OFRANEH Continues to Denounce Garifuna Land problems and Model Cities Advance

OFRANEH Continues to Denounce Garifuna Land Problems on the Honduran North Coast

By Wendy Griffin, December 2014

For example, in its proclamation for the Celebration of the Arrival of the Garifuna People in April, 2012 OFRANEH denounced the selling of the Garifuna lands in Trujillo, Santa Fe, and Guadelupe, Honduras to a Canadian businessman ( www.ofraneh.wordpress.com). The Garifunas of Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro say there is an order of capture (the Honduran equivalent of an arrest warrant) issued by the Attorney General of Tegugicalpa and delivered to the Attorney General (Fiscal) of Trujillo in February 2012 for processing, against this Canadian businessman Randy Jorgenson, for usurping GArifuna lands in the Trujillo area, as he has a land title to 76 manzanas of land, but according to official INA (Honduran Agrarian Land Reform Insistute) land measurements he is occupying 88 manzanas of land formerly owned by the Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro. (Victor García, fiscal, Junta Directiva, Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro, and representative of the INA in Tegucigalpa, personal communication).

 

As Randy Jorgensen was selling lots of less than one manzana (a manzana is about 1.6 acres) to Canadians for $20,000 each before the Trujillo cruise boat dock opened and $40,000 each after the Trujillo cruise boat dock opened (Mapa de Trujillo, 2013), this represents a signifant theft of land.  The Attorney General of Trujillo has not done anything with the order of capture against Canadian businessman Randy Jorgenson since receiving the order in February, reported Victor García in an interview in April 2013, officially and personally authorized by the President of the Comunidad of Cristales and Rio Negro, after a formal signed request by Wendy Griffin as reporter for Honduras Weekly.com to the Board or Junta Directiva of the Comunidad which legally owns the completely legally registered land title to this 12 manzanas of  usurped land, as part of their Manuel Bonilla land title, according the Commission formed by Honduran President Pepe Lobo in December 2012 to study the Trujillo land problems.

 

This Commission included the INA, Secretaría de Pueblos Indígenas y Afro-Hondureños (SEDINAFROH), the Honduran Institute for Forestry Conservation (ICF), the Honduran equivalent of the Forestry Service and which replaced the old COHDEFOR, the Ministry of Cultura (SCAD), and the Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía) in Tegucigalpa, confirmed representatives of INA, the Human Rights office of SEDINAFROH, Tocoa representatives of ICF, president and Fiscal of the Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro and a representative of ODECO who is accompanying the process and who all met in Trujillo in April 2013. Given that the Model City legistlation was already in the works and Trujillo and Puerto Castilla were consistently named as probable sites of the Model City, I wondered if this process was just to keep the Garifunas entertained with visits to Tegucigalpa and meetings, while the real process of taking all their lands was happening around them. The reason the orden de captura was issued was because he was sent three citations to appear to answer questions about the issue of the theft of land, and he did not respond to the three citations, which in Honduras requires the Fiscal or Attorney General to issue an arrest warrant to the non-responsive party. The then Honduran President Pepe Lobo could not say that he did not know where Randy Jurgenson was to be able to have the arrest warrant carried out, because a few days after we went to the Trujillo's Fiscal's office to ask about the warrant President Pepe Lobo was on  national television shaking hands with Randy Jurgenson in Trujillo on the occasion of the inauguration of the cruise boat dock  which in the end was built in waters too shallow for most cruise boats, and will have to be built after all in Puerto Castilla.

 

 

 Some of the Trujillo land is being sold to Canadians for retirement homes, but the almost complete removal and destruction of the Garifuna neighborhood of Rio Negro, Trujillo where they have lived since 1797 was for the purpose of putting in a cruise ship dock, another  project being developed by Canadian businessman Randy Jorgenson.  The Garifunas of Rio Negro resisted selling for over a year, but finally the Ladino Mayor of Trujillo who supported the plan as part of the development of Trujillo, sent a note saying that if they did not sell, he would take their houses under the Honduran law similar to the US law of Eminant Domain which allows taking of personal property  for public works, reporter a Trujillo Garifuna (Griffin,  2013).  OFRANEH describes the prices they received for their lands which were right on the beach on a port next to the heart of the city where the developers wanted to build, as “laughable” (www.ofraneh.wordpress.com).  In Model Cities the Honduran government will also be able to force sales through Eminant Domain.  While not marked on the Zede map of the Honduran government the referendum approving that Suyapa in Tegucigalpa be made a ZEDE or Model City passed in the election which was charactized by multiple complaints of fraud.  

 

 OFRANEH  also denounced Honduran plans to put in a Model City, also called Charter City or REDD, like a mini-state with its own laws and courts, between Puerto Castilla and Sico, Honduras, an area that includes the most traditional Garifuna communities with tens of thousands of Garifunas and most of those who still speak Garifuna fluently at home.  (www.ofraneh.org, www.ofraneh.wordpress.com).  The original plan to have the whole area between Trujillo and Sico included has been changed to two Model Cities or ZEDE—Trujillo-Puerto Castilla and Sico-Paulaya.  See www.zede.gob.hn. This is still going to affect lands where thousands of Garifunas live.

There is a link to the OFRANEH website from BeingGarifuna.com to help Garifunas in the US keep up with news of the struggles back at home(www.beinggarifuna.com).

