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. 

US Racist Development theories Immigration of Honduran Blacks US Effects Mestizaje

American Racist Development theories, the Immigration of Honduran Blacks to the US, and the Policy of Mestizaje--why Honduran Blacks and Indians have been Invisible

The website of the Honduran Minister of Culture Garifuna Dr. Tulio Mariano Gonzales stated that it was the position of this government (of President Pepe Lobo) that culture can be an “eje” (axis) of development(www.scad-gob.hn).  These politics represent significant changes from the period 1929-1950 when in Honduras it became illegal for Blacks to come to Honduras, either to immigrate or to even come as tourists as researchers. Harvard professor Herscovits tried to send a Black researcher to study the Garifunas, but he was denied entry (Euraque, 2004). Many non-Honduran Blacks who were residing in Honduras, mostly English speaking Blacks from the Caribbean Islands working for the banana companies were repatriated, sometimes with only a few days notice and house to house searches for them (Chambers, 2010, and reports by older Garifunas like Sebastian Marin).

This was partly caused by an extremely racist theory of development that Indian and Black cultures, as taught by the United States and Cuban Eugenics experts in a Conference “First Pan-American Conference on Eugenics and Homogenous Culture”  in 1927, impeded the Latin American and US countries from developing and that countries could improve their chances of developing by limiting immigration of “undesirable races” including at various times Blacks, Chinese, Indians from India, Palestinian Arabs, Jews and others and encouraging immigration of white Europeans. This was in line with the Scientific Racism of the period. In the US and all of Central America laws were set up restricting immigration by race and thousands of Afro-Caribbean workers  in Central American had to return home to countries like Jamaica.  Many of these Afro-Caribbean families displaced from Central America eventually migrated to the US(Gudmundson and Wolfe,2012).  For example the Jamaican father of Veronica Airey, former Deputy Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, was born in Honduras, but had to flee there as a child  with his parents due to anti-Black immigration laws, according to her own reports. 

There has been a lot of international interest and research on the history of Afro-Hondurans and Afro-Central Americans recently including several books since 2000 by Trinity College professor Dr. Dario Euraque, Tulane Professor Justin Wolfe,  Texas A and M Professor Glenn Chambers, Honduran UPN and UNAH Professor Dr. Jorge Amaya Banegas, and University of Costa Rica professor Rina Caceres. The academic journal Negritud, edited by Dr. Luis Miletti and based in Atlanta, Georgia which specializes in studies of Afro-Latin Americans, is preparing a special bilingual (English/Spanish) edition on Central American Blacks and the on-line Journal AFEHC  published in January 2013 a special edition in Spanish on Central America Blacks (www.afehc-historia-cantroamericana.org). International conferences on Afro-Central Americans have been organized in the US and in Honduras since 2000. Dr. Sarah England of Soka University in California whose book is available on Amazon.com was the first to study the role of Afro-Central Americans in New York, specifically Garifunas, in the struggles of lands rights and other rights in Central America. Other multi-site international studies have looked at the role of remittances sent back by the Garifunas in New York to the development of Honduras and how immigration has affected the Garifuna communities in Honduras.  Other researchers like Dr. Mark Anderson of UC-Santa Cruz have looked at the question of identity in the Garifuna communities in the US and Honduras. The book Diaspora Conversions looks at how being in New York among other Afro-Caribbean peoples has changed the Garifuna or as he calls it Black Carib religion from how it was practiced in Honduras and in Belize.

Wikipedia now has a lot of pages on Afro-Central Americans, including Garifunas, dugu, Garifuna Americans, individual pages for many Garifuna musical artists like Andy Palacio, Paul Nabor, and Aurelio Martinez , and other Afro-Hondurans like Miskitos, Afro-Mestizos,  and Black English speakers.  For more than 250 years, the Miskitos had their own kingdom and their own king.  Previously little was known about them, but now not only is there a list of all the Miskito kings on the History of the Miskito Coast and when they reigned, but each Miskito king has his own Wikipedia webpage.  The Garifuna villages of Colon east of Trujillo originally were ruled by the Miskito Indian king rather than the Honduran government before 1860, which gave them freedom to maintain their traditional culture and language(Griffin and CEGAH,2005).

Honduran History professor Dr. Dario Euraque (2004b) believes that the strong anti-Black sentiment in Honduras in the 1920’s and 1930’s was partly caused by a mistake. Hondurans who arrived to North Coast towns like Tela, La Ceiba, and Trujillo saw thousands of Blacks and assumed that they were all Blacks from other countries like Jamaica, and Belize come to take jobs away from native born Hondurans. Both studies by Euraque (Euraque, 2004b) and Dr. Glenn Chambers (Chambers, 2010) show that only a small portion of these Blacks were Afro-Antillan immigrants, and that the majority were native Honduran born Garifunas and Black Bay Islanders.

Miskito Indians, Honduran Afro-Mestizos, and some US born Blacks also worked for the banana companies in Honduras.  In addition to expelling the foreign born English speaking Blacks from Honduras, the Honduran government undertook “españolización” campaigns (trying to make Afro-Hondurans adopt Spanish language and culture) through the Honduran schools, affecting the cultures and languages of the Garifuna, North Coast Black English speaker, and Bay Islanders. . The categories of Black, mulatto and Indian were dropped from birth certificates and census records, partly in an attempt to present a public appeareance of a mestizo (mixture of Indian and European) country, perhaps to attract foreign investors. 

This combination of policies which makes invisible modern Indians and Blacks, as well as other minorities like Palestinian Arabs, Jews, and Chinese, is known as “mestizaje”, and has been researched in a number of countries including Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, and existed as far south as Chile.  So if the Garifunas have been invisible, it is partly due to an official policy adopted by many Latin American countries. According to Dr. Justin Wolfe, in Nicaragua the adoption of this policy was heavily influenced by the racist attitudes of Americans and Europeans towards the local Nicaraguans, including the President and other government officials.  They thought, “How can the English recognize the Miskito King and the Miskito Kingdom which was made up of Indians and Blacks, and not recognize us, the Criollos (children of the Spanish born in Latin America), Mestizos and Ladinos of the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua, because of our racially mixed background?”  (Gudmunson and Wolfe, 2012).

 These American racist attitudes continued or worsened in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and in official American diplomatic correspondence about the then president of the Honduran congress and second in command of the Honduran Army and later Honduran President Tiburcio Carias, they considered him “racially inferior”.  According to Carias’s nephew, President Carias had strongly Indian features and was known as the “ el Indio de Bronce” (the Indian of Bronze). He was from a Lenca Indian part of Honduras.  To counter the anti-Indian sentiment against the Hondurans who were of mixed Indian-European heritage, under Carias the Honduran money came to be called “Lempira” for a legendary Lenca Indian chief who rose up against the Spanish in the 1500’s, Honduran schools celebrate “Lempira Day”, the Mayan ruins of Copan were opened as an archaeological park, and Parque La Conconcordia, a Tegucigalpa park with models of Mayan Ruins, was built and  opened (Euraque,2004a). Before Carias, the Central Plaza of the Mayan Ruins at Copan, now world famous, had been rented out to local owners to plant corn, even though archaeological work started there in the 1890’s by US universities like Harvard, according to local residents.

