health culture and traditional Honduran Indians and Afro-Hondurans
martes, 5 de enero de 2021
´Hurracanes Eta and Iota and Indians in the Moskitia
In mid-November 2020 the Indians of the Honduran Moskitis wew hit first by Hurracane Eta and then two weeks later by Hurracane Iota.
The Miskitos and Tawahkas on the river banks. Tawahka Indian Edgardo Benitez said that Iota flooded higher than Hurracane Mitch.The crops in the prodductive area WERE LOST.
Sxott Wood Ronas a Miskito in Brus Laguna said of that area "We have lost all oue crops."
Besides their crops many Miskitos lost their houses. MOPAWI plans to help rebuild houses also.
martes, 8 de diciembre de 2020
miércoles, 1 de julio de 2020
Educación Bilingúe Interculturañ en Honduras Que Falta
Educacion Bilingüe Intercultural en Honlebgua de su etniduras
Cuando yo estabba en Honduras en escribí un articulo en 2013 para Honduras Weekly sobre por que educacion bilingue intercultural n Honduras no marchaba bien. Yo identificó en este articulo creyencia en brujería la razón que no enseñan plantas medicinales. Pero es mas complicado que este.
sLa asesora la ecuatoriana Dra. Ruth Moya no diferenció bien la situación de las lenguas autóctonas.
Los niños Pech, chorti, y Gariifuna no entienden los idiomas de su étnia, excepto los Garifunas de Iriona.
Los maestros Pech and Chorti tiene un fluidez limitado en sus idiomas, entonces no entienden las eescrito como si fueran hablantes nativos de su idioma autoctona. Ellos me pidieron piedir que se traduzcan los libros como la pre-cartilla y la catilla de Pech y Chorti a Español.
Para el idioma Pech se publicódos dos pre-cartillas. Si setienen utilidad.Pero no se distribuyeron a las escules Pech por razones desconocidos.
Sería mas factible escribir un texto que se organiza por gramtica y vocabulario. Hay maestros de Inglés en la UPN y la UNAH quienes conocen las tecnicas de enseñnarsecunda lenguas. Repuesta Fisica Total. Repetir, y similar ejercios se puede utilizar para ensenar gramatica y vocabulario.
Está en proceso de escribir este artículo
Cuando yo estabba en Honduras en escribí un articulo en 2013 para Honduras Weekly sobre por que educacion bilingue intercultural n Honduras no marchaba bien. Yo identificó en este articulo creyencia en brujería la razón que no enseñan plantas medicinales. Pero es mas complicado que este.
sLa asesora la ecuatoriana Dra. Ruth Moya no diferenció bien la situación de las lenguas autóctonas.
Los niños Pech, chorti, y Gariifuna no entienden los idiomas de su étnia, excepto los Garifunas de Iriona.
Los maestros Pech and Chorti tiene un fluidez limitado en sus idiomas, entonces no entienden las eescrito como si fueran hablantes nativos de su idioma autoctona. Ellos me pidieron piedir que se traduzcan los libros como la pre-cartilla y la catilla de Pech y Chorti a Español.
Para el idioma Pech se publicódos dos pre-cartillas. Si setienen utilidad.Pero no se distribuyeron a las escules Pech por razones desconocidos.
Sería mas factible escribir un texto que se organiza por gramtica y vocabulario. Hay maestros de Inglés en la UPN y la UNAH quienes conocen las tecnicas de enseñnarsecunda lenguas. Repuesta Fisica Total. Repetir, y similar ejercios se puede utilizar para ensenar gramatica y vocabulario.
Está en proceso de escribir este artículo
lunes, 11 de mayo de 2020
Honduras Weekly Remembered
Honduras Weekly Remembered
Honduras Weekly was an online English language newspaper editted by Marco Carceres. Mr. Caceres had previously bee famous for getting people together who wanted to help Honduras, known as Project Honduras.. Mr. Caceres was a Honduran who immigrated to the US while in his teens with his parents. Honduras Weekly was a labor of love as advertising did not bring in much revenue.The journalists worked for free.
The newspaper began around 2012 and ended in 2015. Its archive is no loner online. Me. Caceres said he had to devote more time to paying work as he had a child who was getting ready to go to college.
Besides myself the only other Honduras This Week reporter publishing with Honduras Weekly was W.E. Gutman,a professional journalist. Some new regular reporters were CUSO voluntters based in Copan Ruinas,
The paper published a lot of different types if articles by me. They were as different as inauguration of the Honduran Mormon temple, a book review of David Flores's Historic
Evolution of Honduran Folkdances, a 10 article series related to the movie Garifuna in Peril,a 5 article series related to the Honduran electoral process and explaining the fraud in the 2013 presidential election, and how drug traffickers are worsening Honduran Indian and Garifuna land problems. Some of the articles got over 20,000 hits.
I owe Marco Carceres an apology. A lot of things contributed to me having a bout of paranoia.This affected one of my articles. It also affected a blog article where I did not want to be on the Internet because I thought people on the Internet were using my articles and photos for negative actions. I don't have his email now that he does not have the editor@hondurasweekly.com address and so I am posting this apology on my blog.
Honduras Weekly was an online English language newspaper editted by Marco Carceres. Mr. Caceres had previously bee famous for getting people together who wanted to help Honduras, known as Project Honduras.. Mr. Caceres was a Honduran who immigrated to the US while in his teens with his parents. Honduras Weekly was a labor of love as advertising did not bring in much revenue.The journalists worked for free.
The newspaper began around 2012 and ended in 2015. Its archive is no loner online. Me. Caceres said he had to devote more time to paying work as he had a child who was getting ready to go to college.
