Materials Related to the Black English Speakers and Isleños of Honduras Part II History

Materials Related to the Black English Speakers and Isleños of  Honduras

Part II-- E. History of Black English Speakers and Isleños

Brooks, Artlie (2012) Black Chest, Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guardabarranco. Historia de los Isleños y los negros de habla inglesa de la Costa Norte escrito por un Isleño miembro fundador de NABIPLA. La publicación fue financiada por la Secretaria de Desarrollo de los Indígenas y Afro-Hondureños.

Griffin, Wendy (1995c) The Past, Present and Future of English speakers on Honduras’ North Coast. “El pasado, presente y futuro de los Hablantes de Inglés de la Costa norte de Honduras”. Documento inédito pero es citado en varias investigaciones de personas quienes estudian los Negros de Habla Inglés en Honduras. Many of the informants for this study were Black English professors like Matilde Elizabeth “Betty” Meigham and Rose Ferguson in Tegucigalpa. Before I helped start the first English teacher training program in Honduras in 1986, many of the English teachers at public and private bilingual schools and Honduran universities were Black English speakers from the North Coast, rather than the Bay Islands, because there was no complete high school in all of the Bay Islands until the early 1990’s. Living isolated from other English speakers in Honduras’s larger cities, as opposed to the previous semi-closed English speaker North Coast communities of the Banana Company years, if they married, these urban Honduran English speakers often found their children spoke little or no English. To avoid this, whole Honduran English speaking communities immigrated home or to the US, or first home and then to the US.

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.

Afehc (Asociación de Fomento de Estudios de historia centroamericana) did a special edition of their e-journal on  Afro-central Americans for Janaury 2013,but I have not looked at it yet.Elizeth Payne did an article for them and Rina Caceres was the special editor.

At that time, the leading ideologues of Carias’s Nationalist Party were very anti-Black (and anti-Chinese), and the discriminatory immigration policies and the other policies of “mestizaje” were introduced, strongly affecting the Garifuna language and culture. While many of the Honduran politicians and their friends and families from the Tegucigalpa merchant class had never been to the North Coast and actually seen the Garifuna or Bay Islanders, they were distressed by the competition of Chinese and Palestinian  merchants, and for that reason fought for the limited immigration of “undesirable races” in general, suggests the Honduran writer for http://www.angelfire.com/ca5/mas/etnias/chino/chino.html in his book review of Jorge Amaya Banegas’s book “Los Chinos de Ultramar en Honduras” (The Overseas Chinese in Honduras).

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  This is his 875 page doctoral thesis. In addition to good information on Garifunas and anti-black sentiment in the 1930’s in Honduras during Carias’s government and who was the intellectual author of those policies, which led to the closing of immigration of Blacks to Honduras even as tourists in 1934,  he has the only discussion I have seen on why Central America declared freedom for all Black slaves immediately after independence in 1821, which led to an Underground Railroad type situation with the slaves in Belize where slavery was not ended until 1839.

Euraque, Dario (2004a) Conversaciones Históricas con el Mestizaje. San Pedro Sula: Centro Editorial.

The first book to have a chapter on the laws limiting and then eliminating Black immigration to Honduras 1934-1949.

Euraque, Dario ( 2004 ) “Jamaican Migrants and Settlements in Honduras, 1870s-1954”[1] Paper, Conference, “Between Race and Place: Blacks and Blackness in Central America and the Mainland Caribbean,” Tulane University, New Orleans, November 11-13, 2004. (Wendy Griffin has a digital copy.)

 

Elizeth Payne (  ) Trujillo y su camino al melancólico abandono. Tegucigalpa:  Editorial Guaymuras. In addition to talking about the Garifunas, she talks about the Black English speakers in the área, the French speaking Blacks and the mulatos of the villages in the Aguan Valley. Jorge Amaya’s thesis explains how the French speaking Blacks got there. Elizeth Payne says most left after the 1835 fight in which the French speaking Blacks and the Garifunas supported Airey who had come to try to reinstitute Spanish colonial government in Honduras. The French speaking blacks went to Belize and the garifunas started moving into the Mosquitia. A cholera outbreak in the Truxillo area, noted in Hubert H. Bancrofts’ History of the Pacific States  also spurred the out migration of the Garifunas.

