Book Review: The Historical Evolution of Honduran
Folkdances
The dances that today we call Honduran folkdances all
have historical origins. Before the publication of David Flores' book Evolución Histórica de la Danza Folklórica
Hondureña (The Historical Evolution of Honduran Folkdances)
in 2003, in Honduras only social dances, usually danced by male-female couples,
and only the dances of Honduras's mestizo population were included as Honduran
folkdances. For example, only these kinds of dances were documented in the
registers of the Ministry of Culture's Office of Folklore or danced by the
Ministry of Culture's Cuadro Nacional de Danzas Folklóricas (the National Folk
Dance group).
This
policy left undocumented most of Honduras' folkdances which were often
religious rather than social dances and those danced by Honduras' nine minority
Indian and Afro-Honduran groups such as Garifunas, Miskitos, Bay Islanders,
Lencas, Maya-Chortis, Nahuas, Pech, Tawahkas, and Tolupanes.
Both
religious and social dances are included in David's book as are the dances of
most of the Honduran Indian and Afro-Honduran groups. as well as the dances of
the majority ethnic group in Honduras, known as Ladinos. The book which has 360
pages has over 125 photos, primarily of people dancing the folkdances or
playing traditional instruments, although some photos include other aspects of
ceremonies, such as the cohune palm (corozo) leaf house used to dance the most
important Garifuna ancestor ceremony dugu and the special room for the altar to
the ancestor spirits, the guli.
David
also includes many children's dances, known collectively in Spanish as
"rondas infantiles" (circle dances by young children) both of Ladinos
and the ethnic minorities. There is a renewed interest internationally in
traditional games, wtih an International Federation for Traditional Games being
formed in Mexico last year, reported Honduran anthropologist Adalid Martinez.
The International Congress of Traditional Games with participants from around
the world will be held in San Marcos (Santa Bárbara), Honduras on 5 April
2013 to coincide with the National Festival of Traditional Games held in San
Marcos every year.
Like in
the United States, there are many Honduran children's games which have a song
and a dance that accompany them. Some "rondas"
in Spanish in Honduras are old traditional games from Spain, while a number of
Miskito "rondas"
which are sung at Christmastime and played by adults and children are Miskito
translations of traditional children's songs and games in English like Here We
Go Loopty-loo (Naha di
lupdilu), The Muffin Man (El
Panadero), Have you Ever Seen a Lassie? (Tuhkta Marin), and London
Bridges (sung in English).
Other
children's games with songs and dances are special to certain Honduran ethnic
groups including Diyu
(Small Sandpiper) of the Garifunas, where children joined hands and danced
towards the small sandpipers (diyu)
and the large sandpipers (jaradudu)
while singing the Diyu
song, and then imitated the movement of the sandpipers by bobbing their heads
up and down like the birds while they drink and eat at the beach. The children
say the birds dance with them, because the birds run ahead of them on the beach
instead of flying away. Rosalina Garcia, a Trujillo Garifuna, remembers playing
this game on the beach while coming back with her mother from their fields
outside of Trujillo towards Campamento.
Flores's
Book Includes the Folkdances of the Ladinos, Honduran Indians and
Afro-Hondurans
Ladino
is a broader term than mestizos, because the term Ladino in Honduras now
includes descendants of Afro-mestizos usually called mulattos in
historical documents although many were descendants of Indians and Blacks,
rather than of the Spanish, as well as mestizos (the mixture of the Spanish
with Indians), Indians who lost their language and culture, and descendants of
the Spanish. The terms Criollo,
Mestizo, and Ladino are explained in David's book, because
traditionally Honduran folkdances were known as "danzas criollas" (dances by the
descendants of the Spanish who were born in the Americas), when in fact most of
the Ladino folkdances in Honduras were danced by poor people of mixed race,
including mulattos, mestizos
and sambos
(mixture of Indians and Blacks) and Indians who abandoned their languages and
assimilated parts of the mestizo culture (known as indios de habla ladino in colonial
documents).
By
using the term Ladino, as opposed to the traditional terms like criollo and mestizos, David tries
to include those elements of Honduran popular culture that came partly
from Honduran Indians and Afro-Hondurans. New studies of the colonial period in
Central America indicate that in many regions of Honduras, including many
cities like Choluteca, Olanchito, Yoro, and Juticalpa, the Spanish were a very
small minority, and that the largest non-Indian population were the mulattos. Teguicgalpa,
like most other cities in the mining districts of Honduras, had a significant
mulatto population in the colonial period, including the mulattos and pardos (people with
dark skin) of Barrio Abajo (near the Choluteca river), Tegucigalpa who built
one of Honduras's most beautiful churches -- Los Delores in downtown
Tegucigalpa, according to an inscription above the door.