Besides myself the only other Honduras This Week reporter publishing with Honduras Weekly was W.E. Gutman,a professional journalist. Some new regular reporters were CUSO voluntters based in Copan Ruinas,
The paper published a lot of different types if articles by me. They were as different as inauguration of the Honduran Mormon temple, a book review of David Flores's Historic
Evolution of Honduran Folkdances, a 10 article series related to the movie Garifuna in Peril,a 5 article series related to the Honduran electoral process and explaining the fraud in the 2013 presidential election, and how drug traffickers are worsening Honduran Indian and Garifuna land problems. Some of the articles got over 20,000 hits.
I owe Marco Carceres an apology. A lot of things contributed to me having a bout of paranoia.This affected one of my articles. It also affected a blog article where I did not want to be on the Internet because I thought people on the Internet were using my articles and photos for negative actions. I don't have his email now that he does not have the editor@hondurasweekly.com address and so I am posting this apology on my blog.
jueves, 30 de marzo de 2017
Garifuna Music Punta Rock Takes off in Belize Punta and Paranda in Honduras
Garifuna Music Punta Rock Takes off in Belize Punta and Paranda in Honduras
Around 1981 a Belizean male Garifuna
musician Pen Cayetano with his band The Original Turtleshell Band began playing
Garifuna punta music with electronic instruments like an electric guitar. This
was around the time of Bob Marley’s death, and the music may have been a
tribute to him. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_palacio). Other electronic instruments were added
later, like keyboards and now a drum machine replaces the traditional segunda
Garifuna drum. This style was known as punta
rock. While traditional Garifuna punta music is composed and sung by women,
punta rock is composed and sung entirely by Garifuna male groups (Avila,
2009) Some say this music is influenced
by West Indian Soca and Reggae, as well as Garifuna paranda and punta music.
(Avila, 2009). Others say it is influenced by jazz, R and B, and rock and
roll. A number of young Garifuna men,
especially from Belize, such as Andy
Palacio, who was recorded by Stonetree Records, Belize’s only record company,
became famous for playing punta rock(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Palacio,
www.stonetreerecords.com).
Palacio’s career started with a short
lived project known as the Sunrise recording project which was the first attempt in Belize to
record, document, preserve and distribute Belizean roots music. In 1988 his
career took off due to widely circulated cassette recordings of his music by
the Sunrise project. After this he was
invited to represent Belize in music festivals in Mexico, Trinidad, St.
Kitts-Nevis, Malaysia, Belgium, Japan, and many concerts in France, Germany and
Great Britain. His first album was Nabi in 1990. The words and original music
were by parandero Paul Nabor, but Andy Palacio changed it to a punta rock
style. He received the award for “ Best
New Artist” at the Caribbean Music Awards in 1993. In 1995 his CD Keimoun with
Belizean and Cuban studio artists was the first CD produced in Belize. Keimon is listed by The Rough Guide as one of
100 essential recordings from Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1997 he released til Da Mawnin accompanied
by Belize’s top instrumentalists and singers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Palacio).
In 1999 the Belizean government
recognized the National Garifuna Council as the representative of the Garifuna people
in Belize. A number of leading Garifunas
formed the council, including Roy Cayetano, linguist who wrote the People’s
Garifuna Dictionary (Garifuna-english, English-Garifuna in 1993), Jessie
Castillo, author of two collections of Garifuna stories published in Garifuna
and English in New York, a buyei and Wanagua dancer (Jankanu) John Mariano,
Andy Palacio and others. The goals of
the Council was to promote the well being of the Garifuna people, and to
nurture and promote the Garifuna culture and identity, among other goals. The
National Garifuna Council began to work towards in applying for the UNESCO
“Masterpiece of the oral intangible heritage of humanity for the Garifuna
language, dance and music, a process that required many hours of taping Garifuna
music and dance around Belize, producing a video summarizing the information
about Garifuna music and dance with examples of each, and a written
application(Avila, 2009).
.
UNESCO declared Garifuna language, dance, and music in Belize to be a
masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001 (http://www.louisanafolklife.org/LT/articles-Essays/garifuna.html
, http://www.unesco.org/culture/intagible-heritage/masterpiece.php). In 2008 the UNESCO convention for the
safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage took effect, and those intangible
cultural elements previously designated as “masterpieces” were made part of the
Representative List of Intangible cultural heritage of Humanity in 2008. This time the Garifuna language, dance, and
music in Belize, as well as in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua were part of
the list. The purpose of this list is to
identify cultural practices and expressions that help demonstrate the diversity
of this heritage and raises awareness of its importance. Although about 90 elements of popular culture
from around the world had been approved as part of this World Heritage program
of UNESCO, as of 2008, and only two are of Afro-Latin American cultures, and
the declaration for the Garifunas was the first for an Afro-Latin American
group (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_heritage:Lists).
The written information that accompanied the application is in Tomas Alberto
Avila’s book Black Carib-Garifuna (Avila,2009) which is for sale through
Amazon.com. The video of Garifuna dances
and songs which accompanied the application is for sale on the Garinet website,
video section (www.garinet.com)..
Andy Palacio was named Deputy
Administrator of the National Institute of Culture and History in Belize in 2004. He devoted himself to the preservation of
Garifuna music and culture. He was
involved with Stonetree Records’s Garifuna All Start Project, whose music was
released on the CD Wátina. It included a
multigenerational crew of Garifuna musicians from Belize, Guatemala and
Honduras, including Paul Nabor, the parandero now over 80 years old. The album
garnered worldwide attention for the Garifuna people, culture, and
language. Thanks to Wátina, Palacio was
named UNESCO Artist for Peace and won the Womex World Music Award together with
Stonetree Record producer Ivan Duran in 2007.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Palacio). Womex is a large World Music expo
organized in different European countries to promote World Music, which
includes traditional, quasi-traditional, and music that combines influences
from more than one culture(http://en.wikipeida.org/wiki/world_music). The Womex or World Music Expo Award was
started in 1999 to acknowledge musical
excellence, social importance, commercial success, political impact, and
lifetime achievement. (http://en.
