Garifuna Music Punta Rock Takes off in Belize Punta and Paranda in Honduras

Garifuna Music Punta Rock Takes off in Belize Punta and Paranda in Honduras

Around 1981 a Belizean male Garifuna musician Pen Cayetano with his band The Original Turtleshell Band began playing Garifuna punta music with electronic instruments like an electric guitar. This was around the time of Bob Marley’s death, and the music may have been a tribute to him.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_palacio).  Other electronic instruments were added later, like keyboards and now a drum machine replaces the traditional segunda Garifuna drum.  This style was known as punta rock. While traditional Garifuna punta music is composed and sung by women, punta rock is composed and sung entirely by Garifuna male groups (Avila, 2009)  Some say this music is influenced by West Indian Soca and Reggae, as well as Garifuna paranda and punta music. (Avila, 2009). Others say it is influenced by jazz, R and B, and rock and roll.  A number of young Garifuna men, especially from Belize,  such as Andy Palacio, who was recorded by Stonetree Records, Belize’s only record company, became famous for playing punta rock(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Palacio, www.stonetreerecords.com).

Palacio’s career started with a short lived project known as the Sunrise recording project  which was the first attempt in Belize to record, document, preserve and distribute Belizean roots music. In 1988 his career took off due to widely circulated cassette recordings of his music by the Sunrise project.  After this he was invited to represent Belize in music festivals in Mexico, Trinidad, St. Kitts-Nevis, Malaysia, Belgium, Japan, and many concerts in France, Germany and Great Britain. His first album was Nabi in 1990. The words and original music were by parandero Paul Nabor, but Andy Palacio changed it to a punta rock style.    He received the award for “ Best New Artist” at the Caribbean Music Awards in 1993. In 1995 his CD Keimoun with Belizean and Cuban studio artists was the first CD produced in Belize.  Keimon is listed by The Rough Guide as one of 100 essential recordings from Latin America and the Caribbean.  In 1997 he released til Da Mawnin accompanied by Belize’s top instrumentalists and singers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Palacio).

In 1999 the Belizean government recognized the National Garifuna Council as the representative of the Garifuna people in Belize.  A number of leading Garifunas formed the council, including Roy Cayetano, linguist who wrote the People’s Garifuna Dictionary (Garifuna-english, English-Garifuna in 1993), Jessie Castillo, author of two collections of Garifuna stories published in Garifuna and English in New York, a buyei and Wanagua dancer (Jankanu) John Mariano, Andy Palacio and others.  The goals of the Council was to promote the well being of the Garifuna people, and to nurture and promote the Garifuna culture and identity, among other goals. The National Garifuna Council began to work towards in applying for the UNESCO “Masterpiece of the oral intangible heritage of humanity for the Garifuna language, dance and music, a process that required many hours of taping Garifuna music and dance around Belize, producing a video summarizing the information about Garifuna music and dance with examples of each, and a written application(Avila, 2009).

.  UNESCO declared Garifuna language, dance, and music in Belize to be a masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001 (http://www.louisanafolklife.org/LT/articles-Essays/garifuna.html , http://www.unesco.org/culture/intagible-heritage/masterpiece.php).  In 2008 the UNESCO convention for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage took effect, and those intangible cultural elements previously designated as “masterpieces” were made part of the Representative List of Intangible cultural heritage of Humanity in 2008.  This time the Garifuna language, dance, and music in Belize, as well as in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua were part of the list.  The purpose of this list is to identify cultural practices and expressions that help demonstrate the diversity of this heritage and raises awareness of its importance.  Although about 90 elements of popular culture from around the world had been approved as part of this World Heritage program of UNESCO, as of 2008, and only two are of Afro-Latin American cultures, and the declaration for the Garifunas was the first for an Afro-Latin American group (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_heritage:Lists). The written information that accompanied the application is in Tomas Alberto Avila’s book Black Carib-Garifuna (Avila,2009) which is for sale through Amazon.com.  The video of Garifuna dances and songs which accompanied the application is for sale on the Garinet website, video section (www.garinet.com)..

Andy Palacio was named Deputy Administrator of the National Institute of Culture and History in Belize in 2004.  He devoted himself to the preservation of Garifuna music and culture.  He was involved with Stonetree Records’s Garifuna All Start Project, whose music was released on the CD Wátina.  It included a multigenerational crew of Garifuna musicians from Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, including Paul Nabor, the parandero now over 80 years old. The album garnered worldwide attention for the Garifuna people, culture, and language.  Thanks to Wátina, Palacio was named UNESCO Artist for Peace and won the Womex World Music Award together with Stonetree Record producer Ivan Duran in 2007. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Palacio). Womex is a large World Music expo organized in different European countries to promote World Music, which includes traditional, quasi-traditional, and music that combines influences from more than one culture(http://en.wikipeida.org/wiki/world_music).  The Womex or World Music Expo Award was started in 1999  to acknowledge musical excellence, social importance, commercial success, political impact, and lifetime achievement. (http://en.

Wikipedia.org/wiki/womex_award). He was considered after that one of the top World Music musicians, and when he was interviewed he spoke of his desire to rescue Garifuna culture and music.

 After the release of Watina, Andy Palacio toured including in the US with the Garifuna Collective.  Videos of Watina and other Andy Palacio music, including one with him and Paul Nabor in Chicago,  can be seen on YouTube. Andy Palacio was the first artist from Belize to have a video on International television. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/andy-palacio).  On the Wikipedia article about him, there is a link to the interview with Andy Palacio by AfroPop Worldwide, a weekly radio program on World Music from the African Diaspora in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, hosted by a West African Georges Collinet from Cameroon, started in 1988.  The interview was aired by 100 Public Radio stations across the US and also aired in Europe and Africa (www.pri.org/afropop-worldwide/html), adding to his worldwide reputation. 

Tragically Andy Palacio died the year after he received the Womex Award of a stroke and a seizure..  He was awarded posthumously the  BBC3 Awards for World Music in the Americas category by British radio station BBC3  in 2008.  This was the last time this award was given as it was cancelled in 2009.  His death was reported by radio stations around the world and obituaries celebrating his life’s achievements  appeared in both The Times and The Guardian in London, England.   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/andy-palacio).

Punta and Paranda in Honduras

In the 1980’s in Honduras, some Ladino meringue bands who mostly travelled around the country playing at street fairs held for Patron Saints, also began to  incorporate Garifuna drums and punta style into their music.  

One of the few Honduran songs to become famous is “Sopa de Caracol” (Conch Soup). The song was originally written in Garifuna by Hernán Chico Ramos.  The Ladino head of a Honduran meringue band La Banda Blanca heard the song, translated it to Spanish, rearranged the music for a meringue band, and recorded “Sopa de Caracol” which eventually sold over 3 million copies. At first Banda Blanca’s leader Juan Pompilo “Pilo” Tejeda Duarte filed for a copyright for the song and the music. After a lot of controversy, he filed a supplement saying Spanish words and music Juan Pompilo Tejeda aka “Pilo Tejeda”, Garifuna words and music Hernán Chico Ramos. It stated in the supplement, the original song was in the Garifuna language. 

Perhaps even more disturbing that the stealing of the song was the introduction of a Ladino way of dancing punta, with girls in very short skirts and sometimes abbreviated blouses up on stage trying to show off sexy moves.   Punta became a dance done in discos by young people in pairs, losing all of its ceremonial context. Instead of the competitive spirit of traditional punta dancing, where the women try to show elegance, grace, and style, while dancing and listening or singing to lyrics that were often very sad and about sickness and death, it became an opportunity to show how “sexy” the girl was. The Garifuna organization in Honduras OFRANEH actually tried to sue the Banda Blanca for violation of Intellectual Property Rights regarding the use of a Garifuna ceremonial dance as part of a show without permission.

In Trujillo, Honduras parandas accompanied by a guitar, first and second drums, and maracas and sung by the male guitarist Francisco “Pancho” David  were previously played live by the Garifuna musical group Los Menudos at a Garifuna dance club near the beach in Barrio Cristales.  As with the other paranderos, Pancho is older, probably over 70 by now. In clubs, young Garifunas dance punta to paranda songs in many male and female couples instead of the traditional way of forming a circle and going and dancing in the center one by one.   The Los Menudos group also plays punta music without guitar. Examples of the music of Los Menudos with dancing done by family members are found on YouTube. 

In Trujillo, punta songs without guitar are sung at wakes and at the ceremony held one year after a person who has died (fin de novenario or veluria) punta and paranda songs without guitar can be sung and the people dance punta in the traditional way of forming a circle and a woman goes into the circle and dances, usually alone, but sometimes a man will dance around her. Unfortunately, often there are not enough women who still know how to sing punta songs who go to the wakes now in Trujillo.  Besides singing punta at wakes, Garifuna women used to sing punta while they worked in their agricultural fields, saying it makes the work go fast.  Now that few Garifuna women farm in the area around Trujillo, they no longer practice punta songs as often. Several attempts to form dance groups among the Garifuna young people in the Garifuna neighborhoods like Rio Negro and Cristales have failed, because the young women do not speak enough Garifuna to understand the songs. When I worked at the UNAH in Tegucigalpa, a similar fate met the attempt to form a Garifuna dance group among the students of the UNAH.  Young Garifuna girls learn to dance a very vulgar form of punta, as influenced by the Ladino version, in Garifuna schools in Trujillo and they are accompanied by only drums, since no one can sing. The Garifuna boys in Trujillo schools are not learning to dance punta. At inter-dance presentations, other schools do show Garifuna boys dancing punta, but they violate the first rule of punta dancing, that the man does not touch the woman, because she probably has a boyfriend or husband and it could cause problems. 

