More Sources of Videos and Maps related to Honduran indian and Garifuna conflicts

More sources Videos and  Maps on the Internet about current conflicts with Honduran Indians and Garifunas

 

Part III- Originally Prepared for SALALM's Audio Visual Committee 

See the Honduran government’s official Model cities website www.zede.gob.hn. It is linked to the Wikipedia in Spanish article on ZEDE (zonas Economicas de Desarrollo).  It has maps with the potential Model cities. This website also has the signed Memorandum of Understanding, the one of the internet is for Cortes. It also has a road that does not exist from Manto through the Rio Platano Biosphere and to the coast. It is helpful to read the El heraldo article on the expansion of the port at Puerto Castilla to attend ships for mining and for African palms. There have been street protests by the people at Puerto Castilla after hearing about this proposed expansion, which I presume would require expanding from one dock to four docks will require getting rid of the houses of the current village of Puerto castilla, which has a land title. Whether one of these docks will actually be the dock for the cruise ships which require deep water for post-Panamax ships is not stated.  Randy Jurgensen the owner of the Trujillo cruise dock now has another company called the Trujillo Development Authority, which translated into Spanish would not really makes any sense to Hondurans.

See the US government’s official Southern command (southcom) website. They have the map of where they work and their policies and projects. I also recommend the Africa com (Africa Command) website which if that discussion of US national interests in Africa does not give you chills, I do not know what will.

On www.Vimeo.com there are 159 videos about Garifunas, including one “ Comite de Emergencia Garifuna “ (CEGAH).     www.vimeo.com/242885331  This video on Vimeo about the Comite de Emergencia Garifuna by the Equator Initiative of UNDP  is narrated by the current executive Director CEGAH Nilda Gotay and tells about their work while showing photos of their work. The video was commissioned by the Equator initiative of UNDP. The Garifunas of CEGAH were one of 24 semi-finalists for the Equator Prize in the whole world for combining development projects while at the same time protecting the environment.  They were invited to speak at the COP-7 conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and speak about their work when they were named semi-finalists. The Comite de Emergencia is also the co-author of my book Los Garifunas de Honduras.  There were numerous articles in Honduras This Week about the Garifuna Emergency Committee where Wendy Griffin volunteered for about 7 years including one specifically on Lucha Garifuna and at least 4 on the problems of rebuilding Santa Rosa de Aguan. Most of the articles Wendy Griffin did for Honduras this Week for the 1999-2000 time period were articles on one year after hurricane Mitch stories, including southern Honduras, the Chorti area, the Pech area, Roatan and Guanaja in the Bay Islands, the Mosquitia (Puerto lempira, Brus Laguna,Tawahka area) and everywhere on the North Coast including visiting every agency that controlled protected areas on the North Coast. Wendy Griffin spoke at SALALM in 2014 about some of the Garifunas in the Garifuna Emergency committee of Honduras as co-authors of her book Los Garifunas de Honduras and makers of these videos who also have children in the US.

Also a very good video on vimeo.com is Paradise in Peril about the destruction of the rio Platano biosphere as of 2012. It has worsened even since then. Comparing this video full of cattle and grass and fire, and the 2000 video Discovering the rio Platano biosphere inSearch of Ciudad blanca with dense forest almost impossible to get through is startling.  There are also good videos about other agencies that work with comite about issues of good farming techniques, and rural development Red Comal, which includes a Lenca compostura, which are very rare to capture on film. Vimeo has many videos related to the lenca struggle in Rio Blanco including a song to the Rio gualcarque, which is dedicated to the lencas who have died in that struggle with the hondruan government against a dam, which just ends the following people would have liked to been here to hear this if they were still alive.  

See ICF website to see where protected áreas are and you can see that the área where Centroamérica indígena will map is exactly in the área of ZEDE Sico Paulaya and the Rio Platano Biosphere and the área where Garífunas and Miskitos live. Both MASTA of the Miskitos and OFRANEH of the Garífunas are protesting land issues in the área of ZEDE Sico Paulaya.

