euskalkultura.eus

Joseba Etxarri/EuskalKultura.com.   Aitor is a contemporary emigrant.  He is a dantzari (dancer) that left Zuhatza, a town in Araba with 40 farmhouses and 120 inhabitants, to go to cosmopolitan Buenos Aires to keep being a Basque dancer.  You can bet that no one else in the world can brag about living 10,000 kilometers from home doing what he likes to do, nothing more than teaching Basque dance, to which he has added Tango and Argentine Folklore classes. 

-What is it like to live in Argentina? 

-It is a hugely immense country and varied and this allows you to get lost in its immensity.  It is also a close country and there are things that don’t vary much from the Basque Country. Like everything, you have to make your place and life at the same speed as the inhabitants, fast, slow, or stumbled, according to what is going on. 

-What idea did you go with in july, 2004?  Not to stay… 

-I think there was a part of me that knew that it could be a one-way trip.  But today, it’s not like what emigration used to be, since I go home every year.  I traveled with the idea to stay seven months, until Christmas, but a beautiful love story occurred and that happily crystallized and keeps me in Buenos Aires, where  I have been living for 10 years already, doing things that I never thought of, with the luck of working and studying what I like and having the family I have. 

-Do you feel comfortable  in the country? 

-Yes. Euskal Herria and the family always pull on me, even though I have that too in Buenos Aires.  But I do. Everywhere has its pros and cons but the secret is to take advantage of the good and try not to compare, as far as that’s possible, because otherwise you won’t be able to live anywhere in the world.  Argentina is, without a doubt, a great country, with an impressive culture, with dynamics, that offers amazing opportunities.  It is the country where if you plant one seed you grow two plants, it has a tremendous capacity to generate wealth. 

-Newspapers all over the world discuss their political and economic situation, inflation… 

-There are problems, but Argentineans have learned to live with difficult situations and to overcome them.  Perhaps it’s not as bad as some think or say.  Indeed, I think that it is capable of stretching and elongating the chord further than any other country in the world. 

-It seems that there are millions of Argentineans of Basque origin. 

-I would not get lost in the quantitative.  I prefer the qualitative.  And there, many surprising and powerful things happen.  There are Basque dance groups that organize talks, courses, workshops, language classes, exhibits, all organized with a Basque focus.  I am a dancer and I can talk about what is done in my field, but for example, hats off to the classes and the groups of Euskera.  My wife is from Buenos Aires and is a Basque teacher and I see at home  the great work that they are doing.  There are Argentineans, Basque descendants or not, that become part of our culture and join in, having never been in the Basque Country.  It makes an impact.  

-You teach dance at a school of Argentinean students.  

-I teach classes at the Euskal Echea School at its facilities in Llavallol and the in the capital.  In middle school, I teach Basque dance and tango to students in the 4th and 5th grades.  I also teach tango because I have been studying Argentinean folk dancing for three years.  In 4th and 5th grade it is part of the curriculum.  I also teach an extracurricular Basque dance workshop to high-schoolers if they want it; and in Bueno Aires City  I teach 7th grade and sophomores in high school.  I have roughly 500 students in Llavallol and another 75 in Buenos Aires. 

-Strictly Argentinean students attend this school that was founded by Basques.  

-Yes, among them there is the normal percentage of Basque last names that exist in the country.  Every year in October the school organizes the institution’s Basque festival, with 1,000 students dressed in Basque costume. They dance together five or six dances in a row, with the Ikurriña and the Argentinean flag both present. 

-You are the founder of the Ekin Dantzari Taldea, affiliated with Eusketxe, a Basque cultural association in Buenos Aires.  

-Yes, we are a group that enjoys our autonomy, but linked to the Eusko Kultur-Etxea – Basque Culture House in the capital.  We teach classes and workshops in dance and culture and we also carry out other Basque culture activities in general.