According
to Honduran historian Dr. Dario Euraque, in Honduras there has been an official
policy of "mestizaje"
(that we are all mestizos, descended from the Spanish and Indians) which
totally left out the contributions to the economic development of
Honduras and the contributions of Afro-Hondurans and non-Mayan Indians to the
popular culture of Honduras. This book represents a major break with that
tradition by documenting the contributions of the Indians and Afro-Hondurans in
the areas of traditional musical instruments, folk dances, masks, songs and
popular religious celebrations, not only among the existing minority ethnic
groups, but also among the Ladino majority.
According
to studies among the modern Lacandon Mayas of Mexico, they have no word for
secular music. The word for music just refers to sacred music which they sang
during their religious ceremonies. Early reports of the Spanish for Mexico and
Central America also document many Indigenous religious ceremonies accompanied
by instrumental music, songs, and dances, often with special costumes, but no
social dances. Therefore, by leaving out Honduras's religious folkdances which
include for example, the Lenca Guancascos, Garifuna ancestor ceremonies,
Maya-Chorti Moors and Christians and Dance of the New Fire, Miskito
agricultural dances and Tawahka and Pech dances relating to attracting animals
for the hunt, earlier studies of Honduran folk dances completely missed the
dances which are tied to pre-Columbian practices in Honduras.
David's
book documents the transition from pre-Columbian religious dances to colonial
period mixing of Pre-columbian Indian, African and European traditions to the
modern religious dance celebrations such as the Guancascos in Western Honduras,
as well as the continuation of religious dances among the Garifuna which are
related to pre-conquest African traditions, and until recently religious
dances among the Pech, the Tawahka and the Miskitos, who were not conquered nor
completely converted to Christianity during the colonial period.
According
to Dr. Euraque, together with the myth of "mestizaje"
(that all Hondurans were mestizos), there was also a process of Mayanization of
Honduran history, that all Hondurans were descended from Mayan Indians (and the
Spanish), even though in the colonial period Maya Chortis extended only about
12 miles from Guatemalan border, according to a 1675 land title.
Elementary school textbooks published in the 1980's and 1990's had no
drawings of Honduran Blacks, even though Garifunas and Black Bay Islanders make
up about 3 percent of the population, and the Serie Mi Honduras texts,
funded by USAID, taught, "We are all descended from Lenca and Maya
Indians."
I asked
the mulatto and Garifuna teachers of the North Coast how they felt about
teaching that to their students, and one teacher just said, "Do we look
like the descendants of the Lencas and the Mayas?" The series also
taught there used to be Tawahkas in Olancho, even though there are still 3
Tawahka villages in Olancho. The Garifunas, Bay Islanders, Pech, Tolupanes,
Nahuas, and Miskitos were not even mentioned anywhere in the texts grades 1
through 6 and in the early 1990's not even university students in anthropology
classes at the UNAH could name all nine minority ethnic groups currently
recognized in Honduras.
David's
book was the first book produced in Honduras that had photos of all the modern
Indian and Afro-Honduran groups of Honduras (Ramon Rivas' book left out the Bay
Islanders and Black English speakers). Besides the fact that Hondurans are
curious as to what the Honduran Indians and Bay Islanders look like, the photos
prove that the Indians indeed still exist and still practice parts of their
traditional culture, something that had been doubted even by government
officials associated with official institutions in charge of cultural heritage
like the Ministry of Culture and the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and
History. Even for former President Roberto Reina, an UNAH law professor before
becoming president, when faced with a march of thousands of Indians and
Afro-Hondurans in Tegucigalpa during his presidency, his initial reaction was,
"But we are all mestizos."
When
David began his book in 1995, after he had already been director of the Office
of Folklore of the Honduran Ministry of Culture, the first version he lent me
to read said, "Unfortunately all the Indian dances of Honduras have died
out". Since I had just written a book on Miskito music and dances,
interviewed the Tawahka dance group Mayana Rigni for Honduras This Week while
they stayed at my house, and had seen Tawahka, Lenca and Garifuna dances,
David and I began working together to include Honduran Indian and Afro-Honduran
dances in his book, eventually documenting about 70 dances on non-Ladino groups
in Honduras, half of which are Garifuna dances.
