“How are you?”
“Bad, bad. Subject to machine.
“You’ll turn it around because you’re tough.
I don't know. Now I don't know.

This was the last interview with his American uncle. He was a pastor to Nevada, where he founded his family, his new life. They have come from time to time to Euskal Herria, but not too many times. After aging, much less.

He brings them with him, who no longer tells us, the joys and sorrows experienced upon reaching America, their cold and lonely winters and the anguish of having to make money. Or that's what I imagined when I saw the documentary Amerikanuak. Not a few people lost their heads; many wasted what they gained in winter in summer; others have lived happily; others may not make the decision to leave if they were born again.

Migratory processes are violent, especially for those fleeing poverty. In those arid areas where Basque pastors were used to frequenting, there are now South American workers. The world and technology have advanced, but the hard professions do not disappear and it is always the same social class that performs them. The origin of the poor is the only one that changes.

I don't know how many things a migrant can feel, the desire to adapt to the new place or the lack of land left behind, who will win the sokatira. It is probably a continuous transit between the two. We will have to think about what to take and what to leave, how much to remember and how much to forget for survival to be sustainable. Our uncle had a good Basque, 60 years ago, the same one his parents used, kept in the formoles. But he decided to keep himself for him, he didn't teach him to his descendants. This phone conversation may be the last time the Basque was heard in that house.

I've always been surprised by this of denying your children the original language. I know that it is not so simple, and that there are many forces here, of course, in the case of minority languages. I'd like to know what he thought, what Euskera felt to his uncle. Perhaps I would live it as a floor that had to be disposed of, as an old line that linked a sad past. Or it would seem like a set of words that would not serve their American descendants at all. It is possible that the offspring have not shown interest, beyond a couple of phrases learned as a child. I don't know, and if you'll ever know, you'll tell me in English.