Part IV
Garifuna and Miskito Audio Visual Materials Sources
Vimeo.com has over 159 Garifuna videos. Also a lot of
Lenca videos related to the struggle at Rio Blanco including the beautiful
musical video of a song dedicated to the Rio Gualcarque which the Lencas are
fighting against making into a dam. At the end of the video it just says the
names of two Lencas who have died in the struggle with Honduran government
forces over protests against the dam and the line they would have liked to have
heard this song if they were still alive.
Flickr also has some Garifuna videos
especially that of Katherine hall Trujillo’s TED talk, as well as 8.000 photos
of Garifunas.
Also
important on Vimeo.com is the 2011 Paradaise in Peril video about the
destruction of the Rio Platano biosphere where Garifunas, Miskito Indians and the Pech
Indians live, also a video on the issue of what are supposedly green fuels but
actually are excused to steal land and use pesticides which hurt workers,
including 8,000 with renal insufficiency in Nicaragua, and also Guatemalan
Indians and the people in the Lower Aguan (Bajo Aguan).
There are
also videos about the land problems of the Garifunas and militarization of the Mosquitia on
RealNews.com. The RealNews.com video
about Trujillo has the video of Randy Jurgensen, which if searching for his
name on google in English and in Spanish comes up with lots of interesting
stories about him and why he is called the king of porn, about who is
supporting his investments in the Trujillo area from outside of Honduras
including Barrick Gold and Dominion Bank of Canada, and Canadian Imperialism as
related to the 2009 coup. Who is supporting his investments in the Trujillo,
Santa Fe, Guadelupe area inside Honduras are also interesting stories. Who is
supporting the ZEDE or Model Cities and the development of the Bay Islands and
behind Miguel Facusse and FICOHSA and Jaime Rosenthal outside and inside
Honduras are also interesting stories worth considering.
More
sources Maps on the Internet
See the
Honduran government’s official Model cities website www.zede.gob.hn. It is
linked to the Wikipedia in Spanish article on ZEDE (zonas Economicas de Desarrollo). It has maps with the potential Model cities.
This website also has the signed Memorandum of Understanding, the one of the
internet is for Cortes. It also has a road that does not exist from Manto
through the Rio Platano Biosphere and to the coast. It is helpful to read the
El heraldo article on the expansion of the port at Puerto Castilla to attend
ships for mining and for African palms. There have been street protests by the
people at Puerto Castilla after hearing about this proposed expansion, which I
presume would require expanding from one dock to four docks will require
getting rid of the houses of the current village of Puerto castilla, which has
a land title. Whether one of these docks will actually be the dock for the
cruise ships which require deep water for post-Panamax ships is not
stated. Randy Jurgensen the owner of the
Trujillo cruise dock now has another company called the Trujillo Development
Authority, which translated into Spanish would not really makes any sense to
Hondurans.
See the US
government’s official Southern command (southcom) website. They have the map of
where they work and their policies and projects. I also recommend the Africa
com (Africa Command) website which if that discussion of US national interests
in Africa does not give you chills, I do not know what will.
On www.Vimeo.com there are 159 videos about
Garifunas, including one “ Comite de Emergencia Garifuna “ (CEGAH). www.vimeo.com/242885331 This video on Vimeo about the Comite de
Emergencia Garifuna by the Equator Initiative of UNDP is narrated by the current executive Director
CEGAH Nilda Gotay and tells about their work while showing photos of their
work. The video was commissioned by the Equator initiative of UNDP. The
Garifunas of CEGAH were one of 24 semi-finalists for the Equator Prize in the
whole world for combining development projects while at the same time
protecting the environment. They were
invited to speak at the COP-7 conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and speak
about their work when they were named semi-finalists. The Comite de Emergencia
is also the co-author of my book Los Garifunas de Honduras. There were numerous articles in Honduras This
Week about the Garifuna Emergency Committee where Wendy Griffin volunteered for
about 7 years including one specifically on Lucha Garifuna and at least 4 on
the problems of rebuilding Santa Rosa de Aguan. Most of the articles Wendy
Griffin did for Honduras this Week for the 1999-2000 time period were articles
on one year after hurricane Mitch stories, including southern Honduras, the
Chorti area, the Pech area, Roatan and Guanaja in the Bay Islands, the
Mosquitia (Puerto lempira, Brus Laguna,Tawahka area) and everywhere on the
North Coast including visiting every agency that controlled protected areas on
the North Coast. Wendy Griffin spoke at SALALM in 2014 about some of the
Garifunas in the Garifuna Emergency committee of Honduras as co-authors of her
book Los Garifunas de Honduras and makers of these videos who also have
children in the US.