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

Honduran President Carias is also remembered among the Garifunas for the Massacre of San Juan, a Garifuna village near Tela.  Carias believed that the Garifunas of San Juan were responsible for bringing in by canoe contraband or smuggled rifles into Honduras for General Umaña and possibly General Umaña himself.  General Umaña was at that time in rebellion against General Carias. Honduran soldiers from El Progreso went to San Juan and told the Garifuna men that they were organizing a clean up campaign and they should get shovels and come back and dig trenches in the beach.  Some men, including the uncle of Garifuna painter and dancer Herman. Alvarez, ran away at that point, but others came back and dug the trenches. The soldiers told them they were going to take a photo to line up by the trenches.  So the Garifuna men lined up and the soldiers shot them all and buried them in the trenches they had dug, reported San Juan resident Herman Alvarez and Profesor Batiz.. Much of what was left of the population of San Juan immigrated to Stann Creek (now Dangriga) and Hopkins, Belize, including Herman’s uncle who never returned (Arrivillaga Cortés, 2007). These massacred Garifunas are still remembered such as in a recent article on OFRANEH’s blog www.ofraneh.wordpress.com. A Garifuna friend of mine in Trujillo wrote a page to commemorate these killed Garifunas on May 1, Worker’s Day in Honduras, as a way to remember these men who had just been trying to make a little money hauling who knows what in boxes.

After that many Honduran Garifunas were members of the opposition Liberal Party, which was persecuted under the Carias government.  Both Garifunas and Black Islanders, like former Bay Islands Congressman Thomas Green, reported having to leave in the night in a canoe for Belize suddenly because they were sought by soldiers for their activities in the Liberal Party. Both the Comandante de Plaza of Trujillo General Zanabria and his Lieutenant for Iriona, Colon  where many large Garifuna communities are located, were reported to have had private cementaries, according to US historian Louise Donnell, so the threat was serious if the soldiers were looking for them.  Even former Honduran President Roberto Reina was for a time a prisoner of Carias for his work in the Liberal Party of Honduras.   From Belize the Hondurans political exiles immigrated to the US in the 1930’s.  That was the beginning of Garifuna immigration to the US, according to Garifuna teacher Claudio Mejia. The story of the Massacre of San Juan is told in a book by Garifuna teacher from the Tela area Virgilio Lopez (Lopez Garcia,1994).My version of the Massacre was told by Garifunas Hernan Alvaez and Profesor Santos Angel Batiz. 

Contributions of Garifunas to US Economy, Garifuna Music, and Garifuna Language

Contributions of the Garifunas to the US Economy, Garifuna Music, and Garifuna Language

Although most Americans have not seen Garifunas, they have benefited from their labor. In the 19^th century, the Garifunas were the principal cutters of Honduran mahoghany, exported to make fine furniture.  In the early 20^th century, Garifunas went to Panama and worked on the Panama Canal.  During the First World War, Belizean Garifunas fought on the side of the Allies, including in North Africa. 

The Garifunas produced bananas for the banana boom, contacted other farmers by canoe to bring in their bananas to be bought and shipped by the banana companies, took the bananas to the ships in canoes before there was a dock, worked on infrastructure projects for the banana companies like port construction, building the dam for the  water supply to the fruit company controlled port, cut mahoghany and laid rails for the trains to bring in the bananas, help run the train like being the breakman or mechanic,  and especially hauling long heavy bananas stems to load on the trains and on the boats before the practice of shipping in boxes. 

After the banana company United Fruit left NE Honduras, Garifuna men began working as sailors or merchant marines especially for banana companies like United Fruit (now Chiquita) and Standard Fruit (now part of Dole). During the Second World War, the ships of Standard Fruit and United Fruit together with all their Honduran crews were used as transport ships to support the war effort.  They were known as the Great White Fleet. My Honduran Garifuna friend Sebastian Marin said he was in Pearl Harbor as a sailor for United Fruit during the War and that many Garifuna men of his age from Trujillo had been on ships during the War like that. Other Honduran and Belizean Garifunas helped work in the Canal Zone in Panama or at a US naval base in Puerto Castilla, Honduras near Trujillo during the Second World War(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005). Belizean Garifunas, recruited by the British,  also fought with the Allies during the Second War (Avila, 2009).

Now in New York, about 85% of the Garifuna women there are home attendants, taking care of the elderly and the infirmed in their homes.  Home attendants are paid by Medicaid, but with the current financial crisis, New York state has cut back on funding for home attendants, causing crisis not only in Garifuna homes in New York, but also for the old people back home in Honduras to whom they send money to support them.  Garifuna men do all sorts of jobs, including being sailors, security guards, jewelers, musicians, building superintendents and other things. Ruben Reyes, the co-producer and star of Garifuna in Peril, is a plumbing contractor and runs the company “Cal Plumbing”  in Los Angeles where he has trained 15 Garifuna to be plumbers. 

Honduras has the second highest number of registered sailors in the world, after the Philippines, with many coming from the Garifuna and Black English speaker ethnic groups.  This is pretty incredible given the fact that there are only 7 million people in the whole country of Honduras, comparable to the population of New York City. If the husband is a sailor, it implies a lot of hardship for him and his family, being away from his family for 4-6 months at a time. It is also hard work, with 70 hour work weeks minimum and frequent overtime, now at comparatively low wages because the ships take off for room and board, and no benefits. One Garifuna friend was recently offered a sailor’s position for $440/month with 70 hours work weeks.  It also seems to be hazardous work as several of the Honduran Garifuna or Bay Islander sailors I have known, have been killed or injured on the ship, with little or no compensation. Although the US relies significantly on imports, no one thinks about the life or the work conditions of the sailors who bring us these goods or the effects of this work on their families.

Garifunas form an important part of the labor force in their home countries.  There are hundreds of Garifuna teachers in Honduran and Belize, with Garifuna teachers forming about 75% of the rural teachers in Belize, in spite of only forming 6% of the population there. Thanks to help from remittances sent home by US Garifunas, there are now many Garifuna university graduates in Honduras and Belize including doctors, teachers, journalists, economists, university professors, etc. Garifunas in both countries have held important government posts including Congressmen, Ministers, Ambassadors, and Honduran representative to the UN (Avila, 2009, Griffin and CEGAH, 2005). Because of their high level of education, Garifunas are often given management positions in programs for all the minority ethnic groups of Belize and Honduras.

