later to Caracas, Venezuela, with her husband
Luis and his daughter Maria Luisa. She was a piano teacher and she made her way in
Venezuela teaching. On the fourth floor lived our Aunt Elvira, his niece.
I had a large room with a large balcony overlooking the back garden with
orchards of about 22 square meters per family. There they raised chickens or grew
vegetables. In front of the house was a large yard surrounded by a fence. My room was
large and sunny and I shared it with Aunt Lola. The room contained a king bed, and
over the head a newly acquired painting of the Guardian Angel protecting two children
crossing a dangerous bridge. Aunt Lola and I prayed every night that I might be
protected at night and during the day too. This would be her principal worry. Above

21
the night table were many pictures, all protected by glass. A favorite of mine was of
ama who wore a necklace of glass beads, which Aunt Lola had kept let me have. I
looked at it through the sunshine that bathed my room, trying to imagine some unknown
landscape. The necklace was emerald green. Also in my room there was a large closet,
and small toy chest to keep the clothes of my doll Nicole, an armchair and a small shelf
where I kept a collection of books of the German brothers Grimm with the reading of
which I nourished myself intellectually during the seven years I lived in Las Arenas.
We arrived at Las Arenas. In one trip I had lost my parents, sister, and the aunt
with whom I had lived since birth. My grandfather was very happy to have me in his
home and he called me Merceditas, perhaps because I reminded him of his distant
daughter. In Las Arenas I had two aunts to take care of me. Aunt Lola, who said that I
brought the sun into the home, nicknamed me "Solete." (Sunshine) She was in charge of
my religious life. She took me to Mass with her and we visited all the churches around
Easter. In the school she was highly regarded by the nuns. She was a frequent visitor to
check on my "academic" progress. She also took me to visit the Shrine of Arrate.
Arrate, which means “stones” in Basque, is a mountain near the city of Eibar
(Guipuzcoa) with a height of 556 meters. Along the top, crowned by a large stone cross,
is a recreational area surrounding the Shrine of Our Lady of Arrate. Inside is a
venerated image of the Virgin from the fourteenth century.
We played a lot in the woods of pine and beech, picking blackberries, sometimes
with Begoña and always with the children of Aunt Andresa, the brother of Uncle Pedro.
In winter in the snow we saw my uncle hunting wolves that lived in the region and we
attend the classes that Uncle Pedro taught to children from neighboring villages.
The chaplain of the Shrine of Arrate was Don Pedro Gorostidi (1915-2001) a
great photographer and a first-rate electronics expert who founded the first radio station
in Euskara in Eibar, "Arrate Irratia," in late December 1959. The painter Ignacio
Zuloaga, born in Eibar, probably the most important Basque painter of the late
nineteenth century, donated some of his works to the sanctuary including the painting of
Our Lady of Arrate that were exhibited in the small enclosure of the altar. Aunt Lola
and Aunt Elvira liked to help their cousin, Uncle Pedro, especially in the special festival
on September 8 for Our Lady of Arrate. We visited very often in winter or summer. We
went by train from Las Arenas to Eibar and from there we climbed the narrow, winding
road to the summit of Mount Arrate. Begoña and I were carried in baskets on the backs
of donkeys. They gave us chocolate bars and some comics, cartoons aimed at children
such as "Tiny Anita”, a blond with braids who faced many dangers and enemies like
horrible witches I guess to keep us quiet, while the aunts were talking behind us. In
addition to religious ceremonies in which I participated in the procession, there were
dance competitions, Basque rural sports, Basque dance contest Basque and bertsolaris
(improvising Basque poets and singers).
Aunt Elvira loved children, and she lied without reservation to cover my antics
and she spoiled me by bringing goodies almost daily. She was in charge of my social
life. She took me on Sunday afternoons to visit my grandmother and my cousins in
Algorta. We also went to Bilbao to visit old friends of my parents who had two girls my
age or to the famous and largest covered market in Europe”Mercado de La Ribera”
according to the Guiness Book. Or we would go to Portugalete on the ferry to have hot
chocolate with churros or attend fairs in town. I saw my sister Begoña when there was a
family event or during the Christmas holidays.

22
 We were often visited by a niece of my grandfather, Aunt Antonia, tall and thin
and she used a cane, she always dressed in black as I remember. When we had a
telephone installed in the house, maybe because it was black, she did not want to use it
to talk to her sister who lived in Madrid because he believed that this device was an
invention of the devil.
Less than a year after I arrived from France I started school at "La Divina
Pastora." Today it is called "Mother of the Divine Shepherd" and is across the street
from the home of my grandfather. I was three and a half years old. I liked the theater
and in my first performance I said a verse of twenty words to the Mother Superior that I
still have. It seems that everyone clapped and I did too with enthusiasm. Meanwhile my
grandfather and I were creating many problems. We understood each other very well,
and no one could cope with our mischief.
Our parents were kept informed of what Begoña and I were up to. Aunt Lola
wrote letters and eagerly described my latest deeds and my bad behavior, but she added
that my friendliness avercame any punishment. (I still have that letter.) And Aunt Juli
wrote about Begoña’s progress. She was less trouble than I was.
On 24 September, the festival of the Virgen de Las Mercedes, the town of Las
Arenas was decorated for their festival, with gigantes (giant paper mache figures carried
by people inside them) and cabezudos (huge paper mache heads on people’s shoulders),
toros de fuego, and cooking contests. With that in mind my friends and I held snail
races. In the garden there were a lot of them and we put them to climb up the wall of the
house, and we spent hours deciding the championship. We also played marbles, one of
the oldest games, or jacks (our jacks were made from the knee of the hind legs of
lambs) known from classical antiquity and one of our most popular games around that
era. We played hide-and-seek a lot, and we went all around the center of town and we
hid in the gardens of the vacant summer houses. One house across from the train station
was our favorite; the owners of these villas only came in summer. Spinning a top was
another of our favorite pastimes. The neighborhood ice cream vendor kept his cart in the
small garage in our garden, and if we were out playing when he came home in the
evening he handed out to us the ice cream that he had left.
On December 28 we celebrated with great pomp our grandfather's birthday.
Days before relatives had come from towns and villages nearby to help prepare the
sumptuous dinner. Earlier in the kitchen all the women around a huge bowl killed and
plucked chickens and until cooking time they left them hanging on the balcony to keep
them fresh. One time I had the idea to grab one and throw it to the dog Txiki that
belonged to our downstairs neighbors. I sure he was licking his chops when he smelled
that chicken. I do not remember what happened when it came time to cook it and they
realized they were missing a chicken, but surely Aunt Elvira bailed me out with one of
her famous tricks.
With the arrival of two txistularis (txistu players) from Algorta, the party began.
The txistu is a kind of fipple flute with three holes. At dessert a family friend, Maria
Basañez, played the piano and everyone under the dierection of Uncle Ino sang Boga-
Boga (a traditional Basque sailors’ song) solemnly. The house was full of people, many
had come days before to help the aunts prepare the big dinner in honor of our
grandfather. My sister and I continued the fun by jumping on the bed in my room as I
remember. The dinner lasted until the wee hours of the morning. There were special
toasts for the absent family members. Ama wistfully wrote about it and wished she
could return. My aunts answered "it will be soon."

23
 Everything around me was good and lively, at least until I visited my friends and
saw them with their parents, and I resented it a lot for not having mine although it was
not something I liked to talk about. I felt sad that my parents did not live with me. It was
such a longing to have my parents that sometimes when I came home from school
before knocking on the door of the house, I yelled "Ama, aita open the door" so my
friends would hear and think that my parents had already returned. While I lived
through all these experiences, my parents were in Casablanca, Morocco, Africa. They
had been waiting six months for a neutral vessel to cross the Atlantic and go to
Argentina. They had also been in a concentration camp on the outskirts of Dakar,
Senegal, Africa. I did not know all that at the time. Since I liked jewelry, I was happy
when I received from them an amber necklace that I still have
The day after (el Dia de) Reyes (January 6, or Twelthnight in English-speaking
countries), without any time to play with our new toys, my sister and Aunt Juli would
leave to go to San Sebastian and we felt sorry to say goodbye. We got along very well
but were very different in temperament, and physically. She was blonde with big brown
eyes, pretty face and had a small stature; I had brown hair, freckles, and was slender.
Also, our lifestyle was different, and we were following different models. She lived
more isolated from other children because she stopped going to school after the kids
called her "daughter of reds (communists)" with contempt. An andereño (Basque
teacher) came to teach her at home. She was shyer and quieter than I, my temper was
more restless. I was tried to be the leader, and she followed me as much as she could.
We both needed the company of the other, but we seldom had it
Meanwhile my parents had arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ama wrote often
and my aunts and uncle kept them up to date about both of us constantly. They
announced to us the arrival of a new sister, Arantzazu, who was born on January 21,
1943, and said we would soon be able to play with her. They were convinced that their
return was imminent.
My grandfather suffered from arteriosclerosis and used a wheelchair in his final
months. His death was sudden at 79 years of age. I was told that he was sleeping and
during his wake and burial I stayed with family friends upstairs and saw the funeral
procession along Gobelas Street, the priest, the acolytes with their candles and people
behind on their way to the church, but I do not think I realized what was happening. I
was five. He died without our mother’s being able to say her last goodbye.
One year after the death of our grandfather Aunt Lola decided to go to Caracas,
Venezuela to be with her sister Mari who was very ill at the time, and now left my life
another person who had been important to me. At home I was under the tutelage of
Uncle Ino and my new Aunt Carmen. I loved my uncle, and Aunt Carmen was very
good to me. When I was not in school I went shopping at the plaza with her as I had
done with Aunt Lola. I carried my little basket, and almost always came home with
some homemade things that they gave me at the plaza. When we returned from
shopping the food was almost done, and smelled delicious as it had been simmering on
the coal stove and soon my uncle came to eat with us. My aunt and uncle often took me
for a ride to Bilbao. What I remember most is going to Arenal de Bilbao in Semana
Grande (Big Week, a local festival) and riding on the carousels.
My uncle liked to tell of the time when the Arenas Club (the local soccer team)
was champion of Spain in 1919 and runner-up in 1925 and 1927, and when Arenas beat
Barcelona by 5 to 2 in the Racing Field in Madrid. . And together we sang the song
about the game: "... Alirón, Alirón the Arenas Champion". He played soccer on the

24
Arenas Club and had a large photo in the living room with the signatures of the team.
The photo showed the players and I remember a few of those successful times: Peña,
Careaga, Monache and Robus the first three of whom I met. The Arenas Club was
formed in 1912. They first played on a soccer field in Lamiako, but soon they left for
the sports club in Neguri, Jolaseta. Ama told us of his season of glory because once our
uncle had scored a goal. When our uncle playing the whole family attended, and urged
him to score a goal or Aunt Lola would not pay him his allowance.
My uncle also liked to take me to the balcony at dusk to watch the fiery lights of
the blast furnaces, the huge ovens where iron was smelted, but he told me it was the
place where they sent those who were naughty. Once he took me to see the launching of
a ship in the Rio Nervion. It was a moment of great excitement when the ship dropped
from the top of the dike to the surface of the river. We watched with horror as the ship
shook until it finally rested quietly in the water.
In those days, I had a small accident which could have been serious. I was
playing in the house of my friend Miguel Angel, and we decided to create our own
railway line. We put chairs in a row and then 'traveled' under them, perhaps because the
train station was so close to home and we could hear constant whistles. One of the
chairs had a nail sticking out underneath that cut me badly on my forehead. It was
bleeding and it hurt a lot and my friend's terrified mother carried me down the stairs
from where they lived on the third floor, while I cried inconsolably and called for ama.
I was almost 6 years. It was a difficult time for Aunt Carmen. They cleaned up the
wound, and a centimeter scar was visible on my forehead, but is invisible today.
When our parents learned that they had separated Begoña and me, they did not
like it at all because we were not growing up like sisters. But living so far from us, it
was hard for them to evaluate the circumstances and they were very grateful that
everyone treated us well. Shortly after Aunt Lola left, Aunt Juli invited me to spend
some time in San Sebastian, and I decided to try it only for the three summer months,
since I went to school. I boarded the train "El Correo" in Bilbao’s Atxuri station, and
five hours later we entered Amara station in San Sebastian. Begoña was waiting for me
accompanied by Contxesi. She was a Basque-speaking peasant woman from Guipuzcoa,
a first-rate cook who loved my sister Begoña and the right hand of my aunt. She and
Contxesi understood each other very well and they spoke in Euskera. I knew a few
words I learned from my grandfather; to him Erdera (the Basque word for the Spanish
language) was his second language. My sister was happy to see me, and so was I to see
her.
San Sebastian was once a fortified town and fishing village. Now was the Bella
Easo. Aunt Juli lived in an apartment at #15 General Echagüe Street. The house had two
floors. In the basement were the kitchen, bathroom, Contxesi’s room and two large
rooms that held the sewing workshop where a dozen seamstresses worked. The upstairs
was elegantly decorated highlighting the colors maroon and sky blue. The entrance had
a beautiful mahogany cabinet where the phone was, with an upholstered chair, and it
had a maroon carpet. There was an elegant dining room with a large fireplace made of
wood and tiles, and a burgundy carpet and leather armchairs. It was also the bedroom
because a cabinet during the day became a bed at night. The dining room was connected
by sliding doors to a room dedicated to fashion shows. The carpet and sofas wore light
blue and the very dim lighting antorchas embedded in the walls gave a warm and
elegant appearance. This was followed by a waiting room in the same style and finally
a fitting room and a large bathroom as big as the dining room. Every room had huge

25
windows overlooking the River Urumea. The house was located on the corner of
General Echagüe and Paseo Salamanca. The place was beautiful, and I remember falling
asleep to the sound of waves hitting the rocks on the banks of river. The large five-story
stone building was built in the nineteenth century, and it had high ceilings. Aunt Juli
was a true artist in design and sewing and she had her fashion design business in her
apartment.. It was more a home than a business. She traveled a lot during the week, but
when she was at home she was working in the workshop or fitting a customer, and often
we only saw her during lunch. Sundays she took us to Mass at the Cathedral of the
Good Shepherd and sometimes watched boat races in the bay before coming home for
lunch. We were always beautifully dressed. But for me the best of this city was playing
with my sister and we got along very well even though we were living different
experiences. She lived in this elegant, secure but lonely environment, and I was in a
more modest, but more free and had more friends. In this beautiful city of San
Sebastian, we hadn’t the freedom to go out alone because the house was facing the
highly trafficked Paseo Salamanca.
A few months after the birth of our little sister in Buenos Aires, our parents went
to live in Montevideo, Uruguay. The Basque president José Antonio Aguirre at that time
was living in New York and he commissioned aita to be in charge of the Basque
Cultural Week of 1943 in Uruguay. Uruguay at that time had a democratic regime, and
was a close friend of democracy, while in Argentina occurred on 4 June of that year a
military coup that had a positive attitude towards Franco. Aita accepted the new
responsibility of organizing the Basque Week which started on 30 October and was
delayed until November 13, 1943. One of his main tasks was to develop honorary
committees composed entirely of prominent members of the public and intellectual life
of Uruguayan society. His job was made easier because he was a distant relative of the
then-President of the Republic, Juan Jose Amezaga. Their grandfathers had been
brothers. For that Basque Week our father worked hard to have the participation of
poets, painters, writers, sculptors, musicians, and dancers. Aguirre also decided to
continue with the Basque Delegation (with the functions of an embassy representing the
interests of the Basque Government-in-Exile) in Montevideo. In the spring of 1943,
Aguirre asked his old friend Vicente to take over as Director of the Basque Delegation
in Montevideo, which was equivalent to be ambassador to Uruguay, but of course it was
only an honorary title. After two visits to study the situation, aita agreed and moved the
family to Montevideo in September, 1943. They seemed happy. Aita’s very big task
was to raise awareness of Basque culture in this city where it was not widely known,
and ama was concerned with social work. Throughout these times, however, our
mother, as she used to say, the shadow of our absence pained her heart constantly.
In me there continually vibrated a concern that my sister did not share, and it
was the desire to be close to our mother and meet our parents wherever it might be, but
still we were at war, it was not safe to cross the ocean and there was nobody to take
responsibility for our care. So it was not much could be done. Our uncle and aunts
always say "next year you'll be all together", but months and years passed without it
happening.
Now that I knew how to write, I could tell them all this and about my life and I
wrote to our parents often. We received their news frequently. Our brother Joseba
Bingen was born on April 18, 1945, and the war was almost over. Our parents started to
talk about reuniting Begoña and me with them. They wanted us to make the trip
together, to which Aunt Juli told them that the journey by ship from Bilbao to
Montevideo, Uruguay, was very long, in those times about one month, and she

26
suggested it would be better for one to make the journey and then the other. That was a
long trip for two and more if we were going by ourselves. Our parents were not happy
about this but they agreed. I immediately started making plans for what until then had
been only a dream, first trying to convince Begoña that we should go together. I think if
we had lived together at the time it would have been happen like that.
I arrived back in Las Arenas in time to start school. I missed my sister, but my
return brought happiness back to my uncle and aunt. They could not have children and
it seems I filled their lives very well, and I was happy to go to school and see my
friends.

