From Yurumein to the Bronx, A Garifuna Cultural Experience
The Garifuna flag hangs above a table of books written by Garifuna authors or about the Afro-Indigenous community. Between the flag and the table, a photo of wanáragua dancers. All items from Luz Soliz-Ramos’s collection. Photo credit: Janel Martinez
Garifuna households hold an immeasurable amount of history. Whether outwardly displayed on the walls, which likely capture a family’s lineage through photos or wooden art work that pays homage to their national, ethnic and racial identities, or nestled in a corner of the home, only to be brought out for practical use, like the hana, each home encompasses the Afro-Indigenous community’s deep-rooted history.
Luz Soliz-Ramos, founder of the Garifuna Heritage Center for the Arts and Culture, transformed the Boricua Art Gallery into a piece of home for Garinagu, as well as aesthetes and students interested in Garifunaidad. The Garifuna Cultural Experience exhibit housed a collection of artifacts, tools, books written in English, French, Garifuna and Spanish, as well as photographs taken in New York City and Honduras. Though the Boricua College professor curated the exhibit over the past several years with her own items at the Manhattan campus, she felt it was time to share the experience with the Bronx branch of the institution. Her decision was intentional, as this year’s exhibit was on display in the center of the largest Garifuna community outside of Central America.
“This area, with the Boricua College Bronx campus, is practically in the middle of the Garifuna community,” says Soliz-Ramos, who hails from Trujillo in Colón, Honduras. “The Garinagu community starts way from Fordham Road all the way to the end of St. Ann’s [Ave.]. We are in the middle.”
Though the exhibit was geared toward all ages, the activist and educator is inspired to keep Garifuna culture alive for the next generation. A father, who migrated from Guatemala to the Bronx as a child, held his young daughter’s hand as the two walked around the gallery space. Feeling disconnected from his roots, he expressed wanting to introduce his daughter to Garifuna history and culture. Soliz-Ramos stopped to speak with the pair, answering his questions and detailing the steps to making cassava bread, or ereba—even, later on, breaking from conversation to encourage the young girl to play the maracas.
Displayed are a strainer, egi, or grater; beísawa, which is used in the making of ereba; and híbise, a woven sifter for the cassava. Items from Luz Soliz-Ramos’s collection. Photo credit: Janel Martinez
“It is important for the children to appreciate and value everything that is part of us, from the past and present, and to see where we are going from here,” she says. “Although we're not using the híbise to sift the cassava flowers before the making of the cassava bread, they can see where we came from and where we are now. That's why people usually display in museums to see where we are coming from, the past, and how we create new to create maybe a better way, new technology and so on.”
Essential tools for Garifuna foodways were also on display, including a siriwiya, or castnet, used daily by fisherman; beísawa, a hand-held broom used to brush off additional flour during the cassava-making process; egi, or a handmade grater, used to shred coconut meat or grind down root vegetables like cassava and plantain; híbise, and hana, or mortar and pestle, among other items. (“Very seldom do you see a Garifuna home without a hana,” she says.)
A short walk away, Wellington Ramos’s “Brief History of the Garifuna People” is framed on a pillar, it read:
The Garifuna people are descendants of the Arawak and African people who lived in “Yurumein,” now known as Saint Vincent & The Grenadines. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is one of the islands in the lesser Antilles, located in the Caribbean Sea where other Kalinagu people live. These people lived in harmony and peace among themselves for many years before the European arrived. As time went by, the Spanish, French and British made attempts to invade the land, which resulted in a series of wars between the Garifuna people and these European invaders. In 1796 after years of battles, the British succeeded in conquering the Garifuna people and took over their land. Garifuna survivors were captured, imprisoned, tortured and killed on the adjacent island of Baliceaux.
In 1797, a decision was made by the British Crown to remove the remaining survivors as prisoners of war from Yurumein to Roatán, Honduras, which was a British colony at that time. They arrived on the island on April 12, 1797. However, only about 2,500 of the Garifuna people survived the harsh journey. Shortly after the Garifuna people arrived in Roatán, Honduras, they were not satisfied with the living conditions. Some of them then asked the Spanish Crown to grant them permission to live along the coast of the Honduras mainland. The permission was granted, and many of them began to migrate from Roatán to Trujillo, Honduras. The British Crown was unable to stop the Garifuna people from practicing their culture and speaking their language in Roatán. The Spanish Crown was unable to do the same. However, both of these nations did everything in their capacity to isolate the Garifuna people from the other ethnic groups that were already living in their colonial territories. Some Garinagu moved to Nicaragua, Guatemala and in 1801 about 165 of them left the island to settle in Dangriga, Belize. It is being estimated that there are approximately 600,000 Garifuna people worldwide, including a very large population living in the United States.
Items from Luz Soliz-Ramos’s collection. Photo credit: Janel Martinez
Though Garifunaidad is gaining greater attention due to the digital preservation of this vibrant, Afro-Indigenous culture, Soliz-Ramos stresses the importance of archiving and telling our history accurately. There are a number of accounts that are referenced, like the report of West Africans escaping slave ships that were shipwrecked off the coast of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and she urges us to investigate the source of this information and look further into the African kingdoms that existed before Columbus.
