By Amara Amaryah

In 2001, UNESCO declared the Garifuna culture a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”. During my travels through Central America’s Caribbean coast, I experienced this world for myself.

The Garifuna (also Garinagu or Garunagou) are descendants of Arawaks, Caribs, Indigenous South Americans (who migrated to St. Vincent) and Africans who survived a shipwreck off the island of St. Vincent around 1675. The ships travelling from Nigeria washed up on St. Vincent and brought ashore the island Africans who would inter-marry and build community with the local population. Until exiled by British troops to the then-deserted island of Roatán in Honduras in 1797, the Garifuna lived stably in St. Vincent. 

A second exodus prompted by the dictatorship in Honduras in 1937 saw the community create a home and legacy known around the world in Dangriga, Belize. Beyond Belize and Honduras, the Garifuna also settled in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Despite their persecution and constant sojourning, the people continue to hold their customs while integrating into new cultures.

A Journey Down South

The intricate use of art to place an almost 400-year-old memory is, to me, what defines the Garifuna communities. As a Caribbean woman, my visit felt resonant since art has held so much of my ancestral lineage in memory. Without the flair of preserved recipes, woodwork crafting, song and familiar folk tales of Anansi and co, the generous way Creole blends and bears space for linguistic memory, the Caribbean might be a very different place. On the other side of the Caribbean Sea, I found that memories echoed generations later in Garifuna homelands.

I journeyed from the vibrant, soca-soaked energy that lives on the reef-lined Cayes in Belize and headed down sout’ as it is locally called. Garifuna communities are found there in the towns and villages of Dangriga, Hopkins, Stann Creek, Seine Bight and Punta Gorda. While Dangriga is known to many as the cultural capital of the south, I’d say that Seine Bight is its closest rival. This small village was my first introduction to the culture and the artistic memory that survives in Seine Bight. 

It was routine for any conversation with Belizeans about food to end with the question, ‘Have you tried hudut yet?’. I was made aware that hudut is the taste of childhood by a Belizean who insisted that I try it. A fish, okra and coconut soup served with mashed ripe and green plantains, almost reminiscent of fu-fu in texture, is an ode to the coastal livelihood of the Garifuna people, and its preparation holds diasporic memories. 

However, art was my first interaction with Garifuna culture. I lodged a short walk from ‘Lola’s Art Gallery’, a local gallery and gift store with pieces that the eponymous Lola creates by hand. As the only gallery in the village, it holds a distinctive air.

The gallery takes inspiration from everything and everyone between the lagoon and the Caribbean Sea to reflect how naturally abundant and art-like Garifuna life is. Depictions of fishermen with boats full of freshly-caught snapper fish, faceless women in multicolour headwraps that so distinctly mirror the women in the village, the red hibiscus, an ever-present flower in the region, and the national bird of Belize, the toucan (or bill bird as it is locally known). White sandy beaches and turquoise water also frequent Lola’s paintings. This is the epitome of life on the Belizean coast, as far as I had witnessed it so far. 

An Art-Filled Weekend

As an Indigenous group, the Garifuna people take pride in social activities and are not entirely excluded from the land, which tourism is often capable of doing. Every February, many travel from their neighbouring townships to the Placencia village as it hosts its highly-anticipated Placencia Sidewalk Art Festival. For 18 years, the festival has offered two days of immersion in authentic Belizean artistry.

I arrived just in time for this art-filled weekend featuring various local vendors offering everything from locally made hot sauces to jewellery carefully crafted from conch shells and sea moss shampoos and conditioners. Those who came to eat were in luck as there was a range of jerk chicken, fried fish and rice and beans wherever you turned. Equally, with the scorching midday sun’s reminder, stopping for a fruity sea moss smoothie was a popular way to take a break from shopping. 

It was easy to spot the Garifunas at the fair, I just had to follow the drums, the traditional Primero (tenor) and ‘Segundo’ (bass). Children gathered unofficially to drum, sing and take turns to dance in the circle while inviting travellers to join them in call and response. 

Further up the sidewalk, elders gathered in their traditional Garifuna-coloured outfits of black, white and yellow. The black represents the African roots, the white symbolises peace and yellow represents the colour of Garifuna food and the Arawak/Carib ancestors. 