Nacer en Honduras See the video of Juan Orlando hernandez's inauguration to think about his struggle and issues around lenca identity for the lenca anthropologist, for the lencas themselves, and honduras’s current president Juan Orlando hernandez, who called himself hijo del indomintio Indio lempira (the son of undefeatable Indian lempira, a Lenca hero of the resistance against the Spanish conquest for whom the Honduran money is named and who is mentioned in the National anthem and who has a department named after him and has a day 20 July named for him), but at the same this Honduran president was sending police with hoods and guns to threaten the Lencas with una matacina, a massacre as shown in a Vimeo video about the Rio Blanco conflict, was part of Wendy Griffin’s 2014 Salalm presentation. The issue of identity and identity conflict was very pertinent for SALALM 2014 and the current situation in Honduras. For the video of Juan Orlando Hernandez’s inauguration speech referring to indio lempira, see the blog nacerenhonduras. It was originally on the El heraldo’s excellent  multimedia presentation about the Honduran January 2014 toma de possession (taking of power). 

www.miskituhonduras.org The website of MASTA of the Miskito Indians of Honduras which has two videos, one the interview with the MASTA president and one a video of Miskito music.

 

 

11. Revolutionary medicine: the Video on the First Garifuna hospital

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.  There is now a movie about the hospital made by some Canadian students called Revolutionary Medicine: The First Garifuna Hospital. They have a Facebook page which is the easiest way to contact them about trying to get a copy of the video. Writing to their emails does not work.

Some Internet sites for photos of Garifuna crafts and environment

Balbina Chimilio also made the Garifuna dolls in the Burke Museum at the University of Washington and in the Ethnic toy Museum of Neuquen, Argentina. To see the Honduran crafts in the Burke Museum go to link: http://collections.burkemuseum.org/ethnology/ and in the search box at the bottom of the page type in the following:  %2013-189% and hit the search button. 2013-189 is the accession number assigned to the objects Wendy Griffin donated, and then each object has a unique number, like 2013-189. No - not any catalog remarks show up. There are more Garifuna crafts here and not all the Garifuna crafts areup on the Internet yet.

Balbina also had the Garifuna dolls on Wikimedia Commons and the Garifuna dolls in the Museo de Juquete Tradicional Neuquen, Argentina. Wendy Griffin knows of at least two movies on the subject of Black Dolls. At the Langston Hughes film Festival in 2013 in Seattle, the same year garífuna in peril played there, there was a 25minute movie on Why do you collect black dolls? More striking is a movie produced in Nigeria and which played at a filmfestival at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Blue eyes of Yadira, about a African Young girl who feels her life would be different if only her eyes were blue like her dolls. Working with Garifuna dolls with the Garifunas and black platics dolls (morenos) among  the Pech (who do not like blonde dolls which they identify as little old lady dolls) and the mulatto dolls produced by a woman outside of Trujillo and also in the Burke Museum and the Museo de Juquetes Tradicionales have sparked many interesting reflections on dolls and girls and self image and whether the person has a positive self image about their race.

Notice that Garifuna dolls are usually superelegant, in their finest and most formal attire and have necklaces and earrings, and often beads in their braided hair. They often make male dolls too, and one person commented that you should always make pairs, so that the dolls are not lonely. The Garifunas, the Miskitos, and some Afro-Cubans have also had religious traditions related to dolls and ancestors, but they are not the same customs. In Honduras the custom of voodoo dolls, which are put in the person’s path and stuck with pins, etc. only has been noted among the Ladinos, who are partly descended from Afro-Mestizos, but the topic of that type of witchcraft is not opening discussed, although other types like attracting or keeping a partner or separating acouple, are currently opening advertised in Honduran daily Spanish papers.

Photos Related to the Honduran  Craft Exhibition and  Donation and bilingual intercultural Education and Authors--Links to Leigh Thelmadatter’s photos on Wikimedia Commons about the Central american linguists conference and the craft exhibit there and the fórum on Bilingual –Intercultural Education with representatives of all the Indians, and Afro-Hondurans. Fotos de Artesanías Hondureñas que fueron donadas al Museo Burke  de la Universidad de Washington después de ser en exhibición en la UPN y en el Congreso de Linguistas Centroamericanos  en Tegucigalpa,  en la Universidad de Kansas y la Universidad de Washington Occidental (WWU) y la Sociedad de Antropologia Aplicada.