Now in the Garifuna disco in Trujillo or for the fair, occasionally live Garifuna music groups that play punta are brought in from other villages like Santa Fe.  At other times, recorded punta, or usually punta rock, is played at the Garifuna disco in Trujillo.  But now all kinds of recorded music are played in Trujillo discos by DJ’s with reggae in English or Spanish and reggaeton, seeming to have replaced the previously popular meringue songs. A live reggaeton band was brought into the Garifuna neighborhood fair in Trujillo the last time I went.  Wikipedia has an excellent article on the roots of reggaeton.

Garifunas and Tourism Struggles for Human Rights by Blacks and Indians US Honduras

Garifunas and Tourism and the Struggles for Human Rights by Blacks and Indians

Because Garifuna music and dance are world famous, the official tourism sites of the Belizean, Guatemalan and Honduran governments all feature Garifunas and Garifuna villages as important tourist attractions. In Belize, there is even a Garifuna museum—Gulisi, named for the daughter of Chief Chatoyer, in Dangriga.  Almost all Honduran tourist brochures show Garifuna dancers.  At the same time Garifunas are losing their lands to tourist development and sales of land to foreigners who want to live where it is warm near Caribbean Sea beaches. Many Garifunas want “development” of their communities, as the title of one famous book shows “ethnodevelopment” often means “ethnogenocide”.  They do not want to dance like “payasos” (clowns) for tourists, said Ana Lucy Bengochea, the former coordinator of CEGAH when she was interviewed in Malaysia, or be dispossessed of their lands for cruise boat docks, hotels, condominiums, retirement homes and the other numerous development projects that have been proposed for the development of the Trujillo and Tela areas in Honduras and around the Garifuna communities in Belize.

When the Garifunas of Rio Negro, Trujillo resisted selling their homes and lands where their families had lived for 200 years to build the cruise ship dock, they were denounced by the Ladinos of Trujillo on the media, both written and especially over the radio, as "blocking development" (www.ofraneh.org and my personal eyewitness experience.)  I think when the World Summit of Afrodescent People asked for “development with identity”, they meant recognition of their cultures and traditional technologies, their needs for the use of certain types of eco-systems for the development of their culture, the preservation of their languages which is used for many cultural important elements including their religion, their medecine, their songs, and their oral literature, and the important part they can play in helping to develop the areas and the countries where they live.  In the end this cruise boat dock has brought little development to the area, and most of the few profits went to Canadians not the local Hondurans or Garifunas.  

The Garifuna area between Puerto Castilla and Trujillo and between that and Guadelupe and its agricultural area in Betulia has seen a lot of speculation of housing for foreigners, in spite of the fact that Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world due to 80% of the cocaine bound for the US going through NE Honduras on its way to Guatemala and the US. Currently the Garifunas of Trujillo are facing a multimillion lawsuit from a company that says it was going to build a windmill farm on the Garifuna lands near the Guaymoreto Lagoon. OFRANEH suspects that it was never a real deal, with a real company, that the company just made the deal without following the procedures for Free, Informed, Prior Consent as required by ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Human rights of Indians.  See the OFRANEH blog for details www.ofraneh.wordpress.org.  

I don't know about windmill power elsewhere, but in Honduras it has been very problematic,usually affecting indigenous communities. Another windmill project is in Southern Honduras south of the capital Tegucigalpa in Santa Ana Cerro de Hula, a Lenca community which Dr. Lazaro Flores has been studying for over 26 years with his university anthropology students. He bought his retirement home there to spend his final years among his beloved Lencas. The windmills were set on a hill above an archaeological site in a cave, Las Cuevas de Ayestas. Lencas are known to use both caves and hill top sites in their religious and medicinal practices, such as noted by Honduran Lencan economist Dr, Julian Lopez. The windmill company has tried to argue there are no Indians in the area, even though the nearby town of Ojojona is famous for its guancasco, a Lenca ceremony of peace with another Lenca town Lepaterique (Flores,2003). Dr. Flores has documented the modern Lenca culture and practices throughout this Lenca area extending to Reitoca, which did have colonial pueblos de indios (Indian towns,subject to tribute labor). The windmills were so noisy and disturbing that Dr. Flores was forced to abandon his retirement home and return to Tegucigalpa one of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world for more peace and quiet. 

Comparison American Civil Rights Movement and the Garifuna and Honduran Indian social movements

The outcomes of the US Civil rights movements were various.  There were movements around “black power” or “Indian power”, getting a voice in decision making, which partly including getting the vote and getting out the voters, but also being consulted on projects destined for their communities, one of the guarantees of ILO Convention 169.    There were also movements about aesthetics like “Black is Beautiful”, and the Honduran and Belizean Garifunas organize beauty contests of Garifuna women.   There was a lot of movement about the contributions of the ethnic group not being invisible in the society—things like Black History Month, the Black Inventors Museum, the Pequot Indian Museum, the Cherokee Museum, Black dance companies, African drumming and dance companies, art exhibits of Black Artists, journals devoted to Black Literature, movie about Blacks in the Army, etc.which the Garifunas also include in African Heritage Month, Settlement Day or Garifuna Day.   There has been movement about getting Indians and Blacks and Hispanics counted in the census, since in the US a lot of decisions from funding of special projects and education, to electoral districts are based on the census.  The 2001 was the first census in Honduran history to identify how many Garifunas lived in Honduras and the 1988 census identified how many spoke Garifuna and other indigenous languages (Davidson.2011). There was recognition of days or months in which we celebrate the culture and achievement of the ethnic group like Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month and Kwanzaa. Among US Indians Pow Wows often serve partially this purpose. There is has been significant movement towards revisionist history—the contributions and sufferings of Indians, Black, Chinese, Japanese, and Hispanics in the US history. The history books by Garifunas like Salvador Suazo, Virgilio Lopez, and Tomas Alberto Avila help fill the void left by the lack of attention by professional historians.

American Indians have been active in trying to get control of their schools and what is taught in their schools and many  US tribes now control pre-school, elementary and high schools. Previously schools were intentionally used to try to change Indians so that they lost their native cultures and languages, and a video on Indian Boarding Schools blames that educational system as the principal cause of dysfunction on Indian reservations today.  There are at least 12 Indian run colleges, some with multiple campuses.  Most offer teacher’s education to train Indian teachers for their schools, among other topics.  At least one offers a master degree in Management.  Lakota College of the Lakota-Souix of South Dakota calls their Master’s program “Warriors as Managers”. A  number of non.Indian colleges offer Indian studies programs and many US universities offer some kind of African-American or Africana studies programs. Honduran and Nicaraguan Indians, especially the Miskitos have been active in this area with Urracan University in eastern Nicaragua focussing on the ethnic groups of the region, and the UPN in Honduras offering Distance Education in Intercultural Education at two sites in the Honduran Mosquitia.  Miskito and Garifunas are now the majority of the teachers and principals  in their communities.

After the US Civil Rights movement,  there have been statues made of important African-American leaders like Martin Luther King and centers and roads named after him.  There are statues of chief Chatoyer in front of some Garifuna schools, including Kindergaten "America"  in Trujillo and the building of ODECO is named after him.  Garifuna schools are often named after important Garifuna teachers, like Jose Laboriel High School in Santa Fe, after Garifuna musician and music teacher at the Departmental High School "Espiritu del Siglo"  in Trujillo.  The Garifuna have sought most of these changes in Honduras, in Belize and some of them in the US, and often they have been successful. 

When Black Bay Islanders like Dorn Ebanks started the first English speaking cable TV station in Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras which showed shows developed by Black Bay Islanders, they said part of their motivation was so that young people on Roatan could see Black people like themselves on TV, that this might inspire them and think they could do something big in life, like the other Bay Islanders they saw on TV.  Dorn Ebanks went on to become Governor of the Bay Islands and pastor of the Roatan Baptist Church, so sometimes if you think big, great things can happen.  I think the movie "Garifuna in Peril" will likewise inspire not only Garifuna, but also other Blacks, and Indians that speak minority languages, that they and their languages could also do something big.   I applaud the creators of the Garifuna in Peril movie for thinking big and I think it is a great production.  

About the Author

Wendy Griffin is the co-author of the book Los Garifunas de Honduras, a 10 year study of the Garifunas of Trujillo and the North Coast of Honduras, as well as 5 other published and several unpublished books on Honduran ethnic groups.  She was reporter for Honduras This Week from 1992-2004 writing over 300 articles, mostly on the ethnic groups on Honduras.  She has been an English and French professor at the UPN and UNAH univerisities in Tegucigalpa and Anthropology Professor at the UPN in La Ceiba, Honduras.  She has been a volunteer with bilingual-intercultural education in Honduras since it started in 1987.  Since 1996 she has divided her time between the US and living in Trujillo, Honduras in or near the Garifuna communities there. .

Bibliography for all the Garifuna articles published in this blog March 30, 2017. These articles were formerly in the article "Garifuna Immigrants Invisible" on the Garifuna in Peril movie website. They were updated March 30, 2017. 

Amaya Banegas, Jorge Amaya (2005) "Los Negros Ingleses o Creoles de Honduras: Etnohistoria, Racismo, Nacionalismo, y Construcción de Imaginarios Nacionales Excluyentes en Honduras", Boletin No. 13, AFEHC. http://www.afehc-historia-centroamericana.org.