Why
Indian and Afro-Honduran Folkdances and Music Have Become Endangered
In the
19th and early 20th century,
very racist development theories existed, particularly coming from the US,
which claimed that the underdevelopment of Latin America was caused by the fact
that there were many Indians and Blacks and people who were of mixed race
including Indians and Blacks who continued to practice some traditional
elements of their culture. A number of Honduran government policies developed
from these beliefs including "mestizaje",
the promotion of immigration by Europeans to Latin America including offering
free land and citizenship within one year if the settler settled in Indian
lands by Honduras, "españolizacion"
programs in schools to teach Indians and Blacks to speak Spanish and to try to
get them to adopt the national culture, and immigration policies that limited
and finally curtailed the immigration of "undesirable races",
including from 1934-1949 a law against the entrance of Blacks into Honduras
even as tourists.
This
has been highlighted in a number of recent publications such as Conversaciones Historicas con el
mestizaje y su Identidad Nacional by Dario Euraque, Race, Nation and West Indian
Immigration to Honduras 1890-1940 by Glenn Chambers, and Blackness in Central America: Between Race
and Place by Lowell Gudmonson and Justin Wolfe. The title of one UN
published book described the previous attempts at ethnodevelopment as
ethnogenocide, causing Latin American Indians and Blacks to lose their cultures
and religious practices, their languages, traditional technologies (traditional
medecine, traditional food cultivation, hunting, fishing, gathering,
preparation and conservation techniques, architecture, forest
conservation techniques and crafts, etc.), and their lands.
Particularly
in the area of education, these policies led to very harsh policies against the
languages and practices of the traditional Indians and Afro-Hondurans.
For example, a former Lenca bilingual education representative was surprised to
hear that the Lencas during the Classic period of Copán had a very similar
level of civilization to the Mayas with small states, highly developed crafts
which were exported internationally to Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico,
extensively developed agriculture, and temple-pyramids. She said, "When I
was growing up, we were taught the worst things you could be is a Lenca
Indian." Garifunas who spoke Garifuna in school were made fun of by the
teachers who were themselves Garifunas. "Don't speak that guruguru," one
teacher in Trujillo would say.
The
Garifuna children were also punished for speaking Garifuna, such as being made
to stand in the corner with their arms outstretched for an extended period of
time. Miskitos and Bay Islanders say, "We learned Spanish by pure
blood, a puro sangre"
because they were beaten if they did not follow instructions they did not
undertand or if they spoke English or Miskito in school. My Pech friend
Juana who spoke to her children, husband, and mother in Pech at home, was
scolded by the teacher of the elementary school when her oldest daughter Isabel
entered school without being able to speak Spanish.
These
harsh practices in schools were combined with a very negative attitude of the
Catholic church towards traditional ceremonies, music in the indigenous
languages and religious dances , which seemed to have gotten stricter in the
1940's when foreign missionaries arrived in Guatemala and Honduras. For
example, in Sangrelaya, the Catholic priest refused a Catholic funeral mass to
Garifunas who composed Garifuna religious songs such as for a dugu and who
cured with medicinal plants and other traditional rituals. Differences over not
permitting traditional religious practices by Lencas of Yamaranguila,
Intibucá in the Catholic Church there finally led to the Lencas physically
attacking the priest who had to be smuggled out of the town by helpers and the
priest cursing the town, which has resulted in a number of catastrophes
according to a Lenca who grew up there.
The
Evangelical and Protestant churches, such as have been active among Bay
Islanders, North Coast Black English speakers, and Miskito Indians for decades
and now exist in or near most Honduran ethnic groups, were extremely against
traditional religous practices which often included dances, traditional music
on traditional instruments, songs in native languages, incense, alcohol,
tobacco or other burnt leaves, and traditional medicines, because they
considered them pagan practices. These policies have caused the loss and
endangerment of many of Honduras's Indian languages such as Lenca, Nahua,
Matagalpa (all extinct in Honduras), and Tolupan, Chorti, and Pech (endangered)
and the loss of songs, ceremonies, mythology or oral literature in the native
languages, as well as medicinal plant knowledge, and the knowledge of how to
make traditional instruments and other crafts.