 

As I suggested in an article on the results of the 2013 General Election, published in HondurasWeekly.com, the land situation of Afro-Hondurans has gotten worse since the new President Juan Orlando Hernandez took office in January 2014.  In the Inter-American Human Rights Court in Costa Rica of Garifunas of Triunfo de la Cruz vs. Honduras in June 2014 the Honduran government alledged that the Garifunas were Afro-Hondurans, and thus not Indians and not eligible for the protections of ILO Convention 169.  Although there are a number of flaws with that argument, the Honduran government has continued with moving Garifunas off of land in Barra Vieja, next to the Indura Beach Resort in the Tela Bay area west of Tela, off of land in Puerto Castilla near Trujillo, and similar incidents elsewhere in Honduras. There is a striking video of the combined forces of the Honduran Army and Honduran Police backed up by Ladino peasants to take apart the Garifuna’s houses in the area of Barra Vieja on the OFRANEH blog www.ofraneh.wordpress.com .   

 

Garifunas of the Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro, who are  the named owners of the Trujillo Garifuna land have had problems getting their  Junta Directiva or Executive Board recognized by the Honduran government. I was very concerned by the precedent of cancelling the corporate charter or personaría juridica of 5,000 Honduran NGO’s, because all the lands of the Honduran Indians and Garifunas are held by organizations legally recognized as NGO’s under Honduran law. However, none of the 5,000 NGO’s whose personaría juridica was cancelled were ethnic federations or patronatos that held land titles. The list published in La Gazeta was made available on Sergio Bahr’s blog. Some Honduran NGO’s eventually had their personaría juridica restored.  

 

The plan to set up Model Cities in Honduras continues a pace with the first one proposed in the South where the Koreans were doing a factibility study.  The original plan of Juan Orlando Hernandez’s government seems to have been  to work for two years in the South working out the bugs in the Model Cities, and then expanding the implementation to the other áreas designated as Model Cities, according to a document on the Ministry of Planning website that is no longer on the Internet. It was a bad sign that the oficial announcement of where the Model City in the South would be was made in Korea, not in Honduras.

 

Like most Honduran governments, since taking office Juan Orlando Hernandez’s government has been trying to work out a plan with the IMF, which has taken over six months to work out.  Most IMF plans and World Bank conditionality agreements are not made public in Honduras, as is true almost everywhere where they exist. Several books recently published in Honduras say that Honduras does not have an independent economic (or social) development plan, but rather these are worked out in the US, between the International Bankers and Companies listed on Wall Street.  OFRANEH argues that the plans like Model Cities and mines that will cover 30% of Honduran territory or petroleum exploration off the North Coast including the Mesoamerican Reef área are examples of “false development”.  Model Cities in particular they call “Liberatarian Delusions” where you can have good schools, safe streets, good medical care, enough to eat, and low taxes all at the same time.

 

I agree with them and think that the Model Cities proposers who have tried hawking the idea for example at Bitcoin conferences (a currency favored by drug smugglers)  and conferences promoting medical tourism (anyone who is thinking Honduras is a good place to have medical procedures has not been inside a Honduran hospital, some of which I visited this summer and would not recommend a dog go for treatment) are going to do a “Bait and Switch”.  They tell the Honduran government if you do this policy, for example Model Cities, then you will have happy people, a prosperous state, Jobs for the unemployed,  better infrastructure like an airport in your hometown of Gracias. 

 

But after they have moved heaven and earth to change the laws and even the constitution to make it possible, and the foreign investors do not come and the foreign tourists do not come to the most violent country on Earth currently, these advisors will not accept any responsibility if the main result is the Guatemalan Real Estate Company behind Model Cities sell land that Hondurans been displaced off of at the Price of a dead rooster and increased drug trafficking and theft of archaeological pieces in those areas. Why else would the oficial government map of Model Cities have drug related airports and archaeological sites, roads, and river routes on their map on the Internet?

 

The Honduran president might be suspicious that maybe he is not being given sincere advice, because he said in his interview in El Heraldo at the end of the 100 days in office, “I took advantage of these trips out of the country to  ask Foreign investors to come and Foreign Tourists to come, and they all said, “Well, not now.”   But the harrassment of Garifunas, and Lencas using the Honduran Police and the Army, the policy of Model Cities, and the threat of displacement of Miskitos and land confiscation of lands owned by drug traffickers in  proposed  Olancho Model Cities have continued in spite of these presidential misgivings.     

United Fruit’s Truxillo Railroad 100th Anneversary and Spurs into the Rio Plátano Biosphere area

United Fruit’s Truxillo Railroad and  Spurs into the Rio Plátano Biosphere area

By Wendy Griffin (2014)

This year 2014 is the 100^th Anniversary of the approval of the Truxillo Railroad’s concession in Northeastern Honduras.  They took over early concessions given to people to build railroads connecting Trujillo, Iriona, Juticalpa, and Tegucigalpa.  The Truxillo Railroad, was a United Fruit wholey owned subsidiary. Derek Parent, retired Geography professor at Concordia University in Montreal,Canada, Taylor Mack, Geography professor of Louisiana Technological University,  personal communication) have identified tracks in the Mosquitia as belonging to United Fruit's Truxillo Railroad. Geographers Derek Parent (from Canada) and Peter Herlihy, Geography professor of the University of Kansas, (from the US)  have seen the tracks of Truxillo Railroad in the Mosquitia, The official Honduran government refusaed to permit United Fruit to cross the Sico River, a refusal widely covered by the newspapers at the time reports Dr. John Solouri, historian at Carnegie Mellon University,  in his 2009 book Banana Cultures.    Another short distance railline in Mosqutia belonged to the Decker Lumber Company (Derek Parent, personal communication). See map below.