“Our people are told that they must have came in the slave ships, but most likely that is not true,” shares the educator. “We have to remember that thousands of years ago, there was a King named Abubakari that sent expeditions to the Americas, and a lot of those people stayed in the Americas…people were here thousands of years before the explorer, before Columbus came.”
Soliz-Ramos points to a book on a nearby table, which features approximately 25 children-to-adult books either written by a Garifuna author or focused on Garifuna culture. These include Sulma Arzu-Brown’s Bad Hair Does Not Exist!/Pelo Malo No Existe!, Garifuna Para Niños written and illustrated by Isidra Sabio, José Francisco Ávila’s Pan-Garifuna Afro-Latino Power of Pride: My Quest for Racial, Ancestral, Ethnic and Cultural Identity and her own book, Learn Garifuna Now!. Soliz-Ramos references Dictionnaire Français-Caraibe—Primary Source Edition by Raymond Breton, who wrote the first dictionary of the Carib language that was published in 1665; noting that the frequently-referenced historical account places the shipwrecked event at roughly the same time.
“The more you put the pieces together, the more you realize that: Wait a minute, this cannot be? The language was there. The people are here,” she adds.
Displayed above the table was the Garifuna flag, which includes three horizontal stripes—black, an acknowledgment African descendancy; white, “which brings peace among both races;” and yellow, which represents the Amerindians, the native of the Caribbean, as well as the dumari, juices that come from the cassava.
Wanáragua dance costume from Luz Soliz-Ramos’s collection. Photo credit: Janel Martinez
In addition to the display of literature and foodways, music and dance are essential parts of Garifuna Cultural Experience. A framed poster shows a number of influential Garifuna musicians, including Andy Palacio, Aurelio Martinez, Aziatic, Paula Castillo and Lil June. Next to it hung a floral costume worn by a wanáragua dancer (who traditionally are men), and below it a wababan, or headdress that includes the face of a white man, accompanies the outfit. Displayed across the room, the yawei, seashells that adorn the knees of the wanáragua dancer, is a favorite in Soliz-Ramos’ collection. The dance itself is a warrior dance, also referred to as John Canoe/Jonkonnu/Yan Canu in different parts of the West Indies, that was employed to throw off enemies who sought to encroach upon the Garinagu.
“The seashells are there to create a particular sound when he dances to synchronize with the drumming. The drummer and the dancer become practically one. The dancer marks the rhythm and the drummers simultaneously have to play this rhythm that is taking place in a way that they are not even conscious of what they're doing; I think that’s so beautiful,” she says.
Guagei, a basket used in a dügü ceremony. Item from Luz Soliz-Ramos’s collection. Photo credit: Janel Martinez
Drums, maracas and a turtle shell, among other musical elements, are also on display. A guagei, a basket used during a dugu ceremony, is hanging on the back wall—a close reminder that spirituality is woven into all aspects of Garifuna culture. “The songs, and the paranda [a traditional Garifuna musical style], I give thanks to all the paranderos, the beautiful songs and all the ladies that sing at fedu. The fedu songs. All those who continue to sing the ancestral songs through dugu [and] chugu,” says Soliz-Ramos, co-choreographer and artistic director of the Wabafu Garifuna Dance Theater (formerly known as the Hamalali Wayunagu Garifuna Dance Company).
Garinagu have always recognized their vibrant culture, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared it a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” in 2001. Despite this recognition there are only a few physical spaces advocating for Garinagu and/or honoring Garifunaidad in the U.S., like the Garifuna Museum of Los Angeles (GAMOLA) and Casa Yurumein in the Bronx, and Soliz-Ramos sees a future where there will be more institutions for the community.
“My hope is that one day we'll have a community center, and in the community center not only would you have the area where you can teach the arts, consisting of the elements of Garifuna culture, like dancing and language—even a conference for youth, but to also have a museum within that structure where we can invite youngsters from different elementary or intermediate schools to come and experience what it means to be Garifuna. I'm hoping that one day there's going to be a Garifuna Heritage Center for the Arts and Culture.”
Garifuna Cultural Experience ran from October 28 to November 19, Garifuna Settlement Day for Belize and Nicaragua, at Boricua Art Gallery.
Janel Martinez is a multimedia journalist & the founder of award-winning blog, Ain't I Latina?, an online destination celebrating Afro-Latinx womanhood. The Bronx, NY native holds a BA in Magazine Journalism & Sociology from Syracuse University. Her writing has appeared in Adweek, BuzzFeed, ESSENCE, Oprah Magazine, & Remezcla, among other publications. She is a frequent public speaker discussing media, culture & identity, as well as diversity at conferences & events for Bloomberg, NBCU, SXSW, Harvard University & more. Her work is included in the anthology, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed, published by Flatiron Books.