Also a
very good video on vimeo.com is Paradise in Peril about the destruction of the
rio Platano biosphere as of 2012. It has worsened even since then. Comparing
this video full of cattle and grass and fire, and the 2000 video Discovering
the rio Platano biosphere inSearch of Ciudad blanca with dense forest almost
impossible to get through is startling. There are also good videos about other
agencies that work with comite about issues of good farming techniques, and
rural development Red Comal, which includes a Lenca compostura, which are very
rare to capture on film. Vimeo has many videos related to the lenca struggle in
Rio Blanco including a song to the Rio gualcarque, which is dedicated to the
lencas who have died in that struggle with the hondruan government against a
dam, which just ends the following people would have liked to been here to hear
this if they were still alive.
Nacer en
Honduras This struggle and issues around lenca identity for the lenca anthropologist,
for the lencas themselves, and honduras’s current president Juan Orlando
hernandez, who called himself hijo del indomintio Indio lempira (the son of
undefeatable Indian lempira, a Lenca hero of the resistance against the Spanish
conquest for whom the Honduran money is named and who is mentioned in the
National anthem and who has a department named after him and has a day 20 July
named for him), but at the same this Honduran president was sending police with
hoods and guns to threaten the Lencas with una matacina, a massacre, was part
of Wendy Griffin’s 2014 Salalm presentation. The issue of identity and identity
conflict was very pertinent for SALALM 2014 and the current situation in
Honduras. For the video of Juan Orlando Hernandez’s inauguration speech
referring to indio lempira, see the blog nacerenhonduras. It was originally on
the El heraldo’s excellent multimedia
presentation about the Honduran January 2014 toma de possession (taking of
power).
11.
Revolutionary medicine: the Video on the First Garifuna hospital
In health
there are over 34 Garifuna doctors and dozens of Garifuna nurses working in
Honduras. One Garifuna doctor gained
fame in the US because he had worked hard to open the first Garifuna hospital
in the remote area of Iriona, Colon where there are thousands of traditional
Garifunas as well as a number of Ladino communities. This hospital was open
during Manuel Zelaya’s presidency, but after the coup was threatened to be shut
down. There is a link to the hospital on BeingGarifuna.com. There is now a movie about the hospital made
by some Canadian students called Revolutionary Medicine: The First Garifuna
Hospital. They have a Facebook page which is the easiest way to contact them
about trying to get a copy of the video. Writing to their emails does not work.
Some
Internet sites for photos of Garifuna crafts and environment
Balbina Chimilio also made the Garifuna dolls in the Burke
Museum at the University of Washington and in the Ethnic toy Museum of Neuquen,
Argentina. To see the Honduran crafts in the Burke Museum go to
link: http://collections.burkemuseum.org/ethnology/ and
in the search box at the bottom of the page type in the following:
%2013-189% and hit the search button. 2013-189 is the accession number assigned
to the objects Wendy Griffin donated, and then each object has a unique number,
like 2013-189. No - not any catalog remarks show up. There are more Garifuna
crafts here and not all the Garifuna crafts areup on the Internet yet.
Balbina also had the Garifuna dolls on Wikimedia Commons and
the Garifuna dolls in the Museo de Juquete Tradicional Neuquen, Argentina.
Wendy Griffin knows of at least two movies on the subject of Black Dolls. At
the Langston Hughes film Festival in 2013 in Seattle, the same year garífuna in
peril played there, there was a 25minute movie on Why do you collect black
dolls? More striking is a movie produced in Nigeria and which played at a
filmfestival at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Blue eyes of Yadira,
about a African Young girl who feels her life would be different if only her
eyes were blue like her dolls. Working with Garifuna dolls with the Garifunas
and black platics dolls (morenos) among
the Pech (who do not like blonde dolls which they identify as little old
lady dolls) and the mulatto dolls produced by a woman outside of Trujillo and
also in the Burke Museum and the Museo de Juquetes Tradicionales have sparked
many interesting reflections on dolls and girls and self image and whether the
person has a positive self image about their race.