My sister Pam teases me that whenever a subject comes up, I usually find a Garifuna connection to it. She tested my niece Kristen, asking What is the relationship between Frank Sinatra and the Garifunas? as my niece was very into old movies and their stars at the time. Kristin said she did not know. Pam asked me if there was a connection between Garifunas and Frank Sinatra. I said Frank Sinatra ate Honduran bananas which were shipped out by the Honduran Garifuna dock workers. She just rolled her eyes and said, There is even a relationship between Garifunas and Frank Sinatra.  

Garifuna Music Recordings and Artists Made the Garifuna famous Worldwide

Although most US people have not heard of the Garifuna, the movie Garifuna in Peril is not the first time the Garifuna have been recorded by the media.  Most of what is recorded about the Garifuna is their music.  The first recordings of Garifuna music were made in Honduras in 1953 (The Black Carib of Honduras) and in 1982 in Belize (Traditional Music of the Garifuna (Black Carib) of Belize and Dabuyabaragu: Inside the Temple, Sacred Music of the Garifuna of Belize) by the Smithsonian Institute’s non-profit record label Folkway Records. Because of a special agreement between the Smithsonian Institute, the national museum of the US  and the heirs of Folkway Records, the Smithsonian promises to make this music available virtually for forever, so even though some of this music was recorded over 50 years ago, it is still for sale on their website http://www.folkways.si.edu/customer_service/ either as a CD or as a cassette recording or an online download. Most Folkways music is also available from Internet music seller sites like iTunes, eMusic, Amazon.com and Classical.com.

Garifunas play over 34 different types of music, each with its own rhythms, dance and purposes (Flores, 2003, Avila, 2009, Griffin and CEGAH, 2005). Most traditional songs are accompanied by a tenor or female drum called primera  and one (in Belize) or two (in Honduras) bass or male segunda drums. A special feature of Garifuna drums  is that they often have two or three guitar strings strung over the top of the first (primer) drum like a snare, a technique also often found with West African drums, reported Michael Stone (www.worldmusic,nationalgeographiccom/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/garifuna_music_722/enUS).  Other instruments can include maracas, turtle shell drums, a conch shell horn, and two round sticks beaten together known as “claves”.  These are almost all noticeably percussion instruments with the melody of the songs being carried by the voices of the singers. Garifuna music is polyrhythmic like jazz, with the rhythm of the first drum not being the same as the second drum, and the rhythm of the voices singing is also different.  Most songs are sung call and response, with the soloist beginning the line and the rest of the singers joining in as the chorus.  These elements give Garifuna traditional music a very African sound, even though the songs are primarily in an Amerindian language(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).

Besides traditional Garifuna music with handmade instruments, there is also now a whole music business around Garifuna modern popular music played with electronic instruments including electric guitar, keyboards, and drum set.  Although modern Garifuna music derives its inspiration and lyrics from several different genres of Garifuna traditional music, it is usually all called punta rock (Avila, 2009).  In the US one of the leaders of modern Garifuna music is Belizean Garifuna Vince Lewis, usually known by his stage name Aziatic who lives in Los Angeles.  On his website www.belizeanartist.com he described his music as punta pop (This website is no longer up).  For the movie Garifuna in Peril, both modern punta pop and traditional Garifuna music with handmade drums and maracas is used.  There are 19 cuts of Garifuna music on the soundtrack, with several being composed and played by Aziatic.  One of the songs was also written by Ruben Reyes. (www.garifunainperilmovie.com).

 The Garifunas also have two styles of songs done a capella by men (arumajani) and by women (abeimajani) which are accompanied by a gestured dance done with their little fingers linked together. Uyanu is a name that refers to both the men’s (arumajani) and women’s (abeimajani) songs without drums. These Uyanu songs are used in ceremonies like a dugu, a chugu, in healing ceremonies like the healing of sting ray sting, as well as social songs like getting together with friends in the evening and singing. Uyanu songs are thought to be particularly helpful in restoring health, and before a dugu are often revealed to people in dreams, reports Doña Clara Garcia, a Garifuna buyei or shaman in Trujillo, Honduras.  There is one example of uyanu songs in the movie Garifuna in Peril (www.garifunainperil.com/music). The dance for uyanu with the little fingers interlinked may be of Bantu origen. These songs which among the men are about adventures fishing and in love take the place of ancestral songs often about hunting among South Africans for their ancestor cemonies.

The National Garifuna Council of Belize (http://www.ngcbelize.org) 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). The famous Garifuna singer Andy Palacios was one of the people behind that effort. Palacios won first prize at the World Music Expo in Europe in 2007 for his CD recorded with Stonetree Records Watiña.

.  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 had been for sale on the Garinet website, video section (www.garinet.com). It seems this video has not been into a DVD yet.

Garifuna Language, Music, Dances, and Catholic and Evangelical Churches.

 The Catholic Mass in Garifuna now incorporates the dance and rhythm of uyanu songs to accompany the words of the prayer “Our Father” in Garifuna. Other parts of the Catholic Mass in Garifuna incorporate Garifuna drumming, the use of maracas, dancing, traditional food such as cassava bread, singing in Garifuna, and the use of incense, for example, during the offertory song and dance. A Belizean Garifuna was named Bishop of the Catholic Church in Belize (Avila, 2009), and the music and practice of the Garifuna mass was developed in Belize and later spread to Honduras and the US.  In Trujillo, Honduras where approximately 3,000 Garifunas live, the second Sunday of every month, the Catholic Mass in the Cathedral is in Garifuna.  US  Garifunas also occasionally arrange for a Catholic Mass in Garifuna in New York or New Orleans, as well as other Garifuna dance presentations, for example to commemorate their arrival in Honduras (12 April 1797) reported Tulane student Marco Bicchieri and the Garifuna Coalition website (www.garifunacoaltion.org).  Belizean Garifunas in Los Angeles present their traditional dances for Settlement Day November 19, the day the Garifuna arrived from Honduras to Belize, a National Public and Bank holiday in Belize(www.belizeanartist.com, Avila, 2009).

 The Garifunas have been active in working with the Catholic Church to be more accepting of Afro-Latin American cultural traditions.  Prior to Vatican II in the 1960’s, the Catholic priests were antagonistic of many Garifuna practices, to the extent of denying church funeral services to Garifunas who composed songs used in dugu ceremonies or who treated people with medicinal plants, said Honduran Garifuna Angel Batiz. The Garifunas of Trujillo where there has been a permanently staffed Catholic church for over 150 years, used to do their ancestor ceremonies like dugu and the ceremonies for the spirit of the sea out by the Guaymoreto Lagoon 11 km away from Trujillo and at that time reachable primarily by canoe. In 1997 the Americas-wide meeting of the “Encuentro Pastoral Afro-Americano” (The Meeting of Catholic Priests who worked with Afrodescent people in North, Central, South America and the Caribbean)  was held in Trujillo, Honduras at the same time as the celebration of 200^th year anniversary of the arrival of the Garifunas in Honduras. There were many presentations of Garifuna songs and dances, including the presentation of dugu songs by Garifuna school children.  The playing of dugu songs often causes ancestor spirits to possess people and this happened with Catholic priests from all over the Americas watching. The Master of Ceremony for the event said “Don’t be concerned, it is just our religion.”  Still the use of Garifuna language, music, and dance continue in the Catholic church, there are special radio shows in Garifuna on the Trujillo Radio Católica, there is a special organization within the Honduran Catholic Church and in each Garifuna parish “el pastoral Garifuna”, and Trujillo Garifuna Catholics do not seem to have problems with the Catholic Church if they are buyeis (traditional Garifuna religious leaders), assistants to buyeis, treat with medicinal plants, or attend traditional Garifuna ceremonies.

