Basques in Boise

If someone mentions the name Pete Cenarrusa, the first thing that might come to mind is the Idaho Legislature, of which he was a member and Secretary of State of Idaho for 52 years, the longest serving elected official under the Capitol dome in the history of this State.

If you know about the Basque Country and its claims for self determination, then the first thing you think of might be the Basque Peace Memorial, a joint memorial approved by the State of Idaho expressing both Idaho''s support of the right of the Basques to self-determination and calling for an end to violence in the Basque Country.

If you have ever met the man or you know about Idaho''s large Basque community, you''ll know that there is much more to Pete Cenarrusa than that.

Born in Carey, Idaho, in 1917, Pete''s first language was Basque, which he still speaks. "We always talked Basque with my mother. It just came naturally. We learned the Basque language first. One on one, with my father, we always talked English, because he spoke English so well", Pete remembers in an exclusive interview for eitb.com.

Pete''s father, Jose Cenarrusa, from the Basque village of Munitibar, came to Idaho in 1907 at the age of seventeen to work as a shepherd. Once in Idaho he met Ramona, from Gernika, who was working at a Basque boarding house in Shoshone.

Although Jose did not know a word of English when he came, Pete remembers he learnt the English language quite quickly. "He had to learn the English language to associate with other sheepherders. My mother was the other way round. She did not learn the English language because she didn''t have the opportunity. She was at home all the time".

Life was hard at that time. "I think that he found a very, kind of, desolate country. Loneliness and a wide country without anybody. He doesn''t know of a Basque who herded sheep at that time that was not sad," Pete says when talking about his father.

In May 1967, Pete was appointed Secretary of State to fill a vacancy created by the death of the former Secretary of State. He was subsequently elected to a full term in 1970 and relected seven times until 2002 when he did not run for reelection, instead supporting his longtime chief deputy Ben Ysursa, also of Basque heritage.

"I think that a lot of my success here in Idaho has been because I am Basque, and they know the Basque people are good people," Pete explains.

Basque of the world

In 2002, before he finished his term of office, Pete hit the headlines in Spain when the State of Idaho authorized a memorial in support of self determination in the Basque Country and a call for peace. For Pete, it was an opportunity to give the Basques a stronger voice.

"Condoleezza Rice wrote letters and emails and made phone calls to the Senate to kill that bill, not to pass that bill," Pete remembers.

Few people know that it was not the first memorial concerning the Basque Country passed by the Senate of Idaho. In 1972, just after having visited the Basque Country for the first time, Pete led the Senate to allow a memorial that called on the United States to withdraw foreign aid to the Franco regime in Spain if human rights were not respected in the Basque region.

Despite the different feelings that this 2002 memorial aroused in the Basque Country, Pete was already well known in the Basque Country before for his support of the Basque language and culture and had been awarded the honor of "Basque of the World" by the Sabino Arana Foundation in 2001.

Two years later, in 2003, the Cenarrusa Foundation for Basque Culture, his greatest contribution to Basque culture, was born. The foundation promotes the Basque language and culture providing resources for performaces, presentations and programs to organizations throughtout Idaho and Oregon.

Apart from the help many Basque organizations receive from the Cenarrusa Foundation, the foundation is also responsible for a license plate that honors Idaho''s Basque heritage. The plate features a sheep wagon, where the first Basque immigrant sheepherders lived during their long stays in Idaho''s mountains.

The license plate is a reminder of the hard times all Basques had to go through when they first came to Idaho in the early 1900s. Loneliness and sadness at first, but hope and hard work and success as well. Pete is also a symbol of that, of the hard work that brought success to the lives of Basque people and of the love for their homeland that has kept the Basque culture alive in Idaho. For this reason, Pete would like to be remembered just as a Basque. "As I do, here in Idaho. In the newspapers it is always Pete Cenarrusa, a Basque."