Belize dedicates November 19th to honouring Garifuna Settlement Day. While this is by far the most overt celebration of the Garifuna in Belize, respect for the community is not confined to this day. There is beauty in being remembered in such a joyous fashion that young and old continue to look forward to it annually. It prepared me to journey backwards to one of the earlier Garifuna settlements, in Honduras. 

Experiencing Honduras’ Garifuna Population 

After a month in Belize, I headed to Honduras and dwelled among another variation of Garifuna life. In Roatán, Honduras’ largest Bay island, Sundays belong to the Garifuna and everyone goes to Punta Gorda because they know it. On the East End, Punta Gorda is the place to eat machuka and wait for the sun to set and for the drumming to begin. However, West End was where I met Alex, a Punta Gorda native and a Garifuna elder. 

“Punta Gorda was the first village on this whole island, the whole of Roatán begins in Punta Gorda,” he says. Like many Hondurans on the island, he swaps from Spanish to English to Creole and Garifuna as needed. Alex refers to Punta Gorda as a space that continues to be a hub of memory and belonging. For him, one of the most marked aspects of Garifuna culture is the legacy of fishing. Many young men grow up fishing and learn very early that this is what generations before and after will do to preserve their communities.

“We learn to fish and cook traditional meals from very young as Garifuna people. This you’ll find wherever you find Garifuna in the world”. Just like in Belize, it seems the best way to learn about Garifuna life is through a plate of food. We talk of the different ways and soups and stews that fish shows up in a Garifuna kitchen. Fish and coconut milk, fish and cassava, fish and plantain - and many other combinations. Among them is machuka, a meal that seems to be the Honduran Garifuna version of the hudut that I tried in Seine Bight. 

Passing Through Triumpho De La Cruz

My next stop was to the mainland, to stay in Triumpho de la Cruz, a Garifuna community in Tela. This visit to a Garifuna village on the mainland offered me a separate experience away from the tourist-catering Bay islands.

On the night of my arrival, la fería (the fair) had begun which meant witnessing the celebrations in Triumpho in the run-up to the festive easter period. Families and friends gathered to enjoy the cool of the evening and speak over loud music blasting over the usual sounds of crickets and the nearby ocean. It was time for me to see Punta danced in full splendour, and not via a screen. Punta is an indigenous Garifuna dance that is popular in Latin America.

The youth culture in Triumpho allows for more creativity and newer expressions in dancing Punta. Luisa, whose sustainable wellness lodge I was staying in, told me that newer adaptations of Punta show more bawdy, sexy expressions in the dance moves. Born and raised in NYC, she returned to Honduras to immerse herself in the Garifuna culture she spent childhood summers getting to know. When she arrived here two years ago, she realised just how far-reaching the Garifuna youth culture is on the global music scene. As we drove through Tela, Luisa and the driver, also a Garifuna from another part of the village, vibed over music from “You’re going to see, my people know how to have a good time”, she tells me. I later learn that the village, while small, also hosts multiple events where Garifuna artists hold concerts and connect with other Garifuna and Caribbean artists from Belize, Panama and beyond.

Tonight though, the celebration was family-centred and all about tradition. As soon as the drums came out, the crowds multiplied. Many lined up to secure an easy entry into the circle to pay homage and dance their Punta before the drummers. This particular rendition of Punta was very traditional, with certain expectations about how you entered the circle and how you approached the drummers being maintained stringently, or else the drumming would stop. Garifuna women from several generations dressed in their traditional identical outfits, maintaining the symbolic yellow, and lined up to dance. Everyone who entered the circle had to break the dance by acknowledging the drummers with their footwork before exiting the space. While the drumming served as an obvious nod to their African lineages, the entire celebration seemed to show a deeper appreciation for community and roots.

While the Garifuna people continue to experience prejudice and also continue to fight for land rights and end Garifuna-targeted violence across Honduras, their presence is felt. Triumpho de la Cruz showed me how archiving is an everyday effort.

The Garifuna way of life will not be erased, I feel sure and uplifted by that. The drums, the footwork, the full plates, and the canvases act as records and rebellion in this resilient culture.

Up and down Central America’s Caribbean coast, they’ve left an unforgettable footprint that is as memoried and expressive as the water that surrounds their numerous homelands.