Wikipedia.org/wiki/womex_award). He was
considered after that one of the top World Music musicians, and when he was
interviewed he spoke of his desire to rescue Garifuna culture and music.
After the release of Watina, Andy Palacio
toured including in the US with the Garifuna Collective. Videos of Watina and other Andy Palacio
music, including one with him and Paul Nabor in Chicago, can be seen on YouTube. Andy Palacio was the
first artist from Belize to have a video on International television. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/andy-palacio). On the Wikipedia article about him, there is
a link to the interview with Andy Palacio by AfroPop Worldwide, a weekly radio
program on World Music from the African Diaspora in Africa, Latin America and
the Caribbean, hosted by a West African Georges Collinet from Cameroon, started
in 1988. The interview was aired by 100
Public Radio stations across the US and also aired in Europe and Africa (www.pri.org/afropop-worldwide/html), adding to
his worldwide reputation.
Tragically Andy Palacio died the year
after he received the Womex Award of a stroke and a seizure.. He was awarded posthumously the BBC3 Awards for World Music in the Americas category
by British radio station BBC3 in
2008. This was the last time this award
was given as it was cancelled in 2009.
His death was reported by radio stations around the world and obituaries
celebrating his life’s achievements
appeared in both The Times and The Guardian in London, England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/andy-palacio).
Punta and Paranda in Honduras
In the 1980’s in Honduras, some Ladino
meringue bands who mostly travelled around the country playing at street fairs
held for Patron Saints, also began to
incorporate Garifuna drums and punta style into their music.
One of the few Honduran songs to become
famous is “Sopa de Caracol” (Conch Soup). The song was originally written in
Garifuna by Hernán Chico Ramos. The
Ladino head of a Honduran meringue band La Banda Blanca heard the song,
translated it to Spanish, rearranged the music for a meringue band, and
recorded “Sopa de Caracol” which eventually sold over 3 million copies. At
first Banda Blanca’s leader Juan Pompilo “Pilo” Tejeda Duarte filed for a
copyright for the song and the music. After a lot of controversy, he filed a
supplement saying Spanish words and music Juan Pompilo Tejeda aka “Pilo
Tejeda”, Garifuna words and music Hernán Chico Ramos. It stated in the
supplement, the original song was in the Garifuna language.
Perhaps even more disturbing that the
stealing of the song was the introduction of a Ladino way of dancing punta,
with girls in very short skirts and sometimes abbreviated blouses up on stage
trying to show off sexy moves. Punta
became a dance done in discos by young people in pairs, losing all of its
ceremonial context. Instead of the competitive spirit of traditional punta
dancing, where the women try to show elegance, grace, and style, while dancing
and listening or singing to lyrics that were often very sad and about sickness
and death, it became an opportunity to show how “sexy” the girl was. The
Garifuna organization in Honduras OFRANEH actually tried to sue the Banda
Blanca for violation of Intellectual Property Rights regarding the use of a
Garifuna ceremonial dance as part of a show without permission.
In Trujillo, Honduras parandas
accompanied by a guitar, first and second drums, and maracas and sung by the
male guitarist Francisco “Pancho” David
were previously played live by the Garifuna musical group Los Menudos at
a Garifuna dance club near the beach in Barrio Cristales. As with the other paranderos, Pancho is
older, probably over 70 by now. In clubs, young Garifunas dance punta to paranda
songs in many male and female couples instead of the traditional way of forming
a circle and going and dancing in the center one by one. The Los Menudos group also plays punta music
without guitar. Examples of the music of Los Menudos with dancing done by
family members are found on YouTube.
In Trujillo, punta songs without guitar
are sung at wakes and at the ceremony held one year after a person who has died
(fin de novenario or veluria) punta and paranda songs without guitar can be
sung and the people dance punta in the traditional way of forming a circle and
a woman goes into the circle and dances, usually alone, but sometimes a man
will dance around her. Unfortunately, often there are not enough women who
still know how to sing punta songs who go to the wakes now in Trujillo. Besides singing punta at wakes, Garifuna
women used to sing punta while they worked in their agricultural fields, saying
it makes the work go fast. Now that few
Garifuna women farm in the area around Trujillo, they no longer practice punta
songs as often. Several attempts to form dance groups among the Garifuna young
people in the Garifuna neighborhoods like Rio Negro and Cristales have failed,
because the young women do not speak enough Garifuna to understand the songs.
When I worked at the UNAH in Tegucigalpa, a similar fate met the attempt to
form a Garifuna dance group among the students of the UNAH. Young Garifuna girls learn to dance a very
vulgar form of punta, as influenced by the Ladino version, in Garifuna schools
in Trujillo and they are accompanied by only drums, since no one can sing. The
Garifuna boys in Trujillo schools are not learning to dance punta. At
inter-dance presentations, other schools do show Garifuna boys dancing punta,
but they violate the first rule of punta dancing, that the man does not touch
the woman, because she probably has a boyfriend or husband and it could cause
problems.
Now in the Garifuna disco in Trujillo or
for the fair, occasionally live Garifuna music groups that play punta are
brought in from other villages like Santa Fe.