Derek Parent has investigated and uncovered the early 20^th Century locomotive narrow-gauge steam engine abandoned on the old railway bed about two hours trek south of  Ibans Lagoon.  The cut mahoghany was then transported by barge to the Decker Lumber Company sawmill in Brus Laguna. Parent had also observed an easterly direction rail bed leading towards the Black River (Rio Negro or Rio Tinto) perpendicular to the north-south Ibans Lagoon rail bed.

A senior Miskito inhabitant of the area (Henry Decans senior)  related to  him that the rail line was used to haul mahoghany, and that the barge to haul the wood to Brus Laguna was sunk somewhere in Ibans Lagoon, which is near the current county seat of Palacios, in the Honduras Mosquitia. Following rail line tracks still on the ground,  Derek Parent was able to identify that both United Fruit and Cuyamel Fruit seem to have started rail lines in what is now the Rio Plátano Biosphere, partly to access mahoghany and partly to access fresh lands for bananas as other plantations were affected by Mal de Panama and Sigatoka. Banana plantations in the Honduran Mosquitia did not prosper and still to this day Miskitos need to plant Saban bananas, known as Pilipitas, rather than commercial type bananas for the problems of funguses that affect commercially popular types of  bananas.

Miskitos of Brus Laguna (including Scott Wood, personal communications) and resident Ladinos (including Osvaldo Munguia, director of MOPAWI, personal communications) have confirmed the presence of an American owned and run sawmill in Brus Laguna, which was abandoned when a local worker accidently fell under the saw and was killed and so the American manager got in an airplane and flew away never to return, reported Scott Wood. In the 1950’s the old sawmill was still standing, and the local Miskitos still called it “sawmil”, reported Osvaldo Munguia, a native of Brus Laguna.

 Osvaldo Munguia, Derek Parent, Pech,  and Garifunas have all confirmed that the huge pilings for the bridge for the train trestle crossing the Sico River at the town of Sico, are still more or less in place and much of the Truxillo Railroad track or rail bed, from Ibans to Sico and Sico to Limon, were more or less in place during the 1990’s observations, reported Derek Parent. So much for the Honduran government’s disapproval of crossing the Sico River.

 Another confirmation of a line near the Ibans Lagoon is that Miskito teacher Profesor Miguel Kelly reported his American father met his Miskito mother while working in Bataya, the Garifuna town on the east side of the  Ibans Lagoon, for the Truxillo Railroad Company. His father stayed in the Honduran Mosquitia the rest of his life, helping the Moravian Missionaries at the Renacimiento School in Brus Laguna (Miguel Kelly, Scott Wood, personal communications).

US Geographer Taylor Mack remembers seeing the rail line from Ibans to Sico, as well as the line from Trujillo to Sico of the Truxillo Railroad, among the papers of the United Fruit Company (Taylor Mack, personal communications.) If the Rio Platano Biosphere contains an intact relatively undisturbed rainforest today (mentioned as one of the top 50 adventures in the world by Outdoors magazine), try to envisage what it was like before the Truxillo Railroad began to log it. The Truxillo Railroad Consession permitted logging of all the wood it desired along a 50 mile border on both sides of its tracks and they could keep the wood without any additional payment (Griffin, 1992, La Historia de los Indigenas de la Zona Nororiental de Honduras Tomo II 1800 - 1992). It was used for supports under the tracks, barracks and offices, the actually cars of the train and its seats, and for export.  There was also a sawmill at the other end of the line in Puerto Castilla report Garifunas like Victor Garcia whose father worked there.

The Rio Platano Biosphere did not exist at the time of the Truxillo Railroad Company which had mostly stopped operating trains by 1942. The Rio Platano Biosphere began as a Protected Area as the Ciudad Blanca Archaeological Reserve founded in 1961 at the petition of Dr. Jesus Aquilar Paz, the maker of Honduras’s national maps.  The Honduran Mosquitia only fully became part of Honduras after a short war between Honduras and Nicaragua in 1958-1959 known as the War of Mocorón, and the 1960 World Court in The Hague, Netherlands decision recognizing the Rio Coco as the border between Honduras and Nicaragua.   

In the late 1980’s the area between the Rio Paulaya and the Patuca River was declared as the Rio Platano Biosphere.  The purpose still seemed to be to protect the Ciudad Blanca ruin, as explorer Theodore Morde had said the Ciudad Blanca was between the Paulaya River and the Patuca River in the Honduran Mosquitia in his 1939 report to the Honduran Ministry of Tourism. According to  Derek Parent many of the protected areas being founded in Central America around the time of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Summit on the Environment were founded to protect archaeological ruins and only secondarily to protect specific types of eco-systems.

The fact that it took until 1960 to decide the Nicaraguan Honduran border was partially related to another company whose major stockholder was Samuel Zemurray who owned Cuyamel Fruit and who later went on to become president of United Fruit.  Samuel Zemurray was the major stockholder of the Louisana Nicaragua Lumber Company which logged woods on the west side of the Coco River (Rio Coco), an area now part of Honduras,  under a concession given by the Nicaraguan government. He thought he could get a cheaper price for the wood under the Nicaraguan government, so exerted an influence so that Nicaragua did not come to an agreement with Honduras over the Honduran Mosquitia lands.   

