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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Boise celebrates Basque population with Jaialdi festival

Mikel Aranzabal, left, adjusts the costume of an Irrintzi performer, part of a group from the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain, on Tuesday during the first night of Jaialdi at the Basque Block in Boise. The five-day party was a showcase of the Basque culture. (Kyle Green)
Bill Dentzer Idaho Statesman

BOISE – Idaho has 7,900 residents who claim Basque heritage, 2,000 of them in Boise. Those numbers are self-reported on government surveys, so the actual Basque population could be much greater.

What Idaho Basques lack in raw numbers, they more than make up for in concentration, visibility and distinctiveness. Basques began arriving here more than a century ago, flourishing as they integrated themselves into civic and social life while preserving their heritage and cultural identity. Their strong and unique presence made Boise a natural pick for the first Jaialdi festival in 1987, and for those that have followed every five years since 1990.

“What we do have is a very concentrated, more recent immigration that is very visible and vocal,” said Gloria Totoricaguena, a second-generation Boise Basque and scholar who did her doctoral dissertation on what is known as the Basque diaspora. She’s written seven books on Basques.

“When you have a state like Idaho that has a low population to start with, then any group of immigration makes a big splash,” she said. “What we have in the Treasure Valley is concentration, not population.”

Beginning in the early 1800s, Basques left their homeland in northern Spain to escape civil war, economic hardship and political oppression. Leaving Spain, they sought opportunity, a measure of acceptance and peace. They flocked to the Americas and began to filter into the U.S., as did other eager new arrivals, to chase the gold and silver strikes in the West. When they arrived, they saw greater opportunity in feeding and outfitting the miners than in digging for precious metals themselves.

Basques readily assimilated here while still maintaining their strong cultural identity. To the extent they encountered prejudice and discrimination, it was more for their religion – Catholicism – than for ethnicity.

Ben Ysursa, who retired as Idaho’s secretary of state this year after three terms and more than 40 years in the office overall, remembers the stories told by his predecessor, Pete Cenarrusa, a fellow Basque who held the office for 36 years. Among them: a young Cenarrusa growing up in Bellevue, Idaho, and whupping a schoolyard bully who picked on him for being Basque.

More importantly, said Ysursa, whose grandparents were first-generation arrivals here, was a strong sense of community among the Basques living here.

“Pete always thought the fact that Basques usually took care of their own problems internally, that the local communities had no problem having a celebration with Basques,” Ysursa said. “They respect the community and the mores of the community, and worked hard. The perception was that Basques will take care of themselves. You don’t have to worry about them.”

And indeed, Basques did take care of themselves – from the boarding houses where recent immigrants started new lives and sheepherders found a respite from their isolated lives to the Basque Mutual Aid societies that were formed to provide community assistance.

“Basque society in the homeland is very much about you and your neighbor,” Totoricaguena said. “Civil rights or political rights are not given to an individual; they’re given to a community. … Basque values are plural, and so that affects their integration into their community.”