Recently, I had the opportunity to meet Garifuna professor and lawyer Mario Ellington Lambe. We met and spoke while taking part in a conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that dealt with racism in Latin America and the Caribbean. We were able to talk about the history of the Garifuna people, their background, culture, and current situation.
Where did the Garifuna culture come from?
The Garifunas, explained Ellington, are part of the extraordinary and marvelous history of the Caribbean. The Carib and Arawak peoples were banished from Venezuela in the 17th century and sent to the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This, combined with the enslavement of African people in the same lands, led the way to several insurrections by both groups against the European colonial powers (France and England).
Two of these freedom-seeking revolts were led by Satuye (a.k.a. Joseph Chatoyer), a Garifuna leader. In 1772, Satuye organized the First Carib War and fought the British to a stalemate that led to a treaty signed in February 1773. The British did not really honor the treaty, though, and a Second Carib War broke out in March 1795.
During this second war, Satuye was assassinated by the enslavers, but he remained a hero to the Garifuna and was officially declared a national hero of St. Vincent and the Grenadines on March 14, 2002. With the failure of these insurrections, though, Afrodescendant and Indigenous people were expelled to the island of Roatán, which today is part of the Republic of Honduras.
Roatán island: Epicenter of Garifuna culture
Mario Ellington and other Garifunas I have interviewed in Honduras, such as Roy Guevara, the late leader Celeo Álvarez, and Professor Salvador Suazo, all agreed that the island of Roatán became the source of Garifuna language, spirituality, and culture.
Roatán gave birth to the Afro Indian Garifuna culture and spirituality, which is recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It was from there that the Garifuna people migrated to Nicaragua, Belize, and Guatemala.
The Garifuna arrived in Guatemala in 1802. The largest Garifuna community in Guatemala is in the port city of Livingston, Izabal department, Puerto Barrios. The Guatemalan Civil War saw armed conflict between Marxist guerrillas and the Guatemalan army from 1960 through 1996. Many Garifuna youth and children were forcibly recruited to join the armed forces, which led to almost 200,000 deaths. The consequences of this long and painful conflict severely affected the economic and social stability of the country, producing a forced internal and external migration of thousands of Garifuna.
The Seed Movement and the Garifuna people
“I have been a supporter of the Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement), promoted by Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu (1992), the second Guatemalan to receive the Nobel Prize, after Professor Miguel Angel Asturias, who received the same prize in 1967,” says Mario Ellington Lambe.
Lambe said the Garifunas of Guatemala have been one of the most persecuted people in Central America, especially during the civil war, which produced internal displacement and migration to other countries—with the majority to the United States. The spiral of violence that began after the 1954 overthrow of the democratic president, Jacobo Árbenz, did not stop until 1996 when peace accords were signed. Those accords finally acknowledged the identity and human rights of Indigenous peoples and required Guatemala to build a multi-ethnic, pluricultural, and multilingual nation.
During a July 2021 visit to Guatemala, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her desire to contribute to the fight against corruption at that time. But the main objective was to put up a wall against migration, offering $48 million to invest in the economy of that country.
According to Lambe, “the recent elections, concluded last August 20, despite the fact that several sectors of the ultra-right tried to sabotage them, opened a path for peace and hope and within that, the inclusion of the Guatemalan Garifuna people in the government plans. The Garifuna electorate voted 41% in favor of peace and stability.”
Guatemalans have elected the Seed Movement’s Bernardo Arévalo to serve as its new president; he is set to govern from 2024 to 2028.Lambe, with his ancestral wisdom supported by el dugu (ritual of the ancestors), said goodbye with a big hug and we told him, “Buida lcmuga lidim bun…Go well, brother.”