At other times, recorded punta, or usually punta rock, is played at the
Garifuna disco in Trujillo. But now all
kinds of recorded music are played in Trujillo discos by DJ’s with reggae in
English or Spanish and reggaeton, seeming to have replaced the previously
popular meringue songs. A live reggaeton band was brought into the Garifuna
neighborhood fair in Trujillo the last time I went. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the
roots of reggaeton.
Garifunas and Tourism Struggles for Human Rights by Blacks and Indians US Honduras
Garifunas and Tourism and the Struggles for Human Rights by Blacks and Indians
Because Garifuna music and dance are
world famous, the official tourism sites of the Belizean, Guatemalan and
Honduran governments all feature Garifunas and Garifuna villages as important
tourist attractions. In Belize, there is even a Garifuna museum—Gulisi, named
for the daughter of Chief Chatoyer, in Dangriga. Almost all Honduran tourist brochures show
Garifuna dancers. At the same time
Garifunas are losing their lands to tourist development and sales of land to
foreigners who want to live where it is warm near Caribbean Sea beaches. Many
Garifunas want “development” of their communities, as the title of one famous
book shows “ethnodevelopment” often means “ethnogenocide”. They do not want to dance like “payasos”
(clowns) for tourists, said Ana Lucy Bengochea, the former coordinator of CEGAH
when she was interviewed in Malaysia, or be dispossessed of their lands for
cruise boat docks, hotels, condominiums, retirement homes and the other
numerous development projects that have been proposed for the development of
the Trujillo and Tela areas in Honduras and around the Garifuna communities in
Belize.
When the Garifunas of Rio Negro, Trujillo
resisted selling their homes and lands where their families had lived for 200
years to build the cruise ship dock, they were denounced by the Ladinos of
Trujillo on the media, both written and especially over the radio, as
"blocking development" (www.ofraneh.org and my personal eyewitness
experience.) I think when the World
Summit of Afrodescent People asked for “development with identity”, they meant
recognition of their cultures and traditional technologies, their needs for the
use of certain types of eco-systems for the development of their culture, the
preservation of their languages which is used for many cultural important
elements including their religion, their medecine, their songs, and their oral
literature, and the important part they can play in helping to develop the
areas and the countries where they live. In the end this cruise boat dock has brought little development to the area, and most of the few profits went to Canadians not the local Hondurans or Garifunas.
The Garifuna area between Puerto Castilla and Trujillo and between that and Guadelupe and its agricultural area in Betulia has seen a lot of speculation of housing for foreigners, in spite of the fact that Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world due to 80% of the cocaine bound for the US going through NE Honduras on its way to Guatemala and the US. Currently the Garifunas of Trujillo are facing a multimillion lawsuit from a company that says it was going to build a windmill farm on the Garifuna lands near the Guaymoreto Lagoon. OFRANEH suspects that it was never a real deal, with a real company, that the company just made the deal without following the procedures for Free, Informed, Prior Consent as required by ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Human rights of Indians. See the OFRANEH blog for details www.ofraneh.wordpress.org.
I don't know about windmill power elsewhere, but in Honduras it has been very problematic,usually affecting indigenous communities. Another windmill project is in Southern Honduras south of the capital Tegucigalpa in Santa Ana Cerro de Hula, a Lenca community which Dr. Lazaro Flores has been studying for over 26 years with his university anthropology students. He bought his retirement home there to spend his final years among his beloved Lencas. The windmills were set on a hill above an archaeological site in a cave, Las Cuevas de Ayestas. Lencas are known to use both caves and hill top sites in their religious and medicinal practices, such as noted by Honduran Lencan economist Dr, Julian Lopez. The windmill company has tried to argue there are no Indians in the area, even though the nearby town of Ojojona is famous for its guancasco, a Lenca ceremony of peace with another Lenca town Lepaterique (Flores,2003). Dr. Flores has documented the modern Lenca culture and practices throughout this Lenca area extending to Reitoca, which did have colonial pueblos de indios (Indian towns,subject to tribute labor). The windmills were so noisy and disturbing that Dr. Flores was forced to abandon his retirement home and return to Tegucigalpa one of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world for more peace and quiet.
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 and Belizean Garifunas organize beauty contests of Garifuna
women. 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, etc.which the Garifunas also
include in African Heritage Month, Settlement Day or Garifuna Day. 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). There was 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. 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, Virgilio Lopez,
and Tomas Alberto Avila help fill the void left by the lack of attention by
professional historians.
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 colleges,
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.
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
building of ODECO is named after him.
Garifuna schools are often named after important Garifuna teachers, like
Jose Laboriel High School in Santa Fe, after Garifuna musician and music
teacher at the Departmental High School "Espiritu del Siglo" in Trujillo.
The Garifuna have sought most of these changes in Honduras, in Belize
and some of them in the US, 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, 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.
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.
She was reporter for Honduras This Week from 1992-2004 writing over 300
articles, mostly on the ethnic groups on Honduras. She has been an English and French professor
at the UPN and UNAH univerisities 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. .
Bibliography for all the Garifuna articles published in this blog March 30, 2017. These articles were formerly in the article "Garifuna Immigrants Invisible" on the Garifuna in Peril movie website. They were updated March 30, 2017.
Amaya Banegas, Jorge
Amaya (2005) "Los Negros Ingleses o Creoles de Honduras: Etnohistoria,
Racismo, Nacionalismo, y Construcción de Imaginarios Nacionales Excluyentes en
Honduras", Boletin No. 13, AFEHC. http://www.afehc-historia-centroamericana.org.