Notice that Garifuna dolls are usually superelegant, in
their finest and most formal attire and have necklaces and earrings, and often
beads in their braided hair. They often make male dolls too, and one person
commented that you should always make pairs, so that the dolls are not lonely.
The Garifunas, the Miskitos, and some Afro-Cubans have also had religious
traditions related to dolls and ancestors, but they are not the same customs.
In Honduras the custom of voodoo dolls, which are put in the person’s path and
stuck with pins, etc. only has been noted among the Ladinos, who are partly
descended from Afro-Mestizos, but the topic of that type of witchcraft is not
opening discussed, although other types like attracting or keeping a partner or
separating acouple, are currently opening advertised in Honduran daily Spanish
papers.
Photos
Related to the Honduran Craft Exhibition
and Donation and bilingual intercultural
Education and Authors--Links to Leigh Thelmadatter’s photos on Wikimedia
Commons about the Central american linguists conference and the craft exhibit
there and the fórum on Bilingual –Intercultural Education with representatives
of all the Indians, and Afro-Hondurans. Fotos de Artesanías Hondureñas que
fueron donadas al Museo Burke de la
Universidad de Washington después de ser en exhibición en la UPN y en el
Congreso de Linguistas Centroamericanos
en Tegucigalpa, en la Universidad
de Kansas y la Universidad de Washington Occidental (WWU) y la Sociedad de
Antropologia Aplicada.
Balbina’s
daughter Reinita also has painted seashell jewerly in the Burke Museum
collection.
Balbina was
also a member of the Comité de Emergencia Garifuna de Honduras which helped
write my book Los Garifunas de Honduras: Cultura, Lucha, y Derechos Bajos el
Convenio 169 de la OIT, which is in a number of US libraries in Spanish and a
few in an earlier English version. There are photos and descriptions of most
Garifuna dances, and these dances and ceremonies can be seen in Garifuna in
Peril, in El Espiritu de Mi Mama, Monico Productions videos, and on youtube.
There are also photos and descriptions by Wendy Griffin of the Garifuna, Bay
islander, Miskito, dances in David Flores’s book La Evolución Historica de la
Danza Folklorica Hondureña in some US university libraries and a book review of
that book i son HondurasWeekly.com for February 2013.
Balbina Chimilio as member of Club
Wabaragoun
CD recorded by Radio France in Trujillo, Honduras under the
name “Les Chansons des Caraïbs Noires” (The Songs of the Black Caribs)
Every Club Wabaragoun member was given one copy. Sold in
Honduras under the name Club Wabaragoun Cultura Garifuna 100%. Wabaragoun means Vamos Adelante Todos
Juntos/Let’s go forward together. Head of the Club is Enrique “Esly” Garcia.
The Garifunas are descended from the Caribs and Arawaks of
St. Vincent in the Windward islands. There are Carib and Arawak crafts from
St.vincent, from other islands in the Caribbean and inward from st. Vincent
into the orinico valley and into the Amazon basin. These precolumbian crafts
can be seen on the website of the Yale Peabody Museum. There are relations
between the Shell crafts on St. Vincent and the modern Shell crafts of the
Honduran garífunas at the Burke Museum, including conchshells cut in the form
of zemis . There is a saying among the garífunas that the older Garifunas were
garífunas de hacha y azadón (of axe and of hoe). In the St. Vincent crafts it
is posible to see axes and hoes of the precolumbian period among the Garifunas.
The garífuna men were previously fishermen. At the yale peabody Museum you can
see net sinkers and bone fishhooks used by the precolumbian fishermen of St.
Vincent. At the yale Museum you can see the bitter yuca god statue with a
fanine basket for carrying yuca (manioc) on the head. In the book Los garífunas
de Honduras, you can see the Garifuna women carrying these baskets on their
head. These baskets are made of gomerei o belaire among the Garifunas. Other
crafts like small basket and basket strainers and sifters can be seen in the
burke Museum collection.
Another Museum that has a collection related to the Garifunas
is the Field Museum in Chicago. The Garifuna men paddle canoes. Among the
Tulalip Indians of Washington state, the canoe paddle is kind of a symbol of
leadership among the men. This appears to be true among the Garifunas and the
Caribs, too. In the Field Museum, there is a small Green Stone paddle, which is
almost certainly a sign of leadership of the person who carried it. Among the
modern Garifunas they use the full size modern wooden canoe paddles which have
exactly the sameform as the Green Stone paddle in the Field Museum. When adult Garifuna men sing the songs of
mature old men called “arumajani” at dugus, there should be at least 4 men
singing, and the end one should stand supporting himself on acanoe paddle.
