Basque Colombians

### Regions with significant populations

Throughout Colombia, especially Antioquia Department, Eje Cafetero, Bogotá, Valle del Cauca Department, Santander Department, Norte de Santander Department

### Religions

Roman Catholicism · Protestantism (Lutheranism · Evangelicalism

**Basque Colombians** (Spanish: *Vasco-Colombianos*, Basque: *Eusko-Kolonbiars*) are citizens or a resident born in Colombia of Basque descent. The term "Basque" may refer to ethnic Basques who immigrated to Colombia from the Basque Country. The majority of Basque Colombians live in Antioquia Department, Eje Cafetero, Bogotá, and Santander Department, with other important Basque communities in Valle del Cauca Department and Norte de Santander Department. Basque Colombians are one of the largest Basque diaspora groups in the world, and have heavy cultural and linguistic influence in the country, especially in the Paisa Region.

## History

Colombia was one of early focus of Basque immigration; it is estimated that around 40% of the Paisa region's population have full or partial Basque origin (around 4,500,000), which makes this region one of the places with the highest concentration of Basque descendants in the world, surpassing even the Basque Country itself. In addition, between 1640 and 1859 18.9% of residents in Colombia were of Basque origin, which has enabled demographers to determine that today nearly a third of White Colombians may be of partial Basque ancestry.

## Basques in the Paisa Region

The presence of Basque ancestry in the Paisa Region is exhibited by the proliferation of Basque surnames. Some scholars point out that this may be one of the regions of South America with the greatest concentration of ancestry from the Iberian region. The Basques began to arrive in Antioquia during the seventeenth century.

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 Antioquia, and the letter "ll" (double L) pronounced as a fricative, not to overlook the inclusion of the letter "a" before certain initial Rs:  *arrecostarse* instead of *recostarse*, *arrecoger* instead of *recoger* and *arrecordarse* instead of *recordarse*.

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 Basque 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 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".

## References

1. ↑ Luis Gorostiza, (1912).
2. ↑ Vascos en Colombia, Tomos 1 y 2, Francisco de Abrisketa, Jaime de Kerexeta (Oveja Negra, Bogotá, 1985)
3. ↑ Los Vascos en Antioquia durante el reinado de los Austrias, John Alejandro Ricaurte Cartagena (CEVA, Medellín, 2015)
4. ↑ Basque Families of Antioquia, Buber's Basque, link retrieved on 4 April 2009.