Garifuna Women’s Work in Oral History of the Banana boom Era

Garifuna Women’s Work in Oral History of the Banana boom Era

By Wendy Griffin

In Honduras This Week, I did a two article series on the Black Women’s work during the Banana boom. This was partly inspired by working doing oral history together with Glenn Chambers, now a University of Michigan history professor, about Black English speakers during the Banana boom. He was not interested by the work of the Black women, both Garifunas and Black English speakers, but I was surprised at how many Black women professionals there in this process, and also the wide variety of roles the Black women played in the economy of the port towns like Tela and Trujillo. I think these articles are some of my finest research.

Garifuna women as planters of plantains and bananas, and also as sellers and sometimes as people who used canoes, were among the independent banana producers who sold to the banana ships before there were docks and before the banana companies had their own fields. The banana companies did not permit women to work as field hands in the planting of bananas during the banana boom.  Very few Garifuna men accepted to work as field hands in planting bananas, since planting is women’s work. Herman Alvarez of San Juan Tela said if the other Garifuna men saw a Garifuna man dressed for work in the banana plantations like a hat, a machete, rubber boots, they made fun of him and called him “indio”.  Garifuna men had many roles in the banana companies, but planting the bananas was not a big part of the experience of Garifuna men there. The planting seems to have been done by mestizos or Ladinos or even Indians from the mountains or the Miskitos, both Hondurans and Salvadorans. The Salvadorans are in Honduras much earlier than 1945. When there were 5-6,000 West Indian immigrants, which the Hondurans made a big noise about, there were 26,000 Salvadorans which the Hondurans said nothing about at the time, according to Glenn Chambers’ research.

Garifuna women also worked washing clothes and ironing, they made breads and sold them, they grew crops and they sold them to the workers, especially to the Jamaicans who had no land and who ate similar crops to what the Garifunas grew. The Garifunas were mid-wives and healers and massage therapists, not only to the other Garifunas or the West Indians, but also to the mestizo men and women from the banana camps. The Garifuna women worked as cooks, either taking care of a group of men who were single workers “cuidar gente”, or as cooks in people’s houses, usually for mestizos, and they also cooked in restaurants usually for mestizo bosses. The professional jobs like nurses and teachers at that time were only open to Black English speaking women, either from Belize or Jamaica, because of the lack of schools in the Garifuna communities and because it was not the custom to send girls to school when my friends were young. Also the first schools were bilingual schools run by the Episcopal Church in Puerto Castilla and Tela and la Ceiba, and English speaking teachers were needed, not Spanish speaking ones. Still in the 1930’s not all Garifuna women even spoke fluent Spanish. One older Garifuna woman, Doña Lencha said when she went to the hospital in the 1930’s, the doctor was surprised that a “morena” like her could speak such fluent Spanish. My older Garifuna friends who either spent time living or selling in Puerto Castilla still speak words of English. They said in Puerto Castilla that was the language that was most used in Castilla at that time.  I have interesting stories of healings done by Garifunas for even the wealthy white people in Trujillo and of healings done by Jamaican Blacks for Garifunas who were high up in the banana company and had access to all the modern science of the Railroad Company’s hospital. 

Witchcraft existed in the Trujillo/Puerto Castilla area at the time of the Truxillo Railroad. Among Black English speakers there were both male and female witches. The same seems to be true among the Garifunas, although there seem to be more female Garifuna witches than male witches. Garifuna witches are not the same as buyeis. Garifuna witches do things like tie a man to a woman (amarrar), make another person crazy or other punishment for wrongdoing, including cheating with one’s husband and stealing, making snakes appear if you bother his agricultural plot or coconuts, plant plants which will make you lost in the mountains, and use poisin to kill people.  Miskitos, Garifunas and Black English speakers all have fame as being “grandes brujos”. There are also Ladino “brujos” and “brujas”, who are usually separate from the people who are “curanderas” or healers. Snake magic seems to be a speciality of male Garifunas.

My Garifuna friend Sebastian Marin who was over 80 when he died said that there was enacted a law that the banana companies could not have more than 5% black workers. Glenn Chambers looked for this law and did not find it. There is a law that no company in Honduras can over 5% foreign workers.  This does not mean that there was not some private agreement between the banana companies and the Carias government that they would not have over 5% Black workers which might have affected the decision of the Truxillo Railroad to close, since according to Sebastian Marin the workers from Trujillo to the east were all Blacks-either Garifunas, Miskito Indians, and Black English speakers. However, there were definitely ladinos to the East of Trujillo too, as I have met people who worked in Sico and there are still people in Sico descended from Ladinos who went to the area with the banana companies and stayed.

My periodization of Garifuna work does not agree with Nancie Gonzales’s. She notes contraband ending in the 19^th century. The Garifunas were still definitely active in contraband at least until the 1930’s. Family members of the survivors of the San Juan Tela massacre remember that their family members had just come back from a successful contraband run to bring back liquor from Belize. Also in Trujillo, my Garifuna friend Yaya her father worked in bringing contraband and selling it to white merchants into the 1930’s.  The drastic measures of Carias—the massacre of San Juan, the requiring of passes to go from one community to another, private cementaries of the  commandants at Trujillo and Iriona, seemed to have had the effect of curbing most contraband among Garifunas, although Bay islanders still regularly travelled to Belize by skiff, probably until at least the 1950’s. The Garifunas of Iriona start immigrating to the US at this time in the 1930’s running away from political persecution as liberals. After the massacre at San Juan, the majority of the Garifunas were active in the Liberal party.

Garifuna men were very active in the banana companies in the Trujillo area until the Truxillo Railroad closed in 1945. They often reached high levels including chief of the yard or dock, fruit inspector, train mechanic, and breakman.  When the Truxillo Railroad closed, Garifuna men in the Trujillo and Santa Fe area continued working for the other banana companies including Standard Fruit and the Tela Railroad. I have heard of Garifuna men working in Coyoles Central and in the other banana camps of  Yoro, and also as barman and other jobs with the Standard Fruit in La Ceiba. Garifuna men were active on the docks in Tela when he was young, remembers Herman Chavez. I know Garifuna men in Tela who worked as timekeeper and as painters of train cars before the Tela railroad left Tela. There were a few professional Garifunas in La Lima who worked until recently like the head of microbiology lab at the United Fruit Hospital of the Tela Railroad.  The Garifuna participation in the work of the railroad companies and banana companies did not stop in 1919 or even in 1954, although for a number of reasons including moving the ports, moving the headquarters, mechanizing, container ports, switching varieties of bananas which required bananas to be packed in boxes near the fields instead of loaded as stalks, and discrimination, the number of Garifuna men involved in banana companies has seriously declined. But a few Garifunas continued until recently with the Standard in Puerto Castilla, for example one Garifuna man had learned refrigeration and did that. He now lives in Spain where he works in refrigeration.   We are actively doing an oral history project of Garifunas and other ethnic groups at the time of the banana companies and hope to present something next year for the 100^th anniversary of the Truxillo Railroad. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about Garifuna participation in the banana business, plus that of other ethnic groups,  which this oral history project might make clearer.