La Voz de Abajo invites you to hear Miriam Miranda,

Leader of the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), talk about the Garifuna community's permanent resistance in defense of their land, culture and language and their role in the Honduran people's ongoing resistance to the coup of June 2009.

Learn about the latest events in the fight for human rights, democracy and the refoundation of a new Honduras.

Friday, November 4, 2011
7pm Casa Michoacan,
1631 South Blue Island Ave (Pilsen)

Videos, Music, Discussion.

Organized by La Voz de los de Abajo, Sponsored by the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), and Casa Michoacán.



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Banging the Drums of Resistance to the Repression

From a speech by Miriam Miranda, Coordinator of OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras), on the streets of Tegucigalpa, April 1, 2011
“Today we are here, present in the capital, not just so people can watch us dance. We do not want to maintain this idea that Garifuna are only useful to dance. As well, we will not be used to help legitimize a government that carried out a coup d’etat.
“We are here as Garifuna so we can make visible the problems of the Garifuna people. So that people will realize, on a national and international level, that the Garifuna people are here to reclaim their historical rights.
“We are here on the 1st of April, inaugurating the International Year of the Afro- descendents named by the United Nations.
“Today we can say that we are facing the second expulsion of our territories, that is why we’re here.
“The Garifuna people have inhabited Honduras and resisted for more than 214 years. It is not true that we are just able to dance. That is why we are here. We are here with our identity, our spirituality, our culture, because we have a culture of resistance.
Even before a system that wants to eliminate all of the value of our culture, all the value that we are as Garifuna people. We are proud to be Garifuna. The Garifuna culture is a culture of milleniums. The Garifuna people just like the Lenca people, Pech, Mosquito, and Tolipan, all the indigenous and black peoples, we have been resisting against a monoculture, one culture that they are trying to create and say that we are.
“We are here to say that we are not interested in speaking with [President] Pepe Lobo because he is not in charge. We want to tell the world that yes, we are present. We do not want them to receive us in the Presidential House ... when he [Pepe Lobo} will not dialogue with the teachers. When he is repressing the people. Because of this we are here to say we are present!"
"The sounds of our drums are symbols of resistance." (Garifuna doctor, Luther Castillo)
In Honduras, April is a month of celebration for the Garifuna people. To inaugurate the African Heritage Month during the International Year of Afro-Descendents and 214 years since the Garifuna people arrived in Honduras (forcibly brought here by [British] imperialists carrying out an ethnic cleansing on the island now known as San Vincent), roughly 2000 Garifuna people and 214 drums were brought from various communities on the north coast and Bay Islands of Honduras to Tegucigalpa last Friday, April 1st.
From the National Teaching University to the Central Park, the Garifuna community – joined by Lenca indigenous members of COPINH (Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras) – marched with 214 drums, many maracas while singing and dancing in the streets of the capital city.
But as Garifuna doctor, Luther Castillo said to the crowd, “We commemorate [the African heritage month] but we have nothing to celebrate.” With many colorful written banners carried on the streets of Tegucigalpa, the Garifuna demonstrated the various threats to their culture and survival. All reasons why it’s difficult for the Garifuna to celebrate as they are facing “a second expulsion from their territory.”
Banners read:
* The Plundering of Garifuna land and Territory is racism * In the International Year of Afro-descendents, the Robbery of African and Latin American Lands has Intensified * The Hydroelectric Dam Decrees are Unconstitutional: We Demand the Right to Consultation * We Demand Integral Agrarian Reform: No to Facusse-landia * The Municipalization of Education, Water & Indigenous Land is Privatization
hondurassolidarity.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/banging-the-drums-of-resistance-to-the-repression-by-karen-spring/Garifunas in Honduras honor African heritage
Posted by: lisaparavisini | April 2, 2011 repeatingislands.com/2011/04/02/garifunas-in-honduras-honor-african-heritage/