Amaya Banegas, Jorge
Amaya (2012) "Reimaginando la
nación en Honduras: de la nación
homogénea a la Nacion Plurietnica: Los Negros Garifunas de Cristales, Trujillo,
Colon, Honduras" http://www.
ird.fr/afrodesc/IMG/pdf/TESIS_Amaya_web-3.pdf
Arrivillega Cortés,
Alfonso (2007) "Asentamientos Caribes (Garifunas) en Centroamérica: De Héroes Fundadores a Espiritu
Protectors" Boletín de Antropología, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia
Año/Vol. 21, número 38, pp. 227-252. http://redalyc.uaemex.mx
Avila, Tomás Alberto (2009) Black
Caribs-GArifuna Saint Vincent' Exiled People and the Origin of the Garifuna A
Historical Compilation.Providence, RI: Milenio Associates
Chambers. Glenn (2010) Race, nation, and
West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940.
Baton Rouge: Louisana State
University.
Davidson, William
(2011) Censo Étnico de Honduras: Cuadros y mapas basados en el Censo
nacional. Tegucigalpa: Academia
Hondureña de Geografía e Historia.
Euraque, Dario
(2004a) Conversaciones Historicas con el Mestizaje. San
Pedro Sula: Centro Editorial.
Euraque, Dario (2004b)"Jamaican
Migrants and Settlements in Honduras, 1870's - 1954" Paper presented at
the Conference "Between Race and Place: Blacks and Blackness in Central
America and the mainland Caribbean," Tulane University, New Orleans, Nov.
11-13, 2004.
Flores, David (2003)
La Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklórica Hondureña. Tegucigalpa:
IHER. (The Garifuna, Miskito, Bay
Islander, Pech, and Chorti sections are
partly based on my research)
Franzone, Dorothy (1994) A critical and
Cultural Analysis of An African people in the Americas: Africanisms in the Garifuna Culture in
Belize. Ph.D. Disertation. Temple
University. (Available online at
www.ProQuest.com).
Gonzales, Nancie (1988) Sojourners of the
Caribbean: Ethnogenisis and Ethnohistory of Garifuna. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Griffin, Wendy and
CEGAH(2005) Los Garifunas de Honduras: Cultura, Lucha y Derechos bajo el
Convenio 169 de la OIT, San Pedro Sula:
Central Impresora.
Griffin, Wendy and
Tomasa Clara Garcia (2013) Yaya: La Vida de una curandera Garifuna. Negritud.
(Photocopies of the article with Yaya's medicinal plant recipes are in the
libraries at Tulane Univeristy and the Univeristy of Pittsburgh)
Griffin, Wendy,
Hernán Martinez Escobar and Juana Carolina Hernández Torres (2009) Los Pech de
Honduras: Una Etnia Que Vive.
Tegucigalpa: IHAH.
Gudmundson, Lowell
and Justin Wolfe (2012) La Negritud en Centroamerica: Entre Raza
y Raices. San José: Editorial
Universidad Estatal a Distancia. (There
is an English version of this book Blackness in Central America: Between Race
and Place. It is for sale on Amazon.com).
House, Paul et al.(1995) Plantas
Medicinales Comunes de Honduras. Tegucigalpa: Litografia Lopez.
Johnson, Paul (2007) Diaspora
Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa. University
of California Press.
Lopez Garcia, Victor
Virgilio (1994) La Bahia del Puerto de Sol y la Masacre de los Garifunas de San
Juan. Guaymuras,
Honduras.
Tilley, Virginia (2005) Seeing Indians: A
study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press.
Mentioned books
Amaya Banegas, Jorge
Alberto (2007) Las imagenes de los negros Garifunas en la literatura hondureña
y extranjera. Tegucigalpa: Secretaria de
Cultura, Artes y Deportes. prize winning
book. Premio Latinoamericano de Investigación Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa,
Maestro de America.
England, Sarah (2006) Afro-Central
Americans in New York City: Garifuna Tales of Transnational Movements in
Racialized Spaces. Gainesville, Fl:
University Press of Florida.
Palacio, Joseph (2005) The Garifuna: a
Nation Across Border. Essays in Social Anthropology, Cubola, Belize.
The last two are available at Amazon.com
Background Information on Garifuna music.
Punta and Paranda—The Most Famous
Garifuna Dances and Songs
One type of secular song is called
paranda in Spanish which means to carouse.
In Garifuna it is called berusu and in Belizean English guitar song
(Avila, 2009). Opinions vary as to when Garifunas began to sing paranda, but
some time between the Garifuna arrival in Central America in 1797 and the
1920’s the Garifuna men began to accompany themselves on a guitar and sing,
with a background of drums and maracas, and later the turtle drum. Parandas were often traditionally sung as a
“seranata”, going to someone’s house and singing, accompanied by a guitar. Paul Nabor, an over 80 year old Belizean
Garifuna parandero, said in an interview for Spanish TV, when he had a problem
with someone, he would not fight with him, he would sing about the problem (http://www.rtve.es/alacarte/videos/todo-el-mundo-es-musica/todo-el-mundo-es-musica-honduras-y-belice-la-aventura-garifuna/1070122.)
Now in Belize, they are principally sung at wakes (Avila, 2009). Although in
both Avila’s book and in conversations with Garifuna blogger Teofilo Colon,
they identified paranda as “beresu” in Garifuna, the old men who play paranda
in Belize like Paul Nabor, were not familiar with the word “beresu”.(Avila,
2009)
There are female and male versions of
paranda. In Honduras, Garifuna women
organized in dance clubs go singing traditional Garifuna songs from house to
house at night sometime in the week before Christmas. Unlike the more famous Belizean men’s
parandas, in Honduras the women’s paranda is not accompanied by guitar, but it
is accompanied by drums (two segunda and one primero) and maracas. Since the women go into the house and get
people up out of bed and crowd around as best they can, they are variously in
rows or in a circle. The step is balancing back and forth from one foot to the
other with the arms free to move as the person feels the music, like
hunguhungu. One dancer might go up and
dance in front of the drums and the first drum player has to follow her
movements, like punta. Another dance Culiau which has its own song, according
to Honduran Garifuna dancer Herman Alvarez, this is more sexy (mas cadente)
than punta and was traditionally done from house to house before Christmas.
