The Garifuna: A Changing Future
by Pamela Conley

Home | Central America | CA Books | CA News | CA Travel Directory | Honduras | Garifuna | Planeta Honduras | Related Links

Garifuna! The word is powerful and stands separate and alone just like the people. They are the Black Caribs whose ancestors survived slavery, ship wrecks, discrimination, and dislocation. They are a proud and playful people that have managed through much upheaval, poverty and trauma, to hold on to their roots through their language, religion, crafts, music, and life-style for over 200 years.

Their story began in the early 1600s when two ships carrying captured West African slaves to the New World capsized near St. Vincent in the Windward islands. Many slaves swam to safety and freedom in the New World and through inter-marriage with the Carib Indians produced the Garifuna.

The British called them "Black Caribs" to differentiate them from the Native American Caribs. The Garifuna did not colonize easily under the British and for the next 200 years, they continued to fight for their freedom, unlike the Native American Caribs who were slowly decimated by disease and warfare. Fearing the troublesome warriors, in 1797 the British decided to oust them from St. Vincent and they were sent to Jamaica and to Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras. The British left them some food supplies, seeds, tools, fishing hooks and lines. The Garifuna soon discovered that the land to be cleared for planting was extremely difficult to clear, and the rainy season was soon to begin. They pleaded with the Spanish to take them to the mainland where soon after their arrival on the coastline, they began to explore and settle as far as Belize.

Today, their largest population is in Honduras with 200,000 and it is here that their culture is most intact. There are 15,000 living in Belize, and 6,000 in Guatemala, and an additional few thousand scattered in Nicaragua and the Windward Islands. They have continued to be the victims of discrimination politically, economically, and socially.

National borders may separate them by countries, but the Garifuna are the only black people in the Americas to have preserved their culture, a mixture of African and Native American heritage influences. They continue to share much in common with the Native Americans, such as language, fishing, and some religious beliefs. Their African ancestors contributed a deep spiritual mark that is found in their oral traditions, drum styles, agriculture, and indeed their dance.

Many of the Garifuna today speak English and Spanish. But they also continue to speak a musical language that is a blending of a rich mosaic of Arawak, French, Yuroba, Banti, and Swahili. Thus, the Garifuna's preserved language has also served to differentiate these people as the Garifuna from the Black Caribs that speak English like the Jamaicans.

Because the Spanish were in control when they settled on the mainland, the Garifuna adopted Catholicism; however, they never gave up their traditional Afro-Indian rites and rituals in the dugu (religion) that is practiced in every Garifuna settlement. Their religion is deeply connected to ancestor worship and is compared in some respects to voodoo in Haiti. The buyei (shaman) is the psychological link between directing the soul in the present and the future. He or she is the link to the supernatural. The dugu is immersed in ritual, celebration, chanting, and dancing. The freeing of a spirit is a happy time and celebrated with drinking, music, and of course with joy. It is a family reunion, when many travel from as far as other lands to participate. It is the bringing of people together in their traditional ways.

Their music is the healing spirit that connects their laughter with their pain. Women sing their songs while they work, the rhythm freeing them of fatigue by relieving the monotony of work. Their songs have been ways to communicate messages in the past; where to meet and rendezvous, plans of escape, or to announce a death. There are songs for the fishermen, songs to help build houses, have babies, and remember the past. Music is in their soul and indeed, their walk is graceful and often more like dancing.

The more modernized punta is heard in the night clubs and on radios, and teenagers and adults can be seen "walking the dance," but the punta's religious roots are in ritual. The ritual is done after a relative's death to insure that the spirit stays, because the Garifuna believe that only the body leaves, not the spirit. The "punta" is also an adoration of fertility.

Living where the land and sea come together, they live in harmony of spirit connecting man with nature, fishing from dugout boats and a man's success and individuality is still measured by his boat, although it has become harder to survive and scratch out a living. Besides the traditional ways of fishing and farming, many Garifuna are seen selling cold drinks, coconut bread to the tourists, and lottery tickets.

Women, small children, and old men are the ones seen in the villages during the day. The older children have gone to school, and the men are fishing or in the nearest town, trying to make ends meet. More and more of the teenagers learn Spanish and leave the villages for the cities to find work. When they return, they are embarrassed to speak the native dialect. In the past, work was plentiful with the banana and fruit companies. The Garifuna did not have to leave home and preferred to remain by the sea. Now, men who want to work must go away and the migration of fishermen which began with the merchant ships of the United States and Britain has created a large following of permanent residents in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans.

The Garifuna may have learned how to adapt well to city life and how to make a wage, but they will always return home to their native village to spend their last days. The custom has never changed and it is doubtful that it will in the near future.

Though in the aftermath of destruction and devastation left by Hurricane Mitch that added to their grief and poverty, and ripping apart their villages, the Garifuna have weathered the disaster as they have many times in the past. Picking up the pieces once again, the Garifuna continue to survive.

Displaced from their ancestral lands, victims of racial discrimination, and mostly forgotten, the Garifuna have continued to survive through isolation, and a fierce commitment to preserve their culture through adaptation and change. Perhaps, this same ability to accept change and make it Garifuna, instead of turning their backs to the modern world in order to preserve the old, will be their deliverance to the new Garifuna of the twenty-first century.

PLANETA.COM GUIDES

Home | About | Advertise! | Books | Central America | Ecotourism | Headlines
Learn Spanish | Mexico | Media | Site Map | South America | World Travel | Updates