Basque Diaspora

The Basque diaspora is the name given to describe people of Basque origin living outside their traditional homeland on the borders between Spain and France. Many Basques have left the Basque Country for other parts of the globe for economic and political reasons, with substantial populations in Colombia,¿Qué tanto heredó Colombia del País Vasco?
Señal Colombia, 16 de marzo de 2018. Consultado el 15 de junio de 2020.3.500 apellidos vascos en Colombia
El Correo, 1 de junio de 2017. Consultado el 15 de junio de 2020. Argentina and Uruguay with those of Basque ancestry in the hundreds of thousands; Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, Canada, and the United States.

Notably, the Basque diaspora is sometimes referred to as "the eighth province", indirectly referring to the historical seven Basque provinces.

South America

Argentina

People of Basque descent make up 10% of Argentina's population, and it was a major destination for Basques emigrating from both Spain and France in the 19th and 20th centuries. Basques have left an indelible imprint on Argentine culture and politics, with many place names and surnames, including those of several Presidents. After several generations, a sense of Basque heritage is still strong, maintained through numerous Basque cultural centres in major cities. Argentine sportspeople with Basque surnames have frequently been nicknamed ''El Vasco''.

Chile

The Basques arrived in Chile in the 18th century from their homeland in northern Spain (see Basque Provinces) and parts of southwestern France, as merchants and due to their hard work and entrepreneurship, rose to the top of the social scale and intermarried into the Chilean elites of Castilian descent. This union is the basis of the Chilean elite of today. The Basque settlers also intermarried into the Native American population of central Chile in the middle of the colonial period to form the large mestizo population that exists in Chile today; mestizos create modern middle and lower classes; other Basque settlers also intermarried with mestizos of Castilian descent. Thousands of Basque refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War in 1939 also settled and have many descendants in the country and have even intermarried with other Spanish ethnic groups other than Castilians as well as other European ethnic groups. Population estimates of Basque-Chileans range from 10% (1,600,000) to as high as 27% (4,500,000).Diariovasco.
/ref>entrevista al Presidente de la Cámara vasca.

Miguel de Unamuno stated that two things could be clearly attributed to the Basques: The Jesuits and the Republic of Chile
.

Colombia

Colombia was one of early focus of Basque immigration; it is estimated that at least 40% of the Coffee Axis and Antioquia's population have Basque origin (2,800,000 people). Between 1640 and 1859, 18.9% of the residents of Colombia were of Basque origin, making it possible for demographers to predict that nowadays more than half of the country has this ancestry (25,000,000 people). It has been suggested that the present day incidence of business entrepreneurship in the region of Antioquia is attributable to the Basque immigration and Basque character traits. The current Spanish dialect in Antioquia, closely observed, has obvious influences from Basque. Basque influence is evident in words such as 'ma' (mother), 'coscorria' (useless, inept) and 'tap' (tap), to name only a few cases. Basque also influenced the pronunciation of the letter 's' apico-alveolar, so in the Antioquia, and the letter "ll" (double L) pronounced as a fricative, not to overlook the inclusion of the letter "a" before certain initial Rs: instead of , instead of and instead of . Basques began to immigrate regularly and are distributed throughout the country. Due to this presence is that the Colombian department of Antioquia has been considered a major route of the Basque-Navarre immigration, mainly during the colonial era, when hundreds of Basques migrated to be linked to the Spanish colonization companies. It is estimated, for example, for the Department of Antioquia (a region where hundreds of Spaniards arrived, of which a good portion were Basque) some limited aspects of the culture and traditions were brought by Basque settlers. Many point to Basque origins as a way to understand the population's idiosyncrasies. Prominent among these, were two American historians: Everett Hagen and Leonard Kasdan. Hagen looked up the phone in Medellin in 1957 and found that 15% of the surnames were Basques, of Basque origin, finding then that employers in the percentage of surnames was up to 25%, which led it to conclude that the inheritance of Basque was very important to explain the increased industrial development of Antioquia in the Colombian context. These ideas were supported by representatives of developmental theories, who sought to justify business growth based on "the character of social groups." There also seems to be some Basque gastronomical influence in the Antioquia region. It is said that the "arepa" might have been influenced by the Basque "talo".

Peru

A notable percentage of Peruvian people have at least one Basque surname, with more than 6 million or 18% of the national population. They trace back their presence to colonial times.

Uruguay

It is estimated that up to 10% of Uruguay's population has at least one parent with a Basque surname. The first wave of Basque immigrants to Uruguay came from the French side of the Basque country beginning about 1824.

Venezuela

The first wave of Basque immigration to Venezuela consisted of Conquerors and Missionaries, during the Colonization of Venezuela. The second wave of Basque immigration started in 1939, as a result of the Spanish Civil War.

North America

Canada

See also History of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mexico

An estimated 2% of Mexicans have some amount of Basque descent, and that community has increased in size from immigration from Spain in the early 20th century. The Spanish Civil War in the 1930s brought over tens of thousands of refugees from the Basque Country to political asylum in Mexico and Latin America.

Most Mexicans of Basque descent are concentrated in the cities of Monterrey, Saltillo, Camargo, and the states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Durango, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and Coahuila. The Basques were important in the mining industry, many were ranchers and vaqueros (cowboys), and the rest small shops owners in major cities like Mexico City, Guadalajara and Puebla.

Basque names are found in many places throughout north central and Northeastern Mexico, such as Durango, Victoria, Zuazua and Arramberri - the first province in the north of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) to be explored and settled by the Spanish, Nueva Vizcaya, comprised the territory of today's states of Chihuahua and Durango.

Many notable Mexicans have been of Basque extraction, such as Agustín de Iturbide, emperor of the First Mexican Empire, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, seventeenth century conquistador Juan de Oñate, Francisco "Pancho" Villa

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