They were actually Aguirre; his wife, María Zabala; and their sons, Aintzane and Joseba. Despite intense efforts made by Manuel de Ynchausti in the United States, Aguirre's true identity was in danger of being discovered within a month. He wrote then to Ramón María de Aldasoro, the former trade and business secretary of the Basque government, who led the Euzkadi delegation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. However, Aldasoro's efforts on Aguirre's behalf were unsuccessful because the Argentine authorities sympathized with the European "New Order". Aguirre went to Uruguay and asked a small group of Basque patriots for what Argentina had denied him. The Uruguayan president, General Alfredo Baldomir, agreed, and he even received Aguirre with honours in accordance with his status. Once the arrangements were complete, the public announcement of his arrival was made on 8 October in the newspapers of Montevideo. Aguirre's identity was reinstated, and he was given a visa to travel to New York, where he was put under the protection of resident Basques, who were leading movements in Mexico and New York. In New York, Aguirre took up a post as a lecturer at Columbia University. After the Pact of Madrid between the US and Spain, he went to France, where the Basque government-in-exile was established. There, he found that France's Vichy government had sequestrated the Basque government building and that President Charles de Gaulle was maintaining it on behalf of Francoist Spain. The building is now the Instituto Cervantes. The president of the government-in-exile was always a Basque Nationalist Party member, and even the Spanish sole representative in the United Nations was a Basque appointee, Jesús de Galíndez, until his murder in an obscure episode at the time of Spain's entry to the United Nations. Aguirre decided to place the large Basque exiles' network at the service of the Allies, and collaborated with the US Secretary of State and the CIA to defeat their common enemies. Aguirre died in Paris on 22 March 1960 from a heart attack, aged 56. His body was shipped from Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the French Basque Country, where it spent a night in the Monzón house and was buried on 28 March after a funeral Mass at the Saint-Jean parish church. Influence Aguirre's life was the subject of a Soule folk play, Aguirre presidenta ("President Aguirre"). He wrote a book about his experiences, Escape Via Berlin: Eluding Franco in Hitler's