´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.

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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

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.

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.

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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).     .