 

Most of them are in the following categories.La Mayoria de las fotos están las categorías siguientes.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Crafts_of_Honduras (including the sub categories)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:II_Congreso_Internacional_de_la_Asociaci%C3%B3n_Centroamericana_de_Ling%C3%BC%C3%ADstica
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Comayag%C3%BCela (the sub categories)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wendy_Griffin
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pech_people

Balbina’s crafts are in the Category: Crafts of Honduras   Garifuna crafts

Balbina’s daughter Reinita also has painted seashell jewerly in the Burke Museum collection.

Balbina was also a member of the Comité de Emergencia Garifuna de Honduras which helped write my book Los Garifunas de Honduras: Cultura, Lucha, y Derechos Bajos el Convenio 169 de la OIT, which is in a number of US libraries in Spanish and a few in an earlier English version. There are photos and descriptions of most Garifuna dances, and these dances and ceremonies can be seen in Garifuna in Peril, in El Espiritu de Mi Mama, Monico Productions videos, and on youtube. There are also photos and descriptions by Wendy Griffin of the Garifuna, Bay islander, Miskito, dances in David Flores’s book La Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklorica Hondureña in some US university libraries and a book review of that book i son HondurasWeekly.com for February 2013.

Balbina Chimilio as member of Club Wabaragoun

CD recorded by Radio France in Trujillo, Honduras under the name “Les Chansons des Caraïbs Noires” (The Songs of the Black Caribs)

Every Club Wabaragoun member was given one copy. Sold in Honduras under the name Club Wabaragoun Cultura Garifuna 100%.   Wabaragoun means Vamos Adelante Todos Juntos/Let’s go forward together. Head of the Club is Enrique “Esly” Garcia.

The Garifunas are descended from the Caribs and Arawaks of St. Vincent in the Windward islands. There are Carib and Arawak crafts from St.vincent, from other islands in the Caribbean and inward from st. Vincent into the orinico valley and into the Amazon basin. These precolumbian crafts can be seen on the website of the Yale Peabody Museum. There are relations between the Shell crafts on St. Vincent and the modern Shell crafts of the Honduran garífunas at the Burke Museum, including conchshells cut in the form of zemis . There is a saying among the garífunas that the older Garifunas were garífunas de hacha y azadón (of axe and of hoe). In the St. Vincent crafts it is posible to see axes and hoes of the precolumbian period among the Garifunas. The garífuna men were previously fishermen. At the yale peabody Museum you can see net sinkers and bone fishhooks used by the precolumbian fishermen of St. Vincent. At the yale Museum you can see the bitter yuca god statue with a fanine basket for carrying yuca (manioc) on the head. In the book Los garífunas de Honduras, you can see the Garifuna women carrying these baskets on their head. These baskets are made of gomerei o belaire among the Garifunas. Other crafts like small basket and basket strainers and sifters can be seen in the burke Museum collection.

Another Museum that has a collection related to the Garifunas is the Field Museum in Chicago. The Garifuna men paddle canoes. Among the Tulalip Indians of Washington state, the canoe paddle is kind of a symbol of leadership among the men. This appears to be true among the Garifunas and the Caribs, too. In the Field Museum, there is a small Green Stone paddle, which is almost certainly a sign of leadership of the person who carried it. Among the modern Garifunas they use the full size modern wooden canoe paddles which have exactly the sameform as the Green Stone paddle in the Field Museum.  When adult Garifuna men sing the songs of mature old men called “arumajani” at dugus, there should be at least 4 men singing, and the end one should stand supporting himself on acanoe paddle. These arumajani songs which are about the travails at sea, for hunting, or problems in love, as similar to men’s ancestor songs among the Bantus in Southern Africa and it is common that when male ancestors appear at ceremonies what they want to sing are arumajani songs. Garifuna songs likeAfrican songs are not sung alone, but rahter a leader and a chorus, so someone in the ceremony needs to sing with the ancestors when they want to sing. the loss of the Garifuna ,men in the communities, and who are willing to sing in ceremonies,and who know fluent Garifuna and  know arumajani songs has been discussed as missing for decades among the Garifunas. It is interesting that nancie gonzales said older Garifuna men in New York did a recording of arumajani,as it was easier to find the older men in new york city than in Honduras.  Wendy Griffin has small mahoghany paddles Garifuna style for the burke Museum but has not given them to them yet.