 

Payne, Elizeth  “Immigration and Capital: Families and Firms in Trujillo, Honduras 1890-1930” unpublished English translation of an article that was published in Spanish. Wendy Griffin has her comments made on this article in Spanish.  This article has more substantial and detailed information than other sources about the 2 month strike and race riots that led to the Black English speakers of Trujillo-Puerto Castilla area being deported during President Carias’s time in office.

 

There is also a new book on the History of Tela published by the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History.  Most IHAH books are available on libreroonline, but all the recent books which they published on Afro-Hondurans—on Tela, on the Mosquitia, and the Blacks who worked in gold mining in the XVIth Century in Honduras were not made available for sale on the Internet, and even going in person, sometimes the IHAH refused to sell them to book distributors or individuals.

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. Includes the laws that permitted Black English speaker migration to Honduras and then the laws that eliminated Black English speaker and all Black immigration to Honduras and forced the repatriation of many of the English speaking Blacks of Honduras in the 1930’s.

Griffin, Wendy (2012) Comments on Glenn Chambers’ Book. These comments include relationships between different Black groups in Honduras (Afro-Mestizos, Garifunas, Black English speakers of the North Coast, Bay Islanders, and Miskito Indians),  education stories of Honduras’s Black groups before bilingual intercultural education, the need to have passes showing one could travel between Honduran cities during the Carias period, forced labor on the Bay Islands during the Carias period, etc. Many of these older stories are from Black Bay Islander retired teacher Arnold Auld whose father came from Jamaica in the 1930’s to teach in the Truxillo Railroad’s bilingual school, married a Black Islander woman and moved to Roatan in the Bay Islands. I also interviewed Diana Wood Etches’s father, owner of the Wood Store, about his experience with the banana companies. He came from England, to the Bay Islands, to the North Coast and worked with the banana companies, married a Black woman from the Bay Islands and returned to live in West End, Roatan. We also met with Rand Garo whose family had been Black English speakers from Nicaragua when he was 92 in Tela.

 

Gudmundson, Lowell y Justin Wolfe (eds.) (2012)  La Negritud en Centroamérica:  Entre Raza y Raíces.  San José, Costa Rica:  Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia. This book includes articles on Miskitos, the blacks of Omoa (afro-coloniales), Black English speakers in Central America and a few mentions of Garifunas. Also good articles of Pipil Indians-Black relations in Guatemala. Also interesting article about the Black slaves of Englishman William Pitt in the Honduran Mosquitia, who eventually intermarried with the Honduran Miskitos. The large number of English words in the Miskito language may partly be due to the high number of English speaking Blacks who intermarried with the Miskitos.  The article Past, Present, and Future of English speakers notes that many Miskito towns have oral hsitories of having been found by Jamaicans, Belizeans, or Bay Islanders. As with the case of the Garifunas, where many choruses of stories are in English, these English speaking Blacks who intermarried with the Miskitos may have spoken English because they came from countries like Ghana, even before they came to the New World or they may have picked it up where they were seasoned in the Caribbean.  This book was first published in the US as Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place, and was the result of a conference on Central American Blacks at Tulane by the same name. It has an article on how a 1920’s international conference on Eugenics, sponsored by the US in Havana and which recommended limiting immigration of undesirable races which held back countries from developing led to the laws in all of Central America to eliminate immigration by Blacks and in many cases like in Honduras forced repatriation in the 1930’s.

