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News > World

Garifuna Exchange on the Fight for Land: Honduras and Belize

  • Garifuna people celebrate

    Garifuna people celebrate | Photo: EFE

Published 24 June 2017
Opinion

The event, titled “Honduras: The Fight for Reparations,” is scheduled to last for 12 days.

A delegation of six Garifunas from Belize are scheduled to travel to the Honduran Caribbean coast on Sunday to learn about Garifuna struggles and victories for land repossession, reparations and other ancestral fights.

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The event, titled “Honduras: The Fight for Reparations,” is scheduled to last for 12 days and was organized by the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, OFRANEH, and Witness for Peace, WFP, an organization promoting solidarity between peoples in the Americas.

WFP characterize such cultural exchanges as being an opportunity to “meet with leading experts on policy issues, learn from activists working for peace and spend extended time in communities working for justice.”

Amandala reported that participants in the organized exchange include community members from the Belizean Garifuna coast of Yugadan, the communally-held lands of St. Vincent Block/Serru/Cerro in Peini, the Rastafari-led multi-ethnic land reclamation efforts of Harmonyville in Cayo and the Black-owned independent media house Kremandala in Belize City.

Prior to and since the coup that ousted former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, which was supported by the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, OFRANEH has taken a leading role in struggles for the repossession of ancestral lands and other social issues.

In 2015, after decades of consistent struggle, the organization achieved a legal precedent for Indigenous and Black people. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of ancestral land claims by the Garifuna people of Punta Piedra and Triunfo de la Cruz. Subsequently, the Honduran state was ordered to pay cash restitution for having systematically violated their rights.

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That same year, the Maya Land Rights Case achieved an unprecedented ruling when the Caribbean Court of Justice upheld the rights of the 38 Mayan communities to collectively-held territories, according to Amandala.

The court, acknowledging that Belize had colluded with multinational corporations in violating the ancestral rights of Mayan communities, ordered the state to pay reparations to the Mayan communities.

Transnational exchanges between Garifuna and other African-descendant communities located in the Central American, Caribbean, southern United States, and northern South American region have occurred for centuries.

Exchanges of this nature continue to rekindle cultural and social links that transcend national borders.

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