Mitch Gariador started working on the website 'Bridge to the Pyrenees' in 2009, as a means of sharing with the public data about the Basque immigrant community of Southern California “collected over 35 years,” as he explained in a conversation with EuskalKultura.com. The website has not been widely advertized “because I don't think I even uploaded 25% of the information we have.” But now, by adding these interviews, “we're ready to make the website known.” Along with Gariador, Jeanette Bidart, and Marianna Etcheverria are also conducting and filming the interviews, that are being shared with Memoria Bizia as well.
Chino, CA. The Etchart sisters ‒Noeline Magistro and Arlette McGurty‒, Martin Itcea, and Louie Etcheberria are the first four people featured on Bridge to the Pyrenees. Their interviews were uploaded to the website about a month ago, “but we have many more,” in the words of Gariador. “Mariana and Jeanette have interviewed many men and women in the last five years, and they keep interviewing people. When the Memoria Bizia project came up, we started working with Pedro (Oiarzabal) but, as far as I know, they don't have a place to show them so we're also sharing them on our site.” Besides conducting new interviews, the team is also working hard on converting old interviews to put them online.
“Every time I find articles or records about individuals, I put them on the website. It's a great place with a lot of information. And now, with the interviews, we're giving another dimension to the stories of certain Basque families.”
A long journey
Gariador says that “the path to getting into this website to share this information with the public has been quite a journey.” In fact, it all started in the 1980's, when William Douglass, founder of the Center for Basque Studies of the UNR, contacted Marianna Etcheverria to look for Basque names from the 19th Century in Southern California. Etcheverria asked Gariador for help and, after two years of work, Douglass' investigation took another direction. All the information gathered at that time, plus more they've been collecting over the years, is what Bridge to the Pyrenees offers to the public. Three decades later, all that history is being made public little by little: “I don't think I even uploaded 25% of the information we have. But I'll keep uploading everything, this kind of history is something that has fascinated me since I was a kid,” he concluded.
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