Amaya Banegas, Jorge Amaya (2012)  "Reimaginando la nación en Honduras:  de la nación homogénea a la Nacion Plurietnica: Los Negros Garifunas de Cristales, Trujillo, Colon, Honduras" http://www.

ird.fr/afrodesc/IMG/pdf/TESIS_Amaya_web-3.pdf

Arrivillega Cortés, Alfonso (2007) "Asentamientos Caribes (Garifunas) en Centroamérica:  De Héroes Fundadores a Espiritu Protectors" Boletín de Antropología, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia Año/Vol. 21, número 38, pp. 227-252.  http://redalyc.uaemex.mx

Avila, Tomás Alberto (2009) Black Caribs-GArifuna Saint Vincent' Exiled People and the Origin of the Garifuna A Historical Compilation.Providence, RI: Milenio Associates

Chambers. Glenn (2010) Race, nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940.  Baton Rouge: Louisana State University.

Davidson, William (2011) Censo Étnico de Honduras: Cuadros y mapas basados en el Censo nacional.  Tegucigalpa: Academia Hondureña de Geografía e Historia. 

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

Euraque, Dario (2004b)"Jamaican Migrants and Settlements in Honduras, 1870's - 1954" Paper presented at the Conference "Between Race and Place: Blacks and Blackness in Central America and the mainland Caribbean," Tulane University, New Orleans, Nov. 11-13, 2004.

Flores, David (2003) La Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklórica Hondureña.  Tegucigalpa: IHER.  (The Garifuna, Miskito, Bay Islander, Pech, and Chorti  sections are partly based on my research)

Franzone, Dorothy (1994) A critical and Cultural Analysis of An African people in the Americas:  Africanisms in the Garifuna Culture in Belize.  Ph.D. Disertation. Temple University.  (Available online at www.ProQuest.com).

Gonzales, Nancie (1988) Sojourners of the Caribbean: Ethnogenisis and Ethnohistory of Garifuna. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Griffin, Wendy and CEGAH(2005) Los Garifunas de Honduras: Cultura, Lucha y Derechos bajo el Convenio 169 de la OIT, San Pedro Sula:  Central Impresora.

Griffin, Wendy and Tomasa Clara Garcia (2013) Yaya: La Vida de una curandera Garifuna.  Negritud. (Photocopies of the article with Yaya's medicinal plant recipes are in the libraries at Tulane Univeristy and the Univeristy of Pittsburgh)

Griffin, Wendy, Hernán Martinez Escobar and Juana Carolina Hernández Torres (2009) Los Pech de Honduras: Una Etnia Que Vive.  Tegucigalpa: IHAH.

Gudmundson, Lowell and Justin Wolfe (2012) La Negritud en Centroamerica:  Entre Raza  y Raices.  San José:  Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia.  (There is an English version of this book Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place. It is for sale on Amazon.com).

House, Paul et al.(1995) Plantas Medicinales Comunes de Honduras. Tegucigalpa: Litografia Lopez. 

Johnson, Paul (2007) Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa.  University of California Press.

Lopez Garcia, Victor Virgilio (1994) La Bahia del Puerto de Sol y la Masacre de los Garifunas de San Juan.  Guaymuras, Honduras.

Tilley, Virginia (2005) Seeing Indians: A study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Mentioned books

Amaya Banegas, Jorge Alberto (2007) Las imagenes de los negros Garifunas en la literatura hondureña y extranjera. Tegucigalpa:  Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes.  prize winning book. Premio Latinoamericano de Investigación Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa, Maestro de America.

England, Sarah (2006) Afro-Central Americans in New York City: Garifuna Tales of Transnational Movements in Racialized Spaces. Gainesville, Fl:  University Press of Florida.

Palacio, Joseph (2005) The Garifuna: a Nation Across Border. Essays in Social Anthropology, Cubola, Belize.

The last two are available at Amazon.com

Background Information on Garifuna music.

Punta and Paranda—The Most Famous Garifuna Dances and Songs

One type of secular song is called paranda in Spanish which means to carouse.  In Garifuna it is called berusu and in Belizean English guitar song (Avila, 2009). Opinions vary as to when Garifunas began to sing paranda, but some time between the Garifuna arrival in Central America in 1797 and the 1920’s the Garifuna men began to accompany themselves on a guitar and sing, with a background of drums and maracas, and later the turtle drum.  Parandas were often traditionally sung as a “seranata”, going to someone’s house and singing, accompanied by a guitar.  Paul Nabor, an over 80 year old Belizean Garifuna parandero, said in an interview for Spanish TV, when he had a problem with someone, he would not fight with him, he would sing about the problem (http://www.rtve.es/alacarte/videos/todo-el-mundo-es-musica/todo-el-mundo-es-musica-honduras-y-belice-la-aventura-garifuna/1070122.) Now in Belize, they are principally sung at wakes (Avila, 2009). Although in both Avila’s book and in conversations with Garifuna blogger Teofilo Colon, they identified paranda as “beresu” in Garifuna, the old men who play paranda in Belize like Paul Nabor, were not familiar with the word “beresu”.(Avila, 2009)

There are female and male versions of paranda.  In Honduras, Garifuna women organized in dance clubs go singing traditional Garifuna songs from house to house at night sometime in the week before Christmas.  Unlike the more famous Belizean men’s parandas, in Honduras the women’s paranda is not accompanied by guitar, but it is accompanied by drums (two segunda and one primero) and maracas.  Since the women go into the house and get people up out of bed and crowd around as best they can, they are variously in rows or in a circle. The step is balancing back and forth from one foot to the other with the arms free to move as the person feels the music, like hunguhungu.  One dancer might go up and dance in front of the drums and the first drum player has to follow her movements, like punta. Another dance Culiau which has its own song, according to Honduran Garifuna dancer Herman Alvarez, this is more sexy (mas cadente) than punta and was traditionally done from house to house before Christmas. Garifuna women’s dance clubs also go out to “parrandear”, to sing Garifuna songs from house to house and dance with drums the first of January after dancing all night in their club’s dance house (Griffin and CEGAH,2005).

 Paul Nabor was a buyei, a Garifuna shaman in charge of Garifuna ceremonies like the dugu and chugu, as well as a musician, so he was well aware of the problem that young people were not learning the language and some of the old music styles like paranda and the ceremonial songs. Paul Nabor has done concerts around Belize and, after being recorded for the Paranda Project of Belizean record label Stonetree Records, also in the US (www.stonetreerecords.com/albums/meet_the_paranderos.php;  www.belizeanartist.com). He has been interviewed by PBS in January 2004 (www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/Belize/nabor.html) , as well the interview for Spanish TV where he sings his most famous song, Naguyu Nei, written when his sister was on her deathbed and she wanted a band to play at her funeral.  This song and other tracks by Paul Nabor, like Niri and Sandi Balandria are available from Amazon mp3 as well as the Stonetree records site. On Youtube there are over 25 videos of Paul Nabor playing Garifuna music. .  Other paranderos on the CD include Jursino Cayetano (Livingston, Guatemala), Juni Aranda (Dangriga, Belize), Lugua and Dale Guzman, Honduran Garifuna Aurelio Martinez as well as Paul Nabor. Most of these men were over 60, except Aurelio Martinez, and few young people were learning their songs.

Another Garifuna type of song is punta (banquity in Garifuna).  Traditionally women sing and compose punta songs, while the men drum, and play maracas, the turtle shell drum, and the conch horn. Punta is sung at wakes, held the night after someone dies before they are buried the next day.  Both punta and paranda are sung at End of Mourning ceremonies (fin de novenario), held one year after the death of a friend or relative. Women go into the center of the ring one by one and on the tips of their feet they dance forward, backwards, and to each side, swaying her hips. Sometimes a man dances around her, but he can not touch her. Traditionally Garifuna women wear full skirts below the knee and short sleeved blouses and headscarves to dance this dance, which when danced traditionally is sensual but not vulgar. In the past, young people did not dance this dance at wakes, but rather another dance for young people Saguai, which no longer exists(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).

  

Garifuna medicine-Modern and Traditional, healers, doctors and medicinal plants

Garifuna medicine-Modern and Traditional, healers, doctors and medicinal plants

In health there are over 34 Garifuna doctors and dozens of Garifuna nurses working in Honduras.  One Garifuna doctor gained fame in the US because he had worked hard to open the first Garifuna hospital in the remote area of Iriona, Colon where there are thousands of traditional Garifunas as well as a number of Ladino communities. This hospital was open during Manuel Zelaya’s presidency, but after the coup was threatened to be shut down. There is a link to the hospital on BeingGarifuna.com.  Garifunas also work in various roles in projects related to the problem of AIDS in the Garifuna community, from the Radionovelas in Garifuna like “The Ancestors Don’t Die”, to fundraising, to training traditional health practioners and buyeis how to recognize AIDS, and many other aspects in both Honduras and the US.  There is a Garifuna organization “Hondurans Against AIDS” in New York. Concerned that Garifuna traditional practices were not being incorporated into the Honduran medical system in the Garifuna area, OFRAHEH sponsored a training program for Garifuna nurses that included traditional Garifuna medecine and Western medecine. The Garifuna nurse in charge of the government clinic at Puerto Castilla and the Garifuna doctor in Trujillo both attend medecine plant seminars and conferences.  