One day in October of 1945 my paternal grandmother, Maria, who lived in

Algorta was going to daily Mass at the Church of the Trinity when tripped on the steps
of the door fell and broke her hip. She had surgery, but died shortly afterwards of
pneumonia at age 83 without her youngest child nearby. I still remember her funeral. I
was seven years old. After her death I had occasionally went to visit Algorta and see
my uncles and cousins with whom I played very well. Her death re-opened the wound
of separation in our parents who could not give a last goodbye to their parents.
As the Basque Delegate in Montevideo, aita also became leader of a spy network
of a dozen Basque men who gathered intelligence about fascist agents in Uruguay.
They sent this information to the Basques in New York who then sent it to Washington.
The money earned from this service was a vital part of family income in the early and
mid 1940's. In early 1947 the U.S. made a shift of 180 degrees from their concerns with
fascists to the onset of the Cold War. Communism became the enemy and Spain became
an ally in this struggle. Now the State Department and the CIA withdrew their financial
support from the Basque government, a step that subjected the exiles to a financial crisis
which they never recovered. So now the family home was going through financial hard
times.
We were in the year 1947. Ama wrote that for my birthday I would have a new
brother and they want for me to be the godmother. I was happy, but they changed their
minds about the godmother. Maybe I was too young; I was going to be only nine years
old. At school the nuns began to prepare me for First Communion.
Our parents wanted to be present for such a great day and they were saddened
that I would do it far from them. But I would soon be nine years and the school didn’t
know how much longer they could wait. We went to the photographer Cañada to take
photos to send to them. My lovely organdy gown was made in the sewing shop of Aunt
Juli. The celebrant was Uncle Pedro; the date was May 7, my birthday. The place was
the school chapel in a private ceremony. The small church was decorated with beautiful
flowers in May. In front of the altar were three sets of red velvet couches that would be
occupied by my Uncle Ino and Aunt Carmen and in between was mine, wrapped in
white tulle. The chapel was full of lights and flowers. It was a very good day except for
the absence of our parents, which it was the only shadow. When I knelt at my pew
fervently prayed to God that I would meet our parents very soon. Seven months later I
was on a ship to Montevideo, Uruguay. Four days after I made my First Communion,
May 11, 1947, our brother, Xabier Iñaki, was born.
The captain of the ship Monte Amboto, Captain Gastiarena, a friend of my uncle,
told him they were going to South America with stops in Montevideo, Uruguay, next
December and he would be responsible for both of us; but Begoña was unwilling to
leave. It was a long journey and I would have to go alone, without my sister or anyone I

27
knew. Her refusal did not diminish my strong desire to meet our parents. So I began my
trip preparation. The months went by quickly. I do not remember what was going
through my mind when I was about to leave everything that was so familiar and friendly
to me to embark alone to a distant place to go to meet my parents and three younger
siblings. But I don’t think I had doubts about the step that I was going to take, but
though I did not know it, it would completely change my life and that of my parents and
siblings.
In another trip to San Sebastian, again I proposed to Begoña to accompany me
on the journey to America. I could not believe that she did not feel as I did about
something I wanted so badly. It was midsummer and we were both on the Paseo Nuevo
skating and I put emphasis that on this trip we needed to go together. This time I said it
very seriously and I remember exactly her words, "I'm afraid to travel by boat going so
far and I don’t like very much the idea of living with younger siblings." I remember
that day because while we were discussing our future, we looked at some of the people
sitting on the benches of the Paseo Nuevo reading the newspaper with a headline that
read "Manolete Dead". But while the news did not matter to us a lot, when we got
home the seamstresses were talking about the event, saying that the greatest and most
legendary bullfighter in history was killed by a deep goring deep (the bull’s horn
severed his femoral vein and this event turned him into a myth of post-war Spain) and
that was on August 29, 1947. Years later in Montevideo when I did an oral presentation
covering the culture of the Iberian Peninsula, I would explain to the class about this
event with as much eloquence as if I had been present at that event.
I left San Sebastian to go to Bilbao. My uncle went to meet me at the train
station in Bilbao. We drove to Las Arenas in the car in silence. After a long pause he
said, "You know you do not have to go if you do not want to." I nodded, but I had
already made the decision and no one could convince me otherwise.
Days before I left my aunt and uncle gave me a beautiful gold bracelet with four
precious amethyst stones, light purple hue, called "Rose of France". They told me that
whenever I put it on I should remember them. And I wore it during the journey and
today I still have it and I keep it as a small treasure. I learned that this rock is soothing
and invigorating in case of stress, nervousness, fear and anxiety and is one of the
world's most important crystals. And according to Greek mythology, Dionysus, god of
wine and debauchery, sought a maiden named Amethyst, who wished to remain chaste.
The goddess Artemis heard her prayers, and transformed the woman into a white rock.
Dionisio, humiliated, poured wine on the rock by way of apology, staining its purple
crystals. Christianity adopted the amethyst as a symbol of renunciation of worldly goods
and chastity, and even today many cardinals and bishops where it in the form of rings.
The amethyst symbolizes divine wisdom.
December 17, 1947, arrived and we all went to port of Bilbao for me to board
the ship. The captain was waiting. He had no beard or pipe as I had imagined. Very
friendly he took us to the bridge, where ship is steered, and showed us his binoculars
and the wheel. My aunt and uncle inspected my cabin. My bed was above to the right of
the window (porthole). They hugged me and kissed me with tears. I was so emotional
that they thought I had changed my mind about leaving, they told me later. Shortly
after, the ship with its loud horn announced its implacable departure. Begoña was not
with me. I was alone on deck watching them on the pier. My aunt and uncle continued
to drive along the banks of the river from the boat docks, marinas, boatyards, the blast
furnaces, factories, houses and the Euskalduna ship yards, where my Uncle Churchill

28
was waving a large handkerchief. I remember him shouting "Do not forget your
inheritance." Uncle Churchill and Aunt Cris were the aunt and uncle of Aunt Carmen
and we went to visit them from time to time to Bilbao. They lived in the neighborhood
Basurto, on the 5th floor. From the kitchen window it could be seen the San Mames
stadium. It had the best box seat in the neighborhood. While they were chatting in front
of the window, I listened to music on their RCA record player, and apparently I liked it
so much that he promised to leave it to me as my inheritance. At the hanging bridge (the
Puente de Vizcaya) my aunt and uncle took out their handkerchiefs to give me a final
goodbye and I kept looking until they became the horizon. In front of me very soon
would be the sea and more sea.
After a month of crossing many time zones, the perception that I had left behind
something that I loved grew stronger as I came nearer to my destination. I changed the
time on my gold watch that our parents had given me as a gift for my First Communion.
We stopped at Vigo, Lisbon, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Montevideo. Four
ports on a month-long trip, many days sailing across the vast Atlantic where anywhere I
looked I saw only the horizon, which made my stay on board more calm. To pass the
time I remember playing my favorite game, labyrinth, coloring and reading. There were
no children of my age to play with. Torino, who was a waiter from Las Arenas, took me
around the ship and on Sundays we went down to the kitchen where there were large
pots of chocolate and there gave me extra donuts and churros. I remember celebrating
Christmas and Reyes (Wise men), and I received gifts from the captain.
In Vigo we stopped long enough for the captain to take me to the circus. We
sailed to the Canary Islands and stopped at the port of Tenerife for several hours before
hitting the Atlantic Ocean. In the middle of the ocean we faced a pretty big storm; it was
cold, the wind blew relentlessly and the sea was violent. It shook us up a bit and I got a
little scared at the fury of the sea. The captain came and tried to me calm telling me that
the Amboto was prepared for these storms, and he told me the story of the voyage of the
Kon-Tiki, an adventurer who a few months earlier, crossed another sea larger than
“ours" and all he had was a raft made of reeds, which are similar to the reeds that
surround the banks of the river Gobelas. It seems calm returned to my mind because I
ran to tell Torino to "not be frightened."
Almost arriving, my anxiety grew about my new and unknown world of my new
family and country. We reached the coast of Brazil, but I did not pay much attention to
anything because my anxiety grew as we came to Rio. Now the temperature was
warmer. We had left Bilbao in winter and we arrived in summer to Montevideo. Finally
the day came; I chose to wear a summer dress. I think the only one I had. Slowly the
ship was entering the Río de la Plata, and soon was in the port of Montevideo, which
was almost across from us. The date was January 15, 1948, exactly seven years since
our parents had left Europe.
Amboto Mendi ship was launched on September 5, 1928, at the shipyards
Euskalduna for the shipping company Sota and Aznar. It was a tramp steamer, for
general cargo, with a continuous deck and four holds. Since the beginning of the
Spanish Civil War in 1936, it had sailed under the republican flag republican and was
controlled by the Basque Government until August 24, 1937, when the crew went over
to the national side. So it flew the flag of the Government of Burgos (the Franco
Government) until the end of armed conflict. It would then be delivered to Naviera
Aznar, renamed the Monte Amboto.

29
 It was intended to sail in large coastal traffic as a ship tramp. The characteristic
of this mode of transport is its high load capacity and adaptability to transport all kinds
of products, volumes and values. Subsequently, the vessel underwent a transformation,
becoming mixed vessel with a capacity to accommodate 72 passengers, sailing from
that time and for many years, on a regular Northern Spain-South America run, with
stops in Bilbao, Vigo, Lisbon, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. It
also sailed on the Mar del Plata-Mediterranean run. It was scrapped at Santander on
March 3, 1977.

CHAPTER III
MONTEVIDEO

At 2 pm the captain and I together on the deck looked at the dock that we were
approaching slowly. We waited anxiously for the ship to anchor in the harbor. Feeling
lonely and desperately looking for familiar faces, I asked the captain "Who are my
parents?" Before he could answer, my sister Arantza, nearly five years old, and my
brother, Bingen, two and a half years, came running down the dock shouting my name.
Now I was not Merceditas; they called me Mirentxu. For every situation in my short life
I had a new name. From a very early age I called different names depending on the
situation I was in. The first letter that I "wrote" to my parents on the eve of my third
birthday in Las Arenas, in 1941, I signed Merceditas. The first few months in
Montevideo in the park children called me "the Spanish girl" because of my European
accent. When I arrived in Venezuela, my co-workers called me Maria Mercedes, and
my friends called me "ché" (the word used in Uruguay and Argentina for “pal” or
“friend”) because of my Uruguayan accent. When I became a U.S. citizen in 1970 I
changed it to Mirentxu. I used it until I realized that it was difficult to pronounce and
the sweet name was changed to "Merencho", so I chose my first name Marie. My name
in Basque continues in the family, with our eldest daughter Anne Miren, and our first
grandchild Gizelle Mirentxu. The various names and different nationalities I've had is
one of the reasons why the motto on the crest of Paris is appropriate to tell a bit of my
history "nec Fluctuat mergitur" or "tossed by the waves, she does not sink."
A little nervous, from the deck I exchanged a few words with ama on the dock.
Aita’s hands were shaking and he smiled. The rest looked at us, but nobody said much. I
remember I asked about my brother Xabier, then eight months old, since I didn’t see
him, and ama replied that he was waiting for me at home. The captain took me to his
cabin to meet my parents in private and to officially hand me over to them. The minutes
passed slowly, seemed hours until aita appeared in the doorway of the cabin and was
followed by the rest of the family and a few friends. Aita full of excitement kissed and
hugged me calling me "Maitea nere." Ama with tears in her eyes embraced me for a
long time saying "You’ve made us so happy." My sister and brother hugged me. The
emotion of the moment was intense for my parents, and for me to meet them all. I had
wanted to do this for so long, but once it was done I was ready to go home with my aunt
and uncle again. Maybe it was because I realized that everything around me was very
different from what I had experienced so far.
After saying an affectionate goodbye to the captain and Torino we left the ship
and soon we arrived at the house on Juan Paullier Street, No. 1615, third floor. The
apartment was located a half block from the Avenida 18 de Julio, famous and popular
with many shops. The apartment was very nice but a little tiny. In a stroller was my

30
little brother Xabier, beautiful, chubby, blond and he won me right away with his smile.
Also there was Lucinda Martinez, who was called “La Tata” at home. She was the lady
who took care of my brothers and sister and helped with household chores. She
welcomed me warmly. Months later, La Tata, who was a very good artist, would help
me designing the pages of my school essays. On these occasions she told me proudly
that he was a native of the city of Melo, capital of the department of Cerro Largo,
birthplace of brilliant literary talents such as the legendary Juana de America, and
Justino Zabala Muñiz. Her father had gone blind after an explosion in the lab where he
worked and the family suffered financially because of it. While my parents entertained a
few local friends I went to the room that I was to share with my sister, followed by my
sibblings who wanted to see the things I had brought. Arantza, my sister, was a cute
blonde hair who was very interested in everything I said and did and followed me
everywhere with her rag doll in her arms she called "la pipi." Bingen my brother was a
handsome boy with large melancholy eyes, very quiet, serious, silent observer and,
perhaps intimidated because until now he had only one older sister to order him around,
and suddenly he had two. I felt very good to be with them around me, although my role
had changed. Here I was the eldest of four children, with siblings ages 4, 2, and 8
months. Because of their ages they all needed more careful attention than I did, and it
was difficult for a girl of 9 years to accept this after being an only child for seven years.
What a change!
The day after my arrival, our parents took me to see the city. We took a bus to
the Parque Rodo, a huge amusement center near the beach. Bingen and Arantza came
with us. We went on the bumper carts and carousels, but the roller coaster our father
went on with my brother and sister, because I did not want to go to on it and ama stayed
with me. We two were walking through the park's unique flora abounding with greenery
and flowers, which she loved. It was the first time my mother was alone with me since I
was two years old. How many years passed with the lost of experiences and the bond
that is usually established during these crucial years of formation of a child. My family
was lost from my life and I was lost to them and I thought it was difficult or almost
impossible to recover. In silence we looked around when I noticed a seller surrounded
by children who had a bunch of balloons of all colors combined with the colorful
atmosphere. I had never seen balloons before since the carnival figures I had known
carried only inflated animal bladders, which they used to scare children. Ama, on seeing
my great surprise, bought me two. Later we bought cotton candy. I only knew the lump
of sugar on a drink that accompanies hot chocolate. Everything was unknown. I missed
not having Begoña with me. Many years later I told her "all the changes I went through
would have been much easier with you beside me,” to which she replied "I also didn’t
like it that you left me."
In the living room of our home, beneath the window, there were shelves of
books. Aita pointed out to me a collection of books that ama had bought especially for
me. One was "Heidi" the novel about the life of a girl living under the care of her
grandfather in the Swiss Alps. And there were several books in the collection of the
Countess de Segur, whose author is Russian and came when she and her family were
exiled to Paris at age 13 (1812). She was later married to Count Eugene de Segur. Her
novels are based on the life of her three daughters. One daughter, Natalie de Segur, was
maid of honor of the Empress Eugenia de Montijo. Segur's first novel I read was called
"The Model Girls", about a happy family with three “model” daughters: Camila,
Magdalena and Margarita. But their friend Sophie was very different. She was jealous
of her friends. Her mother had had no news of her husband who was lost at sea, and in

31
her house there was much unhappiness. The author focuses on the three girls through
their adventures with Sophie to learn the path of good and evil. And I gladly absorbed
the stories, reading these books several times.
On the first floor of our home lived a woman named Moma, who was very good
to us. When she heard us come down the stairs left some candy or pastry on the ledge
of the door as if she had forgotten it, and we knew it was for us. It was delicious, and
this became routine. Soon Bingen would add for this game. Xabier was too young to
follow. As they could not reach the ledge, the power I got from reaching the delectable
food made me an instant hero. When I went to buy coffee at a place called "El Chaná"
Arantza almost always wanted to accompany me. It was on Colonia Street, one block
from home, and we could not get lost because the aroma of coffee we could smell as
soon as we left the front door. My sister loved making these little excursions with me, it
was something new to her, although I'm sure our parents were shaking a little bit when
she followed me because I was still a novice in the city.
La Tata took us to the park in the afternoons, three blocks from home. It was the
Park of the Allies, named in honor of the Allied nations that won in the First World
War. The park is huge and with all varieties of trees and plants as well as much wildlife,
and monuments such as the Obelisk, La Carreta and the Estadio Centenario. This
stadium hosted the first World Cup soccer championship. Uruguay was the first world
champion in 1930 and again in 1950 at the famous Maracana Stadium (in Brazil). In the
afternoons, La Tata gave us a snack, not the chocolate bar and bread they gave us in San
Sebastian, but bread with dulce de leche, typical Creole jam which I loved. I soon
became friends with a group of children, but I was called "the Spanish girl", a term I
disliked because it emphasized my differences with them, but nothing I could say could
make them change their minds until they heard me speak with a Uruguayan accent.
And these things that happened every day made me rebel from time to time
against the injustice that I saw and felt within myself and at my young age that I did not
know how to express. Only my conduct and my studies gave away my feelings.
Because I compared the difference in the life led by my brothers and sister with what
had been mine. They grew up next to our parents, and everything was easy, but I had to
suffer, fight, stop and change everything that was familiar to me just because of wanting
to be where I belonged by birth. How difficult it was for me to understand and accept
that. Today, in similar circumstances all family members would be subject to family
counseling. But ama was able to overcome these obstacles with patience and love.
Sigmund Freud tells us that many cultures have emphasized the sadness of
mothers separated from their small children, but historically little has been said about
the consequences of the loss of the mothers suffered by young children. The basic need
of a child is the love and tenderness of his mother, and in her absence, his greatest
anxiety is that such love is lost. It is also the father's presence that gives security and
confidence to the child. The dimensions of this drama are impossible to understand for
someone who has not lived them. Ama understood better than anyone that I had
adjustment problems, and although it was difficult to talk now with the girl she left
many years ago, she knew to wait until I was ready for it. It was less difficult for her to
deal with my rebellion than it was for our father, perhaps because she better understand
my struggle that was also her struggle. I know that the two wanted to close the gap that
had opened after the separation of seven years. And there was always the question about
why our mother chose our father instead of my sister and me. Aita tried also
understanding and wanted to get close to me, but I made it more difficult for him. And I

32
knew ama felt this in her heart; she understood it and that made her pain double. And to
hear her express her pain made me love her more. Finally their confidence in me, their
concern and their love worked miracles. When someone trusts us, it adds value to our
lives.
At home we were discipline because mealtimes and bedtime were always at the
same time. While the family ate lunch together, we children almost always ate dinner
before our parents, because they were not home on many days at that time. La Tata
served us every night at seven o'clock. Going to bed too was governed by an almost
inflexible schedule that would not let us be around during their evening or night work.
This routine was followed every night. After we retired to bed, my father took
advantage of the peace in the house, busily working on his translations and literary
works at his desk. Next to him in a special chair, ama sewed clothes for us or knitted in
silence and thus the two were working in company with so much love for each other
until the wee hours of the night. Ama often asked me to help her wind the skeins of
wool, and taught me the art of weaving and knitting and I liked to work on canvases at
her side. And I continued to practice knitting most of my life, even making rugs for the
children’s bathroom, just as she did.
The family’s financial decline a bit before my arrival made my adjustment more
difficult. With my arrival, the house was very small; in just one year were two more
children in the family. A few months after I arrived we moved to Francisco Araucho #
1235, third floor, Apt 6. The building was newly constructed; we were the first people
to live there. It was bigger and spacious and very well located, near the school and in
front of the José Pedro Varela Park, where we went almost every day. This triangular
shaped square, which is bordered by Artigas Boulevard, the Avenida Brasil and Calle
Canelones, is one of the most beautiful and spacious squares in Montevideo. The part
that faces the Boulevard has a beautiful bronze and marble monument dedicated to the
great educator of the people of Uruguay. The statue is carved in bronze and he is
holding a book in his left hand and a pencil in his right hand and at his feet are several
books.
One thing that was still unknown in the lives of my brothers and sister was the
loss of baby teeth. When I lost one, it was a new event in the home, with the legend of
the Tooth Fairy. It was a novelty for them to see that I placed the tooth under the pillow
while sleeping and a mouse (Ratoncito Perez, the Spanish version of the Tooth Fairy)
would exchange it for a gift or money. My sister dreamed of the moment when she
would be toothless. The story of Ratoncito Perez goes like this: "Between the death of
King and the accession to the throne of Queen Mari-Castaña there is a long and dark
period in the chronicles where there are few reports of rats. It appears, however, that
there flourished at that time a King Buby I, a great friend of the poor children and
determined protector of the mice ...” The mouse was very small, with straw hat, golg
glasses, canvas shoes and a red bag, hanging on his back. They say that the mouse lived
with his family in a big box of cookies, in a famous candy store, just a hundred meters
from the Palacio Real. The little rodent ran away from home frequently, and through the
pipes of the city, came to the rooms of the little King Buby I and the rooms of other
poor children who had lost a tooth. He would trick the cats, which were always lurking
about. On the July 18th Avenue was a shop devoted to Ratoncito Perez.
On Saturday mornings we often went to the Pocitos Beach on bus #121. On
Sunday afternoons we visited friends of the family, and sometimes we'd go to Carrasco.
This was an elegant and sophisticated resort about 20 kilometers from the city with the