Garifuna women’s dance clubs also go out to “parrandear”, to sing Garifuna
songs from house to house and dance with drums the first of January after
dancing all night in their club’s dance house (Griffin and CEGAH,2005).
Paul Nabor was a buyei, a Garifuna shaman in
charge of Garifuna ceremonies like the dugu and chugu, as well as a musician,
so he was well aware of the problem that young people were not learning the
language and some of the old music styles like paranda and the ceremonial
songs. Paul Nabor has done concerts around Belize and, after being recorded for
the Paranda Project of Belizean record label Stonetree Records, also in the US
(www.stonetreerecords.com/albums/meet_the_paranderos.php; www.belizeanartist.com).
He has been interviewed by PBS in January 2004 (www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/Belize/nabor.html)
, as well the interview for Spanish TV where he sings his most famous song,
Naguyu Nei, written when his sister was on her deathbed and she wanted a band
to play at her funeral. This song and
other tracks by Paul Nabor, like Niri and Sandi Balandria are available from
Amazon mp3 as well as the Stonetree records site. On Youtube there are over 25
videos of Paul Nabor playing Garifuna music. .
Other paranderos on the CD include Jursino Cayetano (Livingston,
Guatemala), Juni Aranda (Dangriga, Belize), Lugua and Dale Guzman, Honduran
Garifuna Aurelio Martinez as well as Paul Nabor. Most of these men were over
60, except Aurelio Martinez, and few young people were learning their songs.
Another Garifuna type of song is punta
(banquity in Garifuna). Traditionally
women sing and compose punta songs, while the men drum, and play maracas, the
turtle shell drum, and the conch horn. Punta is sung at wakes, held the night
after someone dies before they are buried the next day. Both punta and paranda are sung at End of
Mourning ceremonies (fin de novenario), held one year after the death of a
friend or relative. Women go into the center of the ring one by one and on the
tips of their feet they dance forward, backwards, and to each side, swaying her
hips. Sometimes a man dances around her, but he can not touch her.
Traditionally Garifuna women wear full skirts below the knee and short sleeved
blouses and headscarves to dance this dance, which when danced traditionally is
sensual but not vulgar. In the past, young people did not dance this dance at
wakes, but rather another dance for young people Saguai, which no longer
exists(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).
Garifuna medicine-Modern and Traditional, healers, doctors and medicinal plants
Garifuna medicine-Modern and Traditional,
healers, doctors and medicinal plants
In health there are over 34 Garifuna
doctors and dozens of Garifuna nurses working in Honduras. One Garifuna doctor gained fame in the US
because he had worked hard to open the first Garifuna hospital in the remote
area of Iriona, Colon where there are thousands of traditional Garifunas as
well as a number of Ladino communities. This hospital was open during Manuel
Zelaya’s presidency, but after the coup was threatened to be shut down. There
is a link to the hospital on BeingGarifuna.com.
Garifunas also work in various roles in projects related to the problem
of AIDS in the Garifuna community, from the Radionovelas in Garifuna like “The
Ancestors Don’t Die”, to fundraising, to training traditional health
practioners and buyeis how to recognize AIDS, and many other aspects in both
Honduras and the US. There is a Garifuna
organization “Hondurans Against AIDS” in New York. Concerned that Garifuna
traditional practices were not being incorporated into the Honduran medical
system in the Garifuna area, OFRAHEH sponsored a training program for Garifuna
nurses that included traditional Garifuna medecine and Western medecine. The
Garifuna nurse in charge of the government clinic at Puerto Castilla and the
Garifuna doctor in Trujillo both attend medecine plant seminars and
conferences.
Traditional Medicine and healers among
the Garifunas
Many of the people working in Garifuna
health are not university trained, but rather are traditional herbalists,
midwives, massage therapists (sobadoras), and “buyeis”. These healers treat many illnesses, and
deliver babies. Medicinal plant studies
among the Garifunas have shown the old people know over 300 medicinal plants,
but the young people are not learning them.
The Garifunas believe in several different causes of illnesses including
common causes such as intestinal pin worms or fevers, illnesses caused by
witchcrafts, illnesses caused by ancestor spirits, and illnesses caused by
nature spirits. In my book Los Garifunas de Honduras (Griffin and
CEGAH,2005) there is a section on
Garifuna traditional medicine including over 100 medicinal plant recipes and
how to care for pregnant women and young children among the Garifunas,
according to 92 year old Garifuna healer, midwife, sobadora, and buyei, Tomasa
Clara Garcia, known as “Yaya”. She has
been an informant for several studies of
medicinal plants and the Garifuna religion.
Her biography will soon be published by Negritud in English and Spanish
(Griffin and Garcia, 2013).
Hondurans, including the Garifunas,
believe in several illnesses that Honduran doctors do not think exist, like
haito, empacho, aire, paletilla, etc.
These are generally treated with a combination of herbs and
massage. Evangelical Christians have
taught Miskito Indians that going to traditional healers whom they consider
diabolic, as bad. So when 2 Miskito
students studying in Tegucigalpa got sick of “empacho”, which causes the
stomach to bloat up and get hard, sounds like a drum if you touch it, and
causes problems going to the bathroom, and little balls form in the blood, among other things, the modern Christian
Miskito man who was taking care of them refused to take them to a “sobadora” or
“curandera” (massage therapist or healer).
