The Garifuna people have had many crosses to bear, many injustices to face, and one of the toughest battles of any ethnic group in Belize to keep what is their own, in light of an increasingly globalized world encroaching on them as the British did in St. Vincent two centuries ago.
Today, the 68th celebration of their much-heralded arrival to our shores, was also a day of reflection on who they are, where they came from, and where they are going. Although at an important crossroads – where the Garifuna language, music and dance have been recognized by UNESCO (in 2001) as “a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity,” many Garifuna children are not being raised with a better understanding of that proud history.
Today, Garinagu from Libertad in Corozal to Barranco in Toledo, from Belmopan in Cayo to Belize City and San Pedro in the east, soberly spoke of their need to restore the ancient pride, to integrate “roots” with modernism, and to heed and answer the call of their ancestors, as reflected in this year’s theme: “Wátina— Gúnfuli Waméi Hayumahan Wayunagu.”
The national official ceremonies were held at the Memorial Park in Belize City, but this story begins further up the Haulover Creek at the Belcan Bridge. There, three boats rowed by strong Garifuna men and women, proceeded slowly on the water, re-enacting for a crowd of onlookers the first arrival of the Garinagu in the great migration from Honduras to Belize on November 19, 1823. (There was a previous Garifuna migration in 1802, when 150 Garinagu settled at what is now the Yarborough area of Belize City).
This morning the three boats docked up at the BWS Park in front of the Belize City Center. The next stop was the St. Martin de Porres Roman Catholic Church at the corner of Vernon and Partridge Streets for the official thanksgiving Mass, celebrated by Father Oliver Smalls of Ladyville and Father Joe Damhurst, St. Martin’s parish pastor.
At the Mass, Sister Barbara Flores, in the homily, spoke of the Garifuna experience as she relived it on a visit to Trinidad for a conference of Caribbean religious leaders. As the tour guide showed them, from the Cumana point in northeastern Trinidad, the area of smooth, seamless confluence between the giant Atlantic Ocean and the smaller Caribbean Sea, said Flores, she “couldn’t help but think how history has been so very different from that, the violent history that occurred in that region between the Europeans and the indigenous people of that area.”
Shown a place where Carib and Arawak Indians threw themselves off a cliff to their deaths rather than surrender to slavery, she said, “I thought, ‘This is a holy place, because our ancestors were there. Out of their conviction, and their sense of dignity, they were not about to subject themselves to be enslaved.’”
Yurumein (St. Vincent) evokes similar memories for Garinagu, she said, and it is times like these in which the call can be clearly heard to prevent our children from being enslaved.
This call, she added, is not far different from the ones that God issued to His people—whether leading the Israelites out of Egypt, exhorting us to share according to our resources and our needs, or most importantly, reassuring our faith.
“Today we celebrate because of a people who had to have faith in themselves to do what they did, to have had faith in God…it gives us the opportunity to pause, to tell our story again. The story must be told repeatedly,” she told the gathering, because it is a story of pain, struggle and triumph, through faith in God. The trail from St. Vincent to Balliceaux to Roatan (Bay Islands) to the Honduras mainland and finally Belize, is a story of faith and resilience, she concluded. “Who are we to do any less than our ancestors did?”
Parade and a reaffirmation of pride
At the close of the mass, Garifuna City residents and some of other ethnicities, turned to pomp and circumstance, proceeding east down Vernon Street into Central American Boulevard, headed for the downtown area of Belize City and finally to the Memorial Park.
The sense of joy was palpable. While the onlookers on the sidewalks along the route did not number nearly as much as for the Tenth Parade or Independence Day, it was clear that they were there out of respect and admiration for their fellow Belizeans of Garifuna descent.
A young man standing in front of the Shell Gas Station on the Boulevard said he brought his children out to see the pride and history of the Garinagu, to give them the kind of education that goes beyond mere schoolbooks.
Others we spoke to just enjoy a good parade when they see one, and this one featured the ubiquitous Garifuna drums, turtle shells, and much dancing and chanting of popular Garifuna songs.
On the parade route, Amandala was frequently told, when we asked parade-watchers about what makes Garifuna Settlement Day so attractive, that it is its tradition and sense of history that is missing from some other cultures in Belize.
There was some grumbling about why Belize City was chosen over Dangriga for the site of the official ceremonies, but it is the practice of the National Garifuna Council (NGC) to rotate the site of the ceremony, we were told.
And at the Memorial Park, mistress of ceremonies Trudy Joseph (a Dangrigan), reminded the gathering that they were all originally from the major Garifuna communities and so “no less Garifuna than if we were there, where we came from.”
NGC national president, Ernest Castro, told the gathering that they are being called on by the ahari (spirits) to “value and retain their heritage,” as their ancestors did while being forced out of their homeland by the British.
Among the challenges the Garinagu face is what Castro calls “the erosion of the Garifuna language” in the face of young people’s access to television and the Internet and the overarching usage of the lingua franca of Belize Kriol.
Through efforts like those of the Gulisi Community Primary School (named for a daughter of Garifuna chief and warrior Joseph Chatoyer), the Garifuna language continues to thrive, said Castro, but he put the onus on parents and teachers to continue passing on the traditions to their children.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow said that the Garifuna culture “expresses and embodies their reality” and issued thanks for their effort to preserve their culture against the rush of globalization, with its “homogenization” of culture. He concluded that all Belizeans could learn from the Garinagu.
Keynote speaker Phillip Palacio, an attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Office, asked the question in his address, “What call are we to answer?” He cited Chatoyer’s recognition by the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a National Hero in 2002, a play by African-American William Henry Brown about the 1795 rebellion, which, it is said, draws from Mr. Brown’s own experiences, and Andy Palacio’s “transformation” from primary school teacher and struggling recording artist to cultural ambassador, Artist for Peace, and top-selling world musician before his sudden death in January of 2008.
Palacio asked, “Is it this that our ancestors are calling us to do? Who among us will take the baton from (Andy Palacio) and carry on the role of preserving the Garifuna culture and language?”
The ceremony closed with the crowning of Keila Martinez, 15, as the new Ms. Garifuna Belize City, taking over from 16-year-old Kathleen Sabal. Ms. Martinez finished third in the national pageant; the winner was Areini Flores of Hopkins. An all-day fair followed at the same venue.
We would be remiss, in closing this recollection of the day’s festivities, not to mention Andy Palacio, who has achieved the status of a national hero among his people; whose electric composition, Wátina, has served as the inspiration for this year’s theme; and whose name was fittingly invoked many times in this November 19th, in Belize City and no doubt across the country.