These arumajani songs which are about the travails at sea, for hunting, or
problems in love, as similar to men’s ancestor songs among the Bantus in
Southern Africa and it is common that when male ancestors appear at ceremonies
what they want to sing are arumajani songs. Garifuna songs likeAfrican songs
are not sung alone, but rahter a leader and a chorus, so someone in the
ceremony needs to sing with the ancestors when they want to sing. the loss of
the Garifuna ,men in the communities, and who are willing to sing in
ceremonies,and who know fluent Garifuna and
know arumajani songs has been discussed as missing for decades among the
Garifunas. It is interesting that nancie gonzales said older Garifuna men in
New York did a recording of arumajani,as it was easier to find the older men in
new york city than in Honduras. Wendy Griffin
has small mahoghany paddles Garifuna style for the burke Museum but has not
given them to them yet.
The Smithsonian Latino Center is planning an exhibit on the
Indigenous elements of Caribbean culture which should include the Garifunas
(the Black Caribs for whom the Caribbean sea is named), but so far they only
have one Garifuna drum in the Natural History Museum’s collection. Garifuna
drums are important for understanding the current ecological crisis, as they
need skins of deer or collared peccary (quequeo) and a vine from the beach, to
tightened the head, and trees wide enough enough make a drum, which in the case
of ceremonial drums are three feet across. In Trujillo the drum maker uses wild
avocado trees to make the body of the drum, but Wikipedia articles report other
woods. The story of the maracas is also similar with special red seeds with a
black point on them being used inside and these only grow wild in the low
rainforest and only certain type of jicaro are used whcih are planted. There are
examples of Garifuna maracas in the Burke Museum, also Pech maracas. A special
Garifuna pipe is used and not only do they need the nut of the corozo palm and
tobaco that is not contaminated by chemicals, but also “buei” the bark of a
wild tree. All shaman use pipes. The destruction of the rainforest affects the
rainforest Indians and the Garifunas including their music, their religión,
their ceremonies.
There are Garifuna Museums in Los Angeles and the gulisi
Garifuna Museum in Dangriga, Belize. There used to be a Garifuna Museum in
Tela, Honduras and many photos inWendy griffin’s book Los Garifunas de honduras, are crafts from
this museum which also had paintings. There are also Garifuna paintings in the
Burke Museum and also Dr.James loucky of WWU’s Anthropology Dept. has one
Garifuna painting by Cruz Bermudez. Tete Cobbah, cousin of Dr.Pashington obeng
at Harvard did videos of Garifunas both shaman and artists and craft people and
also members of a youth group in the
Trujillo área and in Tela área. Contact Dr.Obeng for additional information.
Book of Photography of Coral Reefs
One of the main reasons that people go to the North coast of
Honduras is to go scuba diving among the coral reefs of Honduras in the Bay
Islands. There are on Youtube and vimeo videos about roatan, utila, Honduran
coral reefs, or the Bay Islands, which the editor of HondurasWeekly.com has
sometimes highlighted on that website.
Really good
underwater photography of coral reefs is not easy.
To be able to see what they looked like before
they were destroyed, I recommend the book. “A Coral Perspective: Tropical Reef
Imagesfromthe portfolio of Underwater Photographer Connie Whelan”
which is available from
www.coralperspectives.com which is based
in Portland Oregon. Three of the photos are
from Cayos Cochinos or Hog Keys, small islands belong to the Department of the
Bay Islands in Honduras. There are three Garifuna communities there, which are
part of the book Land Grab by Keri Brondo, and their legal story up to 2005 is
in the book Los Garifunas de Honduras as the only ILO Convention 169 violation
complaint by the Garifunas that reached the level of a fact finding misión and
intervention of the ILO International Labor Organization).
The story had been followed by Honduras This
week and involved the Smithsonian tropical Institute as well which was given
authority on the islands.
There are also
articles and reports on Garinet.com from ODECO, the Garifuna organization,
about the issue.
