Garifuna bicentennial in Honduras.

• Author: Garcia, Gabriel
• Position: An African people who trace themselves from an African-Carib Indian cultural admixture, they also live in US cities including Chicago, New Orleans, NYC, and Los Angeles

In a vibrant two-day celebration last April, extending from Tegucigalpa to the Caribbean coast, Honduras's Garifuna people marked the two hundredth anniversary of their arrival in that country.

Amid masses celebrated in the Garifuna language and other activities commemorating the Garifuna's African roots, the president of the Honduran National Congress, Carlos Flores, and President Carlos Roberto Reina unveiled a monument honoring the great Garifuna independence leader Alfonso Lacayo. The Honorable James Mitchell, prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, delivered a rousing historical summation on the exact spot where the first group of Garifuna men, women, and children arrived two centuries ago. A variety of symposiums focused on current issues of importance to the Garifuna: obtaining property titles for traditional lands, creaking bilingual Spanish-Garifuna schools, and achieving proportional and participatory representation in government.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu sent a message acknowledging that "as have the indigenous peoples, the Garifuna too have enriched the cultures of the Mesoamerican peoples. This is one of their most precious legacies."

It was nearly five hundred years ago that the first African slaves were brought to this hemisphere and encountered the Caribs, who lived on present-day Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, and other smaller islands. The Caribs fiercely resisted colonizahon. With their first attacks against European settlements, they took over lands and slaves, and the Africans...