The reason the Honduran Guatemalan border is currently marked “Decided by the Decision of Washington, DC” in the 1930’s was also related to a border dispute in which Samuel Zemurray’s Cuyamel Fruit Company wanted to extend west with a concession from Honduras and United Fruit wanted to extend east with a concession from Guatemala. The Washington, DC brokered deal included not only settling where the Honduran Guatemala border was, but had United Fruit buy out Samuel Zemurray and combine Cuyamel Fruit into their Honduran operations, which gave them an additional impetus to close the Sigatoka ridden Truxillo Railroad. A number of Maya Chorti villages switched from being located in Honduras to being located in Guatemala as a result of the deal.  Not only did Nicaraguan Miskitos and Sumus cross over the new border during the Contra War, but Maya Chorti also crossed over the new border on the Honduran side to reclaim the nationality of their grandparents during Guatemala's civil war.   

Other Protected Areas and the Truxillo Railroad

.

The Truxillo Railroad Company had not logged the mountain range behind the Garifuna community of Trujillo traversed by the Truxjillo Railway east of Truxillo, perhaps because the Garifunas had not permited it.  The mountains now in the Capiro and Calentura parks above Trujillo were logged of mahogany by a ship laden with Belizean mahoghany loggers in the 1950’s, with a permit from the Honduran government. The Belizians logged the mountains, reported Profesor Fausto Miguel Alvarez (personal communication) who grew up in Trujillo. The current forest cover of cohune palm (corozo) found near the Pech villages of Silin and Moradel outside of Trujillo is a crisis plant that grows in full sun after the forest canopy of shade trees is clear-cut, reports UNAH ethnobiologist Paul House (Paul House, personal communications).

The Pech of the nearby community of Silin confirmed that the area that is now in the buffer zone of the Capiro and Calentura National Park and is covered in cohune palm, was previously cornfields which they had planted after the area was logged in the 1950’s (Don Euterio, personal communications). 

However the Pech of Olancho reported that the Truxillo Railroad did log in the Olancho and Colon areas through which the Railroad passed, and when they left Olancho in the 1930’s after the depression reduced the demand for bananas (and apparently hard woods),  they  just abandoned tons of cut mahoghany in the forest.  The start of the still conflictive Ladino community of Sico, Colon in the buffer zone of the Rio Plátano Biosphere dates to the period of the Truxillo Railroad.

In addition to stories on this blog www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com  in English about the Truxillo Railroad period, some Truxillo Railroad related stories collected as part of an oral history Project for the 100th Anneversary of the Truxillo Railroad, are also on my Spanish language blog www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com

African Influence in Garifuna Language and Oral Literature -Stories with a sung Chorus Part III

African Influence in Garifuna Literature and Language Part III Including Garifuna stories with a chorus probably in an African language

 By Wendy Griffin

All over Spanish speaking Honduras, including among the Miskitos, the Pech Indians and Chorti Indians, people tell Uncle Rabbit and Uncle Coyote or Uncle Rabbit and Uncle Tiger (Jaguar) stories, which are thought related to Brer Rabbit stories in the Southern US and the Carribbean which are in turn related to Bantu stories of the Rabbit.  Surprsingly these type of stories are very rare among the Garifuna.  I have only collected one Garifuna Rabbit story in Tela and none in Trujillo ( Griffin and CEGAH, 2005), while I have seen none in other collections of Garifuna stories.. 

 

As mentioned above, the Miskito Indians tell kisi stories, where the word kisi for a nature spirit like an ogre probably comes from the Bantu word nkisi. The Africans who intermarried with the Miskitos may have applied the word kisi to the Mesoamerican stories of sisimite, and that is why there is such a range of kisi stories in the Miskito culture that kiska is one whole genre of Miskito stories.

 

The Garifunas do not tell kisi stories. The Miskitos also tell  "twin" stories, where one person does something with good intentions and they become rich. Another person who is envious and greedy tries to do the same thing, but with bad intentions and the person dies or remains poor or becomes injured, etc. (Miskiwat, 1995a, Miskiwat, 1995b). The only place I have seen this type of story in collections of African stories in English is in Angola. Since one kisi story is also a twin story, it would make sense that both kinds of stories have a common origin.  The Garifunas also do not tell twin stories, either.

 

Nancie Gonzalez (1988) said most Garifuna uraga were Anasi stories, but in the areas I have worked, only one Garifuna man knew Anasi stories (Griffin and the Garifunas of Limon, 1995) and the Garifunas of Trujillo said that Anasi is one of the names of the "devil" (Justa Silveria Gotay, personal Communcation).  None of the other collections of Garifuna stories that I know of in Honduras or New York have Garifuna Anasi stories. Anasi is one Garifuna word for spider according to UCLA linguist who studies the Garifuna Dr. Pam Munro. Anasi stories were the speciality of the Ashanti people of Ghana.