Traditional Medicine and healers among the Garifunas

Many of the people working in Garifuna health are not university trained, but rather are traditional herbalists, midwives, massage therapists (sobadoras), and “buyeis”.  These healers treat many illnesses, and deliver babies.  Medicinal plant studies among the Garifunas have shown the old people know over 300 medicinal plants, but the young people are not learning them.  The Garifunas believe in several different causes of illnesses including common causes such as intestinal pin worms or fevers, illnesses caused by witchcrafts, illnesses caused by ancestor spirits, and illnesses caused by nature spirits. In my book Los Garifunas de Honduras (Griffin and CEGAH,2005)  there is a section on Garifuna traditional medicine including over 100 medicinal plant recipes and how to care for pregnant women and young children among the Garifunas, according to 92 year old Garifuna healer, midwife, sobadora, and buyei, Tomasa Clara Garcia, known as “Yaya”.  She has been an informant for several  studies of medicinal plants and the Garifuna religion.  Her biography will soon be published by Negritud in English and Spanish (Griffin and Garcia, 2013).

Hondurans, including the Garifunas, believe in several illnesses that Honduran doctors do not think exist, like haito, empacho, aire, paletilla, etc.  These are generally treated with a combination of herbs and massage.  Evangelical Christians have taught Miskito Indians that going to traditional healers whom they consider diabolic, as bad.  So when 2 Miskito students studying in Tegucigalpa got sick of “empacho”, which causes the stomach to bloat up and get hard, sounds like a drum if you touch it, and causes problems going to the bathroom, and little balls form in the blood,  among other things, the modern Christian Miskito man who was taking care of them refused to take them to a “sobadora” or “curandera” (massage therapist or healer).  He took them to the teaching  Hospital in Teguicgalpa and they cut them open and the two young men died of the operation. The Miskito parents were furious when they got the dead bodies of their sons sent home, especially when they heard all they had was “empacho”, an easily cured traditional illness. When I have asked Hondurans about the fact that Western doctors do not recognize these diseases, they made maybe they should recognize them, that maybe US children are dying of these illnesses because they do not recognize them.  Yaya treats many children after they have been to the hospital and the doctors could not find out what was wrong, and they were dying.  She treats them with herbs and massages and they get better and live to grow up and have their own children. 

I partly began working with Yaya because I heard that many Miskito Indian women were dying in childbirth, yet only one of Yaya's hundreds of patients had died in childbirth, so I wanted to know what she did.  For example, she told me if a woman is hemoraging, she gives her strong coffee, and that usually stops the hemorraging (Griffin and CEGAH,2005). A Garifuna friend of mine lost his wife in childbirth at a hospital from hemoraging, leaving him alone with 6 young kids.  I am sad to think he may have lost his wife for the lack of a cup of coffee.  A US medical student from Massachusettes who was doing volunteer work with CEGAH, read Yaya's care of pregnant women, and said modern medecine does not do these things, but maybe they should. Garifunas midwives provide prenatal care from 2 or 3 months of being pregnant and also provide after pregnancy care, as well as care of newborns.  The statistics for prenatal care, maternal death, and problems with newborns among the African Americans in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania who all are treated with Western medecine in hospitals are worse than those treated by Garifuna midwives. Unfortunately the modern generation of Garifuna youth are not learning these skills.

Some Garifuna midwives like Yaya also know plants that help women who have trouble getting pregnant to have children.  CEGAH's Trinidadian American advisor tried for several year to get pregnant. Finally she had health tests done in the States, and they said there was something physically wrong.  That she would need hormone treatment and surgury, and it would be expensive, etc.  Discouraged she went back to Trujillo and tried the medicinal plants of a Garifuna healer there.  She went off to India and was going up and down buses, hauling heavy luggage on terrible roads.  She came back to Honduras and went to the doctor's and he told her she was about 4 months pregnant, even though she was over 35, doing all this heavy lifting and hard travelling, etc. and did not lose the baby.  Shortly after the first baby was born, she was pregant again and also had that baby fine although she was almost 40.  Many women in Trujillo have gone to Yaya with this problem, and she treats them with a different plant recipe and a year later they are back to show off the baby.  "Here is your granddaughter," they say.  One woman complained because eventually she had a lot of children after being treated.  "I am not at fault," says Yaya, "You asked for the medecine and it worked." Many people in the US spend thousands of dollars on infertility treatments, which are often uncomfortable,  and sometimes even then do not have children.

Although the Catholic Church in Honduras used to be against medicinal plant use, now some of the leaders of medicinal plant usein Honduras are priests and nuns.  Padre Fausto Milla runs a medicinal plant clinic in Santa Rosa de Copan, and also a special "Casa de Salud" (House of health) for serious, hard to treat cases.  My friend anthropologist Adalid Martinez was diagnosed with lung cancer, and even after chemothearpy they said they would have to take out his lung.  He went to Father Fausto Milla's clinic and "Casa de Salud" for 7 months.  In addition to herbs, he followed a special diet and did "geotheraphy" with special medicinal mud which supposedly  sucks out the illness. He recovered completely and 10 years later he is still fine and very active.  He wrote a book about his experience and other people who Father Milla cured.  Father Milla has had a newspaper column in a Honduran Spanish language newspaper about medecinal plants and a radio show.  In Trujillo, one of the Spanish nuns was trained as a naturalist doctor and presecribed plant medecine for people. Although she had to retire due to old age, the medicinal plant store of the Catholic Church is still open and frequently used in Trujillo. Part of the reason they do this is because many Hondurans are sick and can not afford chemical medecines. Another reason is because the plant medecine usually works.

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If people have heard of medicinal plants, now a multibillion business in the US, they usually think of rainforest Indians, especially Amazonian rainforest Indians. In fact, Blacks both in the Americas and in Africa also had a wide knowledge of medicinal plants.  In South Africa, it is estimated that traditional African healers use between 2,000 and 3,000 different species of medicinal plants (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/traditional-healers-of-South-Africa).  According to  UNAH ethnobiologist Paul House, medicinal plant researchers interviewed one “bush doctor” in Belize who knew 1,000 medicinal plants, which is more than all the medicinal plant lore for all of Europe in one head. The current interest in saving the rainforest by World Bank and similar organizations is motivated primarily by finding 2 effective treatments for leukemia based on periwinkles from Madagascar in Africa, now a multimillion dollar business for a US pharmaceutical company. Some Latin American Indians have raise a cry against "biopiracy", the stealing of traditional knowledge about medicinal plants for the purpose of making rich American pharmaceutical companies. One reason to worry that the Garifunas are losing their land is that they are losing their medicinal plants which could help a lot of people.  While pharmacuetical companies "in gringolandia" are mainly interested in herbal remedies that will bring them a lot of money, like the cure for cancer, the poor people of Honduras are also thankful for medicinal plants that treat every day diseases like urinary tract and kidney infections, ear infections, sinus infections, intestinal worms, amoebas, etc.  Since many rural people live far from government health centers and are poor and can not afford Western medecines, herbal medicines are an important alternative source of medical care. Hondurans also note medicinal plant use is safer.  My sister in the US was recently prescribed a medecine for a sinus infection that said, "Warning causes death in children under 10".  The Honduran cures for sinus infections like drinking water with hot chiles in it or inhaling "ipasina", a root, hot lemonaid or ginger tea with lemon, or inhaling the steam of camomile tea, definately do not cause death and are safe even for newborns.

A Garifuna friend of mine, Profesor Batiz, a modern believer in Western medicine was sick.  He went to doctors in Trujillo, even San Pedro Sula, a big city of a million people. In the San Pedro hospital, they said you have hepatitis.  You can be admitted to the hospital if you want, but we have no medicine for hepatitis.  A cousin of his from the traditional Garifuna area of Iriona, Colon came to visit him and heard his story.  He said do not worry.  I will make some medicine and you will feel better. He made a drink of Caña santa, a wild plant, and “rapadura” unrefined brown sugar and let it ferment for three days with a little viscoyol, a fruit, and gave it to Profesor Batiz.  Within a week he was fine and back to work. The use of Caña Santa for liver or urinary problems have been widely documented in Honduras including among the Ladinos(House et al., 1995), the Pech Indians (Griffin et al. 2009) and the Garifunas (Griffin and CEGAH,2005). Paul House says when a plant remedy is found among several different ethnic groups for the same thing, it is pretty sure that it is actually quite effective for that illness.  Unfortunately Western medecine, modern schools, and Christian churches have made traditional people lose faith in traditional medecine.  In Honduras since I have lived there, there have been campaigns  against "witchcraft" (brujeria) and the only thing they do is get rid of the medicinal plants from the center of towns like Tegucigalpa, confusing traditional medecine with "witchcraft".  The Garifuna young people are not  learning the plants, how to do massage therapy, or be midwives. 

Not only plants are used but also parts of animals.  Lard from chickens, “manteca de pollo” or “fowl fat” is used by Bay Islanders, Ladinos from Tegucigalpa and Garifunas to give to babies when they are very young to treat and prevent problems like bronchitis and asthma. Yaya says that babies when they are born drink some of the amiotic fluid  and if you don’t treat them they will have asthma and other illnesses one after the other. She gives the newborn baby garlic well cooked, and rue, and honey in its mouth so that it will vomit all the dirty water (Griffin and Garcia, 2013).  None of the children she has treated this way, which includes hundreds of babies, have ever had asthma. Bay Islanders, people in Tegucigalpa and Garifunas live very far apart from each other.  If so many people so far apart say these treatments are effective, maybe US researchers should be looking into it, as childhood asthma among African American kids is a huge problem in the US.