Thousands of black Hondurans paraded through the streets of the capital Friday as the country’s president pledged to do more to promote and protect their heritage, CNN reports.
About 2,000 Hondurans of African and Caribbean descent — known as Garifunas — came to Tegucigalpa from communities that dot the country’s coast for the march honoring the start of African Heritage Month.
“This should be a reason for us to reflect in order to have a more cohesive society, without any kind of discrimination, with social justice and opportunities for all,” President Porfirio Lobo said as he kicked off the festivities.
Lobo announced that he would sign an agreement within six months to give indigenous people and Honduran blacks a preferential right to choose teachers and doctors from their own villages.
Garifuna communities have requested such an allowance, which could bring bilingual education into classrooms that once only taught Spanish.
Lobo predicted that he would be recognized as a defender of the rights of Afro-Hondurans by the end of his term.
Government officials said Friday’s festivities marked the first time a Honduran president had inaugurated the month.
The country’s post office also plans to issue stamps commemorating African Heritage Month. Honduras will host a “World Summit of Afrodescendants” in August.
Ana Pineda, the minister of justice, said the Honduran government is concerned about the rights of the Garifuna and other ethnic groups, pointing to the creation of a government ministry of indigenous and Afro-Honduran people as proof.
In 2001, the United Nations recognized the language, dance and culture of the Garifuna, who also live in other Central American countries.
CRLN Comments: Dozens of Garifuna organizations protested this Honduras Government event by responding with a counter “March of the 214 Drums” and a public statement “There is Nothing to Celebrate!”
March of the Drums: There is nothing to celebrate Saturday, April 2, 2011
The following statement was released during a mass march of black and indigenous peoples in Tegucigalpa on 01 April 2011 commemorating 214 years since the arrival of the Garífuna people in Honduras.
March of the Drums: Position of the organizations that make up the 2-14 Alliance