 

 Several of the traditional Garifuna stories "uraga" do have witches (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005, Griffin and Garifunas of Limon, 1995).  Honduran Spanish speakers, the Miskitos and the Garifunas themselves consider that there are Garifuna witches.  Garifunas have in the past used poison, curses, plants, and spells which could kill or make sick or make crazy or cause a snake to appear or have the person end up doing something good when they meant to do something bad or become lost in the mountains, or cause couples to split up, or keep a man from leaving a woman. The Ladinos also accuse the Garifunas of knowing how to put something in their belly. See the article on this blog about Witchcraft as a reason for poor interethnic relationships in Honduras during the Truxillo Railroad era. Garifunas have reported some types of witchcraft that are specialities of certain types of witches like putting something in the belly of the person and making them swell up or making the penis of a young man disappear and have a vulva in its place, known as penis snatching in Africa, a particularly dreaded type of witchcraft according to Wikipedia articles on witchcraft. One Garifuna word for a curse that is coming from far away to kill you is the same word as gorilla in Garifuna.

 

There are a number of Garifuna songs about the fact that someone has sent "mal" (witchcraft from the Spanish word "maloficio") or "a gorilla", usually from New York and in a few days it will arrive and they will be dead. The topic of witchcraft comes up more in personal coversations than it does in stories. For example, Herman Alvarez, a Garifuna from San Juan Tela told about his nephew who raped a Black English speaker's daughter in Belize.  He was sent to jail, but the parents of the girl asked for him to be released and he came home to Tela.  shortly thereafter he became sick.  Herman went to see him before he died, and said he had no more penis, that he had a vulva like a woman.  Then the boy died. 

 

Herman said, Now I believe that "mal" exists.  Belief in Witchcraft is still strong in Subsharan Africa (Wikipedia, Witchcraft).  While placing something like a frog in the belly is a speciality of the Igbo of Nigeria, in Central and West Africa there has been a lot of concern about reports of "penis snatching" witches(Wikipedia, Witchcraft, Wikipedia, Igbo).

 

A story of witchcraft from Trujillo was there used to be a woman named Mindula in the neighboring Garifuna village of Santa Fe.  One man said she came to visit his grandparents and brought them coconut bread.  They ate part and saved part for the morning, but they never woke up.  They died.  Finally people got so tired of her evil doing that Garifunas in New York paid a Hindu to kill her by witchcraft.  One day she was walking on the beach.  A gringo stopped her.  Suddenly a ball of fire came from the sea and hit her and she was burning up.  She called for garlic, but no one would help her and that is how she died. (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  Often stories about witches and spirits including duendes, mafia, the Agayuma, gubida, the spirit of the sea, the devils under the trees, are not formal "uraga" among the Garifuna, but instead are just accounts of what happened to people someone knew.

 

In West Africa, there are two kinds of stories--stories with sung choruses and stories without choruses. I don't know if this is also true for the Bantu area of Africa.  These two types of stories exist among the Garifuna uraga.  The story teller--uragista teaches the chorus to the audience before the story and then they sing along when he gets to the part with the chorus.  The Garifunas say this makes storytelling, which is usually done as part of all night long wakes, less boring.

 

 Some of these choruses are still in English.  For example, in the Garifuna story of Anti Dua, which is almost identical to the story collected among the Ga near Accra, Ghana, the chorus is "You know me, It was not me" in English.  In Ghana the story is of Auntie Dua or Aunt in English and Dua Wood in Ga.  Since the story is about a woman who has all the firewood in the world, and makes fun of people and does not give it to them, it makes sense that it should be called Auntie Wood.  And since English is the official language of Ghana, it makes sense for a Ghana story to have a chorus in English (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  The Ga story of the crab and how he got his hard Shell that Anti Dua is part of was collected and published by reknown folklorist Howard Collander.

 

There is another story about a man who marries a pelican, where the wife before she changes into a pelican and goes to eat fish, always sings a song "I am sorry, so sorry" in English.  (Juan Arzu, personal communication).  The Garifunas tell the stories with the choruses in English even though they themselves do not speak any English and the listeners do not speak any English, probably because the choruses are sung and if they were translated they would not match the tune or beat of the song. The use of English may reflect the story originally came from a part of Africa which the English controlled like Ghana or Nigeria.  West African stories of people changing into animals have been reported.  

 

In the Garifuna story below, the chorus is in an unknown language. This chorus is well known and several people mentioned it to me and could sing it to me, but only my 92 year old buyei friend Yaya could tell me a story that went with it.  There is no guarantee that this is the original story that went with the chorus, because as I said it is a popular chorus, and people could make up other stories and have people sing this chorus.  Garífuna shaman like shaman everywhere are guardians of the oral tradition and so Yaya knew both songs and stories which helped her give advice on how to live as a good Garífuna so that your actions would not anger the ancestors, your neighbors who might do witchcraft against you if they were envious or resentful, or the nature spirits. She was the only person I spoke to who could tell me about the ceremonies for the nature spirits so that they do not withhold the rain.  Honduras has been suffering a serious drought over the last year, and rain over the last 5 years has generally been less than before. Is there a relationship with the fact that the people forgot about the nature and wáter spirits and now they are angry and are withholding rain and fish and rainforest animals as some believe?

 

What is special about Yaya's story is that it is about two children killing a baby gorilla to take its skin to make a bag, and then the mother gorilla is looking for the children. So they get on a vulture and are flying away to safety.  The boy says, The vulture smells bad.  The girl says, "Stop it." and sings to the vulture so that it will keep flying. There are no gorillas in the Garifuna area of Honduras or on Saint Vincent or on the mainland where the Arawaks and Caribs Indians came from, so this is almost certainly an African tale.  There are not gorillas everywhere in Africa, just in a few areas, often in areas where Bantu speaking people now live and where people eat a lot of bananas and plantains, like the Garifuna do.