The Smithsonian Latino Center is planning an exhibit on the Indigenous elements of Caribbean culture which should include the Garifunas (the Black Caribs for whom the Caribbean sea is named), but so far they only have one Garifuna drum in the Natural History Museum’s collection. Garifuna drums are important for understanding the current ecological crisis, as they need skins of deer or collared peccary (quequeo) and a vine from the beach, to tightened the head, and trees wide enough enough make a drum, which in the case of ceremonial drums are three feet across. In Trujillo the drum maker uses wild avocado trees to make the body of the drum, but Wikipedia articles report other woods. The story of the maracas is also similar with special red seeds with a black point on them being used inside and these only grow wild in the low rainforest and only certain type of jicaro are used whcih are planted. There are examples of Garifuna maracas in the Burke Museum, also Pech maracas. A special Garifuna pipe is used and not only do they need the nut of the corozo palm and tobaco that is not contaminated by chemicals, but also “buei” the bark of a wild tree. All shaman use pipes. The destruction of the rainforest affects the rainforest Indians and the Garifunas including their music, their religión, their ceremonies.

There are Garifuna Museums in Los Angeles and the gulisi Garifuna Museum in Dangriga, Belize. There used to be a Garifuna Museum in Tela, Honduras and many photos inWendy griffin’s book  Los Garifunas de honduras, are crafts from this museum which also had paintings. There are also Garifuna paintings in the Burke Museum and also Dr.James loucky of WWU’s Anthropology Dept. has one Garifuna painting by Cruz Bermudez. Tete Cobbah, cousin of Dr.Pashington obeng at Harvard did videos of Garifunas both shaman and artists and craft people and also members of a youth group  in the Trujillo área and in Tela área. Contact Dr.Obeng for additional information.

Book  of  Photography of Coral Reefs

One of the main reasons that people go to the North coast of Honduras is to go scuba diving among the coral reefs of Honduras in the Bay Islands. There are on Youtube and vimeo videos about roatan, utila, Honduran coral reefs, or the Bay Islands, which the editor of HondurasWeekly.com has sometimes highlighted on that website.

 Really good underwater photography of coral reefs is not easy.  To be able to see what they looked like before they were destroyed, I recommend the book. “A Coral Perspective: Tropical Reef Imagesfromthe portfolio of Underwater Photographer Connie Whelan”  which is available from www.coralperspectives.com  which is based  in Portland Oregon. Three of the photos are from Cayos Cochinos or Hog Keys, small islands belong to the Department of the Bay Islands in Honduras. There are three Garifuna communities there, which are part of the book Land Grab by Keri Brondo, and their legal story up to 2005 is in the book Los Garifunas de Honduras as the only ILO Convention 169 violation complaint by the Garifunas that reached the level of a fact finding misión and intervention of the ILO International Labor Organization).  The story had been followed by Honduras This week and involved the Smithsonian tropical Institute as well which was given authority on the islands.  There are also articles and reports on Garinet.com from ODECO, the Garifuna organization, about the issue.  In truthout in May 2014, they are reporting about three planned US military bases along the North coast of Honduras and the effects of militarization particularly in Hog keys and  has a photo of the Hog keys. Mexican newspapers also reported one of the áreas the in theory anti-drug fighting US naval bases were going in specifically was Hog keys or Cayos Cochinos. Latinalista.com also recently reported in English on US military bases in Latin America, republishing a study done by a think tank that follows the US policy in Latin America.    The book Honduran Law by Melanie Whetzel begins with her arrival in the Bay Islands first to scuba dive and then to teach scuba diving before she went on to law school in  Honduras. Her surprise to find out who lives on the Bay islands or in Honduras is fairly typical of people who come to Honduras, and even people in Tegucigalpa including University students don’t know who lives in the Bay islands or why. My “book” on Bay Islanders available for free on the Internet in English and in Spanish at some libraries including the University of Pittsburgh was written because the librarían at IHAH  (Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History) in Tegucigalpa said he really needed a book on Bay islanders also called Isleños because high school teachers require the students to study the nine ethnic groups of Honduras, and he had nothing on the Black English speakers and Isleños. I had some research that I had done either for newspaper articles or for David Flores’s dance book, or the book we were working on with Cesar Indiano about crafts, or somethings I had related to intercultural education in the Bay islands, or on oral history of the North coast also with Cesar Indiano, and oral literatura that I used to teach comparative literature at the UNAH and  I put it together in booklet form and gave it to him. Some Black English speakers on the North Coast liked it so much they gave it to Friends and they put it up on the Internet. Working with Sabas Whittaker on improving the food section of that book, is how I met Dr. Dario Euraque, and how he and I became Friends.