If people have heard of the land problems of rainforest Indians, usually they think of Amazonian rainforest Indians.  I was surprised to read that there are only an estimated 200,000 Amazonian rainforest Indians.  In Central America between the Garifunas, the Miskitos, the Pech, the Tawahkas, and other Central American rainforest Indians, the population is much greater, and the area is much smaller.  The problems of the Central American rainforest are acute.  The largest Honduras protected area with rainforest, "The Rio Platano Biosphere" in the Honduran Mosquitia is a UNESCO World Heritage site and includes 5 traditional Garifuna communities.  The destruction of the rainforest there is so severe that some estimate in 25 years it will all be gone.  Most people who see the Garifuna villages on the coast do not think of them as rainforest Indians, but their hunting included almost all the same animals the other Honduran rainforest Indians eat like white collared peccary (quequeo), deer, "tepescuinte", and armadillo.  The skin of the white collar peccary and the deer is what is used to make Garifuna drums  and is currently hard to get due to the near extinction of these animals.  While some Garifuna medicinal plants come from the lower areas near their field, houses, lagoons, and the beach,  Yaya also used to go into the rainforest part of the Calentura mountain, now a National Park,  to bring down special Garifuna medicinal plants. The Garifuna crafts also depend on rainforest plants like the drums are made of wild avocado tree wood, canoes from silkwood (ceiba), the graters for grating yuca to make cassava bread are made of Honduran mahoghany. Garifuna basketry crafts also depend on a vine "belaire" in Spanish and "gomerei" in Garifuna that grews on the rainforest part of the mountains near water up behind the Garifuna villages. Several Garifuna NGO's have tried to offer to seminars on how to make Garifuna basket crafts, because for some crafts there are just one or two older artisans in all of Honduras. With one small seminar of one craft in the Tela region, almost the entire existence of the plant was wiped out in the large Punta Sal National Park, reported the staff of the environmental NGO PROLANSATE, and in Trujillo there was not enough of the plant to offer the seminar. Craftsmen who know how to make Garifuna basket crafts, like Tomas Guity of Santa Rosa de Aguan, report there are no belarie plants near their village, because the forest are of the Garifuna villages was given either to Agrian Reform cooperatives of Ladinos or to Honduran businessmen who cut down the forest and plant African palm or raise cattle there. Garifuna basket crafts like the basket strainer (ruguma) and the basket sifter (hibise) are essential for making the Garifuna's traditional bread, cassava bread in English, casabe in Spanish and ereba in Garifuna. The sale of cassava bread is an important source of income for many Garifuna women in traditional Garifuna villages. Garifunas are an Afro-Indigenous people who are severely affected by the loss of the Central American Rainforest (Griffin and CEGAH,2006).     . 

Garifuna Organizations in US Garifuna Artists Garifuna Plays Singer Aurelio Martinez

Garifuna Organizations in the US

In Los Angeles, the Belizean Garifunas have founded numerous organizations, some working for economic well being, some working on cultural rescue, such as the Garifuna American Heritage Foundation United (GAHFU) which has a website www.garifunaheritagefoundation.org. 

It was the work of Belizean Garifunas of the National Garifuna Council of Belize in working countless hours recoding Garifuna music and dance that resulted in UNESCO declaring Garifuna language, Music and Dance a Masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity in 2001, mentioned above.  Members of the Belizean National Garifuna Council like Andy Palacio also worked documenting Garifuna music which resulted in many Stonetree Record company productions that became world famous like the Paranda Project with old Garifunas like Paul Nabor and Junior Aranda as well as younger Honduran Garifuna Aurelio Martinez, Umalali the Garifuna women’s Project, as well as the many punta rock records, including Andy Palacio’s own prize winning, world famous Watina. Palacio was Cultural Ambassador of Belize and a head government official working in culture when he died.

 The music and the success of Belizean Garifuna artists encouraged  Garifunas in Belize to work towards cultural revival in their communities.  It also developed ethnic pride and encouraged Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicarguan and US Garifuna and the Karibs of Dominica and St. Vincent  to promote and rescue their language and culture.   For example, after the fame of Belizean Paranda singers and composers like Paul Nabor, the Honduran Garifunas have produced a video as a Tribute to Don Marasa (Marcelino Fernández), a 90 year paranda composer and player who was born in Stann Creek, Belize and then moved to Honduras when he was 8 years old. He formed a group Libana Marasa. Now it is his grandchildren who play Garifuna music in Santa Fe, Honduras. Recently a tribute concert was held in New York of Don Marasa’s music with him present.  The video tribute on Don Marasa was one of the top 5 Garifuna videos selling in the Bronx,, according to www.BeingGarifuna.com.  US Garifunas also made  a CD of the music of Los Menudos, a traditional Garifuna music group in Trujillo, Honduras led by paranda guitar playing Francisco “Pancho” David.  There are numerous videos of Los Menudos, Andy Palacio, Paul Nabor, Aurelio Martinez, and other Garifuna musicians on YouTube.

In New York, the Garifuna organization that is responsible for safeguarding, preserving, and revitalizing the Garifuna language, music, and dance in the US is Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc. which works with 20 smaller Garifuna organizations. They are also a social service and referral agency that helps the Garifuna working poor find help, such as ESL classes.  In New York since 2010 there has been a Miss Garifuna NY Pagent, reports Teofilo Colon of BeingGarifuna.com. (There is also a Miss Belize California pagaent in Los Angeles).  The New York premier of Garifuna in Peril was sponsored by the Garifuna Coalition  which included a special performance by the NYC Garifuna Dance Ensemble.  The event was supported with funds from the New York Foundation, Simon Bolivar Foundation and the New York Community Trust(www.garifunacoalition,org). 

Garifuna Culture Becomes World Famous through Live Performances

The beauty of the Garifuna culture, especially its music and dance, has led to them being known around the World,  Besides commercially produced music, the Honduran government has sponsored a National Garifuna Folkloric Ballet in Tegucigalpa for over 40 years.  This Ballet performs choreographed dances using moves from Garifuna traditional dances like Wanaragua (Mascara, the Dance of the Warriors)  and Punta accompanied by songs in the Garifuna language and using Garifuna traditional instruments.  The costumes and the dances themselves are often not as the dances are done in the communities.  Garifunas in the communities have mixed feelings about this dance group. On one hand they are thankful that they make Garifuna culture visible and known at the local and international level.  .Partially thanks to this dance troupe which presents at festivals and other cultural events around the world, Honduras is more famous for the Garifuna dance  punta than for the Ladino folkdances, notes David Flores,  the former head of the National Folkdance Group (Cuadro Nacional de Danzas Folklóricas)  which presents the folkdances of Honduras’s Ladino majority (Flores, 2003).  On the other hand, some people are unhappy that the way the dances are presented, particularly punta,  as if that is the way Garifunas traditionally danced them, when that is not true. There are videos of this dance company on Youtube, including a presentation in the UCLA library in coordination with  the Garifuna American Heritage  Foundation United, a Los Angeles Garifuna organization (www.garifunaamericanheritagefoundation.org).

In New York and in Los Angeles, Garifunas have also formed live traditional Garifuna dance groups with handmade instruments like drums and maracas.  These groups present several times a year during community events like the Honduran Central American Parade in the Bronx, Garifuna-American Heritage month celebrations in New York, and Christmas shows.  Videos are often made of these and are sold.  For example, the video of the Honduran Parade of 2010 was one of the top 5 best videos sold in the music store in the Bronx that carries Garifuna videos according to BeingGarifuna.com. People also like to take photos of Garifuna music and dance, with over 8,000 Garifuna photos on www.Flickr.com.

Honduran Garifuna Musician and Congressman Aurelio Martinez

Non-Garifuna Honduran artists also include Garifuna culture in their music and plays which has also made Garifuna culture  better known around the world. The most famous Honduran musician internationally and Honduras’s cultural ambassador is Guillermo Anderson from La Ceiba. Although not Garifuna, the songs he sings and plays the acoustic guitar to is accompanied  by a Garifuna percussion ensemble who include traditional Garifuna rhythms like punta and paranda, as well as international rhythms into Anderson’s music. Anderson also includes other ethnic music from Honduras in his music like Miskito Indian rhythms and different  traditional instruments like the caramba, a musical bow. Since the 1990’s he has toured in Europe, South, Central, and North America, Europe and  Asia and has recorded a number of CD’s on Honduras’s principal record label Costa Norte Records(www.guillermoanderson.com). 

The most famous Honduran Garifuna musician in Honduras Aurelio Martinez began his paid musical career as a musician for non-Garifuna groups including Guillermo Anderson.  Aurelio Martinez’s first band Lita Ariran (Black Rooster) was mostly made up of other percussion members of the Guillermo Anderson’s band, said Guillermo Anderson. In the US the Lita Ariran CD Black Turtle with Aurelio Martinez was rereleased by Alula Records reports Teofilo Colon of BeingGArifuna.com. Aurelio Martinez went on  to sing on the Belizean Stonetree Records  album Parranda and then in 2004 released his own record with Stonetree Garifuna Soul. Afropop Worldwide, the Brooklyn, New York weekly radio program produced for 100 US public radio stations, as well as distributed in Europe and Africa, named it one of the top 10 Albums of 2004.  He was named “newcomer of the year”.  Most recently in 2011 he has released a record with a World Music record company from England  Real World Records “Laru Beya”.(www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aurelio_martinez)  He has performed in the US, and when at the end of the show, he sang the song “Africa” in Garifuna about how I will never forget my culture and where I come from, “the crowd came to its feet, danced in the aisles and rushed to stage.  You should have been there”,  reported Teofilo Colon, of BeingGarifuna.com.