 

This book also has the stories of English speaking Blacks who worked inside the “white” compound of the Tela Railroad company’s executive area, now Hotel Villas Telamar. Those interviewed included Rand Garo, the son of Nicaraguan Black English speakers who came towork for the Tela Railroad, and who Glenn Chamber also interviewed for his book, he was interviewed for my article on the Asociación de Tercera Edad in Tela of which he was president, and UPN Anthropology students interviewed him for a video on Black English speakers of Tela which is in the library of the UPN in Tegucigalpa. His son lived in Boston, and his daughter was one of two Hondurans killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The other was a Garifuna young woman from Santa Fe.  They also interviewed a woman of Black Bay Islander descent who had taken care of children of the white people inside the white Zona Americana of the Tela Railroad, United Fruit’s other subsidiary in Honduras. There are many stories of Interethnic relationships in the oral history of the Truxillo Railroad project, including a whole article on Witchcraft by Garifunas, Ladinos, and Black English speakers and how this affected Interethnic relationship. Also stories of interethnic use of specialists in traditional health care. These types of stories are also in my 2013 biography of Yaya: La Vida de una Curandera Garifuna.

 

Antonio Vallejo’s Primer Anuario Estadístico Annual de 1889 and Censo General de Honduras de Antonio Ramon Vallejo de 1885 y 1887 have some colonial censuses in it. Those of governor Ramon Anguiano of 1804 have a number of interesting comments about the afro-mestizos, for example describing the militia de pardos y mulatos as having todas las razas y linages, as describing the 2,000 people legally classified as Spanish for tax purposes and  land owning purposes as perhaps only “Spanish” by law as opposed to by race if one looked into their family backgrounds.  Although Vallejo’s 1887 census available on google books included where the Indians lived and where the ladinos lived town by town,he did not publish the census that way in the Primer Anuario Estadistico  book. To see that census, with its comments about Garifunas (morenos) near Tela and in Iriona and  the Indians living in Sangrelaya and how they classified the people of the Bay Islands, see another version which is available on google books.  In the Bay Islands section he has a short history of the international treaties which led to the Bay Islands becoming legally part of Honduras. The current US military presence on the North Coast and in the Bay Islands violates the 1850 Clayton Bulwer Treaty. Note however, that even 29 years after the Bay Islands supposedly formed part of Honduras there was not one public employee on the Honduran government in the Bay Islands, while as noted in the book “Through the Eyes of Diplomats”, before 1860 there was already a US Consul in the Bay Islands.

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. Includes three tables about the locations of the Black English Speakers of Honduras according to the 2001 Honduran Census.

William Davidson also did a Historical Geography of the Bay Islands which was based on his Doctoral thesis on the topic. One of the things the Honduran President Carias tried to do was change all the names of the towns of the Bay Islands, like Flowers Bay was not supposed to be called Flowers Bay but rather Bahía de Flores. These Spanish names did not stick, and some names even reflect Bay Islands English phonology, like the downtown área of Coxen Hole is called Barrio El Ticket, because it should be Thicket, but Bay Islanders do not pronounce Th’s. Coxen Hole is named for the pirate John Coxen, while French Harbor is named for the French pirate Jean Lafitte whose descendants now own a travel agency in La Ceiba.

Naylor, Robert “Penny Ante Imperialism”  Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickerson University Press. This is one of the better books on the history of British colonialism in the Bay of Honduras and how the Bay Islands came to form part of Honduras in 1860 which is how the book ends.

Whittaker, Sabas (2003) Africans in the Americas Our Journey throughout the world: The Long African Journey Throughout the World Our History a Short Stop in the Arena. iUniverse. Sabas Whittaker is a Black English speaker painter, author, poet,playwright, historian, mental health worker, and former sailor who lives in Hartford, Conneticut. He has helped me a great deal with oral history, not all of which is typed up yet, and he helped Ross Graham with information, too. It was to interview his Aunt Marion who is 80 years old and lives in Brooklyn, that I originally contacted Dr. Renee Blake, as Ross Graham lamented in his article that we have no recordings of North Coast English speakers. Orlando Addington of Tela told me I should look for the North Coast English speakers either in the graveyards in Honduras or in Brooklyn in the US. 

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. This recent article includes both a history of the English speakers of the Bay Islands and a summary of the results of his linguistic study of Bay Islands English. This book can be accessed on google books.