He took them to the teaching
Hospital in Teguicgalpa and they cut them open and the two young men
died of the operation. The Miskito parents were furious when they got the dead
bodies of their sons sent home, especially when they heard all they had was
“empacho”, an easily cured traditional illness. When I have asked Hondurans
about the fact that Western doctors do not recognize these diseases, they made
maybe they should recognize them, that maybe US children are dying of these
illnesses because they do not recognize them.
Yaya treats many children after they have been to the hospital and the
doctors could not find out what was wrong, and they were dying. She treats them with herbs and massages and
they get better and live to grow up and have their own children.
I partly began working with Yaya because
I heard that many Miskito Indian women were dying in childbirth, yet only one
of Yaya's hundreds of patients had died in childbirth, so I wanted to know what
she did. For example, she told me if a
woman is hemoraging, she gives her strong coffee, and that usually stops the hemorraging
(Griffin and CEGAH,2005). A Garifuna friend of mine lost his wife in childbirth
at a hospital from hemoraging, leaving him alone with 6 young kids. I am sad to think he may have lost his wife
for the lack of a cup of coffee. A US
medical student from Massachusettes who was doing volunteer work with CEGAH,
read Yaya's care of pregnant women, and said modern medecine does not do these
things, but maybe they should. Garifunas midwives provide prenatal care from 2
or 3 months of being pregnant and also provide after pregnancy care, as well as
care of newborns. The statistics for
prenatal care, maternal death, and problems with newborns among the African
Americans in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania who all are treated with Western medecine
in hospitals are worse than those treated by Garifuna midwives. Unfortunately
the modern generation of Garifuna youth are not learning these skills.
Some Garifuna midwives like Yaya also
know plants that help women who have trouble getting pregnant to have
children. CEGAH's Trinidadian American
advisor tried for several year to get pregnant. Finally she had health tests
done in the States, and they said there was something physically wrong. That she would need hormone treatment and
surgury, and it would be expensive, etc.
Discouraged she went back to Trujillo and tried the medicinal plants of
a Garifuna healer there. She went off to
India and was going up and down buses, hauling heavy luggage on terrible
roads. She came back to Honduras and
went to the doctor's and he told her she was about 4 months pregnant, even
though she was over 35, doing all this heavy lifting and hard travelling, etc.
and did not lose the baby. Shortly after
the first baby was born, she was pregant again and also had that baby fine
although she was almost 40. Many women
in Trujillo have gone to Yaya with this problem, and she treats them with a
different plant recipe and a year later they are back to show off the
baby. "Here is your
granddaughter," they say. One woman
complained because eventually she had a lot of children after being
treated. "I am not at fault,"
says Yaya, "You asked for the medecine and it worked." Many people in
the US spend thousands of dollars on infertility treatments, which are often
uncomfortable, and sometimes even then
do not have children.
Although the Catholic Church in Honduras
used to be against medicinal plant use, now some of the leaders of medicinal
plant usein Honduras are priests and nuns.
Padre Fausto Milla runs a medicinal plant clinic in Santa Rosa de Copan,
and also a special "Casa de Salud" (House of health) for serious,
hard to treat cases. My friend
anthropologist Adalid Martinez was diagnosed with lung cancer, and even after
chemothearpy they said they would have to take out his lung. He went to Father Fausto Milla's clinic and
"Casa de Salud" for 7 months.
In addition to herbs, he followed a special diet and did
"geotheraphy" with special medicinal mud which supposedly sucks out the illness. He recovered
completely and 10 years later he is still fine and very active. He wrote a book about his experience and
other people who Father Milla cured.
Father Milla has had a newspaper column in a Honduran Spanish language
newspaper about medecinal plants and a radio show. In Trujillo, one of the Spanish nuns was
trained as a naturalist doctor and presecribed plant medecine for people.
Although she had to retire due to old age, the medicinal plant store of the
Catholic Church is still open and frequently used in Trujillo. Part of the
reason they do this is because many Hondurans are sick and can not afford
chemical medecines. Another reason is because the plant medecine usually works.
.
If people have heard of medicinal plants,
now a multibillion business in the US, they usually think of rainforest
Indians, especially Amazonian rainforest Indians. In fact, Blacks both in the
Americas and in Africa also had a wide knowledge of medicinal plants. In South Africa, it is estimated that
traditional African healers use between 2,000 and 3,000 different species of
medicinal plants (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/traditional-healers-of-South-Africa). According to
UNAH ethnobiologist Paul House, medicinal plant researchers interviewed
one “bush doctor” in Belize who knew 1,000 medicinal plants, which is more than
all the medicinal plant lore for all of Europe in one head. The current
interest in saving the rainforest by World Bank and similar organizations is
motivated primarily by finding 2 effective treatments for leukemia based on
periwinkles from Madagascar in Africa, now a multimillion dollar business for a
US pharmaceutical company. Some Latin American Indians have raise a cry against
"biopiracy", the stealing of traditional knowledge about medicinal
plants for the purpose of making rich American pharmaceutical companies. One
reason to worry that the Garifunas are losing their land is that they are
losing their medicinal plants which could help a lot of people. While pharmacuetical companies "in
gringolandia" are mainly interested in herbal remedies that will bring
them a lot of money, like the cure for cancer, the poor people of Honduras are
also thankful for medicinal plants that treat every day diseases like urinary
tract and kidney infections, ear infections, sinus infections, intestinal
worms, amoebas, etc. Since many rural
people live far from government health centers and are poor and can not afford
Western medecines, herbal medicines are an important alternative source of
medical care. Hondurans also note medicinal plant use is safer. My sister in the US was recently prescribed a
medecine for a sinus infection that said, "Warning causes death in
children under 10". The Honduran
cures for sinus infections like drinking water with hot chiles in it or
inhaling "ipasina", a root, hot lemonaid or ginger tea with lemon, or
inhaling the steam of camomile tea, definately do not cause death and are safe
even for newborns.