 The same can not be said for the many evangelical churches among the Honduran Garifuna.  Although churches like the Baptist church use the Garifuna language and have translated the Bible into Garifuna and Jehovah’s Witnesses make  religious materials available in Garifuna,  they use these to preach that the Garifuna ceremonies diabolic, that devils fall on people and possess them.  Some evangelical churches working among the Garifunas are against all dances, even non-religious ones like the men’s dance done at Christmas time shown in the film Garifuna in Peril Wanaragua (Mascaro, the Warrior’s Dance). The principal of the Garifuna high school in Santa Fe, Honduras said they could not have a Garifuna dance group at the school, because the local evangelical church was against dancing. Protestant churches working among other Honduran Afro-descent groups like the Miskito Indians and the Bay Islanders are a significant cause for the loss of traditional cultural practices like folkdances and medicinal plant use, which were often related to the traditional religion and beliefs of causes of illness and cures (Flores,2003).

Garifuna traditional dance, music, religion and language loss

One unusual aspect of the Garifuna language is that for a number of words Garifuna men and Garifuna women do not use the same word. Partly for this reason, usually songs are sung either by all women or all men, but not men and women together.  Some dances are mostly done by women like hunguhungu or fedu, while others like Mascaro or Wanaragua (The Dance of the Warriors) are done by men.  In the film,  Garifuna in Peril there is a beautifully costumed and shot  example of the Wanaragua dance, which in Garifuna villages is done on Christmas Day and New Years Day.   The male dancers dress up in a flowered shirt with long ribbons, gloves, stockings, seashell shakers on their knees, a skirt, a mask and an elaborate headdress and one by one go into the center of circle to dance extravagant dances with jumps and shaking and fancy footwork (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  Traditional Garifuna songs accompanied by handmade drums are sung during the dance during the film as during village celebrations(www.garifunainperilmovie.com).  Examples of these dances can be seen on YouTube.

Garifuna music can be divided into sacred and secular music and dances.  The sacred music like the Folkways Record Dabuyabaraga and the first cut on Radio France’s Chansons des Caraibes Noires, Dugu, is used during ancestor ceremonies like chugu ( a one day banquet, music, and dancing for the ancestors) and dugu (a three days of  dances and music for the ancestors, plus food for them).  This music is all sung in Garifuna.  Most songs have no written form yet, so the singers must memorize enough Garifuna songs to sing all day and all night for two days. In David Flores’s book La Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklorica Hondureña (Flores, 2003) available on garinet.com and in my book Los Garifunas de Honduras I document these ceremonies and songs in Honduras (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005). Tomas Alberto Avila’s book Black Carib-Garifunas documents them for Belize, and  Paul Johnson, professor in the Department of Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan, has documented most of these ceremonies in New York as well as the dugu ceremony in Honduras in his recent book Diaspora Conversions:  Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa”.  (http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520249707), which is available through Amazon.com.  Dorothy Franzone‘s .doctoral thesis A Critical and Cultural Analysis of An African People in the Americas: Africanisms in the Garifuna Culture of Belize, compares Garifuna ceremonies in Belize to ceremonies among the Igbo and Yoruba cultures of Nigeria in West Africa (Franzone, 1994), showing that these represent ancient traditions the Garifuna have maintained in spite of being displaced several times—from Africa, from Saint Vincent, and now from Central America to New York and Los Angeles.  All doctoral dissertations are available online at www.proquest.com.

 The continuance of these ceremonies and this music is threatened by the loss of the Garifuna language both in the US and in the communities back home in Central America.   At least 30% of the Honduran Garifunas no longer speak Garifuna, and in some communities like Barrio Cristales, Trujillo, the first Garifuna community in Honduras, none of the children speak Garifuna. In Belize, many Garifuna children do not speak Garifuna either (http://www.ngcbelize.org).  Dorothy Franzone in her 1994 doctoral thesis said that African professors observing these Garifuna ceremonies said not only did they have elements similar to West African ceremonies and used some African words, but that the Garifuna ceremonies appeared more ancient than the ceremonies being done today in West Africa.  Other researchers have compared them to ceremonies of Arawak and Carib Indians and find indigenous elements in them as well (Franzone, 1994).

Both Honduran and Belizean Garifunas report the previous models of education as the principal cause of language loss among the Garifunas.  Before 1992, it was illegal to speak Garifuna in Honduran schools and students were punished if they did, for example, standing in a corner with their arms outstretched. The teachers, even though ethnically Garifuna, would make fun of the Garifuna language.  “Don’t speak that garugaru,” one Garifuna teacher in Trujillo would say.  Some Garifuna professionals prohibited speaking Garifuna at home, so that their children would do well in school in Spanish.  The former head of Honduran bilingual education, a Garifuna from Trujillo, mostly had to learn Garifuna as an adult, because his father was a school teacher and was against the use of Garifuna at home and at school.   A Belizean Garifuna leader said, “If we speak Garifuna well, it is in spite of the education system, not because of it.” (Avila, 2009)  

 In Nicaragua, none of the Garifuna still speak Garifuna, reported Honduran Garifuna Fausto Miguel Alvarez.  Since no one can sing, the no one learned how to drum the traditional songs there, said Honduran Garifuna Popo Ariola. The Garifunas there have lost the ability to make many of their traditional crafts, like the Ruguma, a 10 foot long woven basket strainer used to squeeze the poisonous juice out of the bitter yuca or manioc used to make cassava bread (ereba in Garifuna).   Honduran Garifunas lead by Popo Ariola who was previously assistant director of the Ballet Nacional Folklorico Garifuna de Honduras (National Garifuna Folkloric Ballet) and the leader of the Garifuna dance group Barauda, went to give a seminar in Garifuna drumming and singing to the Nicaraguan Garifunas in an exchange orgranized by Urracan University on the Atlantic Coast in Nicaragua. When the Honduran Garifunas brought out  a ruguma from Honduras for the Nicaraguans, some of the older Nicaraguan Garifunas began to cry. Seeing the situation in Nicaragua while a teacher in the Sandinista sponsored  literacy campaign in the 1980’s is part of what motivated Belizean Garifuna Andy Palacio to undertake his life’s work of trying to document, promote and revive Garifuna music and culture in Belize.