Wendy Griffin’s Bay Islander book on the Internet--Griffin,Wendy (2004) The History and Culture of the Bay Islanders and North Coast English speakers

.s114101627.onlinehome.us/files/Isleno.pdf

Sources of US Indian videos on topics related to Garifuna issues

(www.richheape.com/black-indians-american-story.htm). 

Many Americans are unaware of the existence of blacks mixed with Indians, so this is an introduction that is helpful. He also has the videos on the trail of tears about the Cherokee

Indian Education or the lack of bilingual intercultural education and ILO Convention 169

Riche Heape productions which is owned by US Native Americans also produced  Our Spirits Don’t speak English: Indian boarding Schools, an award winning film.  This film made me proud that I have spent over 20 years trying to change this system with people in their 60’s crying and choking up still over the effects of the Indian boarding schools in the US  on them. The Issue of Indian Boarding Schools is heavily discussed among US Indians and even more among Canadian Indians who are just finishing the Truth Commission about them, as noted in The Guardian in May 2014. The Canadian Indians organizing the World Council of Indigenous Peoples altogether which the Garifunas belonged to, was what in the end made it possible to write and get approved ILO convention 169 on the Human rights on indigenous Peoples in Independent countries, which includes extensive bilingual intercultural education rights besides land rights and labor rights. With two exceptions of non-Latin American countries, all who have approved ILO convention 169 are in Latin America. One other is Dominica which is where Caribs related to the Garifunas still live, and that adoption is almost certainly a result of Garifuna related organizing of the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean under a Garifuna professor of the University of the West Indies, Belize  Joseph Palacios whose books are usually sold by Amazon.com.  The only African country to approve it is the Central African Republic, and what the relation to that is with the current ethnic violence there ,  I am not sure. I have heard right wing money and ideas are fueling hate of Christian Africans against non-christians and animists, and this country also has a long history of human rights problems with its Pygmy population, but what is really happening I don’t know. Purich Publications in Saskatewan Canada has books related to how and why ILO convention 169 was fought for, the relationship to Eurocentric and boarding school education in the US and Canada,  and the reaction on non-Indians or Native Peoples to the ILO convention which are very revealing. The same issues affected Latin American Indians and are why they have been fighting for bilingual intercultural education. Marie Battiste’s books at Purich Publications will give you a lot of insight into why they have been failing to get intercultural education actually implemented, even in places where it is legal and internationally funded.

Schooling the Whole World--An example of a Human Rights movie about the effect of destroying native culture, science, language and customs through universal schooling of a Eurocentric model is Schooling the Whole World. See the Bellingham Human rights Film Festival website for contact information. In Bellingham, Washington  there is a Tribal College, North West Indian College, as well as a public university Western Washington University and a community college which sponsor this event.