These
policies are documented in Atanasio Herranz's book Estado, Poder, y Lenguage (State, Power
and Language) on the political policies towards minority languages in Honduras and
the effects in the areas of dances, clothes, musical instruments, and
ceremonies with songs in the native languages in the colonial period, 19th
century, and 20th century, are documented in David's book.
The
arrival and influences of non-Central Americans including by immigration of
Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and Europeans who spoke different languages (English,
Spanish, French, German, etc.) and later the arrival and influence of
non-Central American music, dances, and clothing styles through radio, TV,
cassettes, rockolas and records, victrolas, TV, and movies is documented. The
fact that this non-Central American music and dance has ultimately taken over
most of the social spaces of most non-ceremonial Honduran music, is also
documented.
Garifuna
Dances in Flores' Book
In
Tomas Alberto Avila's book Black
Carib-Garifuna, there is a list and description of all the
documented Garifuna dances and styles of music in Belize, but the author
laments that there is not a similar list and description of Garifuna dances in
Honduras. In David's book, there are extensive sections including over 30
Garifuna dances, ceremonies which include dances, instruments, and music in
Honduras together with many photos of Garifunas from Barrio Cristales, Trujillo
and Tegucigalpa doing these dances by me when I was living in Trujillo at the
time as a volunteer with bilingual intercultural education and teaching
anthropology in La Ceiba at the UPN on the weekends.
After
my collaboration with David on this book, I expanded this information and
included it in my book Los
Garifunas de Honduras, the result of a 10 year study, together with
other photos of Garifunas of Trujillo doing these dances. In that book, I was
able to find the African origins of some of the Garifuna dances or their music
like Mascaro's music coming from the Songhay area north of Ghana, Punta music
and dance being related to a dance done by Bantu speakers for example in the
Congo region, and Abeimajani and Arumajani (the semi-sacred men and women's
songs and gestured dances done without drums) being related to a Bantu dance
where all the participants link their little fingers.
These
two books documenting the Honduran Garifuna dances, particularly of Trujillo,
but also includes other communities in Atlántida, Colón, and the Bay
Islands, shows some differences between the well documented Garifuna music and
ceremonies of Belize and the music and ceremonies of the Garifuna in Honduras.
Unfortunately there are some spelling errors in the Garifuna names of dances or
parts of ceremonies in David's book, due to the typist not knowing how to spell
the Garifuna words, but the descriptions, most dance names, and photos are
good.
David
also included my photos and studies of the music and dances of other
Afro-Honduran groups like the Bay Islanders, North Coast Black English
speakers, and Miskitos and Honduran Indian groups like the Pech in his book.
David and I collaborated on most of the rest of the book as well including
studies of the dances of the Tawahkas, the Lencas, and the Chortis and the
classifications of the dances and the ethnic groups. When the book was
published, the Garifuna Emergency Committe of Trujillo, where I volunteered,
organized a presentation of the book in Trujillo. David and I spoke, and copies
of the book were donated to Trujillo Garifuna dance clubs, elementary schools,
and the local library. The Mayor's Office of Tegucigalpa also organized a large
book presentation in Tegucigalpa after the book was published, where David's
Folkdance Group Zots also performed some of the dances.
The
Ceremonies and Dances of the Nahuas of Honduras and Central America
This
book was researched prior to the forming of the Nahua Federation in the
muncipios of Guata, Jano and Catacamas, Olancho, which is why there are only a
few mentions of the Nahuas of Honduras. The Nahuas of Olancho still remember
some elements of their traditional ceremonies, including offering incense to
the Gods, the sacrificing of Nahuas in a secret sacred place in a cave beside a
body of water, and dances of Nahua women in white dresses. These memories
match colonial era Spanish descriptions of ceremonies of Pipiles (Nahua
speakers)of El Salvador and the Indians of the Olancho Valley. For example, in
colonial era El Salvador, the Pipiles sacrificied a Pipil (Nahua speaking)
child at the beginning of the rainy season on 25 April or May 3 (Day of the
Cruz in Honduras and these are still important days for ceremonies among Lencas
and Chortis in Honduras) and also on November 2 at the end of the rainy season,
according to the Spanish language Wikipedia article on the Señorío de Cuscatlan
and Mitologia Pipil (Pipil Mythology).
November
2 is now celebrated as the Day of the Dead by Indian and non-Indian Hondurans.