In truthout in May
2014, they are reporting about three planned US military bases along the North
coast of Honduras and the effects of militarization particularly in Hog keys
and
has a photo of the Hog keys. Mexican
newspapers also reported one of the áreas the in theory anti-drug fighting US
naval bases were going in specifically was Hog keys or Cayos Cochinos. Latinalista.com
also recently reported in English on US military bases in Latin America,
republishing a study done by a think tank that follows the US policy in Latin
America.
The book Honduran Law by Melanie Whetzel
begins with her arrival in the Bay Islands first to scuba dive and then to
teach scuba diving before she went on to law school in
Honduras. Her surprise to find out who lives
on the Bay islands or in Honduras is fairly typical of people who come to
Honduras, and even people in Tegucigalpa including University students don’t
know who lives in the Bay islands or why. My “book” on Bay Islanders available
for free on the Internet in English and in Spanish at some libraries including
the University of Pittsburgh was written because the librarían at IHAH
(Honduran Institute of Anthropology and
History) in Tegucigalpa said he really needed a book on Bay islanders also
called Isleños because high school teachers require the students to study the
nine ethnic groups of Honduras, and he had nothing on the Black English
speakers and Isleños. I had some research that I had done either for newspaper
articles or for David Flores’s dance book, or the book we were working on with
Cesar Indiano about crafts, or somethings I had related to intercultural
education in the Bay islands, or on oral history of the North coast also with
Cesar Indiano, and oral literatura that I used to teach comparative literature
at the UNAH and
I put it together in
booklet form and gave it to him. Some Black English speakers on the North Coast
liked it so much they gave it to Friends and they put it up on the Internet.
Working with Sabas Whittaker on improving the food section of that book, is how
I met Dr. Dario Euraque, and how he and I became Friends.
Wendy
Griffin’s Bay Islander book on the Internet--Griffin,Wendy (2004) The History
and Culture of the Bay Islanders and North Coast English speakers
.s114101627.onlinehome.us/files/Isleno.pdf
Sources
of US Indian videos on topics related to Garifuna issues
(www.richheape.com/black-indians-american-story.htm).
Many
Americans are unaware of the existence of blacks mixed with Indians, so this is
an introduction that is helpful. He also has the videos on the trail of tears
about the Cherokee
Indian
Education or the lack of bilingual intercultural education and ILO Convention
169
Riche
Heape productions which is owned by US Native Americans also produced “Our Spirits Don’t speak English: Indian
boarding Schools”, an award winning film.
This film made me proud that I have spent over 20 years trying to change
this system with people in their 60’s crying and choking up still over the
effects of the Indian boarding schools in the US on them. The Issue of Indian Boarding Schools
is heavily discussed among US Indians and even more among Canadian Indians who
are just finishing the Truth Commission about them, as noted in The Guardian in
May 2014. The Canadian Indians organizing the World Council of Indigenous
Peoples altogether which the Garifunas belonged to, was what in the end made it
possible to write and get approved ILO convention 169 on the Human rights on
indigenous Peoples in Independent countries, which includes extensive bilingual
intercultural education rights besides land rights and labor rights. With two
exceptions of non-Latin American countries, all who have approved ILO
convention 169 are in Latin America. One other is Dominica which is where
Caribs related to the Garifunas still live, and that adoption is almost
certainly a result of Garifuna related organizing of the Indigenous Peoples of
the Caribbean under a Garifuna professor of the University of the West Indies,
Belize Joseph Palacios whose books are
usually sold by Amazon.com. The only
African country to approve it is the Central African Republic, and what the
relation to that is with the current ethnic violence there , I am not sure. I have heard right wing money
and ideas are fueling hate of Christian Africans against non-christians and
animists, and this country also has a long history of human rights problems
with its Pygmy population, but what is really happening I don’t know. Purich
Publications in Saskatewan Canada has books related to how and why ILO convention
169 was fought for, the relationship to Eurocentric and boarding school
education in the US and Canada, and the
reaction on non-Indians or Native Peoples to the ILO convention which are very
revealing. The same issues affected Latin American Indians and are why they
have been fighting for bilingual intercultural education. Marie Battiste’s
books at Purich Publications will give you a lot of insight into why they have
been failing to get intercultural education actually implemented, even in
places where it is legal and internationally funded.
Schooling
the Whole World--An example of a Human Rights movie about the effect of
destroying native culture, science, language and customs through universal
schooling of a Eurocentric model is Schooling the Whole World. See the
Bellingham Human rights Film Festival website for contact information. In
Bellingham, Washington there is a Tribal
College, North West Indian College, as well as a public university Western
Washington University and a community college which sponsor this event.
