Comparison American Civil Rights Movement and the
Garifuna and Honduran Indian social movements
The outcomes of the US Civil rights movements were
various. There were movements around
“black power” or “Indian power”, getting a voice in decision making, which
partly including getting the vote and getting out the voters, but also being
consulted on projects destined for their communities, one of the guarantees of
ILO Convention 169. There were also
movements about aesthetics like “Black is Beautiful”, and the Honduran,
Belizean, and US Garifunas organize beauty contests of Garifuna women and young
girls. There was a lot of movement
about the contributions of the ethnic group not being invisible in the
society—things like Black History Month, the Black Inventors Museum, the Pequot
Indian Museum, the Cherokee Museum, Black dance companies, African drumming and
dance companies, art exhibits of Black Artists, journals devoted to Black
Literature, movie about Blacks in the Army, the Black and Native American press
etc. which the Garifunas also include in African Heritage Month, Settlement Day
or Garifuna Day. There are Garifuna
Museums in Los Angeles and in Belize (The Garifuna Museum in Honduras
closed.)
There has been movement about getting Indians and
Blacks and Hispanics counted in the census, since in the US a lot of decisions
from funding of special projects and education, to electoral districts are
based on the census. The 2001 was the
first census in Honduran history to identify how many Garifunas lived in
Honduras and the 1988 census identified how many spoke Garifuna and other
indigenous languages (Davidson.2011). This year’s Honduras census about
counting Afro-Hondurans instead of Garifunas, Black Bay islanders, Miskito
Indians and the mulattos descended from the slaves brought for mining
separately has been a topic of considerable controversy this year for a number
of different reasons.
If in truth, we counted everyone in Honduras who is
partially descended from Blacks as Afro-Hondurans we would have to include
almost everyone from current president Pepe Lobo and former president Mel
Zelaya on down. Notes one Garifuna historian, since the current scientific theory
is that all of humanity is descended from Africans, on these grounds we would
also have to include all Honduras as Afro-descent people.
The Problems Caused by Reclassifying Garifunas as
Afro-Descent People in Honduras
Since the Honduran government counted the Garifunas
only as Afro-descent people in the 2013 Census and not as Afro-indigenous, they
are danger of losing all the protections of the ILO Convention 169 to their
lands which are currently heavily coveted by tourist developers. ILO Convention only provides protection to
lands of Indigenous and Tribal People in Latin America, so the Honduran
government argues in its InterAmerican Human Rights Court case brought by the
Garifunas of Triunfo de la Cruz, that the Garifunas are Black and not
Indigenous.
In other parts of Latin America, like Surinam and
Columbia, Blacks have been able to qualify for protection under this Convention
because they are still culturally distinct and have their own leadership
structures which the Garifunas also have among the men who usually represent
the communities to outsiders and among the women, such as the traditional dance
clubs who are an important instutition at the local community level.
Since the purpose of counting Afro-Hondurans is to
identify if their levels of poverty, etc are low enough to qualify for special
programs from the government and international funders, by lumping
Garifunas and Black Bay Islanders and
Miskito Indians together under Afro-Hondurans with all the Afro-Mestizos, the
high levels of poverty among these groups will in fact become less clear.
Honduran lawyers are already arguing that lands set aside for Afro-Honduran
Garifunas, should not exclude the possibility of all other Afro-Hondurans from
settling on these lands, reported the ODECO lawyer Karen Ramos at an Assembly
in Limon, Honduras in 2013.
Rewriting History to Give a More Balanced View of the
Contributions of Afro-Hondurans
As a result of the US Civil Rights movement, recognition of days or months in which we
celebrate the culture and achievement of the ethnic group like Martin Luther
King Day and Black History Month and Kwanzaa was developed. Among US Indians
Pow Wows often serve partially this purpose. There is has been significant
movement towards revisionist history—the contributions and sufferings of
Indians, Black, Chinese, Japanese, and Hispanics in the US history. The history
books by Garifunas like Salvador Suazo, Santos Centeno, and Virgilio Lopez of
Honduras, and Tomas Alberto Avila in Rhode Island and Sabas Whittaker in
Conneticut help fill the void left by the lack of attention by professional
historians. The Garifunas have opened spaces for their messages through
Garifuna radio programs on regular radio stations and the Internet radio
stations in Honduras and Belize,
Garifuna TV programs on cable in
New York and in Honduras and the Internet www.GariTV.com,
a Garifuna news and ecommerce site garinet.com
and Garifuna blogs like BeingGarifuna.com and OFRANEH’s excellent blog
www.ofraneh.wordpress.com.
Using New Media to Organize, Inform, Inspire and End
Invisibility
This use of new media by the Garifunas, including the
new film Garifuna in Peril, is inspiring the Pech Indians, Garifuna high school
teachers, Miskito Indians and others to learn computer, video camera, and
Internet skills. Ruben Reyes, the director of Garifuna in Peril, began his work
in the media as a radio announcer on community radio in his home town of
Triunfo de la Cruz.