It is when the Maya-Chortis offer the ceremony of Tzkim, when ayote squash
which has the form of a head, is prepared in different ways as well as other
foods and activities. Spanish colonial officials wrote reports of priests offering
incense to idols in temples near Olancho El Viejo. During big celebrations in
pre-Columbian times, while the Nahua priest was offering incense, other people
would have been doing other activities including singing, playing traditional
musical instruments, dancing, and at some point sacrificing the victims, as
reported among the Aztecs of Mexico, the Pipils of El Salvador and Guatemala,
and the Indians of Trujillo who had chiefs and towns with Nahuatl or
Nahua names.
Modern
Aztec dancers from Mexico tour the US during the summer demonstrating the type
of dances and music that were done at similar Aztec (Nahuatl speaker)
ceremonies in Mexico. Nahua or Nahuat or Nawa (the language of the Pipils
in Central America and many Indians in Mexico, including the Toltecs) and
Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs) are dialects of the same language, like
Spanish from Spain and Spanish in Honduras, so it makes sense that Nahua
Indians in Central America had practices similar to the Aztecs and Toltecs of
Mexico with whom they had commercial and possibly political relations. One US
anthropologist writing about the Chorti theorizes these may have been
Mesoamerican wide practices (Mesoamerica included part of Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize, El Salvador, part of Nicaragua and part of Honduras), which might be
part of the explanation why Honduran Chortis and Lencas now celebrate the same
dates as Pipils, the Aztecs, and the Nahuas did in the colonial period and why
all the Indians in this area celebrated with similar types of ceremonies.
The
Rescue of Honduran Folkdances since Flores' Book
Since
the publication of David's pioneering book in 2003, there has been a renewed
interest in rescuing the folkdances of Honduran Indians, partly as a result of
training teachers for bilingual-intercultural education. The Pech Indians have
rescued three traditional folkdances which were used during certain religious
ceremonies like Kech (held on the occasion on a family member's death). Pech
folkdance groups have been formed in Pueblo Nuevo Subirana, Silin/Moradel and
El Carbon and Pech music has been recorded to accompany the dances. David
rescued and choreographed two Tolupan (Xicaque) folkdances from Montaña de la
Flor, Francisco Morazan which the participants of Zots dance, including in traditional
Tolupan tunic, called the baladran.
The Maya-Chorti of Carrizalon, Copán Ruinas have formed a folkdance group
which dances five Honduran Maya-Chorti folkdances.
While
David's book includes 15 Miskito dances, many more exist. Honduran
Miskito Indian Jairo Wood, the director of the high school in Brus Laguna,
Gracias a Dios, has recently written two books on Miskito music and dance and
taped a CD of Miskito music. These, together with the new book by his
uncle Miskito Indian Scott Wood La
Mosquitia desde Adentro (the Mosquitia from the Inside) being
published this year by the Honduran Ministry of Culture together with the
Miskito grammar book by Miskito Erasmo Ordoñes, represent the largest amount of
books by Miskito authors on the history, language and culture of the Miskitos published
in the history of Honduras.
Also as
a result of bilingual education, many Garifuna schools now have traditional
Garifuna folkdance groups, musicians, and choirs which sing the Honduran
National Anthem in Garifuna. Also, for 40 years there has existed a National
Garifuna Folklore Ballet, which was formerly part of the Ministry of Culture,
and now has a more autonomous status. During Manuel Zelaya's presidency, the
National Garifuna Folklore Ballet performed for him, Trujillo Garifunas and
Ladinos, and the national press in Trujillo, as part of the celebration of
African Heritage Month. In April, the arrival of the Garifunas in Honduras on
April 12, 1797 is celebrated, as is the incorporation of the Bay Islands and
the Mosquitia into Honduras in 1860, and the Afro-Mestizo heritage of many
Ladinos.
The
changing of Honduran policies from "mestizaje"
to the offiicial recognition as a multicultural, multilingual nation as
signaled by the presidential decree founding PRONEEAAH (Programa Nacional de Educación para
las Etnias Autoctonas y Afro-Antillanas de Honduras) (1994), the
approval of ILO Convention 169 (1995), and under current President Pepe Lobo,
the creation of the new Ministry of Indian Peoples and Afro-Hondurans and the
General Directorate of Bilingual Intercultural Education--DGEIM (2013) is
having an effect of opening possibilities for the rescue and documentation of
Honduras popular minority cultures.