Work Being done to Revive Garifuna language, music, and culture

This threatened loss of Garifuna culture through the loss of the language and through immigration to US cities in search of work has spurred some people to try to document, rescue and revive the Garifuna traditions and the language.  Some of the work to document and preserve Garifuna songs has made some Garifunas world  famous like Belizean punta rock singer Andy Palacio who together with the producer of Belizean record company Stonetree Records Ivan Duval  won the number one international award for World Music at the World Music Expo in Europe in 2007 for his CD Watina.  Andy Palacio also  posthumously won the BBC3 award in England for World Music in the category of the Americas in 2008 . Palacio had also received the award for “ Best New Artist” at the Caribbean Music Awards in 1993. He was interviewed for the Public Radio International’s show on the music of the African diaspora of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean Afropop Worldwide heard on 100 US Public Radio stations as well as in Europe and in Africa the year before his death, and the news of his death was reported worldwide, as well(www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/andy-palacio). Andy Palacio was also featured with Honduran Garifuna Aurelio Martinez on National Geographic.  There are numerous YouTube videos of Garifuna music including by Palacio, Martinez and Paul Nabor and their music and life stories are available on online at www.stonetreerecords.com, among other sites.  More information on this process and the artists is provided in the Background information following this main article.

Most of the traditional Garifuna songs are women’s songs, but many of the first Garifuna singers to gain fame in Belize, in the US and around the world were men. Part of the promotion work for making modern Belizean punta rock and traditional paranda musicians famous in the US was done by Los Angeles resident Aziatic who during 10 years split his efforts between his own musical touring and composing and organizing “Best of the Best” Punta Rock concerts in the US, including Los Angeles and Las Vegas, bringing Andy Palacio, Paul Nabor and Aurelio Martinez among others to the States for concerts and media interviews.  (www.belizeanartist.com).

 One of the best known female singers of Garifuna music in the US is Guatemalan Garifuna singer Paula Castillo who has resided in New York City for many years. She sings in Garifuna accompanied by modern electronic instruments, similar to punta rock stars.  She has released 8 CD’s or cassettes including Garifuna India, Nuguru Narutabus, Bunguilla Seremien, Bunguilla Baba,. Millenium 2000 and Darangilu.  She has traveled in the US and Central America promoting Garifuna music and has been honored by the State of Louisiana, New York, and the government of Guatemala for her long and illustrious career.   She attends almost every Garifuna community event in New York City where she often sings, such as at the Honduran Central American Parade Festivals in the Bronx.  In 2011 Garifuna Coalition in New York City awarded her the 2011 Garifuna Heritage Award for her work in the Garifuna community and promoting Garifuna language and music (www.beinggarifuna.com).  Although her music is recorded in New York, it is widely listened to in Garifuna communities  in Central America, which is true for many US based Garifuna groups like Garifuna Kids. 

In Belize, Stonetree Records worked 10 years studying traditional Garifuna women’s music.  The final result was a recording of Umalali, The Garifuna Women’s Project (www.stonetreerecords.com). . A group of 3 Central American Garifuna women Umalali toured in the US and appeared at the Vancouver Folk Festival in Canada.  A video was made on Umalali The Garifuna Women’s Project  and is available on www.Vimeo,com, along with 159 other videos of Garifunas. NPR radio stations in the US did a report on Umalali: The Voice of the Garifuna (www.npr.org). The CD is available on Amazon.com or through Stonetree. Radio France’s CD of  Garifuna women’s music sung by the 60 member Garifuna women’s dance club--Club Wabaragoun of Trujillo, which was called  “Les Chansons des Caraibes Noires”, shows the beauty of Garifuna women singing in large groups  with traditional handmade instruments as is typical in the villages for holidays, fairs, and ceremonies. Although it circulated in Trujillo as a pirated CD under the name  “Garifuna 100%”, a legal version is not available for sale on the Radio France website and in Honduras only the singers of Club Wabaragoun (Which means all of us going ahead together) had one legal copy each of it. Honduran Garifuna writer Salvador Suazo produced a song book Lanigui Garifuna (Garifuna Heart) with the words in Garifuna and a cassette of Garifuna music recorded by a women’s dance club from Sangrelaya.which was sold in Tegucigalpa, but has been unavailable for years. Punta, the Garifuna’s most famous song style, is traditionally a women’s song, and examples are included in these collections.  A google search for Garifuna music history turns up collections of Garifuna music for sale by Guatemalan Garifunas, various field recordings and books of the history of Honduran and Belizean music, including Garifuna music.

.On the site www.beinggarifuna.com blogger Teofilo Colon  has a section where he interviews Garifuna DJ’s around the US and the owner of the main store in New York which carries Garifuna music and videos about what are the current popular songs at Garifuna parties and concerts, often with links to the Facebook pages of the artists, as well as what is selling the most. The most popular musical groups among the Garifuna often do not appear to be those that have had the most international attention.  There are many Youtube videos of Garifuna music and dance, some of which have gotten 20,000 hits, so some Garifuna artists are very popular.   Yet Garifuna music like the Garifuna themselves has mostly been ignored by most US radio stations, and except for those recorded by Stonetree Records are not available through traditional music retailers etc.  The local media like newspapers or national music industry magazines seldom reports on Garifuna music or events, which was part of the reason Teofilo Colon started his blog BeingGarifuna.com for which he is the founder, publisher, and editor. For this work, he has received the 2010 Garifuna Coalition Recognition Award and he was written up by the New York Daily News (http:www.nydailynews.com/new-york/garifuna-blogger-teofilo-colon-fans-people-pride-online-article-1.977231). 

If the mainstream media has mostly ignored the Garifuna, the Garifunas have opened spaces for themselves, often over the Internet. In New York, Honduran Garifuna Valentin Murphy from Santa Fe coordinated the cable TV network weekly TV show The Central American Show.  There he would present the different activities of the Central American, particularly the Garifuna community, in New York. Many shows highlighted traditional Garifuna dances done in New York.  Because the Garifunas of Trujillo, Honduras own their own cable TV channel, too, shows in New York were often rebroadcast on Cablevision Cristales in Trujillo, Honduras. The funding to start the Cable TV company in Trujillo came from the insurance payments for the death of Honduran Garifunas in the Happy Land Social Club fire in the Bronx, New York. In Los Angeles, the Garifunas have opened a Garifuna Museum (www.garifunamuseum.com).

Thanks to California based website designer Jorge Garifuna, there is now an Internet TV station which shows Garifuna TV shows, GariTV.com.  One of the shows is Sásumu Show, a weekly program of interviews about Garifuna culture and issues in the community, which is hosted and produced by Garifuna in Peril star Ruben Reyes (www.garifunainperilmovie.com).  Thanks to Internet by satellite through Internet Cafés that cost $1 an hour in Honduras, or Internet over modems similar to mobile phones that can pick up the Internet anywhere the Honduran cellphone company Tigo has a cellphone signal, even Garifunas in Honduras can watch GariTV.    Garifuna radio stations on the Internet exist with DJ’s based both in Honduras and the US.  One of these Internet radio stations is run by Los Angeles Belizean punta rock star Aziatic (www.belizeanartist.com). Another is Radio Giriga 99.9 FM which you can find on garifunalink.com. Garifunas also have had radio shows on Honduran and Belizean Radio, such as the Garifuna half hour programs on Belize Radio One starting in 1980(Avila,2009).