Princess Angeline—An awesome video of the  story of the Duwamish people of Seattle, who were pushed off their lands and are currently not recognized by the US government, and some in the past literally starved to death, and the river that bore their name was destroyed.  Their history is generally  unknown to most Washingtonians. Princess Angeline was the daughter of Chief Seattle, and a favorite subject of photographer Edward Curtis. Both Chief Seattle and Edward Curtis remain famous. This video and a video about the  Indians of the Tulalip Reservation which includes the Snohomish, for whom Snohomish county where Everett and Boeing are located, was named, are available from the Hibulb cultural Center of the Tulalip Indian Reservation in Washington State. It included interviews with lawyers and historians about the Duwamish’s case. The Tulalip Museum has a website.

General videos on the topic of International tourism, mining,  and Indigenous Peoples

“Gringo Trails” is a movie that  came out in 2013. It is the 10 year study of a US anthropologist on the disasterous effects of International tourism on local traditional peoples.  This is very relevant to the issues of the Garifunas and black Bay islanders and tourism and megatourism in their areas, such as the InterAmerican Human rights Court Case about Triumfo de la Cruz, heard 20 May 2014, and  a theme  in the Garifuna in Peril movie. This was done by a Professor at New York University.

The Surinam Public Health project was in the InterAmerican Human rights Court also in 2014  about the disasterous public health consequences of mining on the maroon (escaped blacks) and the indigenous peoples (including Caribs, so culturally and linguisticly related to the Garifunas) including contamination of their water with mercury, thus causing health problems, and actually building over the rivers, the only source communication in the Surinam rainforest.  The book the Djuka written in 1931 about the Maroons of Surinam is a strong contrast and indictment of “western civilization” entering into traditional people’s territories, very unusual for its time. The fact that one of the most biodiverse areas of the Ecuador Rainforest, a reserve with 2 uncontacted tribes,  has just been opened up to oil and gas development and a Jamaican nature preserve with beautiful tropical animals has just been approved to be converted into a port by the Chinese in Jamaica just now in May 2014 shows that the problems of native peoples whether black or Indians are very similar when faced with transnational corporations.The Mayagna or Sumu speakers of Nicaragua report similar problems with mines on their Wikipedia article.  The Surinam Public health project testimony was on the Internet, and some of the people include University of Washington people who spoke at the Western Regional International health Conference in April 2014. Mining is being proposed or started in the mountains behind the Garifunas such as the Nombre de Dios range behind the community of triunfo de la Cruz, which is currently a protected area,besides 15 mines proposed or active in the Lenca areas, etc. The laws are in place and the concession permits are in the works to give 30% of Honduran territory to mines, according to El herald Newspaper of Teguicgalpa. The new Honduran president said at the end of his 100 days, there have been some glitches, but the mines have to go through.  

The official Maps of the protected areas of Honduras, both those for water catchment areas liked those involved in the conflicts in the Garifuna video Lucha Garifuna/Garifuna standing ground and the Trujillo Garifunas, and the protected areas (national parks, biospheres, marine parks, wildlife Refuges, national monuments and Anthropological reserves) in on the official ICF (Instituto de conservacion Forestal) website.

It would probably behoove people interested in protected areas or ethnic groups in Honduras to download these maps, and also look at the maps of the proposed Model Cities, which for example have been published in Honduran Spanish language newspapers (la tribuna, la prensa, el heraldo).    For example one proposed Model city of ZEDE, is between Betulia west of Trujillo to the Rio Patuca on the far side of the Rio Platano Biosphere. This would mean that the water catchment basins of the Trujillo area and the Garifunas of iriona area, the wildlife preserve laguna de Guaymoreto, and national park Capiro and Calentura (which includes Pech as well as Garifunas), and the upper half of the Rio Platano biosphere would be included, and possibly as far inland parts of the Sierra de Agalta national park and the El Carbon Anthropological Reserve (Pech), not to mention thousands of Ladinos and Garifunas and Miskitos and Pech living in villages along this corridor. Watch the Paul Romer phrases about”uninhabited areas” and then compare to the 2001 Ethnic Census (Censo etnico de 2001) published by the Honduran Institute of Geography and compiled by Historic Geogrpaher Dr. William Davidson. He has also published recently a historic atlas of historic maps in Central America with Fundacion Uno in Nicaragua.