33
most varied types of architecture. The building that I remember most was the Hotel
Casino, because the bus stopped and let us off there. It was a magnificent building
surrounded by gardens and sculptures, and from here we walked through beautiful
countryside with fragrant eucalyptus trees that provided a perfect backdrop for the
mysterious and funny stories that my father told my younger siblings. In Carrasco lived
Maria Ana Bidegaray de Janssen, who was called Marianita. She was born in Hasparen,
Lapurdi, in the French Basque Country. She was Xabier’s godmother and a close friend
of the family. She was the person I most admired in Montevideo, and in her memory
our first child was baptized with the name of Anne Miren. It was not just her culture,
her refinement, her delicate figure, but her intelligence, her charm and humanity in
dealing with people. I loved hearing her stories of the Far East and I remember noticing
in the living room of her home two paintings showing torture in medieval China that did
not go with her personality. She noticed my amaze and told us that the consequence of
disobeying Emperor was torture and death. She was the author of the first book
published in Uruguay on the subject of Basque culture, “The Basque Cradle,” (“Cuna
Vasca”) in 1948. Years later in the farewell to us in Euskal Erria (the Basque club in
Montevideo) she took me aside to speak fondly of many things. How did she know so
much about my life? Among them, she talked about my role and responsibilities as the
eldest daughter. With tears in my eyes, I hugged and thanked her for her words, though
I do not remember having followed all her good advice.
Two months after my arrival and before school started, we went to a studio to
get an official family picture. Ama had made all the clothes that we wore in this
picture. This picture has always been in the dining room. Aita was next, but for some
reason not in the picture. It was March (the beginning of autumn in the southern
hemisphere) and this month we would have the first day of school. Ama, Arantza and I
went to buy uniforms with enthusiasm to the store El Cabezón, a huge warehouse near
home that had everything. And ready the first week of March we started the school. But
although I did not know any at the one school, the Liceo Santo Domingo of the French
Dominican Sisters, soon became my second home. The school and the sisters became a
treasured sanctuary as I grew uup, and I made friends whom I continued to write after
leaving Uruguay until the eve of my wedding.
Others who visited us almost monthly visits were aita’s first cousin, Ludovina
Amezaga, and her husband, Ambrosio Uriarte. While our parents talked to their cousins
Ambrosio’s twin sister who lived with them showed us the delicious jams that she had
made, and which she kept in the large pantry. On the death of Ambrose, Ludovina,
elderly and in somewhat fragile health, moved to a nursing home where we went to visit
often and where we went to say goodbye just before leaving Uruguay. On this last visit I
noticed the very kind and compassionate soul she had and how fervent her faith was,
and that last day I saw her as a saint. When I told aita this later, he said being an
Amezaga there was no doubt about it.
Friday May 7, 1948, dawned rainy and sad, and the thunderous sounds of drums
improvised from pot lids woke me up. The whole family, including La Tata, woke me
up with gifts. It was my first birthday in America; I was 10 years old. Happily I ran to
eat breakfast and dressed in the uniform was ready to go to school when ama told me
they had prepared a surprise for me that afternoon. When I returned for lunch, I neither
saw nor heard anything more than a faint whisper of "Zurik Zorionak." (Happy
Birtthady in Basque) I went to school in the afternoon, this time taking my five-year-old
sister Arantza, who went to kindergarten. Ama had given me a bit of change to buy one
of my cravings of the moment, bubble gum, which I shared with my sister, but still she

34
did not prepare me for the surprise that awaited me. When we returned to the home late,
the whole house was lit and decorated with streamers and thousands of multicolored
balloons. In the dining room table was a large cake with 10 candles and a big heart.
Xabier would in a few days celebrate his first year, and although he didn’t know, he was
included in the treat. Immediately the small apartment began to fill with a dozen
children of friends of our parents. At the back of the room a special chair was reserved
for John Uraga, a dear family friend, the former mayor of Barakaldo, who had saved his
life during the Spanish Civil War by escaping to France across the Pyrenees during a
change of the guard. For the dish there was nothing better than the rice pudding that
ama made me and I savored it with pleasure every time. After blowing out my candles
and the single one for my brother and eating the great "colinetas" or cakes, we had a
Chaplin film that our dear family friend Pedro Arteche always provided. He was born in
Bilbao and came to Uruguay with his parents at a young age. He and his wife had two
daughters, Nora and Marta who were a bit older than me. It was a very dear family to
us all.
Ma Luisa de Biraben at the party asked for permission from ama to take me
several days later to the cinema to see the musical fantasy film "The Wizard of Oz".
This movie was about a young American girl swept away by a tornado and left in a
fantasy land inhabited by good and bad witches, a talking scarecrow, a cowardly lion, a
tin man and other extraordinary beings. It was the first time I went to a movie in
Montevideo, and it was very different from those I had gone to see in Las Arenas,
Bilbao.
Ama was the promoter of celebrating family holidays, as well as for special
occasions like when we were visited by Basque friends from Buenos Aires. She cooked
very well and enjoyed doing it. I remember some of the visitors to Buenos Aires as
Pedro Basaldua, the spouses Lasarte, Jose Maria Aldasoro, and was an occasion for ama
to make her best dishes. She went to bed reading the cookbook. Our anniversaries and
birthdays, which were never overlooked, were part of a legacy that ama and aita gave us
by reciting the events of this special day events, stories of them during the Spanish Civil
War and War World II, when they lived in Paris, and about grandparents and other
family members. With all these stories in a way they were building family unity,
strengthening the culture, and sharing issues of common interest. They also wanted to
transmit their values to us and it made us feel an important part of the family and gave
us a sense of belonging to the family and as consequence to the society in which we
lived. Her last recordings of fifteen audio cassettes were part of that legacy
Part of what we tell our children can mark their lives forever. Our thoughts
dictate what we say; from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks, and it is therefore
better to speak positively than negatively. The tricky thing about all this is to accept
each of the members of the family, appreciate and love them as they are, showing
interest and concern for others instead of apprehension. We had to realizing that we
sometimes give more than we receive, and accept it because there are times when we
receive more than we give, and we should know how to be grateful. Family harmony
and love are a great treasure that should we all nourish.
Even in family celebrations our mother took great pains not only with the food
but with the presentation. The table looked wonderful with a special tablecloth, white
linen embroidered in blue indigo, and the fine china used only for these occasions. On
all these occasions Begoña was spiritually present in an empty chair where we put her
picture to join in the festivities. Aita always gladdened the festivities with some story

35
that at times was humorous and he even sang a song. We looked forward to the desserts
because ama always had surprises. Sometimes she put vintenes (Uruguayan currency)
into the cake and we all looked eagerly for it not for the value but to feel special, but I
think that she enjoyed it most
In the Southern Hemisphere Christmas was in summer, and we felt
discriminated against because the cards had the Magi with their heavy winter clothing
and camels. We wanted lightly clad kings, aboard yachts coming to our shores from the
sea, where we were almost every day at this time. Our postcards instead of snowy
landscape would have had to be sand and palm trees. But the reality was different, we
were told, because the city of Bethlehem this time of year is very cold with wind and
frost from being so close to the desert; and there was snow in the highlands, and that’s
why the manger itself was located atop a small hill.
Christmas for us children was a sweet word that conjured in our mind fond
memories and great food and gifts. For our parents this time was somewhat bittersweet
longing for the far-away parties they had left behind. These were the Christmases of
exile, as aita called. Our mother when this time arrived displayed her artistic talents to
build a beautiful paper mache Bethlehem trying to imitate the elements of the country's
arid and rocky landscape into which she put the sacred figures in the manger.
Every Christmas our good friend Arteche would show up at our home with
delicious sweet bread, a dessert food that always accompanied the rich menu that ama
prepared. We ate, sang and waited until midnight, sometimes praying the rosary after
we were older before opening gifts. When we little we went to bed very early to open
the toys the next day.
Xabier, because of his age, was the fastest-changing, first when he started to
crawl. Then when he was taking his first steps it was a pleasure to watch him as he felt
victorious with these achievements. He was a happy child. It was easy to love him. I
loved to observe the teaching, patience and motherly love that ama used to teach him
the names of different things, and sing to him little songs like "Txalopin Txalo" “Anton
Pirulero" and how successful it was for all of us when she responded positively to his
efforts.
In this South American environment I learned different games from those that
were played in Europe, or at least many of them had different names. Not more game
of marbles, but now we played payana and used stones instead of jacks; el truco, which
they said was a gaucho game; blind man's bluff; and a la mancha, (Dutch ball). This
was my favorite and I played it a lot at school. Nearly all of them today are out of style
except jump rope and hopscotch. The latter we play with our grandchildren perhaps
because it began in the primitive world of the Roman Empire and the Roman soldiers
used it as military training. Kids imitated it and it soon spread throughout Europe and
the Americas.
My brothers and sister were emerging and developing, as I was. Bingen
generally took everything in life very seriously, including religion from an early age.
He was clear in his speech, quiet, very intelligent, independent, drew the highest marks
in all subjects, and when he was asked grades he had received in a given subject he
would point his finger at the large sign painted on a building across the street where one
could read the word OPTIMO (the best, equivalent to A+). He also liked sports,
especially handball. Xabier played with the cars he had and putting things together was
his passion. He had the soul of an engineer; he was very playful and had a very jovial
character. He followed Bingen everywhere and they played together very well. Arantza

36
had now replaced her doll with a notebook and pencil. She lived in her imaginary world
with characters that she read about, and she gave them life in his stories. She wrote
much prose, but she also wrote poems. Her first poem was dedicated to the hands of
our mother, which ama kept in her purse so she could show it proudly to her friends. My
age difference with my brothers and sister became more obvious every day. I started
high school, I went at different times to school and every day my friends were
becoming more important in my life.
Our parents would not let us forget that we were an exiled family dreaming of
our return to Euskadi. At home, ama, who cooked very well, prepared mainly Basque
cuisine. Although when we were out with friends we ate pizza, which as I remember it
was not round but square, we also liked faina, dulce de leche, and empanadas, all foods
that were typical native Uruguayan that we did not eat at home. I ate Uruguayan food
when I was with our friends, the Biraben on their chacra, a ranch in Uruguay, in the
Department of Canelones, about 48 kilometers from the city of Montevideo. I got to try
yerba mate, a kind of tea served in a gourd used as a cup to serve the drink, and with a
silver straw to drink in the afternoon accompanied by delicious sweet rolls. Ma Luisa
was very fond of ama and they worked together in the basque Center, Euskal Erria. She
was my sponsor for Confirmation. Her youngest daughter, Graciela, was two years
older than I and when they visited the farm they always invited me to go with them.
Graciela and her mom were great fans of French music of the moment, and when I was
with them on the farm we listened constantly to Maurice Chevalier and the ballads of
Edith Piaf, songs that Graciela and I were able to memorize completely.
When we were on the farm we went shopping in the only shop in the town of
San Jacinto, five miles from the farm. This small town of San Jacinto had a church,
which we attended on Sunday, a small school next to a plaza and a club where once
Graciela and I went to watch as the townsfolk danced.
In the two weeks of vacation that our father had each year the Biraben family
extended the invitation to the whole family, and we had the whole farm for us. And
everything the farm produced that our good friends left at our disposal. It was very
beneficial for the health of our father to breathe the peace and tranquility of this place.
The farm had a windmill to pump water and electricity for the small villa of the Biraben
family. The vast plantation was for the production of table grapes, muscat grapes that
were on the grapevine. My first paid job was picking grapes in this vineyard. We put
the grapes in large baskets; my salary was one peso per basket, and there sitting on
small stools in the vineyard, Graciela and I did, sometimes spent all day until snack
time, when we had creole cakes waiting for us baked by Maria, the lady who was the
cook and housekeeper. Beautiful fruit trees were all around the place, where ama picked
the fruit in thinking of the delicious jam she would make later. On a nearby ranch lived
an Italian family who were refugees from the Second World War. They were a family
of five people who took care of the place and helped harvest the crops too.
I liked the competition and challenge. At school I enthusiastically participated in
the basketball games. And I was enthusiastic and we played soccer from time to time
among the siblings. Bingen and I were very enthusiastic about sports; ama and aita were
also interested, perhaps remembering their younger days when they were fans of
Arenas. Bingen was a fan of Peñarol and I liked Nacional (the two principal Uruguayan
soccer teams). I liked them more for the color of their uniforms, which were sky blue
and white. Peñarol's uniforms were black and yellow. Xabier supported whoever won.
Arantza was not interested in sports. In 1930 Uruguay was champion of the first World

37
Cup in history. In 1950 it was the first world champion after the Second World War
since many European countries were in ruins. Germany was prevented from
participating as a repudiation of the crimes committed during the Second World War by
the Nazi leaders. On the “dia del Carmen,” July 16, 1950, Uruguay had beaten Brazil 2-
1 in the championship game in the newly opened Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro,
the largest in the world at that time, which was crowded with 250,000 fans. The end was
so unexpected that there were suicides among Brazilians, and death threats for the coach
and some players of the Brazilian team. Some friends invited me to go to receive the
Uruguayan champions at Carrasco Airport. When the plane arrived with the heroes of
the moment, the emotion and commotion were awesome. I felt a mixture of excitement
and fright. At the foot of the plane was a bus waiting for the players. As they descended
the aircraft steps factory horns started sounding in unison with the horns of cars. The
players quickly got on the bus and everyone went to the streets. It was truly a Sunday
of glory. When I got home everyone was celebrating. Bingen who was 5 years old told
me happily that he had heard on the radio with aita when the goals were scored. Our
parents were celebrating this victory with almost the same enthusiasm that had hailed
the "Arenas" team years before, singing "Uruguayans, champions of America and the
world ..."
Our lives were a combination of Uruguayan friends and the friends of Eukal
Erria (Basque Centre of Montevideo), founded on March 30, 1912. Euskal Erria began
to promote Basque language courses when they formed an entity called Euskaltxaleak
(Friends of the Basque Language) in order to spread the maintenance, development and
exaltation of the Basque language. Aita was the honorary president of this entity. At the
same time I started school I started going to Basque classes on Wednesdays taught by
aita. I would leave school at 4:30 and go straight to the house of the Beldarrain sisters
who were waiting for me with a tasty snack. Together we did the homework for the
class. At 6:30 we would leave for the Basque class, which had two dozen students,
including ama. I remember Karmele Storace, two Oxacelay sisters, three Beldarrain
sisters, Estela Gomez Haedo, José Mendiola, and Dr. Michael Banas, who was the best
informed person in Euskal Erria the origins of the Basques in Uruguay. He was always
dressed in a suit and bow tie, which gave him an air of elegance and eccentricity. He
never wore a hat, coat or gloves even if it was a very cold winter. I was the only girl in
the class and and I kept going until aita left Uruguay. The study book, which I still have,
was "The Basque Language," with grammar, conversation and dictionary by Isaac
López Mendizabal. I also attended the classes of culture that our father gave in the
auditorium of the University. Aita taught with energy, love and enthusiasm; you could
see that it was his life.
On Tuesdays La Tata had the day off, so I was responsible for taking my
brothers and sister to the plaza. Crossing the heavily trafficked Canelones Street was
dangerous, and once under my care and to my horror, Bingen slipped away from my
hand and was hit by a taxi driver, but without serious consequences. I had a great
shock. For a few weeks he wore a cast which his friends filled with their autographs.
After this episode aita told us of the legend of the Man of the Bag, a folk character. If
my siblings did not obey me, the man with the bag was going to put them in a big sack
and carry them to an unknown location. Although our brother Bingen did not like
following instructions, this idea scared him, and there were no further accidents. Sitting
on the grass in the park I would tell stories to them and their friends, six in all. It was
not difficult to talk about the rich experiences of a world where I had lived and that in a
certain way still missed, and they did not know. I got their full attention of all except

38
the Xabier who, more than hearing my stories he liked to play with his collection of cars
which fascinated him and he spent his time playing with them at my side.
To compensate for my work caring for my younger siblings, from time to time
our parents took me to the theater at night. I always liked the theater. María Luisa
Iribarne Battle Berres, sister-in-law of the then-president of the Republic, Luis Battle
Berres, provided the tickets. Our parents were devoted to attending the shows. Of all
the shows the ones that I remember were the comedies of "Paquito Busto" where aita
and I laughed a lot. We also went to the ballet and musical theater at Teatro Solís.
Sometimes we had tickets for the circus, but neither ama nor my sister and I were very
fond of it. Our father and brothers enjoyed enough of this entertainment.
Our father's health began to suffer with so much work and responsibility. He had
dizziness, ringing in the ears, and nervous tension. The doctors said the ear problems
were produced by his stomach and ordered him complete diet and rest. The continuous
tests to which he was subjected meant that the medical costs kept rising and aita decided
to sell his two apartments in Algorta. They did not sell well at the time, but there wasn’t
much he could do from so far away.
In those days (1950) the United Nations, established to maintain international
peace and security admitted Spain as a member, and then came the recognition of the
Franco government by the United States because of the Cold War, to strengthen the
European countries against communism. These steps killed the hopes for political exiles
like my parents to return to their homeland. Aita was sad because his dreams were
shattered. It was hard for me not to feel the sadness and disappointment that surrounded
our parents, but I did not want to feel the same. It was not easy for me to talk to my
friends about it, because they did not even understand the meaning of the word "exile";
they barely understood the meaning of the word "Basque" because I told them about it
from time to time. In Uruguay, the saying "the word of a Basque" was well known and
it meant that a Basque could be trusted; what he promised he fulfilled. The two terms,
“Basque” and “exile” were the center of life in our home, but they were unfamiliar
words out in the world where we lived with our friends in Uruguay. With our parents
we lived differently. We had a fully connected life with the world of Basque language
and culture and social development in the Basque Center, Euskal Erria.
Ama was a member of the Women’s Social Welfare Committee, which was the
principal project of the Center, which began at that time the work of helping the elderly
Basques living in nursing homes. In February 1951 she was named president of the
Committee for Charity and Instruction of Euskal Erria and there was more emphasis to
participate in Euskal Erria. Since I was old enough, I did it in various capacities in the
Basque Center. I was part of a dance group led by txistulari (player of Basque musical
instrument, the txistu) Antonio Michelena, chairman of the Festival Committee. These
dances were offered in the various Basque festivals during the year held by Euskal
Erria, held on the outskirts of the city in the playground of Malvin which had a huge
field. The whole family attended the many festivities. My friends and I helped by
serving 30 to 40 tables dressed in poxpoliñas (traditional Basque dresses). The
participants played rummy canasta, a card game invented in Montevideo in 1940, that
spread to the rest of the world to be very popular in 1950s and that soon became one of
the great parlor games played everywhere.
There was a huge turnout that filled the Euskal Erria meeting room, which had
been recently decorated in rustic style reminiscent of a caserio (Basque farmhouse). I
remember serving pizzas, sandwiches and desserts such as pastries that my friends and I

39
savored with our eyes as we served. They were brought from "La Mallorquina,” one of
the most famous pastry shops in Montevideo. Ama was tireless in this social work and
went from shop to shop getting awards for give during these events. Seeing her so full
of vigor Ma Luisa Biraben once told me that despite the "sweet fragility" that ama
exhibited, she was a woman of extraordinary strength and courage.
These games brought in money that was used for distribution of Christmas
baskets that were given to elderly Basque living in nursing homes or who were relatives
of members. These baskets were filled with candies, dried and glazed fruits, pastries and
English style puddings entirely appropriate for the Christmas season. To see the faces of
those old people was a rewarding experience that I had the opportunity to see and learn
that with a modest contribution towards making someone so happy.
Ama received the sympathy, support and affection of her friends with her
responsible, dutiful and loyal personality. Her life now was almost full; her faith in God,
her love and devotion to our father and us was her life. The absence of Begoña was her
only regret. She continued to write to many of her friends from Uruguay until her death,
friends like Ma Luisa Biraben Besides, Ma Luisa Battle Berres Iribarne, Maria Ana
Bidegaray Janssen, Esther Ma Real Idiarte, Paquita de Duvigneau, Antonia Salaverria,
Aurora Ezcurra, Ma Luisa Bidegaray, daughter of Marion. All her social life was in
Euskal Erria and completed her world.
One time Maria Ester and Pepe Real Idiarte gave a big party at their villa that
our parents talked about a lot because the dinner was cooked in the ground, something
we had never seen or heard of before. When Ma Ester became a widow, she spent time
with her daughter, Ana Maria and family, who lived near us and several times it
coincided with a visit by ama, and the two were happy to see each other and catch up on
news of mutual friends in Montevideo.
Years later, having been invited to dinner, Bob and I had the same experience
when we were served dinner cooked in the ground. And this time I was curious to
observe all the details. Our friends told us that the day before a big hole was dug in the
ground and covered with green leaves. Inside they added the meat and vegetables and
covered with heated stones taken from a fire. This was all covered with soil and they
waited for the heated stones to cook the food, a process that took about 24 hours. This
was not a turkey but rather a large pig and the fire threw off a lot of smoke. We were a
large group (60) gathered in the garden around the dead pig. A helicopter was circling
around us and soon the police authorities came to ensure that a fire had not reached the
house. Also they realized that they had to have permission to make such a fire in the
leafy neighborhood. All ended well and it was a fine dinner.
The courage and selflessness of ama in the family was present many times. In
Montevideo she put her life in danger for us all. One day when coming home we heard
a noise like a whistle that came from the master bathroom. From the small window
above the door we could see that a lot of steam was escaping. We were terrified and we
thought to leave the apartment because we realized that the water heater was about to
explode. But ama did not waver and to our astonishment she opened the door and the
vapor enveloped us for a few seconds that seemed like ages. She realized the problem,
and without thinking twice closed the valve. The noise stopped and steam vanished,
saving us all from a gas leak explosion.
Ama was also the spiritual soul of the family. She tried to continue the intense
religious life in which she grew up and the two struggled to continue that tradition with
us, but our lives were different from those they lived. Nonetheless, every night all of us

