Lauburu: Find the Helpers
When the Basque came to America during the mid-20th century, they had very little — no money, no education, no command of English. They were desperately down to be sure, but not out. All they had was each other.
Languishing at the economic bottom, the Basque helped one another. If one needed something, another provided it. A built table or dresser was exchanged for newly sown clothes. Rent was bartered for cooking and cleaning.
Little by little, the Basque wove an economic cocoon around themselves that grew stronger. and more sophisticated year after year until a social, educational, and financial network emerged that lifted all of them.
The results are vivid among the 57,000 Basque in America today. According to the last census, more than 75% of Basque age 25 years or older have some level of college education compared to only 58% of Americans overall. They are 31% more likely to hold jobs in management, business, science or the arts. Their median household income is $70,159 compared to the U.S. median of $52,176. Their poverty rate is half the national average, and they are more likely to own their own home. When they do, the home is 48% more valuable than the average American home.
Like many Basque of her generation, my mom did her fair share to contribute to these results. She grew up believing that a hand up lifts a person, and many hands lift a people. For her, no one had fallen too far to pull up; no one had transgressed too deep to forgive; no one needed help too much to deny.
Indeed, mom was a helper. She breathed this old school religion of the Basque in word and deed. When southside elementary flooded, she waded into the waters with the principal to usher kids and bikes across the street and safely home. If someone was sick, she took the family a pot of beans. In her spare time, she served meals at a soup kitchen, and passed out sandwiches to hungry souls in tents by the Humboldt River.
Her need to help — and that’s what it was, a need — was the kind of spirit that lifted the Basque from a ragtag mass of immigrants to a well educated, sociable, and financially solid group of people after only one or two generations.
It is a spirit that says you can beat down a person, but not a people; you can break a stick, but not a bundle. By every task, we rise; with every challenge, we rise; come what may, we rise. The Basque are living testament to this spirit.
Mom was a true disciple of the creed. An unfortunate side effect was worry. She worried about her children, her circle of family and friends, and even people she did not know and would never meet. Her constant refrain: “We should try to help them.”
Mom died last year, but if she lived now during this corona pandemic, she’d first worry about me and my sisters, then her family in Reno, and all her friends in Elko and elsewhere. Then she’d ask, “How can I help?”
Of course, she had no medical training, and at her age, she would have been at high-risk. But in her own way, she would have helped, somehow. She would have shared all she had to give. She would have been whom she’s always been, a helper, as so many of the Basque had been of her generation.
Mom’s lesson is not lost on me. Among the sad images on television or over the internet, of people scrambling and hoarding, of fights in grocery stores and even outright theft in parking lots, I look for the helpers, the ones who lift up others. Those are the memories I want to keep of this dark time, memories of helpers, like mom.
Those are memories, I hope, that we all want of this terrible episode in world history. I don’t see why we can’t have them. In fact, the Basque have risen so far so fast, I submit, exactly because their spirit aligns with the American spirit.
We are a nation of helpers; we always have been. In the darkest hours, we have flicked on a bright light to help people out of madness. We have raised our goodness like a sword to defend the needy and most vulnerable. To help is to be American; to be American is to help. Like the Basque, we rise together. May we never lose that calling.
So look for the helpers. They are there, hopefully everywhere, in every home and community, in good and bad times. They are in the hospitals to be sure, but in the grocery stores, too. Look for them.
If fear rears its head, and helpers go on holiday, then be one yourself. I’ll pick you out of the crowd and wonder if you’re Basque.
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Vince J Juaristi writes a monthly column on Basque history and culture for the Elko Daily Free Press, and has published two books on the subject. He also owns and operates Arbola, a technology company headquartered in Alexandria, VA.