In addition to the highly visible efforts of music stars to save Garifuna language and culture, there has been a lot of backroom work of developing a writing system for the Garifuna dictionary, writing dictionaries, organizing and supporting efforts to get bilingual (Garifuna-Spanish) intercultural education in Garifuna communities, and documenting Garifuna history.  Some of the leaders of this part of the work have been Dr. Joseph Palacio, a Belizean Garifuna anthropologist, Clifford Palacio who worked with Ruben Reyes on the Garifuna dictionary, Roy Cayetano (Belize), Salvador Suazo (Honduras), Fausto Miguel Alvarez (Honduras) and Ruben Reyes in California, Garifuna in Peril’s co-producer and star. When Garifuna bilingual education was first approved in Honduras, before there were any textbooks, grammar books, or even an agreed upon alphabet, one of the first things teachers did was form choirs to learn the Honduran national anthem in Garifuna, translated by Ruben Reyes, an active member of the California Garifuna organization SONEHCA (Sociedad de Negros Hondureños de California). He has recently founded a foundation “Garifuna Hope” to help preserve the Garifuna language and culture.

 At the same time Garifuna in Peril is coming out in 2012, Ruben Reyes is releasing his just published trilingual dictionary  Gadüdia Garifuna Trilingual dictionary (Garifuna-Spanish-English), a 20 year work of love, which is available for sale at  www.garinet.com and Amazon.com. Jorge Garifuna, a California based computer programmer, website developer, and garinet.com’s owner and website developer, has recently developed an app so that Garifunas can access the dictionary and find the word they are looking for from their mobile phone (www.garinet.com). Jorge Garifuna has received numerous awards from the Garifuna community for his work.  This app and the dictionary should be helpful for the Garifuna bilingual-intercultural programs, which in Honduras was approved as a pilot project in 1992 and made law in 1994 (www.se.gob.hn/eib/afro/ind/garifunas.htm).  Guatemalan Garifunas also have a government approved bilingual education program. 

Film Garifuna in Peril Highlights Modern Problems Past History US Immigrants

2012 Film Garifuna in Peril Helps End Garifuna Immigrants’ Invisibility in the US, Highlights Modern  Problems and Past History

By Wendy Griffin

In the blog Being Garifuna (www.beinggarifuna.com) New York Garifuna blogger Teofilo Colon wonders whether US audiences are ready to watch the film Garifuna in Peril, which is about a Central American people the Garifuna living in the US, that most people in the US, even most Latinos know nothing about. The film  was produced by Ali Allie and Honduran born Garifuna Ruben Reyes. Reyes also plays the starring role. It made its US premiere in December 2012 at the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York City to appreciative audiences, according to Teofilo Colon’s and the Garifuna in Peril the movie websites (www.garifunainperilmovie.com). Its World Premiere was in London, England.  Honduran, Belizean, and St. Vincent dignataries attended the New York and London premieres. After opening two days in New York, the movie was also shown at the Santa Fe Film Festival in Santa Fe, New México. It got favorable reviews in all three places.  Just prior to Martin Luther King Day, on 18 Janauary 2013, the film played again in New York City.

 On Februry 2, 2012 during Black History Month, the film made its West Coast premiere in San Diego, California.  The producers scheduled additional showings such as in Los Angeles, Miami, Cannes, Berlin, Zanzibar, Bogatá, Columbia, the Bahamas, and New Orleans. Eventually it won prizes in Tuscon, Arizona, Boston, Houston, and in Trieste, Italy. The Spanish language premier was in Livingston, Guatemala, a Garifuna community. It played in Honduras in Garifuna towns and big Honduran cities, eventually being shown on Honduran TV. It played at a Belizean film festival and then in several Garifuna towns in Belize. Several US universities arranged to show it after Latin American librarians heard about the movie at the SALALM Conference. The producers of the movie did not find a commercial distributor, but distributed and marketed the movie themselves using Facebook, a website, blogs, Amazon, direct mailings, articles in the ethnic press,  etc. Wikipedia articles were written both about this movie and Ali Allié’s previous Garifuna movie El Espiritu de Mi Mama, which also saw increased sales as a result of the release of his second award winning movie. The movie Garifuna in Peril is still for sale, plus it is now available on Youtube.com.

The fact that few Latinos or other Americans have even heard of the Garifunas is echoed on other websites about the Garifuna.  For example, on the website about folk life in New Orleans, the writer Amy Serrano says that Hondurans were the largest immigrant group in  the New Orleans  area prior to Hurricane Katrina, and many of these Hondurans were Garifuna, yet most people in New Orleans, even other Latinos had never heard of them, but were interested to hear about them. (http://www.louisanafolklife.org/LT/articles-Essays/garifuna.html).  According to this report, many Garifunas came to New Orleans legally during the era of the Alliance for Progress in the 1960’s and still others to help with rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  Others report that there was also significant legal Honduran immigration to the New Orleans area during the years of the banana boom in Honduras when ships of United Fruit (now Chiquita), Cuyamel Fruit of New Orleans resident Samuel Zemurray(now part of Chiquita), and Standard Fruit (now part of Dole) connected New Orleans to the northern Central American ports of Honduras, like Puerto Cortes, Tela, La Ceiba, and Trujillo, all near traditional Garifunas communities. 

 The organization that represents the Garifuna in New York the Garifuna Coalition USA and Dr. Sarah England’s book on Afro-Central Americans in New York also say that even though Garifunas had lived in New York at least since the 1930’s, when they often came legally as merchant seamen with their whole families, they were mostly invisible in New York until the Happy Land Social Club fire in 1990, where 87 people died, 59 of the victims were Hondurans and 70% of them Garifunas.  New York is home to largest Garifuna population outside of Central America, with estimates of between100,000 and 200,000 Garifunas living in New York City, particularly in the Bronx (www.garifunacoalition.org). That makes the population of the Garifuna in New York possibly larger than the entire population of the country of Belize. The Garifunas in New York include immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua. In addition to a New York Times video noted below, the Wall Street Journal had identified the Garifunas as one of the immigrant groups changing Harlem in New York. The New York Daily News has reported on the blog BeingGarifuna.com. Other US cities with important Garifuna populations include Miami, Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Partly due to the high cost of living in New York City, educated legal Garifunas are now spreading to other US cities such as Atlanta and Seattle.

 At Stanford University, they started the Garifuna Immigration project to tell bilingual education teachers and others interested in this migrant group about them, mostly through website links and summarizing articles about them, because few people knew anything about them(“Honduras Teacher’s Corner—http://www.stanford.edu/group/arts/honduras/links/).