THERE IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE!
In the glorious Month of African Heritage we commemorate one more year in which this land was blessed. Blessed because more than two centuries ago the African plant set foot on it bringing with it the richness that decorates it today.
Today after 214 years, our own drums, symbols of resistance, powerful arms of struggle, urgently call us to deeply reflect on our historical reality.
In the midst of the commemoration of the Month of African Heritage in Honduras, we want to emphasize the term commemoration. We commemorate, we do not celebrate. Because we cannot celebrate the infamous inhumane and genocidal exile that our ancestors suffered from San Vicente, a flagrant violation of the most elemental human rights that even today the aggressor powers refuse to repair.
To celebrate would be an affront to the memory of our ancestors, mutilated brutally in the crossing from Africa to St. Vincent, from St. Vincent to Balliceu and from Balliceu to Port Royal, Honduras. The memory of the more than 3,000 Garífuna brothers martyred in Balliceu, plus those who gave their lives in the battle for dignity against the English army and the millions who were murdered in the crossing from Africa plunging into the depths of the ocean invite us to reflect about this term. Let us remember today that occasion that left an un- erasable impression on the historic destiny of our people.
Today as we did also 214 years ago we have had to once again embark on the crossing not of the Caribbean sea but of the battered paths and roads of fifth class that lead to and from our communities throughout our Honduras, from Plaplaya in the department of Gracias a Dios and Masca in the department of Cortes, we have come early in the morning to find ourselves here in Tegucigalpa the capital of the country, here where they decide our future and our destiny, in most cases without taking us into account, without consulting us, or believing that with one telephone call or one text message sent from the private telephones of mercenaries, infamous traffickers of the ignorance and misery of our people, this action is more than sufficient to decide if we continue living or die.
Because of this all of the organizations and sectors that make up the 2-14 Alliance and to the sound of the ringing of the drums, the maracas and the Garífuna conch say with one voice... de los tambores, las maracas y el caracol garífuna planteamos y decimos a una sola voz...There is nothing to celebrate...
There is nothing to celebrate
Because the spirit of our ancesters orders us today to reorient the steering of the destiny of our people, to re-take the true leadership of Satuyé and Barauda. A leadership able to differentiate talk from practice, inescapably linked to the people, for the people and by the people. And not the remote control pseudo-leadership exercised from the comfort of the big cities, completely disconnected from the daily reality of a community that is bleeding and agonizing through the systematic loss of its ancestral richness.
There is nothing to celebrate
Because Satuyé and Barauda left us an orphan leadership of small-minded interests and personal ambitions, crustacean culture perpetuated by a system that divides us with crumbs and then with shameless audacity demands of us and calls us to unity. Today our people is victim of pseudo- leadership imported from western models, converted into instruments of destruction, division, effervescence of small conflicts, directed at weakening the harmony, the peace and the co- existence of solidarity inherited from Satuyé, Barauda and Wamulugu.
There is nothing to celebrate
If our Garífuna people is victim to torture. We cite the recent brutal and repressive breaking up of the peaceful march at the community Triunfo de la Cruz, when our sister Miriam Miranda, president of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras
was captured, tortured and illegally jailed, as a result of a state policy of racial intolerance that replaces dialogue with the baton and the tear-gas bomb.
There is nothing to celebrate
When our beaches after the death of coconut are devoured by coastal erosion and there is no concrete strategy for mitigation and adaption to climate change, leaving our communities in absolute vulnerability.
There is nothing to celebrate
Because due to the stubbornness of the current regime in maintaining a model as exclusive as the neoliberal one, more than 200,000 brothers and sisters have had to emigrate from our communities risking their lives to go in search of an uncertain destiny, leaving behind parents, children, grand-children and other loved ones, when our youth find themselves forced to emigrate due to the absence of opportunities and the blackmail that says if we don't give up out territory it is because we are opposed to "development."
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because even though the United Nations has declared the language, the music and the dance of the Garífuna people as a Oral Master Work and Intangible Asset of Humanity on May 18, 2011 and declared 2011 as the International Year of the Afrodescendants the State has not made any effort to support the strengthening of our culture which it instead commercializes and labels as national folklore at the same time that it promotes cultural homogenization through the media dictatorship taking place in Honduras.
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because the attacks and threats against community media violate the right to free expression and thought and the right that our people have to create their own alternative media as is established in Covenant 169 of the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Declaration about Indigenous Peoples.
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because the the government is working to make its racist policies prevail by denying the incorporation into the country's health services network of the First People's Garífuna Hospital, a monument that dignifies the struggle for survival of our people that ancestrally has suffered abandon, invisibility and exclusion, this center which is
the first of its kind in 214 years of Garífuna presence in Honduras, even though it provides free service to the historically forgotten population, flagrantly violating what is established in ILO Convention 169 in Articles 24 and 25.
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because after 214 years of submission to a colonial education system from which ignorant functionaries graduate, people who cut themselves down carrying the cross of self-denial, who with more education feel ashamed of speaking their own language, of their cuisine and their philosophical and theological worldview. After 17 since the creation of the Intercultural Bilingual Education program we have as a result the most alarming loss of the language in our modern history, but the Secretary of Education and the cooperating authorities who financially sustain this program and reflect in their reports the utopic vision that this program is a complete success.
Our statistics reflect that in the closest communities to the cities 8 or 9 of every ten Garífuna children don't understand nor speak the language, leaving clearly demonstrated that the underlying purpose of these programs isn't the rescue, preservation nor revitalization of the language but the domestication of our peoples, creating in its citizens cowardly and servile conduct. It is opportune to emphatically pronounce or condemnation of the practice assumed by the current government that has as its end the replacement of Garífuna-speaking teachers with non-Garífuna teachers, political activists and career opportunists. For this reason the strengthening of the National Council of Garífuna Education (CONEGAH) and the creation of the first Intercultural Garífuna University (UGI) is imperative.
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because only in Valle de Sula, the most rich zone of the country which produces 60% of the Gross Domestic Product of Honduras, there are more than 50,000 Afro-descendant inhabitants, where they are a fundamental pillar for the creation of that richness, but that contribution is not proportionately reflected in the investment of capital in the black communities of that region.
There is nothing to celebrate.
When the conversion of the Garífuna community of Rio Negro into "Banana Coast" is the prelude to the expulsion of the Garífuna from Bahía de Trujillo, a process which they seek to replicate in the whole coast in the name of uncertain tourism, a pillar of an economy of dependence, as the agro-export model liquidates food security.
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because we unite the voices of the Organizations that today condemn the celebration of a World Summit of Afro-descendants that legitimizes a regime that represses the black communities as it showed the morning of this past Monday March 28th in the community of Triunfo de Cruz, Tela, Atlántida.
There is nothing to celebrate.
Because narco-trafficking is a problem that threatens the country.

