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euskaldiaspora is a hypertextual experiment on the Basque diaspora online. 
It allows to explore the geographical webscape of the Basque diaspora as well as to visualize it and to reimagine the Basques online.
euskaldiaspora? what does it mean?

euskaldiaspora or euskal diaspora refers to the Basque Country or Euskal Herria, and its diaspora.

The Basque Country (Euskal Herria) consists of 7 herrialdeak (provinces or historical territories):

Araba, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, and Nafarroa Garaia lie within the borders of the Spanish State, forming the Southern or Peninsular Basque Country (Hegoalde).

Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa, found in the France State, form the Northern or Continental Basque Country (Iparralde).

The Basque Country covers a surface area of 8,218 square miles at the western end of the Pyrenees, making it slightly smaller than New Jersey. It has a total population of nearly three million people. Over 91% of the total population lives in the Southern Basque Country, which account for about 86% of the area of the Basque Country.

Although the Basque Country as a whole consists of seven provinces, they do not all share the same political structure.

The Iparralde provinces along with Bearn constitute the Department of the Pyrenees Atlantiques (i.e., the former Low Pyrenees, within the Region of Aquitaine). It is an administrative territorial body without any kind of socio-economic or political autonomy.

Since the fall of General Franco's dictatorship (1936-1975), the four provinces of Hegoalde have been divided into two different political structures with their own governments and parliaments. Araba, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa form the Basque Autonomous Community or Euskadi. The Basque Statute of Gernika (1979) provides a strong self-government, with important legal, fiscal, and financial degrees of autonomy. The Foral Community of Nafarroa has a moderate level of self-government.

 

Euskal Herria

 

Euskara, the Basque language is one of the most distinguished identity markers of the Basque people. Euskara is the sole survivor of the so-called Pre-Indo-European languages of Western Europe (6,000 BC). However, its origins are still unknown. Most of those languages were extinguished during the Iron Age (1,500-1,000 BC). Today, over 25% of the Basque homeland population speaks Basque, while over 15,000 people from all over the planet study the Basque language every year.

 

 

The Basque Diaspora constitutes a scattered deterritorialized ethnic people outside the Basque Country, where they form a distinctive collective identity to their host societies’ dominant culture. They create specific social identities, institutions, and networks across spaces and over time. The Basque diaspora institutions and networks favor transnational or cross-border interactions and ties with the Basque Country and with co-ethnic diasporic members (i.e., a world spanning web of attachments and diasporic allegiances) as well as the formation, maintenance, and development of their identities. I consider the Basque diaspora as a plural cultural reality, not as a monolithic and homogeneous community. It integrates and accommodates migrants from diverse times, generations (consecutive or not) and regional places who bring their own sense of Basqueness and thereby help to reshape existing meanings of identity within their new host Basque diasporic communities.

People of Basque descent live in twenty three countries around the world (Europe, Oceania, America, and Asia). They are organized in over 190 Basque Clubs or Euskal Etxeak, creating thousands of socio-cultural activities every year to keep the culture alive.

It is estimated that 4,500,000 of people of Basque origin live abroad (Euskal Etxeak Population Data 1995). For example: In Argentina, 10% of the population have Basque origin i.e., 3.5m people; in Uruguay between 14% (0.42m) to 25% (0.75m) of total population; in Chile 20% of total population (0.26m); and in USA there are about 50,000 families (60,000 people according to the latest 2001 US Census). Over thirty five Basque-American organizations work daily to maintain and promote the Basque identity in the United States. The Zazpiak Bat Reno Basque Club, founded in 1966, is one of them. They are all part of the North American Basque Organization which was created in 1973.

Although the latest waves of Basque emigrants into the New World are quite recently, the Basque presence in the New World date back to the “discovery” of the American continent in the 1500s. The first Basque modern emigrant organization was established in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1876, followed by one in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1877), and another in Manila, Philippines (1877).

 

The Basque Diaspora




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Webscape?

The Basque diaspora webscape is the landscape produced by the Basque diaspora web sites online. As of April 2006, there were over 100 Basque diaspora institutional web sites online. The Basque diaspora webscape is constituted by web sites (texts and graphics), which create a common networked set of online discourses across geographical, political and linguistic barriers, and which are produced by multiple authors. The hypertextual nature of the web text allows analyzing the discourses constructed by the Basque diaspora institutions online.




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What about hypertextuality?

Hypertextuality or intertextuality is a folded text, a new geometry of the text in cyberspace. Imagine an ordinary piece of paper that we fill out with words...then, we are asked to read it through a small window (i.e., the computer electronic screen). The written area of the paper is larger than the screen...the technology offers you an unlimited depth, but you look through a small screen. One of the ways to solve this discrepancy is: To cut the page down to the size of the screen. Then, the technology offer us links to tight together the pieces of the cut page (Rodriguez de las Heras). euskaldiaspora is the Basque diaspora online discourses cut down to fit the screen. The hyperlinks offered here tight together the set of discourses produced by the different Basque diaspora web sites. The online text provides the opportunity to interconnect the diverse Basque texts-sites with specific "hyperlinks" or "links" allowing the reader to move from one text to another. The links imply, first of all, a horizontal network of connections.




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Where could I get more information?

Here you have some information and resources online:

Euskalidentity is the web site for Euskalidentity Kultur Elkartea (EIKE), a non-profit cultural association dedicated to study Basque identity worldwide. It was created by a group of people coming from different walks of life with two clear goals in mind: promotion and dissemination of Basque culture throughout the planet. Its sister site is euskaldiaspora.

The Center for Basque Studies, at UNR, is the leading international research and teaching institution on Basque studies outside the Basque Country.

The Basque Studies Library, at UNR, holds the most comprenhensive archive on Basque materials outside the homeland.




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