“La luz que nunca se apaga”: Mari, Arborglyphs, and the Myth of the Basque Woman in the American West

The paper introduces “La luz que nunca se apaga” (‘The Light That Never Goes Out’), an artistic research project developed during my fellowship as Frank Bidart Chair at California State University, Bakersfield, with the support of Etxepare Basque Institute. The proposal examines the mythologization of the Basque woman within the context of the nineteenth and twentieth century Basque diaspora in the North American West, a figure often forgotten in both Hollywood representations of the Basque and Western genre imaginaries. Drawing from personal interviews with descendants of Basque migrants, oral testimonies and from the Basque Museum of Boise, and The Arborglyphs Collaborative which documents the carvings on aspen trees across different sheepherding trails in California, Nevada and Idaho, the research focuses on the recurring presence of the Basque mythological figure of “Mari.” These trees constitute an intangible legacy of enormous cultural value for American Basque experience. Formalized through painting, inspired by Basque women from different generations, painting functions as critical conservation, as an act to generate images of Basque women and resignify their presence as the backbone of the diaspora’s community, as an active force almost as magical as the beings that are carved in the Aspen tress all across the American West.