There are several  websites related to Model Cities in Honduras including free cities, charter cities (this is Paul Romer’s site the person who started the idea), the ZEDE law on the Internet. There is also an official Honduran government ZEDE website, which can found easily by going to the Wikipedia ZEDE article and clicking the link to the official ZEDE website of the Honduran government with laws and maps. These Someone has written a significant  ZEDE Wikipedia article in Spanish, but it changes a lot.The Secretaria de Planificacion of the Honduran government website which had had the special regulations of the Southern area of Honduras where the first Model Cities are proposed to be put in and the Korean company POSCO, the parent of Daewoo, is doing the assessment or feasibility of the Model City in the South right now,and the Honduran government’s study and policy on Identity  is currently not on the Internet.  The blog Honduran culture and politics by UC-Berkley professor and research assistant  is following some of the Model City developments. Note that some of the money people behind it are real estate companies based in Guatemala and the original Model Cities seminar was at the Franscisco Marroquin University in Guatemala. I was told there was a Barron’s newspaper article about Model cities advancing well in Guatemala,  which made being summarized on yahoo. Everyone from a Third World country speaking at the Western Regional International Health conference in Seattle, mentioned there are social movements on the right as well as on the left, and in most cases they were more, and of course, better funded, and Guatemala was one example.

Movies related to Trends in Intellectual Property Issues Internationally—The World According to Monsanto. See the Bellingham Human rights Film Festival for contact information. Also Bitter Seeds is about Genetically Modified Cotton Seeds and India. Both are owned by  Western Washington University.

Comments of on some Trends in Intellectual Property Rights Impacting Indians, Garifunas, Sick people, farmers,  Technology people, Researchers and Archivists.

Latin Americanists in the US have generally not looked at what is happening globally or even in the neighboring country, even though at least in Central America civil wars in one country routinely historically eventually spread into the next country. But watch the Transpacific Trade Agreement which is being Fast Tracked in the US Congress and it will be voted on in less than 60 days as that is going to change Intellectual Property law for everyone in the whole world, and  make among things generic drugs impossible to produce including in India, so that AIDS people are concerned that will mean no AIDS treatment for people with AIDS in Third World Country.   The issue of crops and patenting of seeds and also of people’s body parts which is legal under US law, like patenting minority groups blood and antibodies, which are hot topics with some Latin American and Canadian Indians are also going to be impacted by this law. People who are watching this law are scared. As people who hold books and archives and original research, SALALM librarians should be watching that the issue of Intellectual Property is becoming very hot, and not only the present is being contested, and versions told outside the US or by minority groups, but the past is contested. Why is the most active group on Wikipedia not medicine but  Military history? Why are libraries being asked to get rid of their old technology books? Why are US companies getting new personal patents for something described by Leonardo Di Vinci and defined mathematically in the 19^th century and for rice grown in india for the last two millennium and for corn? What part of corn was already developed before Monsanto existed do they not get? Why has the Monsanto stock gone up 10 times since they began aggressively pursuing intellectual property of corn and other Genetically modified crops? 