The Garífunas present in this march of the 214 drums
We manifest our solidarity with the indigenous and misquito peoples of Honduras who are being the object of repression, militarization and pillaging of their natural resources by the oligarchy and the transnationals, in the same way we manifest our categorical support for the call for the self-demarcation of their territory. Our solidarity is also with the Honduran teachers in the struggle for the defense of public education and the defense of the Teacher's Statute.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras April 1st, 2011 Alianza 2-14 made up of :
Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras (OFRANEH), Centro de la Cultura Garínagu de Honduras (CENCULGARH) Comité Cívico del Gran Valle de Sula Fundación Luagu Hatuadi Waduheñu, Fundación Mujeres Garífunas en Marcha Gemelos de Honduras Delegación Musical «Black Men Soul» Asociación de Afrodescendientes del Valle de Sula (ASAFROVA) Enlaces de Mujeres Negras de Honduras (ENMUNEH) Asociación Hondureña de Mujeres Negras (ASOHMUN) Juventud Garífuna Luwéyuri Aníchigu (JUGALA) Organización Nacional de Jóvenes Garínagu Organización La Esperanza de Mujeres Garífunas (OLAMUGAH) Sociedad Hondureña Activa en Nueva York (SHANY) Colaboración Planetaria (COPLANET) Federación de Patronatos de Iriona, Patronato de Limón Colon Comunidad Garífuna de Plaplaya Comunidad Garífuna de Batalla Comunidad Garífuna de Pueblo Nuevo Comunidad Garífuna Tocamacho Comunidad Garífuna de Cocalito Comunidad Garífuna de Sangrelaya Comunidad Garífuna de Iriona Puerto Comunidad Garífuna de San José de la Punta Comunidad Garífuna de Iriona Viejo Comunidad Garífuna de Ciriboya Comunidad Garífuna de Cusuna Comunidad Garífuna de Punta Piedra Comunidad Garífuna de Limón Comunidad Garífuna Santa Rosa de Aguan Comunidad Garífuna Trujillo Comunidad Garífuna Santa Fe Comunidad Garífuna San Antonio Comunidad Garífuna Guadalupe Comunidad Garífuna Nueva Armenia Comunidad Garífuna Rio Esteban Comunidad Garífuna Sambo Creek Comunidad Garífuna Corozal Comunidad Garífuna Punta Gorda Comunidad Garífuna Triunfo de Cruz Comunidad Garífuna San Juan Comunidad Garífuna Tornabe Comunidad Garífuna Bajamar Comunidad Garífuna Travesía Comunidad Garífuna Masca

Ongoing Evictions in the Garifuna community of Punta Gorda, Roatán, Honduras
07 April 2011
With the Garifuna People just days away from commemorating the 214th anniversary of their eviction from the island of Saint Vincent in 1797, agents from the Honduran Ministry of Security have begun to violently evict Garifuna families from the island community of Punta Gorda on Roatán off the coast of Honduras. Today - April 7, 2011 - The Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras or OFRANEH released this Action Alert on the evictions.

ALERT: Eviction in the Garifuna community of Punta Gorda, Roatan
At the request of the Military Social Security Institute [Instituto de Prevision Militar, IPM, which owns several businesses], agents from the Ministry of Security are right now carrying out an eviction in the island community of Punta Gorda, Roatán.
The more than 40 families that are being violently evicted live in the neighborhood known as Punta Gorda, located in the community of the same name. It is outrageous that that while the State of Honduras boasts about a policy of inclusion and makes an ostentatious show of its celebration of the International Year of Afro-Descendants, the armed forces order the Ministry of Security to carry out an eviction.
As Garifuna, we find ourselves suffering a second expulsion from the Caribbean. In just a few days, on April 12th, the arrival of our People to Honduras will be commemorated, specifically marking our arrival to the island of Roatán, after our forced displacement by the British from the island of Saint Vincent in 1797.
The pressures on our territory that our People suffer are rooted in the speculation by the tourism industry. Projects such as Banana Coast, Laguna de Micos, and in a not-so-distant future the so-called Model City have precipitated an onslaught of evictions in Punta Gorda and in the majority of coastal communities, which are the aim of businesspeople, politicians and armed forces, taking advantage of the vast judicial void that exists in Honduras.
Since the coup d'etat in 2009, the pressures on Garifuna territory have intensified. The eviction in Punta Gorda is part of the "Christian humanism" of the current administration, which uses violence in an attempt to impose its vision of a "democracy" of the few associated with the party in power.
The Garifuna of Punta Gorda lack a land deed for their territory, despite dancing to the tune of numerous governmental administrations over the years – administrations that tend to celebrate the anniversary of our arrival to Honduras in Punta Gorda with rituals of power.
How will the State of Honduras and its kindred organizations explain this eviction at the Afro-Descendant summit they plan to hold this August? Basta Ya – enough! – of the expulsion of the Garifuna People of Honduras.
Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH La Ceiba, April 7, 2011.
intercontinentalcry.org/ongoing-evictions-in-the-garifuna-community-of-punta-gorda-honduras/