40
together participated in the praying of the rosary with litany in Basque before a lighted
painting of the Virgin of Begoña. For ama family unity and world peace were very
important for the family, and so we asked for those things. At that time there was a
popular saying from Father Patrick Peyton from Ireland who said "The family that prays
together stays together" and "A world that prays is a world at peace," slogans that were
important for our parents. They wanted our family to be together, but mostly they
wanted us to be religious. I do not think there was one night that we did not gather
before retiring to bed to pray the rosary. During Holy Week we walked the seven
churches as they had done when they were engaged. Fasting and abstinence were also
observed always.
Never that I remember did we miss Mass on Sundays. There was a time when
there was an epidemic of infantile paralysis and we were prohibited from attending any
public place, but we heard Mass on the radio. The preferred site for our Sunday
obligation was the Church of the Help of Mary on Canelones Street or the chapel of our
school. The chapel was eight blocks from home, but with one or the other family
member fasting we Amezagas ran through the streets of the city to be on time for the
8:30 Mass. The choir of the Dominican Sisters and the pretty fower-decorated chapel
were so pretty and worth the race; at least that's what aita said.
Exile is one of the worst punishments for human beings because one is uprooted
from all that taught him: family, culture, friendships. It is true that our parents were
lucky to have two important social structures to depend on for the support of both
material and emotional needs: the Catholic Church and the Basque Government in exile
(and the dream of Basque nationalism). If they could not have relied on this support
they could not have carried on more than 30 years as they did. In their book Migration
and Exile, Leon and Rebeca Grinberg tell us that life in exile is a life of denial of the
present. The lives of our parents were dominated by the past full of fantastic memories
and the future represented only by the hope of return.
Exiles like our parents were few in Montevideo. All the Basques who escaped
from the clutches of Franco lived in Argentina, Mexico or Venezuela. The Basques who
were in Uruguay were Basques who had left Euskadi in the early twentieth century for
economic reasons, or descendants of Basques of one or several generations that had
been there forty years before. Our parents were some of the few who had suffered a
recent imposition of exile. Although ama would have wanted to return to Euskadi she
was happy living wherever she was as long as she was beside our father, but aita felt
passionately about their exile expressed his frustration, working tirelessly day and night
to make known the cause and the Basque culture in Uruguay. In Euskal Erria
celebrations of traditional festivals such as Aberrieguna (Easter) San Ignacio (July 31)
and the day of Euskera (Culture Day, 3 December) were celebrated with infectious
enthusiasm and energy. These celebrations strengthened the bonds of community and
made a strong impact on everyone who knew our father since he transformed a simple
act into a solemn and exciting event.
This time it was our father who intervened to save ama’s life. Ama had gone
several times to the Worker Catholic Circle, a health care co-operative, for the birth of
our brothers, Xabier and Bingen, both times by Dr. Aguerre. This time it was to have a
surgical treatment to address her incontinence, and when they gave her a blood
transfusion. The blood was incompatible and she had a severe hemolytic reaction that
could have been fatal. She said that aita’s prayers in the chapel of the clinic at that time
saved her life.

41
 Our mother was named social reporter of the newspaper of Buenos Aires; Euzko
Deya, which in Basque means "The Voice of the Basques". The first issue of this paper
was May 10, 1939. The managers were delegates of the Basque Government. Ama
wrote for the newspaper with information on the life of the Basque community in
Uruguay, to raise awareness in the port city of Basque activities in Montevideo.
In those days there was no TV and to go see news report was of common
interest. One of the technological advances we witnessed living in Uruguay was the
rising production of television. We saw only one and it was in a public place. The
other change was the traffic lights, which we saw two years before leaving the country.
They started in a specific section on the Avenida 18 de Julio, and I remember we tried
to memorize the meaning of the three colors of amber, red and green. Bingen was the
most enthusiastic because they reminded him of the rich colors of lollipops.
One of the trips we made with our parents downtown was going to see films.
The bus left us near the Monument to the Gaucho near City Hall in the Avenida 18 de
Julio. The gaucho, standing in bronze on a marble pedestal, is a national folk hero who
symbolizes the freedom and independence of Uruguay. Aita talked about the
anonymous protagonists of the struggle for independence as he identified with the
nationalist sentiment and personal autonomy of the gaucho. We crossed the street and
entered the American Institute (I don’t remember the exact name, to watch educational
films. The one I remember most was a documentary, “38 th Parallel,” that dealt with the
Korean War. The parallel was established as a boundary line between the Soviet
occupation zone in the north and American zone in the south. I don’t think we liked the
subject but for our aitas it was an interesting documentary.
Carnival in Montevideo has never reached the fame of those of Rio de Janeiro,
but we did have Brazilian girls dancing the candombe and African music that in
Uruguay was not heard at other times of year. Carnival is always celebrated for the
three days before Ash Wednesday, but I think in Montevideo we heard the sounds of
drums for many days. The main character of Carnival is King Momo (Momus in New
Orleans), who was tall and fat, and was the god of mockery and madness in Greek
mythology. This is a period of excess allowed before abstinence of Lent. People painted
and disguised themselves. There are dances and parades that cover all the different
neighborhoods with street musicians. There are men disguised with painted faces that
act, sing and dance the candombes to the rhythm of drums and cymbals, and in the
evening performances are presented in on stages. The whole family went to see the
stage performances, and then we talked about it at home later. The carnival was theater
par excellence.
In these moments with so much noise and disorder celebrating carnival, I
thought of the peace that we breathed in school and which I preferred. Aita teased me
with a little song about the Dominican Sisters celebrating the carnival, which began
with, "We Dominicans have everything, happy body and crazy soul, and we have fun at
the convent ..."
On 20 November I graduated from high school, but I could not make any plans
for the future because I had not yet decided what I wanted to do. There is a Portuguese
poet who said one’s homeland is the place where you live during your adolescence
because that is the age where friends are made. And I agree. The friends I grew up with
were here in Montevideo, and I was leaving for good, but I continued to fight against
this reality. I could hardly believe that it was real and I did not want to leave the
country, and even less did I want to go for an indefinite period. And amid all this

42
confusion, ama knew how to pacify my character. She told me I could take piano
lessons, which was something I had always wanted, and with this gesture I could not
complain any more. I took lessons for two months until the day before boarding. The
reality didn’t change, but I realized the sacrifice ama had made and I took with
resignation the decision of my parents. Decades later I would buy a piano and take
piano lessons. I keep practicing.
Aita decided, although with great difficulty, to try the opportunity that presented
itself in Caracas, Venezuela. I did not want to leave Montevideo or leave half my life
once again. I wanted to finish a college degree and live in that environment where not
only I but the whole family was so happy. Ama was calm and explained that she
understood how I felt, and she felt the same, and that the reasons for leaving the country
were only economic. Aita also wanted to calm me down and one night before leaving he
took me to see the play "Trojan Horse" or "Troiako Zaldi" as he called it. It was in the
School of Architecture, very close to our home. The family was going through tough
economic times where our father earned our living with a combination of different jobs,
but he was now 54 years old and was anxious about long-term possibilities for him and
for us. Two of ama’s sisters (Lola and Mari) and a niece, Ma Luisa, daughter of Mari,
who lived in Venezuela, urged him to go to Caracas because the city was booming
economically and he certainly could get a better paying job.
The plan was for aita to go to Aita alone. Ama and we would join him if he
found in Caracas the solution to the problem. Our friends who ama and I kept writing
were telling us that the country's economic crisis began to unravel in 1955. They added
that they didn’t know if the cause was the fall of prices of exports from the one-product
Uruguayan economy or our departure from the country. How could we not love a
country whose citizens gave us so much help and for whom we felt so much?, Ama
said. When we left she gave us all a memento of her child hood. She gave me two
books: The Imitation of Christ, written by the German mystic, Thomas a Kempis, and
The Psalter, which are the Psalms of David. Both were very appropriate for me at that
time. With sadness our father left Montevideo on July 17, 1955. He wrote to us often
telling us about his impressions of the city and his new job. A month after arriving in
Caracas, aita met with old friends at the Basque Center, which was the sanctuary for
Basque refugees since 1942. His old friend Jose Maria Lasarte, the godfather of Bingen,
offered him the job of Secretary General of the Basque Center, and he agreed. Even
though it paid a good salary, it was less than the other job previously offered, but was
working for and with the Basques, and that was sufficient.
Shortly after this, the lehendakari José Antonio Aguirre while passing through
Caracas had a conversation with our father about his major concern: the fate of Basque
culture in the post-war world. Franco was fiercely persecuting and suppressing the
Basque language. Aguirre explained that he had the idea of forming a permanent
seminar that would produce papers and studies, which would provide for the future of
coming generations. It would consist of four to six people. There would not be much of
a salary, but the site would be a village in the French Basque country. In a couple of
months he would confirm the offer since he had to propose in Paris such a suggestion;
and if feasible aita would be in charge. Our father was very excited; it was his idea of a
dream job and he was certainly able to carry it out. And more importantly, it would be
close to home.
The hope and joy of Aita were intense. He immediately wrote to ama to prepare
a trip to Euskadi. Ama was more realistic; she was not very convinced that it was

43
something so perfect for him. But with great hope she began to prepare for the trip. It
would be an opportunity to meet her second daughter Begoña, now 16 years old.
Ama had a huge job to do alone, because we children were busy in our own
worlds. She had to put most of our household goods up for sale in an auction. She had
to save our father’s books, and she had to make a careful scrutiny of all our father's
books, page by page to ensure that there was no compromising paper in them. Some
books are impossible to carry with her because of the subject so she had to send them by
mail. Ama was also in charge of selling insurance in the company where aita had
worked in Montevideo, and while she was taking on this job there was a fire in an
insured property that ama had to deal with. With so much to do, la Tata became ill and
had to be rest for three months. Ama dealt with everything and everyone with courage
and energy. Our good friend Pedro Arteche, whom ama called him "the savior" because
he got her out of many problems, seriously proclaimed that ama "deserved a statue" and
how right she was.
With great sorrow we said goodbye to Uruguay, leaving what we loved so much.
The friends, country, everything was so familiar to us and nice, and I realized that my
dreams of a college education were broken, though I do not think it was feasible to
expect that my parents could have paid for me to get a degree in medicine, but at that
time I did not realize it.
Farewells are never good. Those days were full of emotion and a lot of fussing
about everything for ama. All our friends showed their love. The last two weeks before
the trip we had almost daily farewell parties from friends and neighbors with dinners
accompanied with songs. We heard the famous tango over and over again "Adios
Muchachos," made popular by Carlos Gardel, a famous tango singer and film actor in
Uruguay and Argentina. My friends gave me a goodbye party in a tearoom. The friends
of my brothers invited them to a barbecue. Ama had a grand farewell by the members of
Euskal Erria with some moving words. Ama stated later that "There was no good way to
say goodbye to so generous and caring friends."
With this trip our family took a different turn. The plan was for us to wait in San
Sebastian for aita get to San Juan de Luz, in France, and meet there with him. In this
way all living close to home might be near Begoña, whose absence from the family had
become a big problem. This gave ama the courage to make the trip.
In the early hours of the morning of April 7, 1956 we boarded the French ship
Provence, and our friends in the port took leave of us. With tears in our eyes we said
goodbye one last time while the ship sailed slowly away out of the Rio de la Plata and
entered the Atlantic Ocean. It was not for ama or for me the first time we had this
feeling of leaving something good that we loved to go aimlessly into the unknown.
When we could not see our friends because of the tears and the distance, we went to the
beautiful dining room where our table was the only one empty, because they were
already serving lunch.
The itinerary of the trip was stops in Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Dakar and
Barcelona, our destination. We got off at Santos and we reveled in the rich aroma of
coffee that covered the city. They told us that 50 years earlier it had been the port of
entry for the bubonic plague in Brazil. The entrance to Rio is spectacular; mountain
chains surrounded us until we got to the wonderful and exotic city and port of Rio de
Janeiro. We visited the Christ the Redeemer statue atop the Corcovado, and from there
we could see the fantastic view of Copacabana beach, from the Sugar Loaf. We walked
in the Copacabana neighborhood famous for its tiled streets imitating the movements of

44
the waves. We bought the aromatic coffee like no other. Brazilians are right to say "God
is the artist and Rio is his painting."
Next was Bahia. In this city we visited the church of San Francisco covered
with gold. This city is called the Black Rome for its large number of churches and
population of blacks.
In Dakar ama went with Xabier and Bingen to visit the city, and Arantza and I
decided to go with our friends. When we returned, we didn’t realize that ama and our
brothers were not on the ship. An hour later we heard the ship's whistle announcing its
departure and they had not yet returned. I went to tell the captain to wait a bit because
our mother had not yet arrived. I don’t know how he would have responded to my
panic, but luckily at that moment we saw ama and our brothers running down the dock.
Early the next morning, they announced that we were leaving the Atlantic and
entering the Mediterranean, and then we could see from afar the Rock of Gibraltar,
which is a rock that has no rivers and has to store its water in cisterns, we were told. It's
the closest point in Europe to Africa.
Even in the midst of our sorrow of leaving our beloved Uruguay, the crossing
was happy for us kids. We made friends with a group of young people, and from the
beginning we all were friends. A young French boy and I spent a lot of time throughout
the trip. At the end of the trip, Arantza gave me a poem titled "My First Love."
Everything was good for us children but not so much for ama, who anxiously awaited
meeting her second daughter and an uncertain future. We celebrated the crossing of the
equator, interrupting the routine on board, and it was declared a holiday. An authority,
in this case, the captain of the ship, disguised him and played the role of the god
Neptune. From the bridge by means of loudspeakers announced the arrival on a
makeshift throne of Neptune, who came in a procession followed by his entourage. Near
the pool on his throne, he baptized neophytes, demanding taxes and granting favors.
They gave me the name "Star Fish". After this ritual and without hesitation we threw the
captain into the swimming pool. The moment when we crossed the line was marked
with a peal of bells. But all young people were busy because that afternoon we were all
dressed in disguises. A lady was in charge of the costumes and she chose for Arantza a
costume representing a seller of baskets of Bahia, and granted me the mysterious
costume odalisque. That night I attended the dance, but ama came for me to go to bed
much earlier than I had hoped.
It was a great trip until the eve of the landing. Our brother Xabier, the youngest
of the group was always running after us, and someone in front of him without knowing
who was behind him, the closed one of the heavy doors of the ship and his hand was
trapped. He needed medical help in the infirmary of the ship and then again in
Barcelona. His screams and cries aroused the sympathy of all passengers.
Communication in those days, in the 1950s, between our parents or us and
Begoña was based on letters that took one to two weeks to reach its destination. Still we
had no idea of supersonic flight, instantaneous communication in writing and speaking.
Not as it is today, when the Internet or cell phones provide us easy international
communication. We never received many pictures of her because our aunt was not very
fond of photography, and she also had busy and hectic life to write letters. Begoña
herself had never been inclined to write much. They tried several times to call our
parents by phone, but it was quite an ordeal because it was so expensive, and often the
conversations were brief and marked by miscommunication. When friends of our
parents traveled to Euskadi, our parents urged them to visit Begoña. But none of these

45
visits was positive because she was quiet all the time for fear that they would take her
with them to America. This kept us from having a close relationship with our sister,
which would have better prepared us for the meeting that was about to unfold.

BARCELONA

The Provence anchored in Barcelona on Sunday April 22, 1956, shortly after
lunch. We went to the bridge and our group of friends tried to find Begoña, and we soon
recognized her on the dock and we all in chorus shouted her name. Begoña, exhilarated
by her sudden popularity, looked at us amazed and happy. At last she came on board
with Aunt Mari, her granddaughter Ana Mari, and friends of the family, Julita and Juan.
Of all the family members she knew only me. When ama and our sister embraced, it
was very exciting for them and for us to see them. Ama lost consciousness for a few
seconds. That day was the first time that all five siblings were together in one place and
fifty years more would pass before we would repeat this feat. And in that moment of joy
we all believed that our sister Begoña would stay with us, but unfortunately it did not
happen like that. Many years had passed with us apart to repair the damage of such
absence. We prepared to leave the boat and they asked for our passports and when ama
showed hers they took it away and said she had to get another safeconduct pass in a
month because her passport was worthless. It was her purge. The books and other
passed through customs without the boxes being opened, thanks to our good friend
Araquistain. We stayed at the Hotel Astoria and the son of Mary Pallin, who was in this
city, took us the three sisters to visit the city during the time we were in this beautiful
Catalan capital. We visited the Monastery of Montserrat, the Park Tibidabo, Montjuic, a
center for arts, entertainment and culture and the Church of the Sacred Heart. After a
few days we took a twin-engine plane to Bilbao.
In Sondica airport waiting for us were Aunt Elvira, Uncle Ino and Aunt Carmen.
The joy and surprise of meeting again was great, since for ama it had been almost
twenty years since she left her town and their families. We went to our uncle's house
and after dinner came the Algorta family to visit. Many memories rushed through my
mind and heart. Now with different eyes I looked around me at what had been familiar
to me as a child. I told this to ama, and she replied that it all seemed smaller, as if taken
from a picture. But her emotions were now focused on her second daughter Begoña.
Begoña was 16 and I almost 18 years, the age when we thought life was fantastic
and the world belonged to us. We got along as well as when we played together many
years ago. Because of the experiences of the past years in different countries, speaking
with a different accent and because there wasn’t much physical resemblance, her friends
did not believe we were members of the same family and the sad thing is and was, we
belonged to two different worlds. So there were and are differences between the two,
but the sad experience of our childhood always united us and will continue to join us.
But the only dissimilarity we felt at that time was that she was a fan of the Royal
Society of San Sebastian and I was a fan of Athletic Bilbao (the two leading Basque
soccer teams). Begoña made a great effort to form with me the inseparable duo from our
childhood, to the dismay of our mother, because with it Begoña relegated her to third
place in her life. Our two brothers have always grown up together in the family and
country and continue without the disparity Begoña, Arantza and I have lived since the
three of us have grown up in different places, in different circumstances and therefore
with different experiences.