Griffin, Wendy   “English speaking churches have long history in Honduras.”  This and the article above were originally published in Honduras This Week online, which since May 2013 is no longer on the Internet. This article is now found on www.honduraspropertylocator.com/english_speaking  and also at

.s1144101627.onlinehome.us./en/…engchurchhist

This article on English speaking Black churches has appeared on various websites over the years, and also was included in Artlie Brooks 2012 “Black Chest” Editorial Guardabarranco: Tegucigalpa,which is the first book about the Bay islands and black English speakers by a Black Bay Islander. However, he did not cite the source of the article. It was originally a two article series which developed out of research I did together with Glenn Chambers when he was on the North Coast studying North Coast English speakers.

I also wrote for Honduras This Week a two article series on“The Work of Black Women during the Banana Boom” which included Garifunas and Black English speaking women.

Griffin, Wendy (2013) “Réquiem for Two Afro-Honduran Towns-Guadelupe and Sandy Bay”

HondurasWeekly.com  Sandy Bay was a Black Bay Islander community. Written on the occasion of the murder of Meredith Merriweather Post’s granddaughter in Sandy Bay on her 2 acre estate and spa by her 25 year old Ladino drug addict boyfriend. I felt the newspapers focused on the wrong part of the story. Guadelupe is a Garifuna community.

 

Griffin, Wendy (2013) “Afro-Honduran Land Problems Will probably Worsen After Nationalist Victory in Honduras” HondurasWeekly.com

Griffin, Wendy (2014) “Black English Speaker communities in Bay Islands Under Pressure” On Wendy Griffin’s English blog www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com

 

Griffin, Wendy (2014) Problemas de Marineros afro-Hondureños y Cerrando la Puerta a imigracion y Derechos de social security, on www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com  Many Black English speaker men were sailors as merchant marines, including Sabas whittaker and the father of Dorn Ebanks.

 

Currently the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Honduras is a Black English speaker from Tela, the Rev. Brooks. The murder of his sister in the patio of her Tela home was reported in Wendy Griffin’s 2013 article “How safe in Honduras for Volunteers” in HondurasWeekly.com 

Griffin, Wendy (2014) New Public health problems of Honduran Indians and Blacks. Part I and II. Published in HondurasWeekly.com and on www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com

I am currently working on some other materials like the 100th Annevesary of the Truxillo Railroad Company and Yaya: The Life of a Garifuna Healer and so I still have other historical stories related to English speakers, especially interethnic stories related to traditional healthcare, that I have not typed up yet.

 

Moran, John Charles, and Moran Robleda, John C. Potencias en Conflicto: Honduras y Sus Relaciones con los Estados Unidos y la Gran Bretaña en 1856 (Tegucigalpa: Ediciones 18 Conejo, 2010).  This is a book about a little known diplomatic incident prior to the Bay Islands becoming part of Honduras which almost scuttled the whole deal.

 

Isaguirre, Ramon R., Charles G. Gerke, and Cookie Rocklin (2003) Through the Eyes of Diplomats: History of the Bay Islands 1858-1895. Comayaguela: Multigraficas Flores,

This book was published in Honduras and includes the diplomatic correspondence of the US Consul to the Bay Islands of Honduras starting in the 19th century. There was a US Consul to the Bay Islands before there was on to Tegucigalpa. Its descriptions of Bay Islander agriculture, the principal work of Bay Islanders, is very good.

A current map of protected areas like marine parks and national parks in Honduras can be seen on the Internet site of ICF Instituto de Conservación Forestal, the Honduran government agency that replaced COHDEFOR.

 

Also see the Honduran government’s website on Model Cities or ZEDE, which includes one for the Bay Islands, and also for the major ports where the few remaining North Coast English speakers live like La Ceiba, Puerto Castilla-Trujillo, and Puerto Cortés.

www.zede.gob.hn

Antonio Diaz Canales did a book on the History of La Ceiba, much of it from oral history. This book is famous for his study of Barrio Ingles, the vibrant Black English speaker community in La Ceiba, which was founded because the owners of land in La Ceiba did want to rent to Black English speakers who came to work for Standard Fruit. He also did a later book, both in Spanish,  on the Strangling of the Economy of La Ceiba. Historian John Moran who has studied extensively the 19th century of the Dept. of Atlantida from primary archival sources, cautions there are problems with the sections before 1890, but from then forward, there are very interesting and informative book.