After Aurelio Martinez became Congressman in Honduras for the Department of Atlantida (Honduran Departments are like States in the US) where the Garifuna are not the majority, a Spanish TV station came and made a documentary of his life.  Although Wikipedia says he was the first Black to become Congressman in Honduras (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aurelio_martinez), this is not true.  There have been a number of Black Congressmen in the history of Honduras including Garifuna Sixto Caucho and Black Bay Islander Thomas Green. But at least twice in the twentieth century,  Garifunas were elected to Congress, and then not allowed to take their seats, according to the research of Garifuna Meliseo Gonzales. Also since I have lived in Trujillo, a Garifuna woman has won the “internal elections”, like a US primary election, to be her party’s candidate for Congress in  the general election, and then during the general election, she was not the candidate on the ballot. So it is still an achievement to become elected as a Black Congressman in a department in Honduras where Garifunas are not the majority and to be allowed to take your seat. That he came from such humble beginnings makes it all the more remarkable.

 Aurelio Martinez was born in a remote Honduran Garifuna village Plaplaya in the Department of Gracias a Dios, generally known as the Mosquitia that still has no electricity or running water and the only way to reach it is by canoe. He began by playing traditional Garifuna music very young, even sacred Garifuna music in ceremonies where children usually are not allowed.  His first guitar he made himself from wood and fishing line. His father immigrated to the States when he was young and one of his famous compositions is “Yalifu”(the pelican)  which is about how he would like to have wings like a pelican so he could fly to where his father was.  He did not see his father again until he was over 20 and singing in a concert in New York and told the story of the song.  He said the man who is responsible for that song is here tonight.  (http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/video/todo-el-mundo-es-musica/todo-el-mundo-es-musica-honduras-y-belize-la-aventura-garifuna/1070122).  He has also played in Los Angeles at one of the best of the best concerts organized by Aziatic (www.belizeanartist.com).

In the Spanish TV video he travels to Punta Gorda, Belize  to meet again Paul Nabor, the over 80 year old Paranda musician with whom he had played on Stonetree Records’s Paranda album. They trade some stories about some of the problems of recording of the CD in Garifuna village like mosquitos eating them alive at night and play music.  But a lot of what of they talk about is how the Garifuna man’s life has changed.  Now there are few fish in the sea, and the men just can not make a living as a fisherman as they used to. Now all the people want things. The young people all say, I am going to the United States.  Paul Nabor says if there were fish in the sea, if you could make a living here, they would not go.  Those Garifunas working in the US are up all night working just to be able to send back $100 or $200. He said he has never liked life in the US.  (http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/video/todo-el-mundo-es-musica/todo-el-mundo-es-musica-honduras-y-belize-la-aventura-garifuna/1070122). BeingGArifuna.com did a review of the video.http://www.beinggarifuna.com/blog/2012/01/19/garifuna-singer-musician-aurelio-martinez-is-subject-of-la-aventura-garifuna-documentary-on-paranda-music).

Garifuna Play tells the World about Garifunas, their history, and their language

Another example of including Garifuna language, dance, history and culture in a work by a non-Garifuna is a play by Rafael Murillo Selva.  He is considered Honduras’ most famous playwright and although he wrote several plays, his masterpiece is a play he wrote with the Garifuna, Louvagabu or the Other Side Faraway in 1980. The actors are all Garifuna originally from the village of Guadelupe about 14 km west of Trujillo.  They formed a theater troupe called “Superación Guadelupe”.  The play shows the story of the formation of the Garifunas on Saint Vincent with the Indians intermarrying with the Africans and having Black children. Then it shows how they were forced to leave San Vicente after their defeat by the English.  There is a Garifuna wake and the women sing and dance punta and the men drum and dance around them.  There is an ongoing story about how the Garifunas of Guadelupe are trying to get a road.  They visit Honduran government officials who are corrupt and want bribes and even their secretaries are corrupt. A son in the States sends a letter to his illiterate mother delivered by a postman who travels on foot from village to village and so can not stop to read the mail.  The son says in the letter “I am sending money for the road.”  The mother says, “The road! What about me?”  Over half of the dialog is in Garifuna.  A video was made of the play, the first video in Honduras about the Garifuna.

For over 18 years this play toured the world being shown primarily at theater or other festivals. Over 1,000 presentations were done before the playwright decided to retire the play.  The Honduran government gave new cement block houses to the participants in the play in Guadelupe to show appreciation for their many years of work.  But people still wanted to see the play after it had been retired.  Even though Guadelupe was previously considered a traditional village, and the actors and actresses had worked for 18 years presenting in Garifuna, when the playwright went back to recruit their children or grandchildren to be in the play, most of the young people did not speak enough Garifuna to be able to act in the play. The road had been put in, Ladinos now lived all along the road and between the Garifuna villages near Guadelupe and on their agricultural lands and in the hills behind them.  Finally the director  was able to find enough actors and actresses to put on the play, as the new cast was able to put on the play for the presentation of Honduran Garifuna Salvador Suazo’s new Garifuna-Garifuna Garifuna-Spanish dictionary in San Pedro Sula in 2012.  But in real life, as in the fictional story of the movie ”Garifuna in Peril”, the beautiful and famous traditional culture and language of the Garifunas is indeed threatened and in peril.

Important Garifuna Artists in Other Genres

Although Garifunas are most famous for their music and dance, they are also active in other styles of music and in other arts besides music.  This practice of Garifuna men to learn other music genres is apparently fairly long standing.  The first Garifuna doctor in Honduras Dr. Alfonso Lacayo did not have enough money to live in a town where there was a high school without a job, but if he went to school, how could he work?  So in the 1930’s he thought of the idea to learn a musical instrument and play in a dance band orchestra and play music at night and study during the day.  He was successful in getting a job with a Honduran dance band and played at night in Olanchito, Yoro, a center of banana production for the Standard Fruit Company.  Unfortunately he could not keep up with his studies because he was so tired during the day, so he had to find another way to make money, reported his daughter. Many Garifuna men used to play brass instruments like saxophone and trumpet, and there are traditional Garifuna dances like Tiras also called Moors and Christians which require this type of music.  Also to be buried, Garifunas accompany the coffin to the graveyard with a band of a trumpet or saxophone, bass drum and snare drum(Griffin and CEGAH,2005).  The people who play these instruments now for funerals or dances are over 70 years old.  In spite of the fact that Garifunas pay for this kind of music, young Garifuna men show no interest in learning this music and these instruments, a source of considerable concern in some Garifuna communites like Trujillo. These musicians like Don Nufo of Trujillo  also organize Garifuna groups to play “musica de recuerdo” (old style Latin music) like cha-cha-cha for special occasions like the fair, the Saturday before Easter, and Mother’s Day.

According to Garifuna painter Herman Alvarez, the first Garifuna group in Honduras to record a record was “Los Aladinos” where he was the singer.  They recorded an album of Salsa music in New York, because there were no record companies in Honduras. He went on to sing and play drums and dance with many Honduran groups including Los Profesionales, and Los Silver Stars of La Lima, who travelled all around Honduras playing at fairs. He has also danced for a number of years for the Ballet Nacional Folklorico Garifuna in Tegucigalpa, traveling around the world. In Trujillo and San Juan near Tela he has worked as a painter of excellent paintings showing Garifuna life, especially Garifuna dancers.  He says, “Since I dance, I know all the dances and moves and so I can paint them.”  Tourists from around the world arrive in Tela and take his paintings back home to Canada, the US and Europe.  Honduras This Week Online published articles on his work both as a painter and  as director, and choreographer of a Garifuna dance group for young Garifunas in San Juan. His photo and short biography are included in the section of Distinguished Garifunas in Los Garifunas de Honduras (Griffin and CEGAH,2005).

According to BeingGarifuna.com Garifunas in the US sing and play a variety of music including reggae, dancehall, bachata, meringue, R and B, Rap, etc.  For example, a popular song by a Garifuna artist is “Fue una noche” (It happened one night) which is a Spanish reggae song by Shabakan.  The video of Shabakan featuring Panchan, another Garifuna  “Mire como Meanea” (Look at how she moves) had received over 34,000 views on YouTube, so it was extremely popular..  Reggae in English is very popular in Honduran Garifuna communities, it makes sense Spanish reggae would be even more popular.  Some Garifuna songs like “Gudemei” by Young Gari, a song about overcoming poverty and not giving into poverty’s depressing grip, got over 10,000 hits on YouTube.  Teofilo Colon, the blogger at BeingGarifuna.com, said I loved this song! (http://www.beinggarifuna.com/winter-2010-2011-garifuna-hit-song-list.html).

In Honduras there are two principal areas where Garifuna paintings are produced—Tela and the Bay Island of Roatan, both tourist destinations.  Garifuna painter Cruz Bermudez has a gallery/studio “El Aura” just a short distance from the biggest resort in Tela and on the same street, Villas TelaMar.   Villas TelaMar used to be where the white executives of the Tela Railroad Company (United Fruit) lived, and across the street lived the highly qualified, usually Black, employees in company housing.  Cruz’s father worked as a mechanic and timekeeper for United Fruit, so Cruz and his brothers grew up in company housing in Tela.  When the Tela Railroad moved its headquarters to La Lima, near San Pedro, Cruz’s family bought the original company house where they grew up.  Cruz’s gallery is one of the last standing examples of banana company employee housing in Honduras. He comes from a very talented family.  Two of his other brothers also paint, and one is a professor of music at CURLA, the national university in La Ceiba.  He has been honored by the city of Tela for his painting career and Honduran TV did a special on him and his talented family. A Danish TV crew came to do a documentary of his life and the life of an American painter who lives in Honduras Guillermo Yuscarán. Cruz at first mostly painted animals, and the painting of the bird that appears in Los Garifunas de Honduras now hangs in Rome, Italy. He wanted to document Honduran birds and animals before they all became extinct, so we could at least remember them, he said in an interview in 2012. But now he does some striking paintings of Garifunas and other people like Haitian boat people fleeing to liberty. Every year for the art exposition in La Ceiba for Garifuna Day organized by ODECO since 1997, Cruz has exhibited paintings. He also exhibits at the fair in Tela and was featured in an exposition on Self-Taught Artists in Tegucigalpa and Honduran Spanish language and Honduras This Week Online newspapers did articles on him and his art. 