46
 At the same time we arrived at Barcelona aita received word from Aguirre that
their project had been postponed indefinitely due to lack of funds. Aita, despite his
sadness, was confident in the tenacity of his friend José Antonio, and continued to hope
that would be done in the future. Ama was not so optimistic. It was a great
disappointment, more than she needed, but at this time to ama the most painful was the
confirmation of what he feared. She had lost her second daughter and it seemed too late
to win her back. It has been a long time and she could not recover in a few weeks the
work of many years. The war continued claiming its victims.
In midsummer the beautiful town of San Sebastian on the shores of the
Cantabrian Sea offers spectacular views. The city is surrounded by three beaches
Ondarreta, La Concha and Zurriola, and three mountains. Monte Urgull, a mountain of
135 meters, is situated between the Old Town of San Sebastian and the Paseo Nuevo,
near the sea. At the top is the statue of the Sacred Heart that dominates the skyline.
Monte Igueldo, 184 meters high, has an amusement park and a lookout tower that
served long ago. Monte Ulia (231 meters) enjoys a privileged setting, wooded with
abundant ruins hidden in the bush and coastal cliffs and a view afforded by the coast
facing the Cantabrian Sea Guipuzcoa. The dictatorship kept for San Sebastian the role
of summer capital city. From 1940 to 1975, Francisco Franco spent the month of
August at the Palace Ayete.
While I lived in the house of Aunt Juli, ama, Bingen and Xabier slept in a rented
room nearby. Begoña and I we soon joined a group of young people with whom we
went out regularly. We would meet on the Ondarreta Beach in the morning and at dusk
on the “Avenue”. One night we arrived home a little late and the night watchman of the
neighborhood, who had the keys to every house and watched over the peaceful streets,
opened the large outside door of the house for us. It reminded me of what aita told us
about the night watchmen in his time in Algorta. They were like talking clocks and
weather forecasters, singing time and weather every hour during the night. Our brothers,
9 and 11 years old, while in Donosti raced their toy sailboats in a large fountain close to
home. They were a real Olympic games. They went hiking, climbing Mount Urgull
and Mount Ulia; and they walked nine kilometers to the neighboring town of Hernani.
They rented bicycles and rode seven kilometers to reach Renteria. Its inhabitants were
known as cookie sellers because they made the delicious cookies Olibet were made
there. We speculated that they went there for the cookies, but they never told us for
sure because their excursions were always alone, and by doing so "hidden" they knew
better. They continued with these adventures until the day before school started. We
only saw them at mealtimes. Arantza, 13 years old, liked to be in Las Arenas. When she
visited San Sebastian things didn’t go very well because we did not include her in our
plans, and she was alone. I had just turned 18, and found myself celebrated and flattered
and I was absorbed in this new adventure with Begoña next to me in wonderful San
Sebastian. I did not realize Arantza needed me. Resentfull, she returned to ama in Las
Arenas where she had a group of friends with whom she went to the beach or on hikes.
In one of these outings she went with friends to Mount Serantes, a small mountain
whose peak is located in Santurce on the banks of the Bilbao estuary, visible from all
parts of the region it serves as a landmark. Arantza fell in a ravine and broke her ankle.
She also had a lot of bruises and even lost consciousness. Ama was taking care of some
paperwork in France but dropped everything and rushed to her side. Although Aunt
Carmen took good care of her, it was problematic for ama to have so many things to fix
and children separated and far away from her without her care and supervision. But we

47
were many and we had to live in different houses, which our aunts and uncle generously
offered.
One day Aunt Juli asked me to be a model for a small fashion show because
Carmen, the official model of the shop, was sick. Nervously I agreed and later my aunt
let me use the clothes from the show to wear to parties. On weekends we went to the
San Sebastian tennis club where Begoña was a member. The time that I lived in Las
Arenas I also had an active social life. I was invited to bowling, and paries and dances
in friends’ homes. We also went to dances at the Royal Club “Josaleta” in Neguri,
which I attended with my friends, the Madariagas from Bilbao. Ama was not very
happy that I had this kind of social life when aita was working so hard to support the
family, but Aunt Juli intervened in my favor, and she let me keep going.
Our father was depressed by the rejection of the plan in France and his grief and
disappointment were made worse by living alone in a boarding house in Caracas. He
asked ama to hurry up to come to Caracas to be with him, not understanding everything
that ama was living through at that time. She wanted and needed to rebuild their home,
that is, look for a house, buy furniture and bring us to live with them. Ama, at the
insistence of our father and leaving unfinished a number of commitments and
obligations that were still pending, and with much sadness left her children to be at his
side. Once she was reunited with aita in a small apartment, Arantza went to Caracas to
live with them and after testing immediately began school. Two years passed before my
brothers and I rejoined them. For now Bingen, Xabier and I lived in San Sebastian. I
had to prepare for the trip to Caracas faster than expected because aita did not approve
of my dating a Spanish engineer, which I had just started. My departure was delayed
several months which was a torment for our father, ama told me later. It was delayed by
the crisis of the Venezuelan government at the time that ended with the fall of the
dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

MADRID

On a cold April morning in 1958 we left San Sebastian. Begoña accompanied

me, along with Aunt Julie, Esperanza (a cousin), and her driver Ramon. We left for
Madrid, about 500 kilometers away. We stopped in Logroño, La Rioja, for lunch at a
restaurant and although I do not remember the name or the menu, if I recall our
astonishment because they had the heating in the floor. We were just about to cross the
Ebro River, and were now officially in Spain, I thought as I remembered the words of
aita. We continued traveling to Burgos, where we stopped to visit the Cathedral of Santa
Maria de Burgos, a stately Gothic church of the thirteenth century. We continued our
trip and although we did not stop, road signs told us we were near El Escorial, the
historic residence of the King of Spain. Just before reaching Madrid, we stopped to see
the Valley of the Fallen in the Sierra de Guadarrama, designed by Franco to honor those
killed in the Spanish Civil War. Half an hour later we arrived at the hotel in Madrid. We
had dinner and went to rest. The next morning everyone went to visit the Prado
Museum, but I stayed at the hotel. I was not looking forward to the trip, perhaps
thinking of what to expect in the new Caribbean country.
Finally the hour of departure arrived and after saying goodbye to everyone I
boarded the aircraft. Since this was still the era of propeller aircraft, the trip from
Madrid to Caracas lasted 11 hours.

48
 For Bingen and Xabier, classes ended several months later and they arrived in
Caracas, and the family was together again. I personally would have loved for Begoña
to join the family as we all would, but for now it was too much to expect of her.

49
CHAPTER IV
CARACAS, VENEZUELA

On the eve of my 20th birthday, April, 1958, I left the airport of Barajas in
Madrid heading to America, in the Caribbean. We made stops in Lisbon, Bermuda and
Caracas. After eleven hours of flying from the aircraft I could see the magnificent
mountains that frame the beaches of this tropical coast. The view was breathtaking. My
parents and my sister, Arantza, were waiting. We hugged, happy to be together again.
Silently we went several kilometers between mountains on a huge highway that
rises to the city, crossing bridges and tunnels through these hills. The hillsides are full of
precarious shacks called "ranchos". The city is in a mountain valley fifteen kilometers
from the Caribbean and 900 meters above sea level. It was noon and it was very hot.
When I left Madrid in the European early spring it was cold and I got to this tropical
country with a searing summer heat. Caracas has a lot of American influence since oil
changed the country from its early days as a Spanish colony. It is a very beautiful
country with a tropical climate with alternating periods of rain, sometimes torrential, hot
weather, sun and drought.
Uruguay and Venezuela have very different cultures. The European culture
embodies Uruguay while Venezuela represents a culture that is Caribbean, Andean, and
flatlands. We left the tangos of Gardel with his bandoneon to enter the country
accompanied by the harp, the joropo, and maracas. We left behind the kapok tree with
its beautiful red flowers to enter the country of delicate orchids of many colors. We
came from the open city of Montevideo with a belt integrated into the urban beaches to
the narrow valley enclosed by the majestic Venezuelan Andes. The food, weather,
friends, everything was very different from what we had had in Montevideo. Here again
we were the last Basque exiles to arrive. Our friends had already passed through the
difficult early immigrant life, while we had to start all over again. We were all older
and were on a more difficult road where there was a more challenging environment.
Shortly after I arrived I went to work to help the house with so many expenses and to
catch up on our new life. While it is true that when we came to Venezuela the country
was in an economic boom, and was it easier to earn a good living than in any other
country, so we made our way more easily than in Montevideo. Ama and I continued to
think about, to miss, and to write to our friends in Montevideo.
For our parents this city was the fifth time they had started from scratch to start a
home with everything attached to it. Abandoning what would have been their first home
in Sopelana, there followed homes in Paris, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Caracas
now. Although they felt nostalgia for things they left behind, sometimes very good
things, our parents never complained, and ama worked with effort and enthusiasm to put
in each one of them a very personal stamp making them warm and comfortable homes.
Aita always insisted that the best treasure that he could leave us was a good
education, and in that he placed his strong emphasis. They sacrificed to send us to the
best schools. While teaching us to increase the quality of life to achieve an economic
level (not always the best), our father never stressed that to make money was a goal. He
gave us his example with his thirst for knowledge by reading incessantly. A polyglot, he
learned eight languages to read the classic books in their original languages. He was a
writer and poet with love for classics and a great admirer of Greek culture, remarkable
for its rich literary tradition, for its art and architecture and its great link to the past. But

50
even with all he knew, I heard him say often, quoting the Greek philosopher Socrates,
that true wisdom is in recognizing one's own ignorance.
From our parents we learned to admire people with the noble sentiments, people
who had spiritual qualities such as kindness, righteousness, justice and forgiveness. He
also admired the simplicity and elegance in people.
Being wealthy was not the goal of any of us. There are many parables in
Scripture related to issues of finance, and God warns that the desire, the love of money
is the beginning of all evil. Ama cited the author of the book of Ecclesiastes that focuses
on the purpose and value of human life: "Vanity of Vanities! Vanity of Vanities! All is
Vanity!" She used to deplore the emptiness and nothingness of the things of this life.
But our mother liked to try her luck with games, including betting on the horse
race known in Caracas as "5 & 6". After coming home from Mass this was a distraction
and hopefully she bet on her favorite horses. After the special Sunday meal she
prepared, she would turn on our first television to follow these races that are carried out
religiously every Sunday afternoon and were televised from the Rinconada Racetrack.
Horse racing was still enjoyed as the the sport of kings. Another distraction for them at
night was watching the news on "El Observador Creole", Radio Rochela (a comedy skit
show) or their favorite show "The Fugitive". Sometimes some of us joined them to see
the renowned physician search for the one-armed man, the real murderer of his wife. I
liked a game show (I do not remember the name) where contestants had to memorize
things to win. I practiced a lot and when I had started to master the game, I wrote to the
Televisa television studios. I received an invitation to participate, and as our mother
liked the show, she accompanied me happily. I did not get to be in front of the cameras,
and we were resigned to sit in the audience. We had fun, and when we left in the lobby
we saw the famous producer and television host, Renny Ottolina, talking to the
producers of the show and we both consoled ourselves by telling everyone about that
event.
Ama also liked to play poker and another card game called julepe, and one
Saturday a month she met with her two sisters, Lola and Mari, to play. The latter lived
with her daughter, Maria Luisa, and her family in La Castellana (a residential district of
Caracas). Although our parents were the only ones who played, the whole family went
and came back late at night. Ama was quite lucky and won almost all the time, which
gave her the incentive to attend these family gatherings. We had the opportunity to see
our cousin, Maria Luisa (Goian Bego; Rest in Peace) living with all kinds of luxuries.
She had two houses, a three-storied one in Altamira, which she rented, and a very
luxurious, two-storied home in La Castellana, with a beautiful green garden and
Olympic-sized pool at the foot of Mount Avila. Both were in very good residential
neighborhoods in the city, if not the best. At the entrance was a large spiral staircase
that separated the living room from the dining room, a kitchen equipped to the last
detail, several maids, and a sitting room where we met to play. Her closets were full of
clothes, her home had beautiful spacious rooms, and she had a Mercedes Benz at the
door, and traveled to Europe every six months with her husband and daughter. Two
years earlier her second daughter, Mari Cris, only a year old, was very ill, was
diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She was taken to New York, and was
hospitalized at Mount Sinai Medical Center, but nothing could be done and she died a
month after being admitted. Many years passed without communications between me
and Maria Luisa, but when I heard she was sick I established communication talking to
her regularly over the last two years of her life. She was very lonely. Her husband and

51
two children had died at that time. In these conditions naturally she was very depressed.
I did not remember anything like the vibrant and glamorous cousin whom I had known
and dealt with in earlier years.
Our parents were avid swimmers, but in this city they had very few chances to
go to the beach. We were invited to our cousin's house to swim and cool off in the
tropical heat many times. One day after lunch we were all we enjoying the pool water
and aita stayed behind after we got out. Then we saw with horror his desperate gestures;
he seemed to be sinking and we needed to act quickly. Without thinking ama dove in to
save him, but now the two were in danger. Aunt Mari grabbed the pole used to clean
the leaves from the pool, and they could cling to it and get to safety. It was a moment of
great panic for everyone.
As in Montevideo the whole family participated in an active way in the Basque
Center in Caracas. The center opened in 1942 with the arrival in Venezuela of the first
exiles of war, which began to form a colony. Overall it appears to be the greatest of all
the Basque centers worldwide. It has a fronton (handball court) where famous athletes
have played pelota. Here it was different from Montevideo. Aita was the main
Secretary of Basque Center, and was working weekends in the dark office all afternoon.
For ama was not very attractive idea to meet with her friends just to chat, and were long
and boring these days of the weekend, without our father. She had enjoyed going with
our father to cultural events and festivals, and the company of her friends organizing
charity events, and had experienced both fully in Montevideo. That had been her world
that fit well with her personality and now she missed both things.
Although I knew no one, I soon made a group of friends who belonged to Eusko
Gaztedi (Basque Youth).
In addition, the streets of Caracas were not as safe as had been those of
Montevideo. One day ama was going shopping on the Boulevard de Sabana Grande, the
longest and most famous avenue of the city, crowded during the week and even more
over the weekend with all kinds of business imaginable. Ama carried a sum of money
for something specific that she was going to buy. Before she realized it, a thief came
and snatched the purse she had been clinging to. Our mother fought, screamed and ran
after the robber, who got scared and ran into a bar. But ama did not give up and
followed him into the establishment. When the thief saw my mother so committed to
getting the purse, he dropped it to the ground and ama recovered her wallet and made
her purchase.
For ama shopping was her favorite pastime, looking at the attractive window
displays, and finding sale prices. In Montevideo she sometimes took my sister and me
with it. For us it was like going on safari through the jungle, an adventure full of
dangers and risks starting with the ups and downs to reach the stores that were in the
busy Avenida 18 de Julio. Then try to pay was another ordeal. When we got home we
were exhausted, but not her.
After working one year as secretary, I lost my job because I really was not worth
anything as secretary. It was not challenging enough. It was boring to spend all day in
a small office with papers to write and things to order. With the money I got when I left,
I registered for an intensive one-year course to become a medical records librarian.
Classes were from Monday to Saturday, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm at the Central
University Hospital in Caracas. The course was based on a curriculum developed in
Chicago. After graduation I received the diploma with degree of Medical Records
Librarian. It was the first time the course was offered in Venezuela. The director was a

52
graduate of the University of Chicago. The subject was connected to the study of
medicine, in which I was interested, and I got into the course as a high school graduate
from Uruguay. I started in January, 1960, and ended in December of that year. Two
weeks after graduating I was offered a job with a salary more than double that of
secretary. Now I was working coding diseases, to process information for a diagnosis of
illness or operation and convert it to a code to be communicated to physicians for
evaluation or medical research. And that interested me and I worked with pleasure.
The hospital is on the grounds of what is now the Central University campus on
land that had been occupied by the famous Hacienda Ibarra. This was one of the most
famous properties in the Spanish colony, a producer of sugar and rum to make the best
of their times. The Ibarras, of Basque origin, were the owners of the farm and the house
for more than three centuries until it was acquired by the Venezuelan government in
1947. This hacienda was also used the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, who devised the future
of Venezuela and its university on the land of the beautiful Hacienda Ibarra. Alexander
Humboldt, the great German naturalist stayed in the house for more than two months,
during his visit to Venezuela, where he was dazzled by Mount Avil, the Rio Guaire, and
the country’s rich colonial culture.
It was fascinating for me to work in this environment while I was thinking about
my future. I tried to learn a lot about different kinds of diseases that medical records
described, I witnessed an operation from the windows of the operating room, and once I
was invited by one of the surgeons to observe the operation in the operating room itself.
Since Caracas was in a tropical country, with a high level of moisture, organisms are
easily spread. It was important to be aware of it and I attended conferences on different
tropical diseases, including Chagas disease, dengue, brucellosis and a few others I can
not remember. This appealed to me, and I talked about it at home. Ama put up with it,
but aita would not hear of hospital or diseases.
As a hospital employee, I opened a medical record for each family member in
case of an emergency. Our parents were served free. The first to go was our father who
had a sore right shoulder. He was diagnosed with shoulder bursitis, and the doctor
injected a dose of cortisone, which was painful. He did not tell the doctor that he had
spent all afternoon the day before throwing stones at mangoes. The mango is an exotic
fruit, sweet and refreshing, which seems to have originated in northwest India 6,000
years ago and had spread to the tropics and subtropics. You have to gather them when
they are pale yellow, and aita made a great effort to knock them from the trees, just
thinking about the delicious mango jam that ama would make. In Montevideo our
mother prepared a mermelade of tomatos and oranges, of the best quality. It meant for
us endless hours of peeling fruit, but the result was very good when we ate the sweet
jam on toast and we thought it was worth the effort to help out. Aita enlivened the
process with interesting stories while we worked.
While working for several years in the University Hospital I knew and was in
daily contact with physicians. And one day I talked to one of the best surgeons and I
presented the case of ama, who had suffered from incontinence for a long time. She had
had three operations and they all failed. He promised me that he would talk to an
urologist and soon the two offered to do the operation that almost certainly would give
her good results. So far there had been no success, and she had been subjected to many
tests and three operations but none were satisfactory. Ama was a little fearful to face the
new challenge. The operation lasted nearly three hours and she held up very well. That
night I decided to spend the night with her, and the following night I slept beside her in

53
case she needed something. The Medical Records Department where I worked was on
the first floor, and she was in surgery, I think on the third floor. We put some cushions
on the floor and I think it comforted her to know that I was next to her, and our father
was also more at ease. By day he could visit often for several minutes. The operation
was a success and ama was completely well after the past frustrations in previous
operations.
The problem with working in this hospital is that it is located within the campus
and transportation was difficult. At that time there were no parking meters, but there
were buses, or the famous and popular carrito por puesto, in which five people share a
car to cover a definite route, but it was chaotic, uncomfortable, uncertain, and quite an
adventure; and none of them were allowed to enter university. And without access to
any public transport except taxis, the time came that it was necessary to buy a car to get
to my job. Driving in Caracas was not easy since it meant dealing with traffic hell. I
decided to take driving lessons. Ama liked the idea and she wanted to learn as well. The
two of us went to the driving school at seven in the morning before going to work, and
in two weeks we got our license, but for ama it was the end of her career behind the
wheel. I liked driving but never knew where I was going, because my sense of direction
is very bad. I bought a car shortly after, an English Hillman, second-hand upholstered in
red leather inside, cream and red double doors. It was slow when climbing, but it gave
me good service.
Since I was the only one who drove, I took all the family from time to time to
the beach. It was a place liked by both our parents, who grew up near the sea, and they
could see the same sea whose waters kissed Euskadi. I do not remember the names of
all the beaches, but they were beautiful, with white sand and crystal clear waters. In one
of them aita lost his glasses when he came out of the water, and he told us about it in a
very distressed way. But before he could finish his sentence without giving us time to
think, ama hurriedly went into the water and after diving a little she appeared
triumphantly with them in hand.
Xabier was my favorite mechanic, and if I had him as my co-pilot I could drive
to China. But on one unlucky day while I was going to work, Caracas had a torrential
tropical downpour. In less than three hours the drainage system collapsed and the
streets overflowed. My car stalled in the middle of the highway, and with muddy water
rising rapidly around me I needed to do something, and I did not know what. Suddenly
a Venezuelan army colonel in his jeep pulled up next to me and suggested I get out of
the car. I opened the door and the mud flowed into my car. It was a drama, but I
moved to safety. When he left me on a nearby street, my car, which was not
amphibious, only showed its red roof. I would have had to dive into the water get out of
the mud and debris surrounding my poor car. Later, a wrecker took it to the shop, but
the mud had made a mess and the cost of the repair was too expensive. Ama went with
me to the insurance company, part of the Ministry of Transport, and the two of us
ventilated our anger, but they were not covered for such a downpour and so for the
moment our adventure ended sadly.
At home we did not have many pets, a chick, won in a school drawing by our
brothers, a cat and a canary, and for a few days a lovely dog called Zuribeltza because
of his white and black markings. We all enjoyed playing with them, but ama was
definitely the only one who took care of them. Aita preferred the cat to any other pet; he
always loved having a cat. He said they are excellent pets and companions but also
independent and easily adaptable to any environment. His idea was to have him at his