 

 I read in a book once that sese meant dance in Bantu, but a Bantu linguist at UCLA had not heard that and  without knowing the whole meaning of the chorus, it is hard to evaluate if the chorus is really in a  Bantu language. I am sorry that I did not ask Yaya what was the Garifuna word for gorilla, as that is almost certainly an African word.  The Garifunas also tell an Anasi story about the wedding of a guinea hen (Griffin and Garifunas of Limon, 1995). The word for guinea hen is likely to be an African word, too.  The chorus the girl sings to the vulture to escape from the mother gorilla is below.

The use of the Garífuna Word for gorilla to mean curse is in the Garífuna songbook Lanigi Garífuna (Garífuna Heart), by Salvador Suazo which had a casette with it for the songs,but no university in the US bought a copy according to WorldCat.

 

yau mi yau, Miguelei

Eh, yau mi yau

yau mi yau

 

Bambu sese sese sese se

Yau mi yau, yau mi yau

Yau mi yau, yau mi yau.

 

(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005)

 

There is also a game played at wakes where the Garifuna women wave their arms like they are flying and turn around and sing bambu sese sese sese se.  The women said they did not know what the words meant, that maybe they meant the pelican is flying, flying, flying. This game, a similar one for children,  and the language it is in is obviously related to the chorus of the story.

Songs about vultures are also common among the Miskito Indians and the song "Usus Mairin" (Female Vulture) seems to be similar to the Gullah song and dance of Buzzard Stomp of the Blacks in the US South in the Sea Islands. Buzzard is another word in English for vulture. The buzzard stomp dance has been identified with a similar dance among the Mandiko people of the old Mali Empire in Western Africa.  Most of the songs still in an African language among the Gullah were also found to be in the Mandiko language. See the article cited at the bottom of the Wikipedia article on Afro-Hondurans in English. The whole article is available on the Internet. The relationship of Garifuna harvest dances and the Miskito agricultural dances, the rain cycle in Honduras, and the cycle of planting rice and harvesting it are in Wendy Griffin's Spanish language blog article about Honduran ceremonies and calendars www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras.blogspot.com
 

 

People I have asked to translate stories or songs for me, like Enrique Gutierrez of Trujillo, say there are a lot of words, particularly in dugu songs that modern Garifunas do not know what they mean.  They are words in sacred songs which are part of the overall ritual, so the Garifunas sing them without knowing the meaning, just like the story choruses in English or a possible African language. Maybe the early composers of Garifuna dugu songs used borrowed words from their native African languages. 

 

So far studies of Garifuna looking for African words have found under 10 words (Suazo, 2002), but maybe that is because they were comparing to West African languages and cultures, which do not seem to be the major influence in Garifuna ceremonies or foods, or because they were searching among modern Garifuna words, instead of the older forms of Garifuna frozen in dugu songs and uraga, the traditional stories.   It may also be that the person who was looking did not know the esotheric words in the language as Dorothy Frazone in her doctoral thesis on Africanisms in Garifuna Culture quotes a Yoruba priest who said he found many Yoruba words in the practices related to the dugu ceremony. Her thesis is available from PROQUEST.com.

 

 

Bibliography

 

 Allsopp, Jeanette (2003) The Caribbean Multilingual Dictionary of Flora, Fauna, and Foods in English, French, French Creole, and Spanish.  (El diccionario multilingüe caribeño de flora, fauna y Comidas en Inglés, Francés, Creole Francés, y español).  Kingston, Jamaica, Arawak Publications.

 

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.

 

Arrivillaga Cortés, Alfonso (2007) "Asentamientos Caribes (Garifuna) en Centroamerica:  De heroes Fundadores a Espiritus Protectores"  Boletín de Antropología, año/vol. 21, No. 38, Univerisidad de Antioquia, Medellin, Columbia, pp. 227-252. 

 

Avila, Tomás Alberto (2009) Black Caribs-Garifunas Saint Vincent' Exiled People and the Origin of the Garifuna. A Historical Compilation. (Caribes Negros a Garifunas, El Pueblo Exilado de San Vicente y el Orígen de los Garífunas. Una Compilación Histórica.)  Providence, Rhode Island EE. UU.:  Millenio Associates. Este libro escrito por un Garífuna en los EE. UU. da la historia y explanación de la cultura garífuna de punto de vista de los mismos garífunas, princiaplement Garífunas Beliceños.  Se puede comprar a través de www.Amazon.com. This book written by a Garifuna in the US gives the history and an explantion of the Garifuna culture from the view point of the Garifunas themselves, principally Belizean Garifunas. It can be ordered from Amazon.com.  Highly recommended.

 

Chambers, Glenn A. (2010) Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940 (Raza, Nación, y la Imigración de Afro-Antillanos a Honduras, 1890-1940). Baton Rouge:  Louisana State University Press.

 

Davidson, William V. (2011)  Censo Etnico de Honduras, 2001, Cuadros y mapas basados en el Censo Nacional.  (editado por Mario Argueta).  Tegucigalpa:  Academia Hondureña de Geografía e Historia.

 

Davidson, William (2009) Etnología y Etnohistoria. Ensayos. Tegucigalpa:  Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia.