Most Honduran books are not available in e-book form, and the Hondurans who write books are very hesistant to let them be made into e-books for fear, as has happened recently with Sabas Whittaker’s materials and the Comite de Emergencia’s videos, that they will get sold and then the people who wrote them will get nothing. Honduran Garifunas are also concerned and distressed about people using their photos for commercial used like a bigger than life mural copying a photo of a Garifuna man  in Pollos Camperos without his permission, and dancing videos of Garifunas to attact tourists and then displace them, or photos of them in calendars and post cards produced by the Palestinian Arabs living in Honduras for which the people in the photo get nothing,  and even the issue that they danced all day in the hot sun, like Moros y Cristianos, and then the person who gets the money is the man who made the video, not the dancers.  There are also issues of researchers taking information and not making available to people who were studied and if there were economic benefits not sharing them.  The Purich Publication book by Marie Battiste (Canadian Indian who grew up in the US with a doctorate from Stanford) and John Henderson (Chickasaw Indian from Oklohoma with a law degree, I believe from Harvard)  about the need to protect indigenous intellectual knowledge and heritage is very helpful in understanding this debate, and in the future librarians should expect even greater restriction to indigenous photos and videos that they themselves do not produce or benefit from, or for which there is no reciprocity. The themes of this debate are affecting and informing ArchaeologyTourism and even some Museum collections as well.  Wendy Griffin’s books on the Garifunas, the Pech, and other groups she had worked with primarily recopiling information with them due to reading and writing and computers and so they could not do it themselves are not scheduled for republication right now, until a thorough discussion with the co-authors on Honduran and US and International Intellectual Property Rights under the laws, and then trying to understand how they see their rights, and also discussing the very real dangers to them if this information is made widely known, under current Interllectual Property Rights and this situation is likely to get even worse soon. On Witness.org’s website there is also a notice that they are interested in opinions and views about archiving and making available human rights videos.   Wikipedia has good and well thought out articles and series of articles about Intellectual Property Rights and a lot about indigenous rights and also about genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. Indigenous rights are being violated from their right to breathe on the planet and not be killed on down. The UN has actually done a booklet on indigenous people available free on the Internet which starts out very depressingly about how we have not even been to stop them from being killed and wiped out and also  ILO has a guides to ILO convention 169 in several languages which identify the cases country by country.  The English guide is free as a PDF, but apparently the Spanish guide you must order from Geneva. Why this guide says the ILO has never received a complaint about Honduras, when I have been in at least 4 meetings face to face with the Garifunas working with the ILO over Hog Keys in Honduras and why they show a group of Garifuna women peeling yucca to make cassava bread without even a caption as to who they are, I do not know.  I once wrote in a Honduras This Week article on taxis that there is a book called The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, my hometown, but Honduras has more mysteries than Pittsburgh ever thought of having. The name Honduras really does mean the Country or Place of Great Depth, as one book about the country is called. These audio-visual materials show that there are layers on layers of depth of stories behind them. Not everyone likes the stories that documents tell,and so there is a long history of burning archives in Honduras. In the US, this is being played out in getting rid of the books in the library as some people want to tell other stories than those ones, and they would just as soon these stories different from theirs not get told. Why else would the head of the Foreign Affairs Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas who funded the Mexico Indigena study and is  now funding the Geography of Central American Indians study,  care that women, Indians,and terrorists (which he lumps together on at least 3 occasions) are having increased access to the means of mass of communication? The stories of the Alternative Founding of Pittsburgh PA on Wendy Griffin’s blog www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com  and the related comparisons of Honduran Black and Indian narratives with those of US Indians in the East of the United States, including the Cherokee, or Allegewi (from which Allegheny county comes in the Pittsburgh area and in North Carolina) who in the Rich Heape award winning films answer some of the counter allegations like but you are not where you were, some of you are no longer Indian color, a lot of you have lost your language, etc. The book La Historia de la Embriguidez (the history of Drunkness) from Honduras and sold by Literatura de vientos Tropicales has many of same narratives as on Wendy Griffin’s Honduran stories related to state policies that caused switches from low alcohol (chicha) to high alcohol (guaro), from women controlled access to access with money which often men not used to a cash economy spent their cash on their vices which if it had been corn they would have given to their families, from  principally ceremonial drinking to drinking whenever there is access,  from drinks in low sugar to high sugar, leading to diabetis problem, from traditional stories that warn that you willlose your family and die alone if you fo away and spend your fish money on drink, to advertising that says el hombre muy hombre toma Ron Plata (the man who is really a man drinks Plata rum), that it is whites who take plants that Indians usually ceremonially like tobacco and coca leaves and turns them into outrageous drugs to sell, which is now also happening with hyper strong marijuana in the US, if you ask the young people.  While maybe alcoholic Indians is a stereotype, even that has a long story behind it, and that story has to do with the people who controlled commerce and who controlled the laws and their enforcement or the bribes and the taxes and often the guns, and none of that was the Indians.

 

See www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com for suggestions of other maps and more information on the mapping project Centroamerica Indigena. There is an ongoing ethics violation case going on at the University of Kansas and the American Geography Society about this project.