54
side while writing at his desk. He repeated it so much that he convinced our mother and
one day she found his ideal companion. It was a Persian cat with elegant gold fur and
blue eyes. It was curious, agile and active and it loved to climb to high places in the
house. Maybe that's why one day it jumped to the window of the kitchen too quickly
and fell from our eighth floor apartment and died. We decided not to have another cat
after losing this one so tragically.
But ama was alone at home every morning when we left home in different
directions, to work, school and university. And I thought she needed company and I
decided to buy her a beautiful canary. It was lively and cheerful and sang a lot. It sang
and participated in the general excitement of our family, jumping and chirping in his
cage. Ama hung his cage in the middle of the plants and flowers that were abundant on
the spacious terrace, which offered a cozy place for the singing canary, which she
tended with care.
Our futures continued to emerge. Begoña, who was still living in San Sebastian,
was a graduate of a business administration program and was an excellent accountant in
the business of Aunt Juli, and and she also worked at the Red Cross as a nurse. She
inherited the ama’s ability for numbers and business. Arantza was about to graduate
from Central University as a librarian, and was already working in Electricidad de
Caracas. Today she is a successful novelist. Bingen was a medical student and
graduated years later from the School of Medicine. He would go on to become a heart
surgeon and Head of Cardiology of a large Caracas hospital. Two years later Xabier
would enter the School of Engineering. In his second year he chose another field and
now is engaged in the planning, design and implementation of Web sites and Web pages
in Spanish and English. I was in my senior year of revalidating my high school diploma;
as always, I had to struggle twice to do the same thing again. But that did not discourage
me; on the contrary, it gave me more incentive to continue. I passed the equivalency
exams on my own but I still had to complete the last year. In September 1964 I enrolled
in a secondary school at night in Bello Campo (a Caracas residential district), so
between school and work I did not have much free time. I was glad that in a few months
I would meet my goal. I did not get to complete the revalidation in Caracas, but years
later I would achieve one of my dreams by my earning my university degree in the
United States.
The Basque Center quite often offered lectures, many times given by our father
or guest speakers for some commemoration. Aita almost always planned or gave ideas
about any cultural event. His lectures were full of wonderful emotion and patriotism as
only he could do and conquered the audience with their words. Arantza and Bingen
followed his suit. Although public speaking was not what I did best, aita asked me to be
part of a group of young people who presented a lecture on Jesus de Galindez, and I
presented the chapter about the "exile with its nostalgias and loves."
Now with my full social life in the Basque Center, and with more enthusiasm,
we continued making monthly trips, going to different places by bus rented for such
purposes and happy on the road singing boleros by Lucho Gatica, a Chilean bolero
singer who was in fashion that time, some Venezuelan folk songs, and a few Basque
songs, which we sang always on our expeditions.
Sundays at the Center we saw movies rented by Euzko Gaztedi. I loved to
participate in the dance groups, although the practices were sometimes grueling. I also
participated in the choir of Gabon (Basque, for Christmas), which sang the villancicos
(carols) for Christmas. This we did with great enthusiasm. We would divide into groups

55
and visit different houses where we sang; and they gave us sweets, drinks and money to
send to the Basque government in Paris. Masses and retreats were not lacking, and the
whole group was very close and fun. I had two special friends, one was a recent
graduate of the University as an engineer, Trini, and one in psychology, Beatriz, and we
went everywhere together, but we always ended up in the Basque Center.
The young people decided it was time for our independence. Under the stern
gaze of the elders we could not socialize according to our tastes because the lords of the
"old guard" were shocked to see that danced holding our partner (a custom frowned
upon by traditional Basque culture). In the group we had professional construction
engineers, so we decided to build a dance floor away from the supervision of the elders,
just for us. I participated but I do not remember that part I had to do. But together we
did a great job, turning a useless field into a concrete terrace for dancing with a low wall
to sit on at twilight outside.

EUSKADI, 1963
Two doctors from Madrid came to visit the Medical Records Department
because they were interested in opening a program like it in the hospital where they
worked. We gave them a tour, and before leaving they left their cards so we could
contact them if any of us went to Spain. Months later when I was preparing my trip to
San Sebastian I got in touch with those doctors. We agreed that they would come to
Barajas airport to meet me. Before my trip to Euskadi, aita and ama gave me a
wonderful Canon camera, one that used rolls of film, not a digital like we have today. I
liked taking pictures, and I got a lot on this trip, but in picture-taking Xabier always beat
ama and me in terms of quality. He has an eye for photography, and he has an artistic
and technical ability that makes him a very good photographer. Personally I always
thought it is an art that enriches our lives.
The whole family came with me to the airport in Maiquetía, and I still remember
that when I said goodbye to everyone and was walking down the runway and neared the
stairs to board the plane, I heard the cry of ama "Miren". She was calling to give me a
last farewell. Maybe she thought there was that possibility that I would settle in Euskadi
with a job, or because I was going alone adventure, or as an omen, but I turned around
and smiled to encourage her. Although the trip was good all night, at dawn we were still
flying over the Atlantic. The plane began to shake violently and it was as if we lost
height for a few seconds. One of the passengers near my seat went to the cockpit, and
when he returned asked if I was afraid, and I understood the reason for his question. I
categorically denied I was terrified but then he said slowly that we had lost an engine
and the pilot was preparing to make an emergency landing. I looked out the window and
saw no land anywhere. I began to pray fervently. After a while that seemed centuries,
the pilot said we were going to land in Lisbon without going into much explanation.
And there before our eyes we spotted land. Soon we could see terracotta roofed houses
everywhere. We stayed in a nice hotel where we spent the rest of the day and night
before leaving for Madrid on the evening of the second day. After leaving the luggage
we ate; the dessert was a delicious cream cake. Then they gave us a tour of several
hours through the historic center of this picturesque city that has hills, some very steep
that not even the bus could climb. During the war, Lisbon was one of the few European
Atlantic ports in a neutral country, so it became a gateway for the excape of many
refugees. When we arrived at Barajas (Madrid’s airport) it was dark. I had planned my
trip to connect by train to San Sebastian. The two doctors were waiting for me despite

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the delays and took me to the Atocha station to take the train to San Sebastian, but not
before asking me all sorts of questions, and I gave them a copy of my notes. They were
really interested. I was able to get a train that night and I arrived at the North Station in
San Sebastian as eight hours later. My stay in San Sebastian was very good and both
Begoña and I had a great time. But now both of us were more mature and we each
thought more seriously about building a future than previous years. Some time later one
of the doctors wrote that they had managed to open the program and offered me a job. I
was glad I could help with anything, but I had my plans for my college degree in
Caracas. In San Sebastian I also had opportunities to implement the program and
perhaps a job for me, but due to budgetary problems, they offered to pay half of what I
was making in Caracas.

CARACAS
After this trip in 1963 I returned home with the idea that it was better for us to
buy an apartment than to rent. Aunt Juli had just bought a very nice studio apartment in
a tall apartment house in San Sebastian and I caught her enthusiasm to make a similar
investment. We then lived in "Edifico Naiguatá,” a well located apartment, spacious and
sunny, but rented. Nearby under construction there was a beautiful condo building that
we visited on a Sunday after Mass.
We loved it, especially our father. It had magnificent views of the golf course
and Mount Avila, while it was in a central location. There were gardens all around, a
swimming pool, a small playground for children, and a golf course that gave us all a
sense of peace even amid the noisy Avenida Miranda. We had a family meeting to
discuss the cost and the household income. At that time only aita, my sister and I
worked. Bingen could not work because he was in his first year in medical school, and
that absorbed all his free time. We could make monthly payments but the problem was
the down payment. We were discouraged when ama with a satisfied smile gave us a big
surprise. She was always responsible for juggling the available resources, and had been
secretly saving with the same idea in mind. Now she had saved enough to start our
project successfully. So we bought a beautiful apartment in Campo Alegre.
The pool was one of the things we liked in this new house. My brothers and I
enjoyed swimming and going to the beach was impossible because I had no car.
Depending on the time we had all the pool to ourselves. Only ten floors down we went
with our towels and sunglasses where there awaited us a refreshing exercise in this
tropical country. We loved to jump from the diving board and have races. Xabier
brought not only the required towel but came equipped with swimming goggles,
breathing tubes, fins, and earplugs of the Azteca type that they wore to show their level
of importance. I do not think that our brother could even get wet wearing so much
equipment.
Shortly after we moved, the Basque Center eliminated aita’s job. These were
anxious moments for all of us. My brothers were still studying, and our father was 63
years old, a bit old to easily get a job, especially as a foreigner. But he got another job
thanks to his friend Pedro Grases, who had helped him before and did it again now. The
new job was doing what our father liked, that is, historical research. Grases was born in
Catalonia (1909-2004) and arrived in Caracas in 1937 to escape the Spanish Civil War.
He was a writer, historian and literary critic. An avenue in the Caracas neighborhood,
La Castellana, where he lived for over half a century bears his name. He valued and

57
recognized the worth of our father and was always ready to give him the opportunity
that our father deserved. A sense of self worth is needed to assess the worth of others.
At this time the Medical Records Department was talking of a scholarship for
one of us to go to Chicago, Illinois, to do graduate work, and I was thinking to register
for it, although all the English I knew was medical terminology. I think I would have
gotten it, but something intervened in my plans. "Man proposes and God disposes" is a
saying attributed to the German writer Kempis, author of Imitation of Christ; and ama
repeatedly said it to make us see that our goals depend on the divine.
In November, the American holiday of Thanksgiving, is a traditional festival in
the U.S. and Canada. In the United States it is held on the fourth Thursday of
November. Usually for this feast family and friends gather around the table to share a
feast. Aita worked with an American student and my father invited him to dinner that
day with us. He liked the food that ama prepared so he gladly accepted. The traditional
main dish for dinner is a great roast turkey stuffed with corn and sage, served with a
sweet cranberry jelly, vegetable dishes, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy
made from turkey. The desserts are varied, with pumpkin pie being the most popular,
then pecan and apple. Days before the party George, as we called our friend, asked our
father if he would mind inviting another American student new to the country who was
also alone. Aita agreed immediately.
In the United States Macy's department store in New York makes a great parade
through the streets that attracts millions to Broadway to see the giant balloons and
watch performances by guest artists. To compete we decided to do our own show. I
sang the popular and famous Mexican musical ranchera song "Ella" by Pedro Infante.
Bingen accompanied me on the cuatro, a musical instrument typical of the Venezuelan
Plains, based, as its name says, on four strings. It is a very ancient instrument, giving
rise to today's guitar. We were ready to compete with the big Macy's parade.
Xabier opened the door and took care of the necessities of the guests. Arantza
Ama gave instructions on what to do for our celebration. Aita was not very confident
that things would go very well and was a little nervous.
At six o'clock the intercom rang and Xabier started to carry out his duties. Soon
the door was opened and George and his friend Robert arrived, the latter with a bottle of
wine. Pello entertained us with his loud laughter and everything went well to the relief
of our father. After dinner Bingen and Xabier went to the Basque Center, aita and ama
prudently withdrew, and the five of us went out to the terrace to chat animatedly until 1
am.
Bob, as we called him at home, called me in fifteen days and went to eat an
arepa and a drink. Soon we began dating and this relationship became more formal on
March 19, the feast of St. Joseph and a public holiday in Caracas. Bob and I went to
spend the afternoon on Monte Avila.
Caracas is located at the foot of Monte Avila, a mountain of 2,765 meters which
is reached by a cable car to the top. The trip, which lasts 15 to 20 minutes, is a
picturesque ride through Venezuelan nature. It passes through the different types of
plants such as palms, ferns, flowers, orchids and trees such as Bucharest, the most
beautiful tree of Venezuela with orange leaves. Reaching the top is almost like being in
the jungle, deep green, dense and cooler temperatures. Its green is constant in contrast to
the dry cement in the city.

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 At the top there is hardly any place to walk because it is a peak, but in this
narrow area stands the famous Hotel Humboldt, a cylindrical structure with 14 floors
and a 360 º view on the top floor. From the summit looking south we see the town, now
quiet in the distance, and to the north we watched the Caribbean Sea. And there in this
romantic place Bob proposed to me and I accepted, in the lobby of the hotel dining
room, where there an ice skating rink, a gazebo, and a cafeteria. We entered the latter
and there toasted our future with a Coca Cola each.
The first person I told of our engagement was ama. We hugged, and went to tell
aita. For both it was a joy mixed with sadness because I would leave the house and the
country. Almost the first thing my father did after receiving Bob into the family was
buy a Basque flag to have with us always, which we have done. It is framed and is
always in prominent place in our living room. But ama, with her strong faith, was
worried that Bob was not Catholic. To calm her, aita took us to his desk and looked
there and studied the origin and history of the Methodists, the religion in which Bob had
been baptized, and he read all the information we needed. He followed closely my
relationship with Bob. He liked his sense of responsibility, seriousness, punctuality and
eagerness to study, and generally liked him very well.
After our engagement time flew. There were so many details, so little time to
prepare for the wedding. Ama helped me buy most of the outfit, gave me tips on home
management and cooking. I did not worry much, but her lessons I put into practice
later. She accompanied us to choose the invitations and participations. We sewed and
wove quickly. I needed fall and winter clothes, which I did not have. She had taught me
to crochet years earlier and I liked it, and she told us how she learned to knit from the
women in the batzoki (local club of the Basque Nationalist Party) who made jackets to
send to the gudaris (Basque soldiers) at the front during the Civil War.
On June 23, Arantza, Pello and Bob and I were married in a civil ceremony. It
was a simple family ceremony. After the ceremony, we went home where ama had
prepared one of her famous banquets. We set the wedding date by the church on
September 15. Aunt Juli designed my wedding dress, simple and very pretty with a long
veil and a crown of silk lilies. Ama and I were walking to church the day before the
wedding to arrange and decorate it with flowers. On the way ama told me that she
longed for me what she had hoped for and obtained from her marriage: to be loved,
cared for, and understood. We talked of many things that awaited me in the future and
what we wanted to share more closely. Ama told me in an uncertain voice said, "We'll
go to visit you." The little chapel looked simple and humble, but beautifully decorated.
Wednesday, 15 September 1965, was sunny and everything was ready for our
big day. The small church was filled with flowers. Ama was the bridesmaid. With soft
music we entered the church on a red carpet coming down the aisle. We were married
by Father Jose Mari Mendizabal (Goian Bego; in Basque, Rest in Peace)). Father Jose
Mari talked about Basque women and he reminded Bob that in the Basque Country the
wife who is in charge of everything. Ama was the best example. Bob was calm and
happy. I was less so, thinking about so many changes that awaited me. Once again the
joy of the moment was a bit confused by the farewells from all my family, and also the
shadow of war in Vietnam, which was present. This war had intensified in the spring of
this year, and Bob was facing two years of military service after getting his doctorate.
Xabier took the pictures because the official photographer arrived after lunch, having
suffered a car accident.

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 It was very sad for them to let me go and for me to leave them. Not without
tears in our eyes we all said goodbye. We were thinking about another separation and
more when we would see each other again. We went to the Sheraton Macuto and two
days later before embarking I called home to say goodbye to ama, and that evening we
sailed for Houston, Texas. That afternoon, in the tropical port of La Guaira, I could not
help feeling that I had left behind a part of me that I might never recover. The ship was
at sea. This was the third time that a ship would take me to a different destination
leaving my loved ones, to start a new chapter in my life as a migrant. Today I can say
that I received all the sacraments and each in a different country: Baptism in Paris; First
Communion in Las Arenas; Confirmation in Montevideo; Marriage in Caracas; and
Anointing of the Sick in Washington.
Ama and I had talked about my total ignorance in the kitchen, and soon she sent
me my first cookbook, "My Vizcayan Economic Cookbook", by Mercedes Ledezma.
The author was a professor at the academy of cooking and worked in Bilbao where all
marriageable girls came to take lessons. It was possibly the first academy of its kind to
be formed in this city. Ama knew that I would learn and would benefit from the small
cookbook, and I did, but I struggled with the equivalence of measures, such as
converting grams into ounces.
In the year 1965 there were many changes globally, which affected Bob and me
personally. The situation had worsened in Vietnam, and President Lyndon Johnson
ordered to send troops to prevent South Vietnam from collapsing, and the continued war
intensified. The Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII was one of the
events that marked the twentieth century. It lasted from the fall of 1962 until its closure
in December 1965. The goal was to modernize and renew the Catholic Church. And the
final decisions of this council were drastic changes such as replacing the altar table,
moving the tabernacle to the side, remove the rail for communion, the priest celebrating
Mass facing the people, women not needing to wear a veil in the church and changing
the language of the liturgy. The Mass had been celebrated in Latin for hundreds of
years and now it would be in the vernacular, which in my case would now be in
English. While it is true that all these changes took place gradually over four years after
finishing the Council, the changes were added to the big change I was experiencing at
the moment.
Ama and I agreed that we didn’t like all these liturgical changes very much.
Here you can add what the Prophet Jeremiah told us. Do not look longingly to the past
wishing things could be as they were before. Exalt God in this moment and let us move
forward. And so it proved to be.
The Bible has a great influence, but we are unaware of the path that has left us
not only historically in the social and cultureaspect but in art, science, literature and
music. Ama in her everyday language used many sayings from the biblical world.
Some of the expressions taken from the Bible and spoken by ama:

"There is everything in the vineyard of the Lord" (Matt. 20:1-7) Jesus taught equality
among all the disciples about the reward of eternal life.

"In the blink of an eye" (1 Cor. 15:52) A doomsday scenario that tells us we must be
awake because at any given time the final trumpet sounds and all living and the dead
shall be changed.

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"Double-edged sword" (Prov. 5:4) Discretion and understanding prevent adultery that
leads to disgrace, bloodshed and bringing remorse at the end, compared with marital
faithfulness that brings happiness and safety.

"Make the Passover for someone" (Exodus 11:4-5, 12, 29) in this passage God told
Moses to kill all the firstborn of Egypt

"Mourn like a Magdalene" (Luke 7:38-44) A lesson of the relationship between

forgiveness and love. Only love and recognition inside a sinner brings mercy and
forgiveness.

"Going through hell" (Gen. 4:11-14) the first murder in history, Cain kills Abel.

"To have more patience than the holy Job” (James 5:11) the book of Job is an exquisite
dramatic poem about the suffering of the innocent. It is a matter of patience and
perseverance in the midst of trials.

"Sow discord" (Matt. 13:24-30) The wheat and tares growing together was the best
expression that the church is a mixture of good and bad, like the rest of the world. But
in the end all will be judged and justice will triumph.

"Vanity of vanities" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) this is an expression of the entire book of

Ecclesiastes and refers to something that may be true, but has little or no substance.

"Selling out for a mess of pottage" (Gen. 25:29-34) Essau gives up his birthright to
Jacob in exchange for lentil soup. Trade one’s honor for material goods and give up
something important for an immediate but minimal benefit.

"To see the speck in your neighbor's eye and not the beam in their own" (Matthew 7:3-
5) Jesus said not to judge to as not to be judged.

"To see the heavens opened" (Acts 7:56) See the glory of God said the first Christian
martyr Stephen, to have the vision of the risen Jesus in glory before being stoned to
death.