Princess
Angeline—An awesome video of the story
of the Duwamish people of Seattle, who were pushed off their lands and are
currently not recognized by the US government, and some in the past literally
starved to death, and the river that bore their name was destroyed. Their history is generally unknown to most Washingtonians. Princess
Angeline was the daughter of Chief Seattle, and a favorite subject of photographer
Edward Curtis. Both Chief Seattle and Edward Curtis remain famous. This video
and a video about the Indians of the
Tulalip Reservation which includes the Snohomish, for whom Snohomish county
where Everett and Boeing are located, was named, are available from the Hibulb
cultural Center of the Tulalip Indian Reservation in Washington State. It
included interviews with lawyers and historians about the Duwamish’s case. The
Tulalip Museum has a website.
General
videos on the topic of International tourism, mining, and Indigenous Peoples
“Gringo
Trails” is a movie that came out in
2013. It is the 10 year study of a US anthropologist on the disasterous effects
of International tourism on local traditional peoples. This is very relevant to the issues of the
Garifunas and black Bay islanders and tourism and megatourism in their areas,
such as the InterAmerican Human rights Court Case about Triumfo de la Cruz,
heard 20 May 2014, and a theme in the Garifuna in Peril movie. This was done
by a Professor at New York University.
The
Surinam Public Health project was in the InterAmerican Human rights Court also
in 2014 about the disasterous public
health consequences of mining on the maroon (escaped blacks) and the indigenous
peoples (including Caribs, so culturally and linguisticly related to the
Garifunas) including contamination of their water with mercury, thus causing
health problems, and actually building over the rivers, the only source
communication in the Surinam rainforest.
The book the Djuka written in 1931 about the Maroons of Surinam is a
strong contrast and indictment of “western civilization” entering into
traditional people’s territories, very unusual for its time. The fact that one
of the most biodiverse areas of the Ecuador Rainforest, a reserve with 2
uncontacted tribes, has just been opened
up to oil and gas development and a Jamaican nature preserve with beautiful
tropical animals has just been approved to be converted into a port by the
Chinese in Jamaica just now in May 2014 shows that the problems of native
peoples whether black or Indians are very similar when faced with transnational
corporations.The Mayagna or Sumu speakers of Nicaragua report similar problems
with mines on their Wikipedia article.
The Surinam Public health project testimony was on the Internet, and
some of the people include University of Washington people who spoke at the
Western Regional International health Conference in April 2014. Mining is being
proposed or started in the mountains behind the Garifunas such as the Nombre de
Dios range behind the community of triunfo de la Cruz, which is currently a
protected area,besides 15 mines proposed or active in the Lenca areas, etc. The
laws are in place and the concession permits are in the works to give 30% of
Honduran territory to mines, according to El herald Newspaper of Teguicgalpa.
The new Honduran president said at the end of his 100 days, there have been
some glitches, but the mines have to go through.
The
official Maps of the protected areas of Honduras, both those for water
catchment areas liked those involved in the conflicts in the Garifuna video
Lucha Garifuna/Garifuna standing ground and the Trujillo Garifunas, and the
protected areas (national parks, biospheres, marine parks, wildlife Refuges,
national monuments and Anthropological reserves) in on the official ICF
(Instituto de conservacion Forestal) website.
It would
probably behoove people interested in protected areas or ethnic groups in
Honduras to download these maps, and also look at the maps of the proposed
Model Cities, which for example have been published in Honduran Spanish
language newspapers (la tribuna, la prensa, el heraldo). For example one proposed Model city of
ZEDE, is between Betulia west of Trujillo to the Rio Patuca on the far side of
the Rio Platano Biosphere. This would mean that the water catchment basins of
the Trujillo area and the Garifunas of iriona area, the wildlife preserve
laguna de Guaymoreto, and national park Capiro and Calentura (which includes
Pech as well as Garifunas), and the upper half of the Rio Platano biosphere
would be included, and possibly as far inland parts of the Sierra de Agalta
national park and the El Carbon Anthropological Reserve (Pech), not to mention
thousands of Ladinos and Garifunas and Miskitos and Pech living in villages
along this corridor. Watch the Paul Romer phrases about”uninhabited areas” and
then compare to the 2001 Ethnic Census (Censo etnico de 2001) published by the
Honduran Institute of Geography and compiled by Historic Geogrpaher Dr. William
Davidson. He has also published recently a historic atlas of historic maps in
Central America with Fundacion Uno in Nicaragua.