Echeverria-Gent, Elisavinda (1992) « Forgotten Workers : British West indians and the Early Days of the Banana Industry in Costa Rica and Honduras «  Jounal of Latin American Studies. 24(2) : 275-308.  I have not read this study, but everyone cites it. Much of what I have seen cited does not agree with the Oral History collected during the Oral History Project in Honor of the 100 years of the Truxillo Railroad Company.   

 

Griffin, Wendy (1992a) La Historia de los Indígenas de la Zona Nororiental de Honduras Tomo I Prehistoria  a 1800  Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. MS. A copy is also in a US library and is on google books. There are a few mentions of Black English speakers and lots of references to English traders, smugglers  and pirates in Honduras even prior to Independence in this book. A revised  English versión of this book also exists in US libraries and on google books. This book is also very good for understanding the issue of why most of Northern Honduras where the banana Company railroads went was not controlled by the Honduran government at the time the concessions were given. Includes the history of the Bay Islands which were often not part of Honduras in the colonial period. This is also one of the few books that will orient you on the issue of the mulattos of Honduras when those Blacks arrived and why many were free in Northern Honduras.

 

Griffin, Wendy (1992b) La Historia de los Indígenas de la Zona Nororiental de Honduras Tomo II 1800 al Presente. Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. MS.

This book is also on google books. No English versión yet exists. This book which had many maps is very helpful to understand how the Bay Islands and the North Coast and the rest of NE Honduras (Moskitia, Olancho, El Paraiso) came to be part of Honduras very late, the concessions for the railroads especially the Truxillo Railroad, other earlier concessions like rubber which were the model for the banana concesions, etc. 

Examples of Honduras This Week articles related to the Bay islands. List is not complete.

Griffin, Wendy (1994) “Bay Islands are not as haunted as they used to Be” Honduras This Week, August 27, 1994.

Griffin, Wendy (1995) “BICA helps Utlia face the environmental challenge of Tourism” Honduras This Week. June 13, 1995.

Griffin, Wendy (1996a) “Memories and Spirits Linger on Road to Flowers Bay”, Honduras This Week, September 7, 1996.

Griffin, Wendy (1996b), “Horses Gallop through Honduras folk tales and legends” Honduras this Week, November 9, 1996.

Griffin, Wendy (1997a) “Fiscalía de las Étnias Investigates  Human Rights Abuses of Minorities” Honduras This Week, March 22, 1997. (Artlie Brooks cites the actual Fiscalia de las Etnias report which Wendy Griffin prepared, but she does not have a copy. He apparantly does, and so should the Fiscalía de las Etnias, in Tegucigalpa.

Griffin, Wendy (1997b) “Forest Spirits look after cattle, woo women” Honduras This Week, April 12, 1997.

Griffin, Wendy (1997c) “How to Exercise Precaution when Buying Property in Honduras” Honduras This Week, June 21, 1997.

Griffin, Wendy (1997d) “Buy Beach Property Above Limits Presents Problems” Honduras this Week, June 28, 1997.

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.  The Paper copy archives of Honduras this Week are held by the owner’s children who now own Honduras This Week videos and have the URL

www.hondurasthisweek.com.

I know of two doctoral thesises about the Bay Islands one by Dr. David Evans of Wake Forest University on change in French Harbor, Roatan and one on Money Order Economies, which I believe is about Utila and the sending back of money by Bay Islander sailors. Many Bay Islander sailors, like those of the Garifunas, eventually moved permanantly to the US. New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina used to be known as Honduras’s third largest city because there were an estimated 200,000 Hondurans there more population of Hondurans than in La Ceiba Honduras’s actual third largest city. Many of them were Bay Islanders. Honduran Black English speakers have also been reported in Brooklyn, New York and in Boston.  

---

[1] This paper builds on Euraque,  “The Historiography of the West Indian Diaspora in Central America viewed from Honduras,” a Paper presented at the  University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica, February 21,  2002.