CHAPTER V
WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES

We left the port of La Guaira at nightfall and our first stop was the port of
Curacao. The arrival at the port of Curacao was surprising because the ship entered the
port passing near a row of picturesque houses of different colors. We learned the
meaning of the name of the island. Curacao means "healing island" because when ships
came to port with sailors suffering from scurvy, they were cured by eating the delicious
fruit that the island offers. Our second and last port was Aruba before coming to

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Houston, Texas. It was a happy eight-day trip across the Caribbean Sea dotted with
islands and then into the wider Gulf of Mexico. Taking a Caribbean cruise is exciting
and memorable when you look over the Caribbean Sea and more if it is on your
honeymoon. They were happy days and Bob and I enjoyed them greatly.
When planting new roots, many of us find our minds wandering through the seas
to the mountains or the valleys of the land of our parents or the land they left behind in
other pilgrimages. Someone said that the sea can be a psychological boundary that
protects us from hidden wounds and bitter memories. Our parents sailed the same
waters that were battlefield in innumerable wars of German submarines destroying and
sinking Allied ships.
I was living my experience as an immigrant for the fourth time in 27 years.
Arguably, I was a "citizen of the world." It meant to pack suitcases, say goodbye to
loved ones, reach unknown lands, hear a strange language, learn one’s way around a
new city, adapt to new customs and idioms, and change radically all these things I
experienced as a child, youth and adult. All these moves have their pros and cons. It
really gives us a different view, makes us more open minded and adaptable, and
integrates heart and soul into the society we live in. And it makes it easier to
understand other minds and cultures. But all of this it entails great expense, which is to
lose one’s roots.
On Saturday, September 24, we slowly entered the Houston Channel and arrived
at the inland port of Houston, Texas. The port is 40 kilometers from the Gulf of Mexico,
and only one kilometer from the city center. Bob's sister and her family hosted us
generously. In Houston we enjoyed great breakfasts which were really rather brunch
including pancakes and syrup. Three days later we began traveling from Houston to
Washington in eight days. We covered the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama. We continued our honeymoon by spending several days in the beautiful city
of New Orleans. We crossed the Mississippi River into Alabama and visited a friend of
Bob’s from graduate school and his wife. In Atlanta Georgia, we strolled through the
heart of the south, where they filmed "Gone with the Wind." We crossed South
Carolina, and in North Carolina celebrated Bob’s birthday on the road. Finally we came
to Virginia, the southern capital, at noon which we crossed in three hours. And finally
we came to Washington, that evening I will never forget.
To reach the center of the city we had to cross the Potomac River on one of the
many bridges that add special fascination to Washington. We crossed the bridge that
offers the greatest view of the city because it is lined with American patriotism that tells
us we are entering the capital, the Memorial Bridge. We stayed in a hotel and the next
morning before leaving to look for a home I described in a long letter to my parents and
siblings all my thoughts, joys and concerns.
We soon found and settled in a beautiful, tiny apartment in a downtown
neighborhood near Johns Hopkins University where Bob was a student. The small
apartment had a lovely sofa that converted into a bed at night. Two large windows were
decorated with mustard-colored curtains and the sofa was upholstered in blue and
cream, with chairs and tables in French style. The living-room fireplace warmed us in
the winter and the rest of the apartment included two closets, a small desk, old, large
kitchen with huge closet and a happy bathroom that the sun bathed through a large
window. It was very well located in terms of cultural education of American life and
entertainment, as it was only a few blocks from the White House, the Capitol, many
museums of various kinds, the National Gallery of Art with its concert halls where

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attended on weekends, majestic monuments, and Library of Congress, the oldest
cultural input in the United States that serves as the research institution for Congress,
and is one of the largest libraries in the world. We were also near the Washington
Monument, an obelisk made of white marble, 185 meters tall, on the ground of the Mall.
Bob and I tried to break the record by climbing the 897 steps of the iron stairs in 20
minutes. But we failed as the record to climb to the observation deck was 6 minutes and
42 seconds. We were also close to the historic Cathedral of Saint Matthew, a huge
church, with an exterior like the churches in Italy, made of red bricks that contrasted
with the interior richly decorated with marble and semiprecious stones. The
confessionals were marked by flags to indicate the different languages in which
confessions were offered. I went to Mass every Sunday, and Bob was always with me.
Ama liked that.
At the beginning of spring dresses up Washington with the cherry blossoms. We
went for a walk through the flowery path one Sunday morning; although it was a bit
cold, the show was lovely. This is an annual celebration of the blooming of 3000 cherry
trees Japan gave to Washington in 1912 as a memento of the friendship between Japan
and the United States. People around the world gather here to welcome the arrival of
spring.
July 4, Independence Day of United States from the Kingdom of Great Britain
and aita's birthday, is celebrated on the banks of the Potomac River with millions of
kilos of explosions that are thrown into the air in what is the biggest firework display in
the world. To attend these festivals there are large discounts on airfares, hotels, package
tours, restaurants and shopping centers. Bob and I had a picnic after a short walk to
witness the time the sky was filled with magic.
Bob's parents came from London where his father worked as a petroleum
geologist, directing the search for oil in the North Sea. They came to Washington and
stayed with us for a week. We tried speaking in Spanglish and got it right most times.
They were very nice people and really treated me with affection. It was an exciting year
for us. There were so many things to do and see. I was excited to share all these
experiences of this exciting city with my parents and siblings. Our parents were excited
about what I told them and they wanted to come to visit soon. Aita unfortunately could
never do it. Ama came four years later and we were able to show her the places that I
had described in letters.
Meanwhile aita had promised to teach Bob Euskera by correspondence so he
began to prepare and send the classes, and ama accompanied the lessons with drawings
that she designed. For Bob it was very easy to learn the language faster in the little time
that classes lasted.
In June, 1966, Bob graduated from Johns Hopkins with a Ph.D. in International
Relations and immediately the army called him to do two years of service. The first year
he was assigned to Walter Reed Military Hospital in Washington. The shadows of war
that I sensed in our wedding came true on a beautiful April morning in 1967 when Bob
received his orders to go to Vietnam. The Vietnam War was a war whose origin was the
determination of the Communist guerrillas (the so-called Vietcong) in South Vietnam,
supported by North Vietnam to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. The
confrontation led to a war in both countries which soon became an international conflict
when the U.S. and over 40 other countries supported South Vietnam and Russia and
China furnished munitions to North Vietnam and the Vietcong. In this bloody war some
57,685 U.S. troops were killed; 153,303 injured; and 2,500 were missing in action.

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 Bob could delay his departure a little because our first child would be born soon.
But sadly the person appointed to replace him during that time was killed in an ambush.
Ama sent me some beautifully made clothes for our new baby. She wanted to be
with me in these important moments of our lives, but it could not be.
Our first child Anne Miren was born happily on an important date, July 7, 1967,
the day of San Fermin, an important celebration for all of Navarre. She was born in the
most famous hospital in Washington, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. This major
hospital was named in memory of Walter Reed, who was in charge of a team which
confirmed that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes and not by direct contact.
As a result of this important discovery not only did he save many lives, but also made it
possible to carry out the construction of the Panama Canal. The nurses were very
curious to know where I had bought such elegant clothes that Anne Miren wore upon
leaving the hospital.
The year 1967 was a year of triumphs with the births of the first two children
and grandchildren and challenges with the departure of Bob to Vietnam and Pello
imprisoned for attending an Aberrieguna (Basque patriotic celebration; banned at the
time in Spain) with a camera.
On Saturday, July 29, at 8:00 pm the city of Caracas was shaken by an
earthquake, known as "Earthquake Cuatricentenario of Caracas” since the city
celebrated in those days its first four centuries. At the moment ama was cooking squid
for lunch the next day, while my father worked at his desk. Ama felt the movement but
thought she was a little dizzy, until she saw the chandelier in the dining room moving
from side to side and realized it was an earthquake. She called to our father who seems
not to have noticed, and there in the living room the two held each other until it ended.
When all was calm they hurried down the ten floors out with the other neighbors on the
street. Later they heard on the radio the sad news. The neighborhoods of Altamira, Los
Palos Grandes and the central part of the coast were the hardest hit by the quake. Bingen
and Xabier were unharmed and assisted in the rescue work. Pello and Arantza ran to
their home in Los Palos Grandes where they lived to find their child of six months. He
was with the nanny, and to get to their home they passed buildings of six and ten floors
that had been compressed to the height of a floor, but luckily their building was
standing and there on the street near his apartment they found the boy in the arms of the
mulatto woman who saved his life. That night that began happily for many suddenly
changed when everything went dark and the earth shook. Happiness became pain and
panic. The first quake lasted 35 to 55 seconds and measured 6.5 on the Richter scale,
but it was enough for the terrified population to go out into the street like lost souls; and
more than 400 inhabitants of Caracas and the coast died. There were thousands of
casualties and incalculable material damage. In the center of the city, the Patriarchal
Cross of the Cathedral of Caracas broke off from the top of the church and tradition
says when it fell down the earthquake stopped; and as testimony to that fact its mark is
recorded on the floor. A few weeks later I got a letter from ama with details of the
earthquake and the sad news of the death of Basque friends when the building they lived
in collapsed.
Meanwhile, I just arrived home from the hospital with my baby in my arms and
began my arduous task of being a sweet mother without any help except what Bob
could do when he came home from work. We did not have any family around to
celebrate her arrival or to ask for advice or assistance. Bob had gotten a woman to help
me clean the house. She was a tall, slender black woman who wore hat and gloves.

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After greeting me and the baby ceremoniously, she went singing around the house
cleaning. I could relax to the sound of quiet songs of the mulatto with my daughter
asleep in the white bassinet that I had lined with tulle from my wedding veil.
At 15 days we baptized Anne in the English style gray stone Memorial Chapel at
Walter Reed. We had a little party where we invited Perico Beitia, the Basque
government delegate in Washington, Yaione Bilbao and husband who were visiting the
city, and some friends of ours. A few days we packed up and the three of us went to
Houston, Texas, where Anne Miren and I planned to live near Bob's family during the
absence of Bob after he left for Vietnam. Bob with his new Ph.D. would ow be
responsible for planning and coordinating the security of caravans and trucks carrying
medicine, food and ammunition. Our farewell was very sad, both of us crying with our
newborn between us.
Three months later my in-laws invited me to visit them in Bogota, Colombia,
one of the highest cities in the world, 2640 meters above sea level, and also one of the
largest in Latin America. This city offers a contrast between the houses of rich colonial
heritage and modern buildings and is surrounded by huge Andean mountains. On the
streets you see people clothed with dark-colored ponchos that make them look more
dramatic. We were staying in the Hotel Residence Tequendama, located in the center of
the city. We spent a month with them in Bogota during which we made many
purchases. We visited the "Quinta Bolívar" in honor of Simon Bolivar, a beautiful
house, beautiful gardens, with a mosaic floor made of sheep bones. We went to Mass at
the Church of San Diego, then at the Copper Museum nearby where we saw exhibits of
thousands of objects of copper. Seeing these copper utensils, I thought of the typical
rustic Basque cuisine and I cannot remember where, but we bought ten copper items for
cooking and to decorate our kitchen. We bought ponchos and jewelry made with
emeralds.When we had finished our stay my in-laws joined us on the trip from Bogota
to Caracas to meet my parents and siblings. Anne Miren and I spent five months in
Caracas.
CARACAS
We arrived at Maiquetía airport and the whole family was waiting. My in-laws
after a delicious dinner prepared by ama went to rest at the Hotel Tamanaco where they
were staying, and the next day they came to our home. My father-in-law and I went to
the U.S. Embassy to report my new address and telephone number. Meanwhile my
parents and my mother-in-law stayed at home and they understood each other very well
with my father as translator. At night they invited the whole family to dinner at the
Hotel Tamanaco. I could not stay because Anne Miren never stopped crying and my
good father-in-law took both of us home. Ama told me it went very well and our parents
personally liked Bob's parents very much.
One of the first things ama, my daughter and I was to visit the ruins of the fallen
houses during the earthquake. It had been five months in Caracas, and even though the
streets were damaged, buildings were dilapidated, and there were vacant lots where
once there were buildings, everyone seemed calm as they waited for Christmas. At
home aita was speaking fondly in Basque to Anne Miren. Ama was delighted to make
dresses for her and take her for walks. Everyone was very kind to us but I could not
fully enjoy the visit because they were bad moments for me thinking about Bob and the
Vietnam War where we never seemed to hear very good news. In April 1968 we could
not wait any longer and returned to Houston to await the return of Bob. Before I left,
aita gave me a copy of his recently published book which he dedicated to me. The title

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was The Basque Man. I was filled with pride and I did not expect it. Again and sadly we
said goodbye.
HOUSTON, BRYAN, TEXAS
On the eve of our daughter’s first birthday, Bob returned from Vietnam. We
celebrated in style with the whole family. I called Caracas to report the good news.
They had already offered him his first job was in Bryan, Texas, a university town two
hours north of Houston. Here there were real cowboys, they had exciting rodeos and its
inhabitants were very friendly. It was a small charming village, but it lacked the cultural
or entertainment events offered by cities such as Washington or Houston. I think
because of that, we had parties all the time, and almost all songs we sang were nostalgic
college songs accompanied by Bob on guitar, a musical instrument that I had purchased
as a gift from Don Disco, in the Chacaito neighborhood of Caracas. In this environment,
Bob began his teaching career, and the three of us pursued family life had been
interrupted by separation due to war.
I remember that I told ama what we did in this town of Bryan, and she wrote that
after my tumultuous year to travels to Bogota and Caracas, and Bob’s to Vietnam, she
advised me to take advantage of the peace of this small town and take the time to restore
our lives to normal. And she was right. We needed in these moments the tranquility of
a small town.
A few weeks into my second pregnancy Bingen informed us from Caracas that
our father was going to the University Hospital for x-rays. He became dizzy and was
hospitalized. They found him anemic and gave him a blood transfusion. Bingen got in
touch with the gastroenterologist to view the x-rays and it was diagnosed as probable
carcinoma of the stomach. After several transfusions he recovered enough to perform a
laparotomy to make a definite diagnosis. Bingen was upbeat and told me not to worry,
but unfortunately it was stomach cancer with liver metastases. A week after the
operation he had a complication, peritonitis, renal failure and died in full awareness and
without pain. I was five weeks pregnant and had had a miscarriage several months
earlier so I could not travel to see and be near him one last time. Begoña arrived in
Caracas days before the operation to be next to her father before he died and got to
know and embrace him.
Ama did not expect such a tragic end. She wrote some letters that were very
painful and difficult for me to read and I felt very sad about being so far away to offer
my support and love. Xabier wrote me that he took her for walks and for trips, which
she had always liked. They even made excursions into the Venezuelan jungle, visited
the Venezuelan Andes and he also took her to eat one of their favorite delicacies, the
almond cake in Colonia Tovar (a Venezuelan tourist site), and other excursions. For
these trips all she had was to do was enjoy the scenery and food, and she enjoyed going
with them ama told me in all her letters. She wrote of these adventures with excitement.
Bingen told me that he also took her to the cinema to see "Fantasia" by Walt Disney,
which she really liked. Our two brothers and Arantza were able to be support for our
mother in those difficult moments.
On all these trips Xabier took ama in a German Werchmacht jeep from the
German armed forces in World War II. It had no doors and a canvas roof that let the
noise in from everywhere. I called it "The Tank" but according to Xabier it was a work
of engineering masterpiece and he proudly took her everywhere, even driving once to
Brazil.

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 My father in-law had taken me two years earlier to the Houston Space Center
where they control all space facilities and which serves as a NASA astronaut training
center. It was an interesting tour that impressed me. Now on a hot July morning sitting
in front of our recently acquired first color television set, we saw the space launch of
Apollo 11 from Cape Canaveral. Four days later, on July 20, 1969 the first human
landed on the moon. On July 24, they landed in the Pacific Ocean. It only took eight
days to go to the moon and return. Neil Armstrong, the commander of the lunar
module. When stepping on the moon famously said "This is one small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind." Anne Miren had just turned two and did not understand what
happened and we waited until night to point out the moon and describe to her what
happened, but she was not as impressed as we wanted. I wrote to our mother telling her
about this event and she said she thought how aita would have enjoyed watching this
unparalleled event.
We invited our mother to Texas to be with us for the birth of our second child
and she did so. She came several weeks before birth, in time to put the finishing touches
on clothes that neatly sewn for the crib and the baby. Kathleen was born on the saint’s
day of Las Mercedes, the ama’s patron saint, September 24, 1969. She shared her room
with the newborn that we decorated it together. She felt a lot of affection for the little
girl. She attended her day and night to let us rest and so I could be more with Anne
Miren, and her caring for the newborn soothed her aching spirit. We baptized her in the
oldest church Bryan, Saint Joseph’s (1873), with the name of Kathleen Elizabeth, names
of family members of Bob.
Two months later my in-laws invited us to visit and stay with them a few days in
the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, the "Sparkling City by the sea", 443 kilometers from
Bryan. At that time they resided in this city. I was a little worried about invading the
house with the five of us, and more with a newborn, but between ama and Bob they
encouraged me. Ama was treated royally, and she was very grateful for the attention
from my in-laws. They let her have the master bedroom with private bathroom, the
girls occupied one bedroom and we the other, while my in-laws sleeping in a small
room adjacent to the living room. Ama told me "I do not think aita would have given
someone else our bedroom." My mother-in-law liked that ama was so witty; such as
when ama invented a way to walk our daughter since we had not brought the stroller for
Kathleen. She got her baby seat from the car, and put it on top of a serving table with
wheels, and thus took her for a walk outside. Ama said "necessity is the mother of
invention." The truth is that ama had a good time even though we did not go to many
places.
Bob and I prepared for a weekend visit to New Orleans, six hours away. Ama
offered to take care of the girls. We stayed at the Provincial Hotel located in the French
Quarter, the oldest sector of the city. We'd been there on our honeymoon and we liked it
for its quiet, simple elegance, and because it was very well located, close to everything.
In the nineteenth century it had been the convent of the Ursuline Sisters, and then was
converted into a military hospital during the Battle of New Orleans and later during the
civil war. Upon arrival at the hotel called to make sure everything was okay. Ama and
Anne Miren spoke a bit and everything seemed in order. The next night we called again
and this time the line was busy; even after half an hour was the same. We knew that
none of the three could talk much on the phone, or more precisely, not at all; and we
called the neighbor and in Spanish spelled a message to give to ama. We called and ama
answered. The phone had been off the hook because Anne Miren thought I was on the
line all the time. She missed us and her consolation was the phone. This episode made

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me think sadly back to my childhood because I was her age when our mother left us and
went to Marseille. And we returned home.
Bob was offered a good job, the post of head of the department of political
science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He accepted it and we left his
family behind in texas. It made us a little sad because in this new city we did not know
anyone. The city of Chattanooga is along the two sides of the Tennessee River and
surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains. We rented an apartment in an historic region
in the neighborhood of the top of Signal Mountain, so named because the first
inhabitants, the Cherokee Indians, from the top of this mountain sent smoke signals
through the valley. The mountain has an altitude of 600 meters and offers a unique
panoramic view, but has a very narrow road with many curves and does not inspire
much night driving safety. One month later we bought our first house, down in the
suburbs of the city. The region offers a picturesque setting. The city is very urban but in
the mountains the culture revolves around the arts, music and folk crafts.
Living in such a picturesque city, I decided to take correspondence courses in
Interior Decoration offered by La Salle University, and learn to choose the right colors
to decorate our home and develop my creativity. With each lesson we transformed the
rooms starting with the entry and ending with the girls’ rooms. As soon as I had
graduated, Bob helped me in this project and I ended up changing our whole house. I've
always wanted our home to reflect our tastes and personalities. Some time later, ama
upholstered a chair for us, perhaps as a show of support for our efforts.
In 1972, Bob worked as a coordinator in the state of Tennessee in the election
campaign of Senator George McGovern for president. For a few months we were very
busy. The phone kept ringing until late at night and by day we organized and we went
to parties for fundraising. There were countless trips to give talks, meet politicians and
finally to be a delegate to the Convention in Miami, Florida. Bob could not attend. Ama
eagerly followed closely the political career of Bob and sent him a drawing of a donkey
in support. She sent me a gold pendant for bracelet, a donkey, a symbol of the
Democratic Party.
EUSKADI
In 1973 we traveled to Euskadi to show Bob the country that we had talked
about so much. At that time ama was living with Arantza, Pello and their three children
in Pamplona. Since aita died she divided her time between Caracas, Euskadi and the
U.S. On our wedding day, she promised me she would write once a week and she did
so faithfully. Now she wrote her letters more often. In the first week of July we spent a
few days to visit Pamplona. Anne Miren was convinced that in Pamplona the fiesta and
fun were celebrating her birthday. And the place that we most enjoyed was the pastry
shop. During our time Bob made a number of interviews with people in the Basque
underground struggle that later become part of his first book about Basque politics.
Most of the interviews were made possible thanks to the intervention of ama through
her contacts with politicians in Euskadi.
I had never lived in this city known worldwide for the famous festival of San
Fermin. Ama insisted we should go to witness the running of the bulls, which consists
of a three-minute run before the bulls, culminating in the bullring. She woke us up early
to be sure that what we did it. We arrived before the first rocket launch (txupinazo) and
climbed up to a window of a bank so we could experience the risk and excitement of
these popular events immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in his novel "The Sun Also
Rises."