Although tourism is down in Honduras, first due to Hurricane Mitch and now due to the high crime rate and the highest per capita  murder rate in the world, Cruz says Canadian tourists still come and buy his paintings, although other Tela painters like Ladino Napoleon Villalta are suffering economic hardship with the change. Cruz’s brother Gil Bermudez whose paintings are in Los Garifunas de Honduras and was featured in Honduras this Week Online, gave up painting and opened a medicinal plant clinic. Tela Garifuna painter and previous owner of the Tela Garifuna Museum, Máxima Tomas married a Canadian and immigrated to Canada. Herman Alvarez is planning to move to the Bay Islands, where thousands of tourists arrive each year on cruise ships and to go scuba diving on the world's second largest coral reef.

Cruz Bermudez was excited a few years ago when the US government sent a Black Ambassador to Honduras Larry Palmer, and he painted a special painting of him.   The Garifunas in general were excited about this and invited to Larry Palmer to visit them in the Garifuna community of Limon, east of Trujillo.  He went, but when he was getting near Trujillo on the road from Limon to Corocito, he was stopped by the Honduran police asking to see his papers and the papers of the car.  He showed the documents and asked what was wrong.  The police said,  It was so unusual to see a Black man driving such a nice car, that it must have been stolen, that is why they stopped him.  

Cruz thinks famous Garifuna composer Victor Bermudez is an uncle of his.  According to Professor Batiz, the golden age of Garifuna music started when Victor Bermudez’s mother died and he composed a punta song for her.  Since he was a breakman on the Truxillo Railroad (a United Fruit subsidiary in Colon), every time they stopped in the many Garifuna villages of Colon, he would teach people his songs. Some Garifuna composers have composed over 200 songs in Garifuna, kept alive by Garifuna dance clubs and other singers.

A Garifuna painter on Roatan is Marco Tulio Guillen, a native of Guadelupe, Colon west of Trujillo. He paints beautiful Garifuna themed paintings like a fisherman with an oar by his canoe. His brother Celso Guillen also paints.  He paints cotton  cloth bags, skirts, and shirts with Garifuna scenes and also produces silkscreened decorated clothes. He employs several Garifuna women in Guadelupe who make the clothes and bags for him.  He is also on the city council of the “municipio” (like a US county) of Santa Fe, for the UD party, Honduras’ newest and most left wing party, made up of Honduran union members, Agrarian Reform agricultural cooperative members, among others.

About one quarter of Honduras's Garifunas now live in on the three main urban centers--Tegucigalpa, San Pedro, Sula and La Ceiba.  Santos Arzu is a Tegucigalpa Garifuna painter who paints modern art and has received awards at the painting salons held in Tegucigalpa. Garifuna Peter Centeno was helped by a teacher to study art professionally in Mexico. He worked  for 20 years as a commercial artist for San Pedro Sula newspapers like La Prensa.  His painting of "Yan Canu" or "Mascaro", a Garifuna dance shown in Garifuna in Peril, was put on Honduran postage stamp to celebrate the 200th anneversary of the arrival of the Garifunas in 1997, and now hangs in a Tegucigalpa hotel. He has had his own Gallery in San Pedro, and has exhibited at Garifuna bicentential art exhibitions in La Ceiba.   In addition to a Honduras This Week Online article on him, he was the only Honduran artist included in Encyclopeida Caribe (www.encaribe.com)

Some Garifuna painters have immigrated to the US.  Sabas Whittaker, whose mother was a Black Bay Islander of Gran Caymanian descent, and his father was a Garifuna from Punta Gorda, Roatan Honduras, now lives outside of Hartford, Connecticut. He began his career as a merchant marine at age 15 and later worked in law enforcement and then in Mental Health.  He paints, makes artistic furniture, and he composes music, including producing two CD’s of Latin jazz music which he composed and played. He has published 4 books—two books of poetry, a book about faith and the mental health field called Faith in the Field, and a history book “Africans in the Americas”.  He has written, produced, composed music, and directed plays, such as “Don’t look down on Your brother if you’re not going to pick him up” about the homeless.  This was performed as a benefit for FISH homeless shelters in 1991 at the famed historical Warner Theater is Torrington, CT. Two of his children’s plays that he wrote were later put on to benefit the Connecticut AIDS Buddy Network in 1994.   Honduras This Week Online did an article on him when his book “Africans in the Americas” was published.

Sabas’s brother Overton Whittaker was famous a journalist.  In addition to working for Honduran radio stations and Tegucigalpa newspapers like La Prensa and La Tribuna, he worked overseas for many years including as one of the few Black reporters covering the Vietnam War and also in Germany. Rosie, Sabas Whittaker's cousin, is a graduate of Columbia university in New york and is an editor for People En Español in New York City.  Another famous Garifuna reporter was Julio Ariola, whose report on the news of Trujillo for Radio America was heard all over Honduras for decades.  Now over 90 he still does reporting for local radio stations in Trujillo.

In Belize like in Honduras and the US, the best known Garifuna painter is also a musician. Pen Cayetano, the inventor of punta rock, and the originator of the Original Turtle Shell Band was also a painter. .There are other Belizean Garifuna painters whose names I do not know, but their beautiful and well done paintings showing tradtional Garifuna life including the dugu and Mascaro, hang prominently in Banco Atlantida's La Ceiba  branch.  One such Belizean Garifuna painter was the late Benjamin Nicholas (http://www.ngcbelize.org/content/view/12/138      http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/69013).  His son  Isiah Nicholas is also a painter in the same style (www.rogallery.com/Nicholas_Isiah/Nicholas_bio.htm).  Belizean Garifuna painter Greg Palacio (son of Clifford J. Palacio who worked on the dictionary) studied painting under Pen Cayetano and Benjamin Nicolas. Garifuna in Peril co-producer Ali Allie has started work on a film portrait of him and his work, but that project is on hold for right now.

One of the most famous Garifuna playwrights in the US arrived in New York in the early 1800’s.  In 1823 a play about the Garifuna hero Joseph Chatoyer was written by playwright William Henry Brown who is believed to be a Garifuna from St. Vincent.  His play, the Drama of King Shotoway, was the first Black drama of the American theater.  The subject is the 1795 Black Carib Insurecction on the Island of St. Vincent. (www.garifunacoalition.org).

The most famous Honduran Garifuna writer is Salvador Suazo, the author of at least 10 books.  He has written dictionaries and grammar books and Conversation books to learn Garifuna, books on the history of the Garifuna, a Garifuna cookbook, a book on the Esotheric Beliefs of the Garifuna religion, a collection of Garifuna stories in Garifuna and Spanish, a Garifuna songbook with cassette Lanigui Garifuna. Some of his books are for sale at www.garinet.com.  Under the Manuel Zelaya government, he was Vice Minister of Culture. He was one of only 5 Hondurans included in Encyclopedia Caribe (www.encaribe.org) an online free Encyclopedia of Caribbean history and Culture organized by universities in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.  The director of the National Garifuna Folklore Ballet Armando Crisanto Melendez has also written a few books on Garifuna culture, not all of which have been published. Much of Garifuna literature is oral and in Garifuna.  There are traditional Garifuna stories called "Uraga",usually told by men at wakes, several collections of which have been published. There are other Garifuna stories which people just tell, mostly as experiences of what has happened to people, like a "duende" (a nature spirit) possessing someone. The people who tell "uragas" are often quite old, and reportedly the best "uragistas" have already died.  In Honduras there were at least 2 projects to collect "uraga" in which people of the Ministry of Cutlure and the Ballet Folklorico Garifuna participated and then the results were not published, showing the difference in the level of support Honduran Garifunas as compared to Belizean Garifunas have had.

In a newspaper interview of Cristanto Melendez’s daughter Ashanty, who also dances for the Ballet, she said Garifunas are well known for music, sports, and food, but not for science.  In fact, one of the best known biologists in Honduras, Dr. Cirilio Nelson of the UNAH is Garifuna.  He has an herbarium with examples of over 10,000 Honduran plants and has produced at least two books with the common and scientific names of all Honduran plants.  Anyone doing research on the Honduran rainforest or medicinal plants in Honduras, has to consult his work.  Dr. Tulio Mariano Gonzales, the Minister of Culture, has his doctorate in tree science, and has been president of the profesional organization of Hondurans who work in Forestry.

There are also Honduran Garifuna agronomists, like Noel Ruiz.  While working with CEGAH, he not only taught modern ideas  of agronomy like organic fertilizers and "seed banks" for Garifuna root crops that are becoming scarce, but he also listened to the old women farmers who explained about how to plant according to the phases of the moon and other traditional techniques. Studies of attempts of non-Indian agronomists to try to change how Arawak and Carib Indians farmers farm yuca or cassava, have shown most of their advice does not work.  If you add fertilizer, the yuca gets smaller and the leaves grow more. If you plow, the yuca  does not grow as well, reported ethnobiologist Paul House. .If you plant in a swampy area, like one Honduran agronomist suggested, the yuca rots.After 3,000 years of planting yuca, the Garifuna women know good techniques how to plant yuca.  Noel Ruiz was so popular as an agronomist, partly because he incoporated Garifuna ideas into his farming seminars, that he was recently elected Mayor of the Garifuna "muncipio" (like a US county) of Santa Fe, Colon, west of Trujillo.