There are
several websites related to Model Cities
in Honduras including free cities, charter cities (this is Paul Romer’s site
the person who started the idea), the ZEDE law on the Internet. There is also
an official Honduran government ZEDE website, which can found easily by going
to the Wikipedia ZEDE article and clicking the link to the official ZEDE
website of the Honduran government with laws and maps. These Someone has
written a significant ZEDE Wikipedia
article in Spanish, but it changes a lot.The Secretaria de Planificacion of the
Honduran government website which had had the special regulations of the
Southern area of Honduras where the first Model Cities are proposed to be put
in and the Korean company POSCO, the parent of Daewoo, is doing the assessment
or feasibility of the Model City in the South right now,and the Honduran
government’s study and policy on Identity
is currently not on the Internet.
The blog Honduran culture and politics by UC-Berkley professor and
research assistant is following some of
the Model City developments. Note that some of the money people behind it are
real estate companies based in Guatemala and the original Model Cities seminar
was at the Franscisco Marroquin University in Guatemala. I was told there was a
Barron’s newspaper article about Model cities advancing well in Guatemala, which made being summarized on yahoo.
Everyone from a Third World country speaking at the Western Regional
International Health conference in Seattle, mentioned there are social
movements on the right as well as on the left, and in most cases they were
more, and of course, better funded, and Guatemala was one example.
Movies
related to Trends in Intellectual Property Issues Internationally—The World According
to Monsanto. See the Bellingham Human rights Film Festival for contact
information. Also Bitter Seeds is about Genetically Modified Cotton Seeds and
India. Both are owned by Western
Washington University.
Comments
of on some Trends in Intellectual Property Rights Impacting Indians, Garifunas,
Sick people, farmers, Technology people,
Researchers and Archivists.
Latin
Americanists in the US have generally not looked at what is happening globally
or even in the neighboring country, even though at least in Central America
civil wars in one country routinely historically eventually spread into the
next country. But watch the Transpacific Trade Agreement which is being Fast
Tracked in the US Congress and it will be voted on in less than 60 days as that
is going to change Intellectual Property law for everyone in the whole world,
and make among things generic drugs
impossible to produce including in India, so that AIDS people are concerned
that will mean no AIDS treatment for people with AIDS in Third World
Country. The issue of crops and
patenting of seeds and also of people’s body parts which is legal under US law,
like patenting minority groups blood and antibodies, which are hot topics with
some Latin American and Canadian Indians are also going to be impacted by this
law. People who are watching this law are scared. As people who hold books and
archives and original research, SALALM librarians should be watching that the
issue of Intellectual Property is becoming very hot, and not only the present
is being contested, and versions told outside the US or by minority groups, but
the past is contested. Why is the most active group on Wikipedia not medicine
but Military history? Why are libraries
being asked to get rid of their old technology books? Why are US companies
getting new personal patents for something described by Leonardo Di Vinci and
defined mathematically in the 19th century and for rice grown in
india for the last two millennium and for corn? What part of corn was already
developed before Monsanto existed do they not get? Why has the Monsanto stock
gone up 10 times since they began aggressively pursuing intellectual property
of corn and other Genetically modified crops?
There are websites in English and in Spanish (out of Peru and Chile,two
countries who will be part of TPP) against the TPP.
Most
Honduran books are not available in e-book form, and the Hondurans who write
books are very hesistant to let them be made into e-books for fear, as has
happened recently with Sabas Whittaker’s materials and the Comite de
Emergencia’s videos, that they will get sold and then the people who wrote them
will get nothing. Honduran Garifunas are also concerned and distressed about
people using their photos for commercial used like a bigger than life mural
copying a photo of a Garifuna man in
Pollos Camperos without his permission, and dancing videos of Garifunas to
attact tourists and then displace them, or photos of them in calendars and post
cards produced by the Palestinian Arabs living in Honduras for which the people
in the photo get nothing, and even the
issue that they danced all day in the hot sun, like Moros y Cristianos, and
then the person who gets the money is the man who made the video, not the
dancers. There are also issues of
researchers taking information and not making available to people who were
studied and if there were economic benefits not sharing them.