 

Flores, David (2003) Evolución Histórica de la Danza Folklórica Hondureña. Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Incluye descripciones y  mas de 125 fotos de danzas folklóricas incluyendo  muchas danzas afro-hondureñas incluyendo las danzas ceremoniales o religiosas. Estudio de danzas Garifunas de Wendy Griffin, Estudio de danzas de Isleñas de Wendy Griffin y David Flores, Estudio de danzas Miskitos de Miskiwat y Wendy Griffin, Danzas Ladinos de David Flores.  Danzas Lencas y Maya-Chortis de David Flores y Wendy Griffin.  Unas danzas ceremoniales  grandes conocidos como "los Guancascos" de los Ladinos, Chortis y Lencas tienen una sección especial que se llama "Los Negritos" y los bailaraines andan con máscaras y hacen danzas graciosas.

 

Gonzalez, Nancie (1988) Sojourners of the Caribbean. Urbana, IL:  University of Illinois Press.  Este libro sobre la historia y cultura de los Garífunas fue traducido al español y republicado en Honduras bajo el nombre Peregrinos del Mar.

 

Griffin, Wendy (2004)  Los Isleños y Los Ingleses de Honduras:  Su Historia y Su Cultura, manuscrito inedito.  Hay copias de la versión en español en la bibliotecas de la UPN y el IHAH en Tegucigalpa, Honduras, y la University of Pittsburgh, y Tulane University, EE.UU.y PRONEEAAH.   Unas personas como Jeanette Allsopp, los representantes de PRONEEAAH, y profesores de Tulane y la Unversidad de Pittsburgh tienen copias electronicas de la versión en inglés.I have an electronic version of this book on the English speaking Bay Islanders of Honduras.

 

Griffin, Wendy (1998) "Coconuts play Central Role in North Coast Cultures" (Cocos juegan un papel  central en las culturas de la Costa Norte)  and "Coconuts can be good medecine"   (Los Cocos Pueden Ser Buena Medecina), en Honduras This Week Online (Honduras Esta Semana En Linea), Mon. Feb. 2, 1998 at http://www.marrder.com/htw/feb.98/cultural/htm. Había muchos artículos mios sobre la comida típica, la medecina casera, las danzas folklóricas, las ceremonias, las leyendas, de los afro-hondureños, indígenas y Ladinos  en este periódico en inglés en el Internet. There are many of my articles in English on Afro-Honduran culture, including the story The man who married a Pelican in this newspaper where I wrote for 12 years..  You can search Pelican or GArifuna and Honduras Wendy Griffin on google and they will come up. 

 

Griffin, Wendy (1996) Los Miskitos:  Su Historia y Su Cultura.  manuscrito inedito.  Hay copias de la versión en español en las bibliotecas de la UPN y el IHAH en Tegucigalpa, Honduras, El Museo de Antropología e Historia, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, y la University of Pittsburgh y Tulane University, EE. UU. y PRONEEAAH.

 

Griffin, Wendy, Juana Carolina Hernandez Torres y Hernán Martínez Escobar (2012)  Guia de Artesanía y Arquitectura Pech y Reflexiones de la Cultura e Historia Pech en el Museo de antropología e Historia de San Pedro Sula, Honduras.  Obra inedita.  Hay versiones digitales en el Museo de San Pedro Sula, Honduras, el Museo Peabody de Harvard University, el Burke Museum, Univeristy of Washington,Seattle, WA. y PRONEEAAH.  Además de información sobre las artesanias Pech, este libro incluye también información sobre como se siembra, limpia, cosecha, y procesa el arroz y también como se hace dulce o rapadura y la chicha al estilo pech  en Honduras y las artesanías que necesitaban para hacer esto.

 

Griffin, Wendy y Tomasa Clara Garcia Chimilio (2012) "Yaya:  La Vida de Una Curandera Garífuna"  Manuscrito en español en la biblioteca del Museo de Antropología e Historia de San Pedro Sula Honduras, la University of Pittsburgh y Tulane University, EE. UU.  Este artículo en inglés (Yaya: The Life of GArifuna healer)  y en español será publicado por la revista Negritud, de Atlanta, Georgia, EE. UU. en 2013.    To be published in English by the Journal Negritud, Atlanta, GA.  I can also send it by email.

 

Griffin, Wendy, y Juana Carolina Hernandez Torres y Hernán Martínez Escobar (2009) Los Pech de Honduras: Una Étnia que Vive.  Tegucigalpa:  Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH).

 

Griffin, Wendy y el Comité de Emergencia Garífuna de Honduras (CEGAH) (2005) Los Garífunas de Honduras:  Cultura, Lucha, y Derechos bajo el Convenio 169 de la OIT.  San Pedro Sula:  Central Impresora. Casi todas las copias de este libro publicado con fondos de la Fundación Edwards de los EE. UU. fueron donados a escuelas, colegios y bibliotecas en las comunidades Garífunas de Colon. Hay copias en la UPN y el IHAH en Tegucigalpa, el Museo de San Pedro Sula, Tulane, University of Pittsburgh, University of New México, Western Washington Univeristy, Central Washington University, Peabody Museum, Harvard Univeristy, EE. UU.  There is a preliminary version in Tulane University, Garifuna Coalition, Nueva York,  and University of West Indies, Barbados.

 

Griffin Wendy y los Garífunas de Limon (1995) Once Upon a Time in a Garifuna Village/Había una vez en una Comunidad Garífuna. manuscrito inedito bilingüe español/inglés. There are copies in the library of IHAH en Tegucigalpa, el Museo de Antropología e Historia, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and the University of Pittsburgh and Tulane University (but it does not show up in WorldCat). La Escuela Socorro Sorrel, Trujillo, Honduras.

