バイデン氏祖先の地アイルランド、米大統領誕生を願う親族

【バリナＡＦＰ＝時事】米ホワイトハウスから東に数千キロ離れたアイルランドの街に、米大統領選の民主党候補、ジョー・バイデン氏（77）を描いたポップアート風の肖像画が誇らしげに掲げられている。（写真はアイルランド北西部メイヨー郡バリナの市街に掲げられたジョー・バイデン氏のポップアート風肖像画と、みいとこのラウリタ・ブルーイットさん）
　バイデン氏の祖先の故郷であるアイルランド、メイヨー郡バリナ。岩がちな大西洋岸にあるこの街で、バイデン氏の遠い親戚に当たる人々が、米国の最高職責を目指す同氏の挑戦に胸を躍らしている。
　バイデン氏のみいとこ、ラウリタ・ブルーイットさん（３７）は「私たちはもちろん１００％、ジョー・バイデン支持です」と語った。「私たちには家族のつながり、それに彼との友情や絆があります」
　バイデン家のルーツはアイルランドにある。系図学者のメーガン・スモレニャク氏によると、バイデン氏は「アイルランド人の血を８分の５程度」引き継いでいる。
　１８５１年、大飢饉（ききん）と貧困から逃れて米ニューヨークでの新たな生活を目指したアイルランド移民の中に、バイデン氏の祖父の３代前のエドワード・ブルーイット氏がいた。

■飛び火する米国の分断
　バリナは、バイデン氏が生まれた米ペンシルベニア州スクラントンと１９４２年に姉妹都市となった。
　前副大統領であるバイデン氏と、ドナルド・トランプ現大統領が激しい選挙戦を繰り広げる中、米国の分裂はアイルランドの片田舎にも飛び火している。
　やはりバイデン氏のみいとこで、配管工のジョー・ブルーイットさん（４１）の仕事用のバンには、「ホワイトハウスにジョー・バイデンを、あなたのお宅にジョー・ブルーイットを」と米大統領選にかけたジョークが書かれている。
　そんなジョーさんのもとに、ヘイトメッセージが送られてくることがある。嫌がらせ電話もあった。米国アクセントの声の主は「トランプが大統領になるんだ」と言った。ジョーさんは「ヘイトがはびこっている」と嘆いた。
　一方、ラウリタさんは、トランプ政権の４年間で政治的慣習がすべてひっくり返されたが、大統領選でバイデン氏が勝利すれば、米国内外が「もう少し正常に」なるかもしれないと語った。「１１月３日にここで、盛大に祝えることを願っています」と彼女はにこやかに笑った。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/10/30-10:16）

Thousands of miles east of the White House in Ireland, a pop-art portrait of US presidential candidate Joe Biden towers over his ancestral hometown of Ballina, County Mayo.
In the town on Ireland's rugged Atlantic coast, the Democrat's distant relatives are thrilled to have one of their own bidding for America's highest office.
Obviously we're 100 percent behind Joe Biden, Laurita Blewitt, the former vice-president's third cousin, told AFP.
We've got that family connection and we've got that friendship and relationship with him, the 37-year-old said.
Biden's family roots run deep in Ireland, with a heritage described as roughly five-eighths Irish by genealogist Megan Smolenyak.
She has traced his lineage to east-coast County Louth and Ballina -- a town of 10,000 people, which is dotted with brightly coloured shopfronts and bisected by the River Moy.
In 1851, Biden's great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt joined the legions of Irish fleeing famine and poverty for a fresh start in New York.
- 'Irish soul' -
The mural was raised by a band of locals last month, and Ballina is twinned with Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden was born in 1942.
The 77-year-old politician has visited twice -- first in 2016 when crowds turned out to see president Barack Obama's deputy.
In 2017 he came back and turned the first sod for a new regional hospice -- a cause near to his heart after his son Beau's death from cancer two years earlier.
Biden wrote that when he dies, northeast Pennsylvania will be written on my heart.
But Ireland will be written on my soul.
He is mining a rich tradition of American statesmen touting Irish heritage.
In the 20th century, John F. Kennedy was most closely tied to the Emerald Isle, and had to overcome anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudice to win the White House.
But others including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have all claimed ancestral links to Ireland.
- 'Soft power' -
Ten percent of Americans claim Irish heritage -- a 31-million-strong bloc vastly larger than the five-million population of Ireland itself.
Those links helped give Washington an intermediary role in resolving the 30-year Troubles in Northern Ireland, a sectarian conflict that killed 3,500 in Ireland and the British province itself, before it largely ended in 1998.
Lately, Britain's Brexit withdrawal from the European Union has threatened the cohesion promised by Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement.
US politicians have stepped in, warning London that a post-Brexit UK-US trade pact could be at risk if the peace is undermined.
Their alarm has reportedly been stoked by energetic briefing by the Irish embassy in Washington.
The connections between Ireland and the US are incredibly strong, said Ballina local councillor Mark Duffy.
It is that soft power, he added. Ireland does definitely punch above its weight on the international stage.
- Division -
Thinking of their ancestral homelands, Irish-Americans may evoke a lush green idyll of tight-knit communities.
But in the midst of a bitter US election campaign between Biden and President Donald Trump, America's own divisions have spilt over into the Irish countryside.
Biden's third cousin Joe Blewitt -- a local plumber -- decorated his van with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the campaign: Joe Biden for the White House and Joe Blewitt for your house.
He received hate messages and one harassing call from a private number where an American voice told him: Trump is going to be president.
There is an awful lot of hatred, the 41-year-old mused.
Laurita Blewitt travelled to Las Vegas to canvas for Biden during the Democratic primary process in February.
Any time I visit the States now it's not like that friendly, open, welcoming place that it used to be, she said.
Everyone's a little bit more suspicious now.
But she said after four years of a Trump presidency that has upended all political conventions, a Biden victory next month may provide a little bit more normality, both at home and abroad.
Hopefully we'll be able to celebrate in style here on the third of November, she grinned.