J. E. / Donostia-San Sebastián. On May 3rd Iñaki Mallona passed away in Puerto Rico. Bishop Emeritus in Arecibo, he was originally from Fruiz (Bizkaia) like his colleague Karmelo Etxenagusia [auxiliary Bishop of Bilbao who visited the Basque communities in the western United States with aita Tillous in 1999-2000]. Bishop Iñaki, as he was known on Puerto Rico, was a member of the local Basque club, Basques of Puerto Rico, since its founding. It was the fault of Jesus Lasaga, from Aramaio, Araba who in addition to being a founding member, chaired the club for a decade. The upper image sows Lasaga with his vice-president Ruben Arrieta [grandson of Navarrese from Irurita, Baztan] in 2003 in Vitoria Gazteiz, at the World Congress of Basque Collectivities. As we recall in our obituary section, Lasaga and Arrieta passed away on March 4th and 28th respectively.
We talked on the phone about these bad news with the current president of the Puerto Rico Basque Club, Eduardo Cifuentes, from San Sebastian. Remember that he took over the presidency from Lasaga in 2005. The Puerto Rico Basque Club is not at all in its best hour, in a situation worsened by the pandemic, and its main problem has not improved throughout its beginning: lack of youth, absence of generational change.
Born in Aramaio like Jesus Lasaga and resident for several decades in Puerto Rico was the Franciscan Mariano Errasti, journalist, poet and historian, author of a multitude of articles and several books like El otro Caribe (The Other Caribbean), America Fransciscana (Franciscan America) in two volumes, Los primeros franciscanos en America… (The first Franciscans in America), Los Franciscanos in Puerto Rico (The Franciscans in Puerto Rico), Las cofradías americanas de la Virgen de Arantzazu (The American Brotherhoods to the Virgin of Arantzazu), Memorias y cartas de un fraile indiano (Memories and Letters of an Indiano Friar), Subida al nuevo Arantzazu (Climb to a New Arantzazu)…
Errasti lived and worked for more than 65 years in the Caribbean [in Cuba, and after being expelled from there in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic] then returning definitively, in his nineties, to Euskal Herria in 2018, and he also passed away this year, on February 5th. And as Miel Elustondo remembered in the daily Berria, “A few days before, on January 20th Pedro Ángel García Chasco [another instrumental Basque friar that dedicated his live to the people in the Caribbean] also passed away, both of them Franciscans residing in the friars home in Bermeo, what could be sweeter or more peaceful,” Elustondo wrote.
All of them, each in their own way, took with them and were Euskal Herria in the Caribbean. Gogoan beude.
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