A Garifuna friend of mine, Profesor
Batiz, a modern believer in Western medicine was sick. He went to doctors in Trujillo, even San
Pedro Sula, a big city of a million people. In the San Pedro hospital, they
said you have hepatitis. You can be
admitted to the hospital if you want, but we have no medicine for
hepatitis. A cousin of his from the
traditional Garifuna area of Iriona, Colon came to visit him and heard his
story. He said do not worry. I will make some medicine and you will feel
better. He made a drink of Caña santa, a wild plant, and “rapadura” unrefined
brown sugar and let it ferment for three days with a little viscoyol, a fruit,
and gave it to Profesor Batiz. Within a
week he was fine and back to work. The use of Caña Santa for liver or urinary
problems have been widely documented in Honduras including among the
Ladinos(House et al., 1995), the Pech Indians (Griffin et al. 2009) and the
Garifunas (Griffin and CEGAH,2005). Paul House says when a plant remedy is
found among several different ethnic groups for the same thing, it is pretty
sure that it is actually quite effective for that illness. Unfortunately Western medecine, modern
schools, and Christian churches have made traditional people lose faith in
traditional medecine. In Honduras since
I have lived there, there have been campaigns
against "witchcraft" (brujeria) and the only thing they do is
get rid of the medicinal plants from the center of towns like Tegucigalpa,
confusing traditional medecine with "witchcraft". The Garifuna young people are not learning the plants, how to do massage
therapy, or be midwives.
Not only plants are used but also parts
of animals. Lard from chickens, “manteca
de pollo” or “fowl fat” is used by Bay Islanders, Ladinos from Tegucigalpa and
Garifunas to give to babies when they are very young to treat and prevent
problems like bronchitis and asthma. Yaya says that babies when they are born
drink some of the amiotic fluid and if
you don’t treat them they will have asthma and other illnesses one after the
other. She gives the newborn baby garlic well cooked, and rue, and honey in its
mouth so that it will vomit all the dirty water (Griffin and Garcia, 2013). None of the children she has treated this
way, which includes hundreds of babies, have ever had asthma. Bay Islanders,
people in Tegucigalpa and Garifunas live very far apart from each other. If so many people so far apart say these
treatments are effective, maybe US researchers should be looking into it, as
childhood asthma among African American kids is a huge problem in the US.
If people have heard of the land problems
of rainforest Indians, usually they think of Amazonian rainforest Indians. I was surprised to read that there are only
an estimated 200,000 Amazonian rainforest Indians. In Central America between the Garifunas, the
Miskitos, the Pech, the Tawahkas, and other Central American rainforest
Indians, the population is much greater, and the area is much smaller. The problems of the Central American
rainforest are acute. The largest
Honduras protected area with rainforest, "The Rio Platano Biosphere"
in the Honduran Mosquitia is a UNESCO World Heritage site and includes 5
traditional Garifuna communities. The
destruction of the rainforest there is so severe that some estimate in 25 years
it will all be gone. Most people who see
the Garifuna villages on the coast do not think of them as rainforest Indians,
but their hunting included almost all the same animals the other Honduran
rainforest Indians eat like white collared peccary (quequeo), deer,
"tepescuinte", and armadillo.
The skin of the white collar peccary and the deer is what is used to
make Garifuna drums and is currently
hard to get due to the near extinction of these animals. While some Garifuna medicinal plants come
from the lower areas near their field, houses, lagoons, and the beach, Yaya also used to go into the rainforest part
of the Calentura mountain, now a National Park,
to bring down special Garifuna medicinal plants. The Garifuna crafts
also depend on rainforest plants like the drums are made of wild avocado tree
wood, canoes from silkwood (ceiba), the graters for grating yuca to make
cassava bread are made of Honduran mahoghany. Garifuna basketry crafts also
depend on a vine "belaire" in Spanish and "gomerei" in
Garifuna that grews on the rainforest part of the mountains near water up
behind the Garifuna villages. Several Garifuna NGO's have tried to offer to
seminars on how to make Garifuna basket crafts, because for some crafts there
are just one or two older artisans in all of Honduras. With one small seminar
of one craft in the Tela region, almost the entire existence of the plant was
wiped out in the large Punta Sal National Park, reported the staff of the
environmental NGO PROLANSATE, and in Trujillo there was not enough of the plant
to offer the seminar. Craftsmen who know how to make Garifuna basket crafts,
like Tomas Guity of Santa Rosa de Aguan, report there are no belarie plants
near their village, because the forest are of the Garifuna villages was given
either to Agrian Reform cooperatives of Ladinos or to Honduran businessmen who
cut down the forest and plant African palm or raise cattle there. Garifuna
basket crafts like the basket strainer (ruguma) and the basket sifter (hibise)
are essential for making the Garifuna's traditional bread, cassava bread in
English, casabe in Spanish and ereba in Garifuna. The sale of cassava bread is
an important source of income for many Garifuna women in traditional Garifuna
villages. Garifunas are an Afro-Indigenous people who are severely affected by
the loss of the Central American Rainforest (Griffin and CEGAH,2006). .
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