The basic book about the Garifunas by an academic is Nancie Gonzales’s Sojouners of the Caribbean, published in 1988 and widely available. It was recently translated into Spanish and published in Honduras with the title “Peregrinos del Mar”. A good basic book about the Garifunas by a Garifuna is Black Caribs-Garifuna Saint Vincent’ Exiled People and the Origin of the Garifuna: A Historical Compilation edited by Tomas Alberto Avila who lives in Providence, Rhode Island (Avila, 2009).  Avila’s book is available from Amazon.com. It contains articles both by foreign researchers and by leading Garifuna and St. Vincentian intellectuals.

Garifunas are hard to classify, as noted in the New York Times video Being Garifuna ( www.nytimes.com/video/2012/01/13/us/.../being-garifuna.html).   Many come from Spanish speaking countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and speak Spanish in addition to sometimes speaking their native language Garifuna, so they often  are considered Hispanics. The Garifunas, traditionally called morenos or Black Caribs,  are as dark as many sub-Saharan Africans, so sometimes they are classified as Afro-Latino.  However, in Los Angeles, the majority of the Garifunas there are from the English speaking country of Belize, and speak English as well as Garifuna. The Garifuna language is primarily an indigenous language of the Arawak Indians who lived in the Caribbean Islands, with some Carib Indian, French, Spanish, English and African languages derived words. (In other parts of the Caribbean the Arawak speaking Indians are often called Tainos, and  many Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and some Cubans also consider themselves partially descended from Arawak or Taino Indians, although few speak the language.) So Garifunas are sometimes considered an Afro-Caribbean culture or an Afro-Indigenous culture from both English and Spanish speaking countries.

Garifuna foods, like the Garifunas themselves, are a mixture of influences of the Indians of the Caribbean islands, with African influence from Africans who intermarried with the Indians on the island of St. Vincent in the Caribbean. Before 1797, the ancestors of the Garifunas lived on the island of St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles north of Venezuela, where Africans destined to be slaves on a ship or several ships which shipwrecked, and escaping African slaves from nearby islands like Barbados, mixed with the local Arawak and Carib Indians. (The Garifunas have a tradition that the European sailors slept with the African women while crossing the Atlantic and these women got the keys to release the men, who then took over the ship and ran it aground in the Grenadines.)

Many Garifunas also believe there were Africans who had mixed with the local Indians before the Europeans came (Avila,2009), perhaps from the expedition of the King of Mali (See the Wikipedia article on Mali Empire, and Garifuna writer Sabas Whittaker’s book Africans in the Americas.).  The Caribbean Sea is named for the Carib ancestors of the Garifunas. After losing a war with the British, some scenes of which are in the Garifuna in Peril movie,  they were taken to Honduras in 1797.  From there they spread out to the neighboring countries.  In New York, a city with significant Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cuban, Jamaican and other West Indian populations, the Garifunas are often considered as an Afro-Caribbean people as well as Central American. On the US 2010 census, when faced with the choices of Hispanic, Indian, African American or Other, many US Garifunas chose Other and wrote in Garifuna.   The 2001 census in Honduras let them choose Garifuna, but the 2013 Honduran census had the classification Afro-Honduran, which could include up to 30% of the population of Honduras. This new classification, actually requested by the First World Summit of Afro-Descent People, led to legal problems for the Garifunas as the Honduran government said in an Inter-American Human Rights Court case the Garifunas were not indigenous, and thus their lands were not protected by International Labor Orgranization (ILO) 169 which protects the Human Rights of Indigenous People. The Inter-American Human Rights Court did not buy into the Honduran government’s argument and felt the government had violated the Garifuna’s human rights in two cases—Garifunas of Triumfo de la Cruz and Punta Pierda vs. the Honduran government. There are additional Garifuna Human Rights violation cases in the pipeline, and the Court has ordered Honduras to take preventative measures to ensure the life of Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda. See Ofraneh’s blog for more details www.ofraneh.wordpress.com.

The movie Garifuna in Peril produced by Ali Alié and Garifuna Ruben Reyes is about a Garifuna language teacher Ricardo in Los Angeles, played by Honduran born Ruben Reyes, who is concerned about the loss of his ancestral language Garifuna both in Los Angeles and in Central America. Even his own son does not speak Garifuna.  Attempting to rescue the language, he tries to start a Garifuna language school in a Garifuna community on the north coast of Honduras. The Garifuna men were traditionally fishermen, and their villages from Belize to Nicaragua are located within a few meters of the white sand beaches of Central America’s Caribbean Coast.  His plans run into trouble, because of proposed tourist development expansion in the area among other problems.

Although the film is a fiction, the problem of tourism development near or on Garifuna lands is very real, particularly in Reyes’s Honduran hometown of Triumfo de la Cruz where at least 2 Garifuna have been murdered relating to land disputes, according to the Committee for Defense of the Lands of Triumfo de la Cruz, near the resort town of Tela.   The land problems of the Garifunas have been reported in the US press, such as an article by Detroit Free Press writer Gerry Volgenau “In Honduras, the Garifuna culture fights for survival” and in the Honduran paper Honduras This Week Online (http://www.marrder.com/htw).  The film is shot both in Los Angeles and Honduras, particularly in Triumfo de la Cruz near Tela(www.garifunainperilmovie.com). One film critic called it one of the top 25 foreign films produced in 2013.  As the directors, producers, writers, most of the actors, and even the musicians primarily live in Los Angeles, California this makes us wonder about inclusion/exclusion in what makes a film foreign or American.

For most of the actors, this is their first film.  The majority of the actors are Garifunas and the majority of the dialogue (55%) is in the Garifuna language, with the option of English or Spanish subtitles.  The rest of the dialogue is in English or Spanish(www.garifunainperilmovie.com).  The Garifunas are the largest Afro-descent people in the Americas who speak their own non-European language, although some of other groups of mixed Indians and former African slaves like the Miskito Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua and some Black Seminoles or Black Cherokee of the US, also have their own languages.

According to an ABC special on “Black Indians: An American Story”, now available as an award winning DVD, people who are a mixture of Indians and Blacks in the US are often marginalized both even within those cultures and by the general US population, “their heritage ignored and their contribution denied. They are all but invisible at the dawn of the new millennium.” (www.richheape.com/black-indians-american-story.htm).  According to the website www.afroprescencia.com, based in New York which writes about the issues of Afro-Latinos,   Afro-Latinos are often marginalized within the larger Latino community in the US and in their own countries. 

The issue that Latin America Indians, with separate cultures, religions,  and languages within the larger US Hispanic community, such as the significant Maya and Mexican Zapotec population in the US, has only recently begun to be addressed by researchers like Dr. James Loucky of Western Washington University and linguists like Pam Munro at UCLA and Gabriela Perez-Baez at the Smithsonian Institute. Latin American Indians are sometimes found within US Indian organizations and events, such as in 1991 the president of the Board of the Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  was a Taino Indian shaman from Cuba, Miguel Seguey, and  their  Pow Wow was opened by a ceremony by Seguey. There were also Indian vendors from Ecuador and Aztec Indian dancers from Mexico. Other times Latin American Indians work within Hispanic organizations like when I worked for The Center for Central American Refugees in Plainsfield, NJ, some of the clients were Maya Indians fleeing from the civil war in Guatemala.