 

Gudmundson, Lowell y Justin Wolfe (eds.) (2012)  La Negritud en Centroamérica:  Entre Raza y Raíces.  San José, Costa Rica:  Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia.  There is an English version Blackness in Central America.  Between Race and Place.

 

Martinez Perdomo, Adalid (2011) Antropología Alimenticia.  San Pedro Sula:  Central Impresora. Incluye mis estudios de la Comida Miskita e Isleña. Tiene el estudio de Virgilio Lopez, un profesor Garífuna sobre la Comida Garífuna.  Adalid validó mi estudio de la Comida Pech y lo incluyó bajo su nombre. Incluye los estudios preliminares de sus estudiantes de la Comdia Chorti y Lenca, mas información étnohistorica.

 

Metz, Brent E., Cameron L. McNeil, y Kerry M. Hull (2009)  The Chorti Maya Area:  Past and Present (La Zona de los Maya-Chortis:  El Pasado y el Presente),  Tallahassee:  University Press of Florida.

 

Miskiwat--Miskitu Iwanka Watla/Centro de Cultura Miskita(1995a)  El Kisi que Se llevó a Un Niño y Otros Cuentos--versión bilingüe Miskito/Español (Wendy Griffin, coordinadora)  Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guardabarranco. Con dibujos del artista Miskito David Smith.  Casi todas las copias de este libro publicado con fondos de UNICEF fueron donados a escuelas en La Mosquitia.  Hay copias en la biblioteca de UPN y el IHAH en Tegucigalpa, el Museo de Antropología e Historia de San Pedro Sula, University of Pittsburgh y Tulane University, EE. UU. y PRONEEAAH. Unas personas como Jeanette Allsopp, Elmor Matute Wood y la biblioteca del IHAH también tiene la versión electronica en inglés. the book The Kisi that Carried Away a Child and other Stories.  I have the English digital version.

 

Miskiwat--Miskitu Iwanka Watla/Centro de Cultura Miskita(1995b)  Miskut Kiuma Nisanka Kiska Nani Cuentos de la gente de Miskut--versión bilingüe Miskito/Español (Wendy Griffin, coordinadora)  Teguicgalpa: Editorial Guardabarranco.  Con dibujos del artista Miskito David Smith.  Casi todas las copias de este libro publicado con fondos de UNICEF fueron donados a escuelas en La Mosquitia.  Hay copias en la biblioteca de UPN y el IHAH en Tegucigalpa, el Museo de Antropología e Historia de San Pedro Sula, University of Pittsburgh y Tulane University, EE. UU.  y PRONEEAAH. No hay versión en inglés.There is no English version yet of this Miskito story book, which has 4 "twin stories".

 

Perez, Isabel  Entre la Vida y la Muerte.  A study of Miskito ethnomedecine.

 

Sarmiento, José (1992) Historia de Olancho:  Guaymuras:  Tegucigalpa.

 

Stone, Doris (1943) The Lencas (Los Lencas) in Steward, Julian (1943) The Handbook of South American Indians, Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institute.  Hay una traducción en español de este artículo en las Bibliotecas del IHAH, Tegucigalpa  y el Museo de Antropología e Historia, San Pedro Sula.

 

Suazo, Salvador (2002) Conversemos en Garífuna: Gramática y Manual de Conversación.  Tegucigalpa:  Editorial Guaymuras.

 

Será Publicado Próximamente/To be published soon.

 

Graham, Ross (2013) "Bay Islands English" (Inglés de Islas de la Bahía) en Hopkins, Tometro, John McKenny and Kendall Decker (eds.) World Englishes: Vol. 3 Central America. London: Continuum.

 

Laura Hobson Herlihy, Hawks, Chip, Grate, and Squeeze:  Recipes from the Bay Islands (Recetas de las Islas de la Bahía).

 

Scott Wood Ronas (2012) La Mosquitia Desde  Adentro. Tegucigalpa:  Ministerio de Cultura.(The Mosquitia from the Inside, the first book on Miskito culture and history written by a Miskito Indian)

 

Diaspora Conversions

 

Websites consulted

Wikipedia, dugu, 

Wikipedia, Garifunas

 Wikipedia,  Afro-Latin American religions

Wikipedia, Palo

 Wikipedia, Traditional African Medicine,

 Wikipedia, Traditional healers of South Africa 

Wikipedia, Shamanism

Wikipedia, Divination,

Wikipedia,  Rooster 

Wikipedia, Cuisine of South Africa

Wikipedia, rapadura

Wikipedia, East African Cuisine

http://www.ikuska.com/Africa/Gastronomia/kwanga

Videos with Garifuna Dances of their sacred Ceremonies 

Garifuna in Peril (2012) Abeimajani, Punta, also non-religious dances like Wanaragua (Mascaro or the Dance of the Warriors)

El Espiritu de Mi Mama Dugu, Punta

Tierra Negra, about the Garifuna land problems done by Telesur in 2013, available on Youtube. Shows a chugu.

Both available at www.garifunainperil.com and through Amazon.com

CD’s

 

Ayó, by the Garifuna Collective (a Belizean group) Available from Stonetree Records and other places.

Folkway Records Garifuna CD’s available through Folkway Records of the Smithsonian.

Doctoral Thesis

Dorothy Frazone (1994) Africanisms in Garifuna Culture. Done among Belizean Garifunas. Available from PROQUEST.com