"Covering more than five centuries of history, Azcona examines the roles and fates of the Basques who came to the New World. He also studies the impact of the New World on the Basque Country, from the importance in the modern Basque diet of such American foodstuffs as corn and beans to the encouragement given to traditional Basque industries by the colonizers' demand for ships and iron tools. He considers the role of Basques in the Spanish imperial expeditions of exploration and conquest; their participation in transatlantic commerce and communication; and their importance to the settlement and continuity of the American empire as merchants, administrators, ecclesiastics, missionaries, farmers, artisans, and businessmen. Among them were such distinguished personages as Juan de Zumarraga, the first bishop of Mexico; Juan Bautista de Anza, governor of Spanish California; and the sixteenth-century merchant Simon Bolivar, whose eponymous descendant achieved immortality as a leader of the Latin American independence movement." "Possible Paradises is a major contribution to the study of the Basque diaspora and to Latin American history in its broadest sense. Enhanced by numerous maps, tables and graphs, name lists, and photographs, Possible Paradises records the role of a single distinctive and culturally cohesive ethnic group in one of the greatest migration movements in human history."--Jacket.