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 We were able to take the girls and their cousins to see the parades of giants and
cabezudos, carnival figures known as I had told them many times. With some
trepidation they watched passing in front of us the giant figures representing different
races of the world and the “big heads” that chased the children shouting and running.
But we could not stay to attend the final night. On the 14th San Fermin officially ends
and everyone meets in the plaza across from City Hall and holding ligted candles sadly
sing the song "Poor me."
CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE
Our trip to Euskadi and our stay there were very good and productive for all.
We were happy we did it. Two years later ama came to be with us for a while. At this
time we lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She arrived a few weeks before the birth of
our third child, who was born December 24, 1974, with all happiness. When he was
born the doctor told us that the child's life was in danger because he was suffering from
severe anemia associated with Rh factor. They were thinking about giving him a
complete blood transfusion. Like many Basques (30-40 percent), I have Rh- blood.
Among Basques, the Rh factor is absent to a high degree. Robert was born with Rh+
and he suffered from a condition called Eritroblastosis fetal. They put him under a blue
light for 10 days. It was not necessary to give him a transfusion; it seems that he was
saved because he was so robust since he weighed 4 kilos, 200 grams. Ama called him
“aizkolari,” a Basque word for weight lifter. After one month the baby was baptized
Robert Vincent in honor of his father and his two grandfathers. He was baptized in St.
Jude Catholic Church in Chattanooga.
A few months after ama left we were in full summer. The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga where Bob was a professor gave its annual picnic, in the
house of the Chancellor, which is located on the banks of the Tennessee River, close to
the enormous hydroelectric plant, Chickamauga Dam. When we arrived, the place
impressed us with its majestic house and beautiful garden along the river with a rapid
current, an impressive panaroma typical of this region. Bob and the girls went to play
with their ball and I stayed with Robert (eight months) in his carriage. Several minutes
later neither the carriage nor the baby was beside me because it had started to roll down
a hill to the river. Instinctively I looked toward the river and in that instant I could see
the carriage overturned and my baby thrown into the river. I ran desperately calling for
help to attract the attention of those present. I did not see the baby, but I put my arms
under the water near the carriage and by miracle I grabbed him. He began to cry at
once, a cry that seemed to us a sweet melody. I was trembling from the shock and since
Robert had a small bump on his head we hurried to the pediatrician. When our mother
learned of the accident she baptized our son Moses (saved from the waters).
Ama returned a few months later and was with us six months. This time she
came because I was hospitalized for a week to have a series of tests when I suffered by a
loss of balance and partial loss of hearing. They diagnosed me with hipoacusia, partial
loss of hearing capacity, without discovering the cause. When they put me in the
hospital, the first thing I did was call Bingen and we talked about the problem. When
we told ama all of this, she was worried because she was afraid of all its consequences,
since I was only 37 years old. Aita had suffered all his life, and experienced tinnitus
(ringing in the ears), a constant noise in one ear that made it practically impossible for
him to understand conversations in meetings or parties where there were a large number
of people. Ama knew how frustrating this was for him. And I would suffer the same
thing from this point on. Besides being physically challenging and provoking stress, it

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meant I would be the rest of my life with a diminished capacity to perceive sounds in a
conversational and noisy environment as well as an inability to locate where sounds
came from. But I did not lose hope, and I repeated to ama one of the most cited phrases
from the Bible: “Be not afraid.” I think this calmed her a little bit. The loss of my
hearing was the same day that Franco died, November 20, 1975. We recalled
“Montezuma’s revenge,” for the “bad time” that a tourist has when he eats spicy food in
Mexico.
Physically I recovered rapidly and ama and I soon began to make our plans. In
the mornings we would have a regular daily routine. Very early in the morning ama
finished preparing the night’s supper, and we usually left the house at 10:00 am until
lunch time. Usually I took her to shopping centers, which is what she liked most. How
she enjoyed it. In the afternoons, after taking a nap she had a cup of coffee and thus
refreshed she was ready for what lay ahead. Most of the time we eere in the backyard
with the children or we did the household chores like sewing or knitting. At night some
times we played cards. Sundays we went to Mass, and then Bob would take us on an
excursion to see something new. We decided to visit the nation’s capital and so the six
of us went to Washington for one week. We visited the most important buildings like
the White House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and several of the museums that
I had written her about years earlier.
Unfortunately for us, ama had to return to Caracas. She got along very well with
the children, and I had time to talk with her about many things long forgotten. She
promised us show would return for another visit in a year. Every time she came she
brought books, records and dolls for girls, which she dressed as she had done in our
infancy.
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Kathleen had her First Communion on my birthday, and ama came to celebrate
with us. We were now living in Washington. With ama’s arrival we reinforced the
family traditions from times past. She had a lot of fun with the girls, and she taught
thenm to memorize Txalopin Txalo (a Basque child’s song and game) and the game
“Palomita Blanca,” before giving them candy, which she always had with her.
On this trip ama and I did a lot of things together because I had more freedom
since the girls were in school all day. Among other things, she upholstered another
chair that she liked because she said it was very comfortable and her favorite; we still
have it as a memento of her. One day she decided to go shopping by herself to
downtown Washington on the bus. On these adventures she never got lost and she
never arrived late. On all the trips that she took alone, Bob left her at the bus stop at the
university and he waited for her at the stop at the time they had agreed. Another time
we went to a shopping center near home and she bought some sound equipment (record
player, speakers) that Xabier had asked her to get. She and Bob spent the entire
afternoon packing it to take it to Caracas. She did not care about the inconvenience of
having it with her on the airplane; she was only thinking about making our brother
happy.
With added confidence from her earlier trips, she now began to take different
routes and different bus lines, and one of her adventures led her to the boutiques in the
famous Watergate Building, which is like a small city with five buildings. It’s
enormous, covering 25 hectares, and is located next to the Potomac River and the
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It is considered the most desirable place to

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live in Washington. It is popular among members of congress and cabinet secretaries.
It is like a city inside of other one with a hotel, apartments, restaurants, food stores,
health clubs, a medical and dental clinic, post office, pharmacy, liquor store, and shops.
In 1972 the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee was located on the
sixth floor, and was the scene of the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of
President Richard Nixon. And to this place our mother went shopping. She bought me
a plaid skirt with a shawl. And she returned happy from her trip and told us many
things that night. She enjoyed shopping and seeing so many things that she hardly
noticed being tired. When she said goodby on this trip, which would be the last she
would make to Washington, she was worried about my health and a little sad to leave
us. She said to me, “How proud aita would be of you.”
EUSKADI

For Christmas 1978 we decided to return to Euskadi. We arrived on an

important day, the day of the promulgation by King Juan Carlos I de Borbon of the
Spanish Constitution of 1978. It was ratified on December 6, and did away with the last
remnants of the old Francoist regime, substituting a democratic system with a
parliamentary monarchy.
We saw ikurriñas (Basque flags) and patriotic Basque symbols everywhere and
everyone was in good spirits to celebrate Christmas. Arantza invited us to stay with her
en Alzuza, and ama made us a first-rate Christmas meal: squid in black sauce, ham
croquettes, flan, and fruit compote are what I most recall. This was the last Christmas I
would spend with her.
During this time ama invited her two oldest grandchildren – Xabier and Anne
Miren – to watch a game of handball (traditional Basque sport). We went to the Labrit
frontón (handball court) in Pamplona. Anne Miren and her cousin Xabier competed
during the entire game, and ama enjoyed it a lot to see the rivalry between the two
cousins. Xabier bet on one color and Anne Miren for the other; I don’t remember who
supported which color. Although Anne Miren had never seen a handball game, she
liked the challenge of betting against her cousin. To her happiness, Anne Miren’s team
won. Although her cousin didn’t like it much, he bore up under the loss like a
gentleman, and ama took them both to have chocolate con churros.
Everyone except ama and me decided to go to the town of Leitza, the birthplace
of great figures in Basque country sports, to see the arrival of the Olentzero (mythical
Basque figure who appears on the winter solstice with gifts, similar to Santa Claus).
The two of us talked the whole time about the memoirs that ama was writing and about
the books of our father that she wanted to publish soon. We talked about the photos in
the family album that she treasured so much. I asked her if I could have the photos of
me when I was a little girl to show my children, but she told me that she enjoyed
looking at them so much she didn’t want to part with them yet. Sadly I will never be
able to see them because they disappeared after her death. On this trip she gave me a
book titled La Perfecta Casada (The Perfect Bride) by Fray de León, the lyric Spanish
poet. It is an interpretation of the proverbs of Solomon.
For New Years Eve we all went to San Sebastian to celebrate with my sister
Begoña and her family. This was the last time the four of us – ama, Arantza, Begoña
and I – were together.

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 After this trip, Anne Miren and ama sustained a frequent correspondence. Our
13-year-old daughter wrote her about her plans for the future. Anne Miren always
loved to write and she wrote long letters, which she showed me, but I don’t remember
any of them. The only letter that I recall was one of the last, in which she told ama that
she “was going to buy a house as large as a castle and ama would be the guest of
honor.” Ama liked this plan of her granddaughter very much and she answered Anne
Miren right away with a very affectionate letter. Ama never left any letter unanswered,
or any chore undone, or any special date unmentioned. Ama was extremely faithful. It
helped her spirit a lot to hear affectionately from her grandchildren, although nothing
could ever fill the emptiness in her heart for the absence of our father. With us she had
different experiences, from the plains of Texas, to the mountainous city in Tennessee, to
the exciting capital of the United States. And she enjoyed in a different way in each
one.
On April 9, 1980, Carlos Garaikoetxea was elected President of the Basque
Government, almost five years after Franco died. He was the first president elected by
popular vote. This raised our spirits and we were enthusiastic to do something for the
Basque cause and culture. Ama, who was living in Alzuza at the time, happily saw of
her dream come true. Around that time, she wrote me that she had a flight reserved to
Caracas on June 14, and in September she would come and spend Christmas with us.
Then she had the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes and she wanted to go.
Her 13-year-old grandson Xabier would accompany her.
(Our sister Arantza relates this trip.)
“It was a beautiful and sunny morning, Thursday, June 5, 1980, when ama and
her 13-year-old grandson Xabier left for Lourdes, stopping in Zaragoza where they ate
lunch, and proceeding to Andorra where they arrived at 4:00 in the afternoon. After
registering in the hotel, they went out shopping. Andorra is the shopping country par
excellence, and ama was in her kingdom. You can buy duty free, making the prices the
lowest in Europe. The next day, June 6, also they spent shopping. At night, after
playing mus (a Basque card game) with her grandson they went to bed. But at one
o’clock in the morning ama awoke with nausea and shortness of breath. Xabier, at
ama’s request, called the hotel doctor and they took her to the hospital in an ambulance.
Her grandson remained with her several hours in the hospital and left her sitting up in
bed talking to the Chilean doctor.”
In her last hours of life, it was as if she wanted to be heard, and she talked about
the drama she suffered and continued suffering. The theme was of the two girls left in
Biarritz, a subject about which Aunt Lola also talked about in the hospital before she
died, the year before. In the wee hours of the morning, and seeing that she talked in an
animated fashion, Xabier went to the hospital to sleep. From the hospital the tour guide
called Alzuza to notify them of ama’s condition, and he said the diagnosis was
“exhaustion” and the doctors recommended that she not continue on the trip. At six
o’clock in the morning on June 7 Arantza and Pello left for Andorra, six hours from
Pamplona, but when they arrived ama had died of a heart attack.
At more than 3000 meters altitude, Andorra it seems was fatal for her heart
ailment. She was almost 75 years old but still in good health, or at least that’s what we
thought. The distances that separated us once again were like a giant shadow over us
and will always be with me. It hurt me that I was not with her in her final hours. A
week after her death I received her last letter, sent from Andorra. I still keep it as a
treasure. In it she told me of her future plans with us. We knew the great devotion she

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had to St. Joseph, the patron saint of the good death, and she died as she had asked God:
quickly and without suffering.
What a huge emptiness I felt without her. I missed her weekly letters, always so
punctual, with news, questions, good wishes and advice. So many projects we had to
do. In my last letter I asked for her advice and help because I had decided to enter the
university, which required so much time and work, and the children were still little. She
was happy to hear of my idea, and also to see that she was needed. A little note written
by her about this said: “It is worth more to be called upon as essential and necessary and
to be turned away, of course, as something that is worthless. M.”
In 1985 the five of us returned to Euskadi and we traveled across the Basque
Country from east to west and north to south. I felt ama’s absence deeply and we made
several visits to the cemetery where her remains are buried, and we also returned when
we visited Euskadi three years later. We planted a small bush near the Iribarren crypt
where she is buried.
In her memory I felt a pressing need to meet with Basques more than ever. I
imagined that there were Basques in the Washington area, but we did not know any. I
wrote to U.S. Senator Frank Church from Idaho, a friend of the Basques and chairman
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to ask for help in identifying Basques in
the area. A week later I received his answer with the requested information. And so
with one name I got in contact and we quickly knew a dozen Basques. The next year on
Aberri Eguna, the Basque national day, always celebrated on Easter Sunday, we invited
about 20 people to our home to meet them and to eat lunch together. In our backyard
the ikurrina waved proudly. We had other meetings with them, on Christmas and on St.
Valentine’s Day. And so there began to emerge something more serious. At the request
of several of them the next year we tried to form a small Basque Center; and we met in
an assembly to elect an executive committee of five persons.
To prepare before the assembly I studied and translated to Spanish parts of
Robert Rules of Order, a manual to organize meetings efficiently and effectively, based
on the procedures used in the British Parliament. They are principles applicable to any
organization that has to make decisions, from the Congress to community club
committees. The art of working together, that is, to associate with others to achieve a
goal, is an American talent. One of the best political thinkers of his time, the
Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, said “The Americans have a special aptitude for the
art of associating together.” So at least we thought we were ready to form officially a
Basque Center. In the assembly we were 35 members. We voted, and Bob and I were a
little surprised at the result. We had formed a Basque Center called “Euskalerria,” and I
felt inside that ama had been the true founder.
As president I had before me a huge number of plans to carry out, and happily
we decided to begin the job that would last barely seven years, but in which time we did
a lot. We celebrated a Mass for the first time in Euskera, Aberria Eguna, San Ignacio
(patro saint of the Basque Country), and Euskera Day. We printed monthly bulletins,
we held classes in the Basque language, choir and dances, and how excited we were to
be doing these things. We showed movies about Basque culture, and we invited
professors from the University of Nevada, Reno, to speak on Basque immigration as
sheepherders more than a century ago. In 1988 we crowned our labos with a visit by
the Lehendakari (Basque President), Jose Antonio Ardanza to our center, and we hosted
a great banquet for him and his entourage. But how much work, time and energy it took
to do these things. And the center closed its doors sooner than we had expected. Bob

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and I said goodby with disappointment. The seed would be revived almost twenty years
later with a different group of Basques, but always with the vision of Euskadi.
On August 11, 1988, 19 years after aita’s death and eight years after the death of
our mother, the City Council of Getxo unveiled a bust of our father, the work of the
sculptor Jose Luis Butron, in the plaza that carries aita’s name in recognition of his
intense work for his people and for Basque culture. The plaza is in Arriluce, a short
distance from the Avanzada, the site where aita and ama officially began their courtship
60 years before and almost across from the Municipal Cemetary of Getxo where ama’s
remains rest in eternal peace. On this trip we went with our son Robert and we rented
an apartment for a month in the town of Algorta, where aita was born and grew up. In
the inauguration of the plaza, in the name of the family and at the request of my sister
Arantza, I improvised a few emotional words. I concluded with the famous phrase from
the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and repeated by Robert Kennedy during his
presidential campaign and used by Ted Kennedy during Robert’s funeral: “Some people
see things as they are and ask, why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why
not?” This was a phrase that seemed to me to sum up the life of our father.
In the years that followed, I graduted with honors from George Mason
University, and I have worked as an interpreter for the courts and the local schools. I
published my book Nere Aita (My Father), devoted primarily to aita. And nowadays
when I prepare the altar of my church for the celebrant and I take care of the flowers
and plants of the church and our home, I think that I am doing it with the same love that
ama did these things in Las Arenas and St. Jean Pied-de-Port. Our three children were
married and our daughter Kathleen made us grandparents four times, giving us three
beautiful granddaughters and a handsome grandson.
GORRAIZ, NAVARRA

At Christmas, 2008, the five siblings met fifty years after fifty years which it
was the last time we had all been together in the same place. Family reunions, it is said,
are the key to constructing a family legacy. The only time (before now) that the five of
us had been together was on board the ship Provence, April 22, 1956. The wars
changed not only the destinies of our parents but ours as well, and those of our
grandchildren. Now each of us is involved with our own families, in different cultures,
different parts of the world, and in my case speaking a different language.
With all the happiness that this reunion brought us during this week, we have
realized how much happiness we lost because of our respective exiles, and the
emigration of our parents, and transmitted to successive generations because of two
unjust wars.
Personally I have lived in five different countries, always with the image of
something precious left behind, and a new sentiment awaiting me in the new land. And
seeing our children and grandchildren grow up, I can always see something in them that
reminds me of what I left behind. This last trip has been for me especially full of
nostalgia with the memory of the messages, the image and the example of our mother in
my mind and heart. But as the saying goes, “The past is history, the future is a mystery,
and the present is a gift.”
I dedicate my memoirs to the memory of our mother, although the best way to
honor her on September 10 is that she can see from Heaven that peace reigns among her
five beloved children and that the ties of love that she tried to connect among us always
be present in our hearts.

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 I am especially grateful to my husband Bob who has helped me patiently in this
project and installed all the pictures on this document.

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 And special mention to my brother Xabier Iñaki, who take the enormous
task, of recopilate edit, program, and published the biography of our father, with
all materials, references, his writes, conferences and poems, creating one place on
Internet with his name, another to our Mother, and additional facts of our family
on Internet

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INDEX

Ancestors
Their people, their lives
Our parents
Spanish Civil War
First Exile
St. Jean Pied de Port
Paris
Birth of the first two daughters
Second exile, crossing the sea
Third exile, Buenos Aires
Birth of third child
Fourth exile, Montevideo
Birth of the fourth and fifth sons
Fifth exile, Caracas
United States
Maps

My Parents’ Route to Exile

Marseilles-Dakar-Casablanca: January 15 – October 31, 1941

Casablanca-Bermuda-Vera Cruz-Havana: October 31, 1941 – March 12, 1942 77

Havana-Barranquilla-Rio de Janeiro-Buenos Aires: March 12 – April 15, 1942

 Paris – Las
Arenas: 1940-
San Sebastian – 1941
Caracas: 1958

Caracas –
Washington:
1965

Bilbao –
Montevideo:
1947-1948

Montevideo –
Barcelona: 1956

My Journeys
1940-1965

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