Modeling the Garifuna Film Festival in Los Angeles,
the Garifunas of Trujillo and Santa Fe had planned to set up mini-festivals of Garifuna videos in
Honduras to inspire Garifuna young people that they could do more with their
lives than just get involved with drugs and steal. If a Black Hispanic owner of
a plumbing company in Los Angeles like Ruben Reyes who grew up in a traditional
Garifuna community on the North Coast of Honduras can go on to direct and star
in a film that has won awards at film festivals in Tuscon, Arizona, Boston and
Houston, and has played in Europe, the US, Central America, Africa and in South
America, then perhaps by seeing the film, the young people might dream, Couldn’t
I do that? The showing of the Film at the Bronze Lens Festival in Atlanta,
Georgia, the hometown of Martin Luther King, strives to do the same with US
Blacks.
Trying to Get Control of Education of Their Youth
American Indians have been active in trying to get
control of their schools and what is taught in their schools and many US tribes now control pre-school, elementary
and high schools. Previously schools were intentionally used to try to change
Indians so that they lost their native cultures and languages, and a video on
Indian Boarding Schools blames that educational system as the principal cause
of dysfunction on Indian reservations today.
There are at least 12 Indian run Tribal Colleges in the US, some with
multiple campuses. Most offer teacher’s
education to train Indian teachers for their schools, among other topics. At least one offers a master degree in
Management. Lakota College of the
Lakota-Souix of South Dakota calls their Master’s program “Warriors as
Managers”.
A number of non.Indian colleges offer Indian studies
programs and many US universities offer some kind of African-American or
Africana studies programs. Honduran and Nicaraguan Indians, especially the
Miskitos have been active in this area with Urracan University in eastern
Nicaragua focussing on the ethnic groups of the region, and the UPN in Honduras
offering Distance Education in Intercultural Education at two sites in the
Honduran Mosquitia. Miskito and
Garifunas are now the majority of the teachers and principals in their
communities and other Honduran Indian groups are actively training
bilingual-intercultural education teachers with the high school and university
level preparation. . The Garifuna NGO ODECO is actively trying to start an
Afro-Latin American university in La Ceiba, Honduras.
Public Monuments to Recognize the Roles of Cultural
Significant Garífunas Now Exist
After the US Civil Rights movement, there have been statues made of important
African-American leaders like Martin Luther King and centers and roads named
after him. There are statues of chief
Chatoyer in front of some Garifuna schools, including Kindergaten
"America" in Trujillo and the
Satuye building of ODECO in La Ceiba, Honduras is named after him. The Garifuna dance troupe “Chief Joseph
Satuye” in New York is named after him and the Garifuna Museum in Belize is
named for his daughter Gulisi. A dance group “Barauda” named for his wife has
existed in Honduras. The story of the Satuye, his wife Barauda and their
children is part of the Garifuna in Peril movie.
Garifuna schools in Honduras are often named after
important Garifuna teachers, like Jose Laboriel High School in Santa Fe, after
Garifuna musician and former music teacher at the Departmental High School
"Espiritu del Siglo" in Trujillo. Other musical members of the
Laboriel family went on to become famous as musicians in Mexico where one
recently died and his death was reported internationally. The first Garifuna
doctor in Honduras Dr. Alfonso Lacayo has a statue to him in the city of La
Ceiba where he practiced and ODECO has published a book on his life written by
his daughter. There is a plaque
identifying where the Garifunas first landed in Honduras at Carib Point, Roatan
and where Chief Joseph Chatoyer fell in battle on St. Vincent. The Garifuna have sought most of these
changes in Honduras, in Belize and some of them in the US and in St. Vincent,
and often they have been successful.
When Black Bay Islanders like Dorn Ebanks started the
first English speaking cable TV station in Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras which
showed shows developed by Black Bay Islanders, they said part of their
motivation was so that young people on Roatan could see Black people like
themselves on TV, that this might inspire them and think they could do
something big in life, like the other Bay Islanders they saw on TV. Dorn Ebanks went on to become Governor of the
Bay Islands and pastor of the Roatan Baptist Church and is currently the Mayor
of Roatan for the Liberal Party, so sometimes if you think big, great things
can happen.
I think the movie "Garifuna in Peril" will
likewise inspire not only Garifuna, but also other Blacks, and Indians that
speak minority languages, that they and their languages could also do something
big. I applaud the creators of the
Garifuna in Peril movie for thinking big and I think it is a great
production. The Garifuna in Peril movie is now available in DVD and so can be seen at
home or at private showings such as in
churches, libraries, at universities, etc.