The
Purich Publication book by Marie Battiste (Canadian Indian who grew up in the
US with a doctorate from Stanford) and John Henderson (Chickasaw Indian from
Oklohoma with a law degree, I believe from Harvard) about the need to protect indigenous
intellectual knowledge and heritage is very helpful in understanding this
debate, and in the future librarians should expect even greater restriction to
indigenous photos and videos that they themselves do not produce or benefit
from, or for which there is no reciprocity. The themes of this debate are
affecting and informing ArchaeologyTourism and even some Museum collections as
well. Wendy Griffin’s books on the
Garifunas, the Pech, and other groups she had worked with primarily recopiling
information with them due to reading and writing and computers and so they
could not do it themselves are not scheduled for republication right now, until
a thorough discussion with the co-authors on Honduran and US and International
Intellectual Property Rights under the laws, and then trying to understand how
they see their rights, and also discussing the very real dangers to them if
this information is made widely known, under current Interllectual Property
Rights and this situation is likely to get even worse soon. On Witness.org’s
website there is also a notice that they are interested in opinions and views
about archiving and making available human rights videos.
Wikipedia
has good and well thought out articles and series of articles about
Intellectual Property Rights and a lot about indigenous rights and also about
genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. Indigenous rights are being violated from
their right to breathe on the planet and not be killed on down. The UN has
actually done a booklet on indigenous people available free on the Internet
which starts out very depressingly about how we have not even been to stop them
from being killed and wiped out and also
ILO has a guides to ILO convention 169 in several languages which
identify the cases country by country. The
English guide is free as a PDF, but apparently the Spanish guide you must order
from Geneva. Why this guide says the ILO has never received a complaint about
Honduras, when I have been in at least 4 meetings face to face with the
Garifunas working with the ILO over Hog Keys in Honduras and why they show a
group of Garifuna women peeling yucca to make cassava bread without even a
caption as to who they are, I do not know.
I once
wrote in a Honduras This Week article on taxis that there is a book called The
Mysteries of Pittsburgh, my hometown, but Honduras has more mysteries than
Pittsburgh ever thought of having. The name Honduras really does mean the
Country or Place of Great Depth, as one book about the country is called. These
audio-visual materials show that there are layers on layers of depth of stories
behind them. Not everyone likes the stories that documents tell,and so there is
a long history of burning archives in Honduras. In the US, this is being played
out in getting rid of the books in the library as some people want to tell
other stories than those ones, and they would just as soon these stories different
from theirs not get told. Why else would the head of the Foreign Affairs Office
at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas who funded the Mexico Indigena study and is now funding the Geography of Central American
Indians study, care that women,
Indians,and terrorists (which he lumps together on at least 3 occasions) are
having increased access to the means of mass of communication? The stories of
the Alternative Founding of Pittsburgh PA on Wendy Griffin’s blog www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com and the related comparisons of Honduran Black
and Indian narratives with those of US Indians in the East of the United
States, including the Cherokee, or Allegewi (from which Allegheny county comes
in the Pittsburgh area and in North Carolina) who in the Rich Heape award
winning films answer some of the counter allegations like but you are not where
you were, some of you are no longer Indian color, a lot of you have lost your
language, etc.
The book
La Historia de la Embriguidez (the history of Drunkness) from Honduras and sold
by Literatura de vientos Tropicales has many of same narratives as on Wendy
Griffin’s Honduran stories related to state policies that caused switches from
low alcohol (chicha) to high alcohol (guaro), from women controlled access to
access with money which often men not used to a cash economy spent their cash
on their vices which if it had been corn they would have given to their
families, from principally ceremonial drinking
to drinking whenever there is access,
from drinks in low sugar to high sugar, leading to diabetis problem,
from traditional stories that warn that you willlose your family and die alone
if you fo away and spend your fish money on drink, to advertising that says el
hombre muy hombre toma Ron Plata (the man who is really a man drinks Plata
rum), that it is whites who take plants that Indians usually ceremonially like
tobacco and coca leaves and turns them into outrageous drugs to sell, which is
now also happening with hyper strong marijuana in the US, if you ask the young
people. While maybe alcoholic Indians is
a stereotype, even that has a long story behind it, and that story has to do
with the people who controlled commerce and who controlled the laws and their
enforcement or the bribes and the taxes and often the guns, and none of that
was the Indians.