 This marginalization seems to affect the Garifunas, both in Honduras and in the US.  For example, in the 1990’s the Honduran elementary school textbooks series “Serie Mi Honduras”, paid for by USAID, taught “we are all descended from Lenca and Maya Indians”.  In Tela, Honduras I asked university students who included Garifunas, Afro-mestizos, Black English speakers, and Mestizos, and who were  public school teachers in equally mixed communities, how they felt about that. One just said, “Do we look like the descendants of the Lencas and the Mayas?”.  There were no Blacks in the entire Honduran textbook series for grades 1-6, even though Garifunas and English speaking Blacks make up about 3% of the population of Honduras, and there are thousands of dark skinned Miskito Indians and Afro-Mestizos, according to the 2001 Census of Honduras (Davidson, 2011) and my personal experience there.  Honduras now recognizes nine Indian or Afro-Honduran groups in Honduras, including the Garifunas, according to the website of the recently formed Secretaria de Pueblos Indígenas y Afro-Hondureños (Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Hondurans) (www.sedinafro.gob.hn) whose former Minister Luis Green was a Garifuna. The Minister of Culture of Honduras under Honduran President Pepe Lobo Dr. Tulio Mariano Gonzales was also a Garifuna from the community of Barrio Cristales, Trujillo, Honduras.  Under the current presidency of Juan Orlando Hernandez in Honduras both of these ministries were cancelled, and a smaller Department of Honduran Indians and Afro-Hondurans now exists inside the Ministry of Social Inclusion, still with some Garifuna staff.

 In New York, there are also English speaking Blacks from northern Honduras, many of whom settle in Brooklyn near other  Anglo-Carribbean groups, according to Mr. Addington, an English speaking Black native of Tela, Honduras. There are also Spanish speaking Hondurans in New York who not only settle in  neighborhoods close to each other, but also whole apartment buildings will have primarily Spanish speaking people from one  Honduran town like Tela, according to Geovani Maradiaga of Tela. But except for a few community wide events, like the annual parade, these different  Honduran groups in New York seldom see each other or mix socially.

People who see the Garifuna in the streets and subways of New York often do not recognize them as Central Americans or Hispanics. Some assume that they are US African Americans, because of their dark skin.  If people hear them speak Spanish, they assume they are from some Spanish speaking island in the Caribbean like Cuba, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.  If they are speaking Garifuna among themselves, sometimes people think they must be speaking an African language and that they are Africans. Most non-Honduran Hispanics if they have heard of the Garifunas of Honduras , it is usually because many Honduran soccer players, including the majority of the “Selección Nacional” which plays soccer with other countries to see who goes to the World Cup, are Garifunas (Amaya Banegas, 2012).  Some Garifuna soccer players have even been traded to European teams like Honduran Garifuna David Suazo who played in Portugal.  While most Black Honduran soccer players are Garifunas, a few are from English speaking Black families, often called Bay Islanders or Isleños (Amaya Banegas,2005).

The Garifunas in Ali Alie films

 This is Ali Alie’s second film about the Garifuna.  The first film “El Espiritu de Mi Mama” (The Spirit of My Mother) released in 1999 was about a Garifuna woman in Los Angeles bothered by dreams of her mother who goes home to the Honduran North Coast to see if her mother needs a traditional Garifuna ceremony.  The film shows her consulting a buyei or Garifuna religious leader about the dreams, and preparing for the ceremonies of the bath of a soul and a dugu.  This film was favorably received by Garifunas who sold it on the Internet on a Garifuna e-commerce store (www.garinet.com) and by video distributors like Blockbuster Video and Amazon.com. It is still available on Amazon.  When I reviewed the film  for the Honduran English language newspaper Honduras This Week Online in 2002, I recommended it to people interested in a video showing Garifuna dances, drumming and ceremonies including the most important one dugu, as well as the striking contrast between the Garifuna’s homeland in Honduras and the grafitti covered streets of Los Angeles where they have ended up in search of better economic opportunities (www.marrder.com/htw/2002jul/cultural/htm).. I know some US universities that teach about Afro-Latinos and Afro-Caribbeans like Tulane University of New Orleans have bought the film. In WorldCat it is also classified as a different kind of mother-daughter story, and a film about domestic help workers in Los Angeles.

In Ali and Ruben’s new film Garifuna in Peril, in addition to the struggle of Ricardo to open his language school, there is also a play within the movie.  Garifuna children reenact the story of the Garifunas on the island of St. Vincent and how under their chief Joseph Chatoyer they fought against the British, before being exiled to Central America. This moment is so central to the Garifuna people, that the song Yarumein (Saint Vincent in Garifuna) about their struggle against the English and coming to Honduras is considered like the national anthem of the Garifuna.  A version of this song, sung by Honduran Garifuna Aurelio Martinez and accompanied by the traditional Garifuna band Lita Ariran (Black Rooster) is found in music section of Garifuna Coalition’s website (www.garifunacoalition.org), together with the national anthems of Honduras, Guatemala, and the US translated into Garifuna by Ruben Reyes. One of the Garifuna Dance groups of New York is named for the Chief Joseph Chatoyer, as is the Satuye Center, the building of the Garifuna NGO ODECO in La Ceiba, Honduras. On St. Vincent and other nearby islands in the Caribbean, pictures of Chatoyer are so common that they even appear on phone cards and there is a national monument to him on St. Vincent (Avila, 2009). 

When Ali and Ruben’s film made its World Premiere in London, England, many of the people who attended were St. Vincentians living in London who liked seeing their nation’s history on the big screen (www.beinggarifuna.com, www.garifunainperilmovie.com). The Garifunas have remade contact with St. Vincent and offer training in the Garifuna culture, music, and history to St. Vincentians.  The government of St. Vincent has sent a letter to the British government requesting reparations for the attempted genocide of the Garifuna people of St. Vincent, according to the Garifuna Coalition in New York.

The touching movie Yurumein Homecoming is about Honduran Garifunas and a St. Vincent Carib living in Los Angeles returning home to St. Vincent for National Hero’s Day and to visit the islands where about half the Garifuna population died due to poor conditions and maybe even poisoning by their British captors prior to exiling them to Honduras. That film also refers to this time in Garifuna and Carib history as genocide. The typical narrative of English colonization of the Caribbean is that all the Indians died out early, thus requiring the importation of Black labor. The fact that the Indians did not all die out, but in fact continued to fight bravely until 1797 (after the US revolution) and then many were exiled where they flourished in Honduras and the rest of Central America, shows that the original colonial narrative was simply not true.   The movie shows the Caribs who remained with the British on St.Vincent did not fare well.