Garifunas of Belize Guatemala Social Movements Protect Their Culture and Language

Garifunas of Belize and Guatemala and their Social Movements

Garifunas of Belize and Social Movements to Protect Their Culture and Language

At first Garifuna settlements, founded in the early 1800’s, were not well accepted in Belize, but rather the English speaking white population suggested removing them from the Settlement.  However, eventually they were accepted because they provided help patrolling the Coast, they sold food which the women raised, and the men worked cutting mahoghany in the 19^th century.  Catholic missionaries were active among them, and starting in the 1800’s founded schools among them  Beginning around 1913, the Jesuit priests who worked among the Garifuna began using Garifuna teachers all around Belize. One author estimated that 75% of the teachers in rural Belize were Garifunas.  Many were multilingual, speaking Garifuna, Spanish, Creole English and Mayan languages.

In 1920 Garifuna Thomas Vincent Ramos immigrated with his wife from Honduras to Belize. He was a school teacher, but also a visionary founding the Carib Development and Sick Aid Society (CDS) and later the Carib International Society (CIS).  Both organizations spread and were established in all Garifuna communities of Belize and the CIS has affiliations as well in Guatemala and Honduras.  He fought to get Garifuna nurses assigned to Dangriga hospital, in a Garifuna community of Dangriga or Stann Creek. He was concerned with the promotion and preservation of the Garifuna cultural heritage.  In 1940 he approached the Governor of the Belize with two other Garifunas and asked for the establishment of a Public and Bank Holiday to observe the arrival of the Garifunas from Roatan, Honduras under Alejo Beni November 19^th.  This was granted and “Settlement Day” was celebrated in Stann Creek District beginning in 1941.  In Punta Gorda or Toledo District it began to be celebrated in 1943.  In 1977 Garifuna Settlement Day became officially a Public and Bank Holiday throughout Belize  T. V. Ramos died 13 November 1955 and every year on November 13, there is a torchlight parade in honor to his contribution to the Garifuna people and Belize. (Sebastian Cayetano in Avila, 2009)

This inspired Guatemalan, Honduran, and US Garifunas.  In Guatemala, they celebrate the settlement of the Livingston area by Honduran Garifunas with a ceremony called “Yarumein” (St. Vincent). Previously they celebrated this together with the fair of San Isidro Labrador, but after the Declaration of National Garifuna Day as 26 November, they moved the event to the 26 November (Arrivillaga Cortes, 2007).    In Honduras, Garifuna organizations like ODECO have sought to have special times set aside to remember the Garifuna arrival, which has resulted since the 1990’s  in “Mes de Herencia Africana” the African Heritage month in April to honor the culture and heritage of all Afro-Hondurans including Garifunas, Bay Islanders, Miskitos and Afro-Mestizos, and later “Garifuna Day” 12 April. This Day is celebrated with parades, cultural presentations, speeches, and sometimes a Garifuna Mass or an arrival of the Garifunas by canoe, used both to represent the arrival of the Garifunas to Honduras and the arrival of the ancestors for the ancestor ceremony dugu since 1997, the bicentennial of the arrival of the Garifunas to Honduras. While most Garifuna communities arrange some sort of event to celebrate Garifuna Day, Garifuna organizations like ODECO also try to arrange one big Garifuna Day event in a different Garifuna community each year.   Some years Honduran presidents like Manuel Zelaya and Pepe Lobo come to Garifuna communities like Trujillo and Santa Fe to celebrate African Heritage month, together with all the Honduran press who follow them, so there is sometimes Honduran  national press coverage of these events.   New York Garifunas under the Garifuna Coalition have successfully sought to have 13 March to 12 April declared Garifuna-Honduran heritage month in New York and it is celebrated with a series of events including a mass for the victims of the Happy Land fire, a dinner and cultural presentation and awards to Garifuna community leaders in both New York and Central America (www.Garifunacoalition.org)

Like the Honduran Garifuna, the Belizean Garifunas were active in the trade unions which became legal after 1943, particularly the General Workers Union which had members and affiliates in Dangriga among the Garifuna of the Pomona Citrus Factory. Between 1950-1952 the labor union leaders also became leaders of political movement which in 1952 became the People’s United Party.  Shortly thereafter George Price emerged as leader of that.  In 1954, under the leadership of Mr. Price, universal adult suffrage was achieved, a right that had previously been denied in this multi-ethnic, polyglot country.

In 1961 Hurricane Hattie struck Belize and destroyed Belize City and Dangriga.  It was economis ruin for Belize.  Shortly thereafter Belizeans, Creoles, and Garifunas began immigrating to the US, mostly in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.  It has been estimated there are 20,000-50,000 Belizeans in the US.  In 1988, remittances to Belize totaled $10 million dollars.

In 1966 some Belizean Garifunas formed the Waribagaba Dance Group. In 1967, some Karibs from St. Vincent were brought to Belize, the first meeting of Karibs from St. Vincent and the Garifuna in almost 200 years.   In 1972  the Miss Garifuna Belize National Contest was started. In 1979 Garifuna Theodore Aranda assumed the leadership of the United Democratic Party, the highest post ever held by a Garifuna up to that time. The first Garifuna to hold a Permanent Secretary position (a cabinet post similar to Honduran Ministries) was Edmund Zuniga in the Ministry of Defense in 1988. On October 7, 1982 Garifuna Father Martin was ordained Bishop Oswald Peter Martin, the Bishop of Belize and Belmopan. A Garifuna radio show was started in 1980 and the National Garifuna Council of Belize  was formed in 1981. The Garifunas who make up only 6% of the population of Belize were being recognized.

The main task of the Garifuna Council is the coordination and enhancement of economic, cultural and social development of Garinagu in Belize. Together with the Toledo Maya Council, the Garifuna Council became a founding member in 1987 of the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP), which also included the Karibs of Dominica and St. Vincent and the Indians of Guyana.  The first conference was held in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the theme of the Conference was Caribbean Indigenous Revival: towards Greater Recognition and Development. Dr.  Joseph Palacio, a Garifuna anthropologist, and resident tutor of the University of West Indies, Belize, was the coordinator of the COIP Secretariat in Belize.  His 2005  book The Garifuna a Nation across Borders,  is for sale on Amazon.com. In 1988, the Garifuna Council was fully legalized and registered in Belize and organized a trip to 10 Honduran Garifuna communities (This entire section on the Belizean Garifunas is from Sebastian Cayetano’s article “Garifuna Re-Settlement in Central America:Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize” in Avila, 2009). There have been many meetings between Belizean Garifuna linguist Roy Cayetano who wrote the People's Dictionary English-Garifuna, Garifuna.English and was a member of the National Garifuna Council of Belize, and the Garifuna teachers of Honduras to help develop a standardized Garifuna alphabet as part of the bilingual-intercultural education program.. The Garifuna Council has also organized courses on making Garifuna crafts and courses on Garifuna dancing in Belize.

Garifuna Organizations in Guatemala

The Garifuna live in Guatemala in or around the port of Livingston on the Gulf Coast of Guatemala.  There are an estimated 4,000-5,000 Guatemalan Garifunas (Avila, 2009).  In the 1980's young Garifunas who belonged to the group "Ibimeni" (sweetness) formed a group that later became "Despertar Garifuna Marcos Sanchez Diaz" (Wake Up Garifuna Marcos Sanchez Diaz).  Marcos Sanchez Diaz was the leader of the group of Garifunas who founded the Garifuna settlements in Guatemala in 1799.  Later the organization "Organización Negra Guatemalteca" (Organization of Guatemalan Blacks) was formed.  The Guatemalan Garifunas have fought to have a special day named after them, and 26 November is now National Garifuna Day (Arrivillaga Cortés, 2007)  The Garifuna did not play a significant part during the recent 30 year civil war in Guatemala, preferring to remain neutral or after 1960 to immigrate to the US.  While in Honduras and in Belize, there are now modern large cement block homes in Garifuna communities, built by Garifunas in the US who plan to return someday and live in them in their retirement, as 1990, these types of homes were not being built by the Guatemala Garifuna immigrants (Avila, 2009). A number of Guatemala Garifunas living in the US like Paula Castillo, Socie Style,Eddy GNG and some members of Garifuna Kids have become famous as Garifuna musicians or singers, with Socie Style's music with Soriano (aka Jasha) "Wara Wara" getting almost 20,000 hits on YouTube (www.beinggarifuna.com).  There is a CD of tradtional Guatemalan Garifuna music for sale by Barnes and Noble.com  on the Internet--Ibimeni-Garifuna Traditional Music from Guatemala.  There is a custom that the Garifuna Women's Dance Club of Livingston, Guatemala some years comes to Trujillo to sing with the women's dance clubs there, and other years the Trujillo women's dance clubs go to Livingston, Guatemala to sing.  This helps keep ties strong between this otherwise isolated Garifuna community and the other Garifuna communities.   The Garifunas of Guatemala have a bilingual-intercultural education program as do the various Maya groups of Guatemala and the Xinca Indians of Guatemala, reports Tulane linguist and anthropologist Judith Maxwell.