New Garifuna movie Garifuna in Peril Showings Part of
Remembering the Dream
The New York premier of this new movie in December
2012 by Los Angeles resident Honduran Garifuna Ruben Reyes and Ali Allie
Garifuna in Peril was sponsored by the Garifuna Coalition of New York which included a special
performance by the NYC Garifuna Dance Ensemble.
The event was supported with funds from the New York Foundation, Simon
Bolivar Foundation and the New York Community Trust(www.garifunacoalition,org). The movie made its US premiere in New York in
December 2012 as part of the African Diaspora Film Festival and will play again
in New York at Columbia University 18
January as part of the best of the African Diaspora Film Festival. Its World
Premiere was at a Latin American Film Festival in London, England.
The film is unique in many ways as the majority of the
dialogue is in Garifuna (55%) with the possibility of English or Spanish
subititles. The rest of the dialogue is in English or Spanish. The film is shot in both Los Angeles and in a
Garifuna village on the Caribbean Coast of
Honduras. The title refers both to the danger of the Garifuna language
disappearing and the Garifuna being in danger of losing their lands as a result
of tourism expansion. The majority of the cast are Garifunas, including the
star of the movie Ruben Reyes. None of the cast are professional actors and
this film represents the premiere performance for most of them. The soundtrack
of the movie includes 19 cuts of Garifuna music, both those played on
traditional wooden drums and other percussion instruments and the modern
popular Garifuna music known as punta rock, such as by Belizean Garifuna
Aziatic.
After seeing the movie, non-Garifuna Americans say
they want to know more about the Garifunas.
One man who saw the movie said he stayed up all night after seeing the movie,
searching the Internet for information about the Garifuna, reported co-producer
Ali Allie. The Garifuna are an
Afro-Indigenous people who originally lived on the island of St. Vincent north
of Venezuela in the Caribbean sea, which is named for the Carib ancestors of
the Garifunas, who were traditionally known as Black Caribs.Their language,
also called Garifuna, is principally an
indigenous Indian language Arawak, with some words derived from French,
English, Spanish, Carib Indian language, and African languages. They fought two wars against the British who
wished to take over their lands for sugarcane and to prevent slaves from
escaping and living among the Garifunas. After being defeated by the British in 1796, they were taken to
small islands off the coast of St. Vincent where many died. In 1797 they were
taken by 11 ships by the British to the island of Roatan north of Honduras,
thousands of mile away from their home.
From Roatan, the Garifuna spread to the mainland around Trujillo, and by
1802 had spread to Guatemala and Belize, too. The Garifunas have played leading
roles in the organizing for language and cultural revitalization, bilingual
intercultural education, agricultural and economic development, health care
that includes elements of traditional beliefs and practices, disaster recovery
after hurricanes, the legalization of indigenous and traditionally Black
controlled lands, tolerance towards Afro-Latin American practices within the
Catholic Church, and the struggle for
the respect of Human Rights of Indians and Blacks in their native countries of Honduras,
Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, in the Central American and Caribbean
Regions, Internationally and in the US, as detailed in the article below.
Just prior to Martin King Day on January 18, 2013 at
Columbia University in New York City as
part of the best of the African Diaspora Film Festival, the movie Garifuna in
Peril will play in New York. On February
3, 2013 it made its West Coast premiere in San Diego in time for Black History
month. The producers are currently working to organize showings in other cities
such as Los Angeles, Miami and New Orleans.
See the website www.garifunainperilmovie.com
for information on how to arrange additional showings. Some showings can include
opportunities to interview the producers, and an interview with them can be seen
on their website. Other showings can include traditional Garifuna dances, music
and drumming done by Garifuna dance troupes from New York, Los Angeles,
Seattle, or Miami. (www.garifunainperilmovie.com)
For additional information on the Garifunas see the
Garifuna in Peril website in English (www.garifunainperilmovie.com)
or in Spanish www.garifunaenpeligro.com.
About the Author
Wendy Griffin is the co-author of the book Los
Garifunas de Honduras, a 10 year study of the Garifunas of Trujillo and the
North Coast of Honduras, as well as 5 other published and several unpublished books
on Honduran ethnic groups, including The Garifunas: Resource loss and ILO
Convention 169 and The History and
Culture of the Bay islanders and Black English speakers of the North coast of
Honduras, the latter available on the Internet in English for free . She was reporter for Honduras This Week from
1992-2004 writing over 300 articles, mostly on the ethnic groups on Honduras
She
wrote for HondurasWeekly.com in 2013 and 2014.
She has been an English and French professor at the UPN and UNAH
universities in Tegucigalpa and Anthropology Professor at the UPN in La Ceiba,
Honduras. She has been a volunteer with
bilingual-intercultural education in Honduras since it started in 1987. Since 1996 she has divided her time between
the US and living in Trujillo, Honduras in or near the Garifuna communities there.
.
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