On May 18, 2001, UNICEF declared the Garifuna language, music and dance a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, recognition that was fully deserved and that made the nation proud, across the length and breadth of the country. According to Belize Glessima Research, the celebration of Garifuna Settlement Day began in 1941 after Thomas V. Ramos, Catarino Benguche and Matias Avaloy “wrote to the Governor requesting a day to recognize the contribution of the Black Caribs”, and in 1943 “the holiday spread to Toledo and became a Public and Bank Holiday in the Southern Districts.” First as a trickle, Belizeans from the other districts traveled south to join the celebrations, and since 1977 when the day, November 19, was made a Public and Bank Holiday for the entire nation, there’s been an explosion of Garifuna culture countrywide in the month of November, up to Settlement Day.
The history of the Garinagu began with a shipwreck in the 1600s near the island of St. Vincent, with the survivors, Africans from the continent who were destined for the slave plantations in the Americas, escaping the chains and beginning a new life among the native Caribs on the island. The marriage of the Caribs and the Africans created the Black Caribs. Belize Glessima Research says that between 1974 and 1975 leaders of the group “advocated for Stann Creek Town to be renamed [Dangriga] and Black Caribs to be called Garifuna/Garinagu.”
The Garinagu ran afoul of the British in St. Vincent when they refused to give up their lands to European farmers who wanted to expand their sugarcane plantations. The militarily superior British eventually overcame the Garinagu, and after the Garinagu leader, Joseph Chatoyer fell in battle, his people were rounded up and taken to Balliceaux, an island off the coast of St. Vincent.
The story, “219 years after genocide attempt, Garinagu celebrate survival,” published in the Amandala of April 16, 2016, notes: “another historic date which is commemorated among members of the wider Garifuna community—that of 12th April 1797… marks the exile by the British of over 2,000 Garinagu to Roatán, Honduras.” That report says, “Unlike the Garinagu’s arrival to Belizean shores, their arrival to what is now known as Honduras, was not as joyous, since those who had made it to that destination had seen almost half of their brothers and sisters perish from starvation and disease on the desolate island of Balliceaux …”
Continuing with that 2016 story in the Amandala, E. Roy Cayetano, a Garifuna educator, historian, and former Deputy Chief Education Officer of Belize, said the British “were too civilized to just take a gun and kill the survivors, the Balliceaux survivors; so they exiled them.” Cayetano said, “between July 1796 and March 1797, 4,338 (some say, 5,000 and odd) Garinagu were imprisoned on Balliceaux, an island unfit for human habitation, and on March 11, 1797, 2,248 were boarded on 11 ships. The flagship was HMS Experiment, and the Garinagu were taken away … and dumped on the island of Roatán to fend for themselves.”
Science teaches us that diamonds are produced under extreme temperature and pressure, not in soft beds. Mainly because the Garinagu are black, they weren’t embraced on mainland Honduras, and when they started migrating northward to Belize, which would become the home of Garinagu on the west shore of the Caribbean, they landed in a country where they weren’t immediately accepted. History records that while the men were given jobs in Belize’s forest industry, the colonial rulers insisted that they be kept apart from the enslaved/recently freed African woodcutters.
The pain of losing their land in Yurumein (the Garifuna name for St. Vincent), the exile on barren Balliceaux, the banishment and starvation on Roatán and rejection in mainland Honduras, and separation from others in Belize, helped forge a remarkable people. Not by choice, by force the Garinagu recognized that if they would survive, their stance would have to be, “we against the world.” They won, and the world, especially Belize, did too. Like the stone the builders refused, our Garinagu brothers and sisters have become a pillar.
On November 19, we celebrate the numerous outstanding contributions of the Garinagu to our nation. In education, music, sports, dance, the arts, they have excelled. There are too many Garinagu heroes and heroines to name here, but Alejo Beni, who led many Garinagu to Belize to escape violence and other hardship in Honduras, and Thomas Vincent Ramos, who led the lobby that won national recognition for Garinagu contributions to the nation on November 19, stand tallest during the annual celebration.
Happy Garifuna Settlement Day, Belize! “Afeduha waméi wagücha, afareinha waméi wanichigu! – Celebrating our roots; sharing our culture.”
Krem Radio, since 1989
The United Black Association for Development (UBAD), a cultural group which later became a political party, since its birth in 1969 had included free radio in its platform, and when the party dissolved in 1974 the party’s newspaper, Amandala, continued championing the call for voices other than those of the ruling PUP to be heard on the airwaves. In the 1970s, only the government-controlled Radio Belize and the private radio station of the British Forces in Belize were licensed to operate in our country.
The ruling PUP maintained that Radio Belize was neutral, despite all its employees having to pass a PUP smell test before getting before a microphone, and the unceasing broadcasting by the station of the glorious achievements of the government ministers. The only time the opposition parties in the country — NIP, PDM, UBAD, Liberal Party, and the amalgamated UDP—were allowed to air the issues that concerned them was just prior to general elections, and only for a few minutes.
Disappointingly, the UDP, which had experienced the disadvantage of challenging a government that controlled the only local radio station, instead of magnanimously freeing the airwaves when it took the reins of government in 1984, in a decision that reeked of pettiness and ingratitude, effectively said it was “our turn” to take advantage of their good fortune at the polls. Throughout their term in office, 1984-1989, the UDP maintained the status quo of a single radio station for Belizeans, this time under their control.
The Amandala, in the editorial, “Krem at 21”, said “KREM Radio was the result of an act of political desperation on the part of the then Opposition People’s United Party (PUP) … Having contributed substantially to the UDP general election victory in 1984, at Amandala we felt we were being given a bureaucratic runaround [over a radio license] … In early 1989 we began making noise, and the PUP suddenly jumped on our bandwagon. They publicly promised to give ‘Radio Amandala’ a license if they were elected in the 1989 general elections. And so they were …”
On this 35th anniversary of KREM Radio on November 17, the Amandala salutes all the contributors to free radio, and the station’s survival. Because of never kowtowing to the establishment, because of its insistence on speaking truth to power whenever it believes that “power” is abusive or on the wrong path, KREM has not been a favorite of the corporates. KREM could very easily have “rolled over”, sang for its supper, “cozied up” to the money. But, like its parent, the Amandala, KREM put the education and the good of the people first.
Happy Birthday, KREM!