Many Afro-Honduran Immigrants Originally Merchant Marine Sailors and their Problems Part I and II

Many Afro-Honduran Immigrants Originally Merchant Marine Sailors  

(Part 1 of 4)

By Wendy Griffin

“Before, the Garifuna sailors were the best sailors in the world,” begins the video on the Internet about the life of Honduran Garifuna singer Aurelio Martinez, “La Aventura Garifuna” (The Garifuna Adventure). Honduras has the second number in the world of registered merchant seamen, after the Philippines. Previously most of the sailors were from two of Honduras’s afro-Honduran groups—the Garifunas and the Black English speakers. This is almost incredible when you realize that there are only 8 million people in all of Honduras, or about the size of New York City.

The Garifunas are descendants of Carib and Arawak Indians from the Island of St.Vincent, who formed families with Africans who arrived on the Island in different manners, including shipwrekcs, escaping by sea from slave owning islands nearby like Barbados, and according to oral traditions pre-Columbian Blacks. After losing two wars with the British, the Garifunas were exiled to Honduras in 1797. Many of their traditional communities are near the traditional ports of the Banana Companies of Honduras—Puerto Cortes, Tela, La Ceiba, and Trujillo. Many Garifuna men lived by fishing prior to incorporating themselves in the work of the banana companies, first on the docks, then on the ships.

The English speaking Blacks of Honduras arrived in Honduras from different islands like Gran Cayman and Jamaica, or neighboring countries like Belize and Nicaragua. Most arrived after slavery was abolished in the British Empire. They also increased immigration to Honduras during the Banana Boom in the early 20^th century. They also settled in the ports and in the Bay Islands located off of Honduras’s North Coast. They also were famous as seaman navigating between Belize and the Bay Islands in their skiffs and dories. Currently these two Afro-Honduran ethnic groups make up 3% of the Honduran population, but there are still dozens of communities in Honduras where these ethnic groups make up the majority. Both groups are heavily affected by immigration to the US.

Garifunas in the Second World War

Before the beginning of the building of railroads for the banana companies in Honduras, the Garifunas and the English speaking Blacks, were active in the planting, harvesting, and sale of bananas. Also recruiters looking for workers to build the Panama Canal arrived at the doors of their homes looking for people to help build this massive work of infrastructure. The Canal was finished in the same year the banana companies arrived to build railway beds, ports, and worker barracks and plant bananas on new concessions of land. The Banana companies built the ports at La Ceiba, Tela, and Puerto Castilla/Trujillo and used the government built port at Puerto Cortes. The Garifunas and Black English speakers formed an important part of the labor available to the banana companies on the North Coast and many Garifunas became trilingual (English-Spanish-Garifuna).

United Fruit, the owner of the Truxillo Railroad in Northeastern Honduras, began to shut down most of its operations and was barely functioning in 1942 when Puerto Castilla was taken over for a US Navy Base against German U boats who might try to enter the Western Caribbean. Given the lack of work on the mainland in bananas, the Garifuna men accepted to become merchant marines during WWII.  The ships of United Fruit (now Chiquita), and Standard Fruit (now owned by Dole), acted as logistics support to the war effort in WWII, and the Afro-Honduran merchant marines manned them. There was a scarcity of white American sailors at the time due to the large number of men involved in fighting the Second World War, and this opened a doorway of opportunity for Afro-Hondurans to get hired as merchant marines.

My Garifuna friend and former sailor for United Fruit’s Worldwide Shipping Sebastian Marin was in the Pacific during World War II, including in Pearl Harbor.In spite of the name “The Great White Fleet”, sometimes it was necessary to paint the boats grey color to be able to pass unobserved by the Japonese or German U boats, observed Sabas Whittaker, an Afro-Honduran, who formerly worked as a merchant marine.

Since the Black English speakers spoke English, many Bay Islanders after 1950 were accepted to work in cruise boats with tourists, reaching good positions like purser or head of security. Many Garifunas worked in cooking, as it was the custom of Garifuna mothers to teach their sons to cook, in case their wife was sick or away, but sometimes they also worked as saloonman, in security, or in cleaning.

These Garifuna sailors have the right to be included in the list of veterans of the Second World War at this Memorial in Washington, DC. Other Garifunas of Honduras and Belize worked in the Canal Zone in Panama during the Second World War.  Belizean Garifunas also fought as part of Allied forces with the British during the War. “It is time to recognize these Afro-Honduran sailors who helped with logistics in the Second World War. It was the only way to get things and people to these theaters of war at the time,” said Sabas Whittaker, author of Africans in the Americas, who now resides in Hartford, Conneticut.

The practice of using Afro-Hispanic merchant marines continues until today. During the War between England and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, the British used a ship of the Cunard Lines for logistics, where Sabas’s brother worked. Ships carrying arms and soldiers to Iraq carry Afro-Honduran civilian chefs like Rigoberto Calix’s brother, based out of Houston. These Afro-Honduran merchant marines are civilians, not military, and belong to a sailor’s union. Sailors with a good record until recently were allowed to immigrate to the US with all their family members, which is the origin of the large Garifuna communities in the US like in New York City.In addition to military transport ships, they also work on civilian cargo ships, like petroleum frieghters, like Balbina Chimilio’s son and son-in-law in Atlanta.

Special  Problems Face Families of Afro-Honduran Merchant Marines

(Part 2 of 4)

By Wendy Griffin

If the husband of a Garifuna woman is a sailor, this implies many difficulties for him, her, and their family, since the man is away from his family 4-6 months at a time, and previously they only gave vacation once a year, according to older sailors. For example, the mother of Garifuna painter Herman Alvarez was very strict with him, but he believes it was because she was under a lot of stress having to play the roles of mother and father with him, while his father worked as a sailor for United Fruit. At that time the men only returned home once a year, instead of twice a year as is currently the norm.

Also the work of sailor is hard, with 70 hours of work a week minimal, and frequent overtime. Salaries are currently relatively low, because the ships take out for room and board and there are no benefits for many sailors. A Garifuna friend was recently  offered a contracto of $440/a month after taking out room and board, for a 70 hour work week, and the possibility of overtime at $2.40 an hour. According to his ex-wife after a time, he earned $1,000 a month.  Salaries before were reported at $1,500 to $2,000 a month, reported former Bay Islander sailors. When the old Garifuna sailors started working, the salaries were extremely low, as little as $1 a day.

It   also seems to be dangerous work, since several of the Garifunas and Bay Islanders I have known who were sailors, have died from on board accidents or were injured, such as an eye problem. These mostly seem to have been cases where little or no compensation was paid to the sailor if he lived, or to his family if he died.

Many of the Honduran sailors were exposed to asbestos on ships, but their legal cases were put on an inactive docket, and their cases not heard. Cancers can develop from asbestos exposure. Currently the way asbestos litigation is handled has changed, maybe they would be eligible.

Maybe the courts were not hearing their cases, because the workers were not American, and often the ships have flags of registration that they are not American, so maybe these sailors were not considered “American employees”, and were outside of the jurisdiction of US courts. Even though the economy of the US depends a great deal on imports, no one thinks of the working conditions of the sailors who bring us these products.