Flores'
Book Caused Controversy
In
addition to descriptions and photos of the dances and the different ethnic
groups, the book begins with a theory about folklore and the history of the
collection of Honduran folklore with photos of the leaders in collecting
Honduran folklore, as related to folkdances. Prior to David's book, the
principal books on Honduran folklore and dances were by Honduran Rafael
Manzanares, which he began investigating and writing in the 1950's.
Manzanares
is regarded almost like a saint among Honduras' more than 300 Ladino folkdance
instructors. In addition to researching and publishing the first books on
Honduran folkdances and the costumes worn while doing folkdances, he started
the first Office of Folklore in Honduras, which was at first in the Ministry of
Education and then in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. He also collected
the music that accompanied the folkdances. He trained many folkdance
instructors, most of whom were teachers, and almost all folkdance instructors
have read his books and use casettes of folkdance music he collected. Because
the Pan-American Highway was being built then in Southern Honduras, most of the
folkdances, folkdance clothes styles, and music he collected were from southern
Honduras or from the Lenca areas like the departments of La Paz and Intibucá. He
also classified Honduran folkdances.
David's
folkdance book is extremely controversial among Ladino folkdance instructors
principally because it changes the classification scheme of Manzanares.
According
to Rafael Manzanares, danzas
indígenas (Indian folkdances) were the dances now done by
Ladinos which originally had been danced by Honduran Indians and were later
adopted by Ladinos. He was apparently able to use this classification in that
way because he did not believe that there were any living Indians in Honduras,
even though he documented Lenca Indian clothes in La Paz and Intibucá, Indian
clothes in Choluteca, and some folkdances he documented like Las Escobas (The Brooms)
in La Paz, were directly related to Lenca Indian religious structures and
practices.
For
example, the name of the dance refers to the brooms that the Lenca women would
decorate, carry, and go and clean the church and the place of the Lenca cofradia (a Catholic
religious organization responsible for organizing the fair, religious
observances in the absence of the priest, and administering the Indians' funds
from the lands belonging to the cofradia)
in anticipation of the election of the new "mayordomo"
(steward) who was the administrator of the cofradia.
But since David called the dances by modern living Honduran Indians "danzas indígenas"
(Indian folkdances), he had to call the dances by the Ladinos something else.
So he called them "danzas
mestizas o ladinas de influencia indígena" (Ladino or mestizo
dances with Indian influence).
Also,
Manazanares had called the dances like the waltz (sometimes called vals and
sometimes called déstros
in Honduran Spanish, from the phrase "Play one (waltz) by Strauss"
which became shortened to Toque
un déstros), the schottische (called chotis in Honduran Spanish), and the Lancers
(Los Lanceros) "danzas coloniales"
(colonial era dances) and the clothes worn to dance them "vestuario colonial"
(colonial clothes), even though the historical record shows that these dances
were primarily done by the Honduran elite, especially in Comayagua, during the
19th century rather than in the colonial period. The female "colonial
clothes", such as dress known as "tipo
princesa" (a princess style dress) is a style known to
be from the mid-19th century, while the men's clothes he called "colonial
clothes" match photos of the uniforms of the municipal police from
the 1920's .
The "frak"
(frock coat) was what was worn by the Honduran elite men on formal occasions in
the 19th century, according to Honduran paintings. So these dances were
reclassified as "danzas
de la burguesia del tiempo de la republica" (dances by
the upper class during the Republican period) to separate them from religious
dances that were danced in the colonial period, like Moors and Christians, (danzas coloniales religosas)
and the social dances of the poor Ladinos in the 19th century (danzas de la clase popular en el
periodo de la república).
These
changes, particularly the reclassifying of what were "danzas indígenas"
(Indian dances) to being Ladino dances, has caused hard feelings, resentment,
and open enemies among a sizable number of the other Ladino folkdance
instructors and members of the National Folkdance Group towards David. His
response has been, if anyone wants to seriously research Honduran folkdances
they will have to consult this book, whether they agree with it or not.
(2/20/13)
Note:
The author is a writer and historian. She was a frequent contributor to
Honduras This Week. Wendy Griffin is widely known for her understanding of the
ethnic groups of Honduras, and she is the author of several books,
including "Gods, Heroes and Men in the Pech Mythical
Universe", "The Ogre Who Carried Away a Boy and Other
Stories", and "The Historical Evolution of Honduran Folk Dances". David
Flores' book is for sale on Garinet Global.
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