Garifuna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Garifuna | |
|---|---|
 Flag |
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| Total population | 200,000 |
| Regions with significant populations | Honduras, Belize, Guatemala |
| Language | Garifuna, Spanish, English |
| Religion | generally Roman Catholic |
| Related ethnic groups | Caribs, Afro-Caribbeans, Miskito |
Garífuna is a Spanish term for the people and language of the Garínagu. The Garifuna are settled along the Caribbean Coast, in Belize, Guatemala (Livingston), and on the island of Roatán, Honduras and Nicaragua. The Garifuna are ethnically descended from Amerindian and African people, while their language is a dialect of the native Brazilian language family Arawakan. The British colonial administration invented the term Black Carib under which the Garifuna went before they came to the Island of Roatán and eventually the Honduras mainland. The Garifuna population is estimated to be around 200,000 both in the Caribbean homeland and in the USA, the latter due to heavy migration from Central America. One of the earliest accounts we have of the ancestors of the Garifuna is from accounts by the French Pere Raymond Breton. He was missioning on the island of St. Vincent in the 1630s and recorded the Black Caribs' own story of their peregrination. According to legend, the Arawak speaking peoples of Northern Brazil came to the island of St. Vincent long before the arrival of Europeans to the New World. Here they lived for a long time in peace and heterogeneity until one day the island was attacked by a group of Carib speaking men from the mainland. The Carib men slaughtered the Arawak men down to the very last one, and took the women as their slaves and companions. This state of affairs then eventually gave the result, that both men and women spoke Arawak while the men retained some vocabulary of Carib. At some point in time, escaped slaves arrived on the island and were successfully integrated in the population, adding an African heritage to this very composite route of provenance.
A more fantastic , but scientifically unproven, version of 'Black Carib' origin is that pre-Columbus African explorers intermingled with the indigenous population (see "They Came Before Columbus" by Ivan van Sertima).
When the British invaded Saint Vincent, they were opposed by French settlers and their Carib allies. When the Caribs eventually surrendered to the British in 1796, the "Black Caribs" were considered enemies and were deported to Roatán, an island off the coast ofHonduras. The British separated the more African-looking Caribs from the more Amerindian looking ones, and decided that the former were enemies who had to be deported, while the latter were merely "misled" and were allowed to remain. 5,000 Black Caribs were deported, but only about 2,000 of them survived the trip to Roatán. Because the island was too small and infertile to support their population, the Garifuna petitioned the Spanish authorities to be allowed to settle on the mainland. The Spanish employed them as soldiers, and they spread along the Caribbean coast of Central America.
They are also known for their dance, which is called punta, and associated with a certain musical style as well.
[edit] See also
- Garifuna music
- British Honduras
- Miskito
- Carib
- Arawak
- Cariban languages
- Arawakan languages
- Taino
- Black Seminoles
- black carib
- Portrayal in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
[edit] References
- Breton, Raymond
1635. Grammaire Caraibe. Paris.
- Flores, Barbara A.T.
2001. Religious education and theological praxis in a context of colonization: Garifuna spirituality as a means of resistance. Ph. D. Dissertation, Garrett/Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. *Gonzalez, N.L. 1988. The Sojourners of the Caribbean: Ethnogenesis and Ethnohistory of the Garifuna. University of Illinois Press. Chicago. 1997. The Garifuna of Central America. In: The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Pp. 197-205 , Samuel M. Wilson (ed.)
