“We have not gained any concrete reaction from the authorities,” said César Benedit, leader of the network and a member of the Blos angelesck Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) in Triumph of the Angels Cruz, Progressive. “We don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”
Continued attacks on Garifuna communities have led to the exodus of others to the United States, particularly in the context of asylum seekers and migrants’ caravans in recent years.
According to Benedit, the list of abductees includes 4 members of OFRANEH: Alberth Snider Centeno Tomus, Suami Aparicio Mejoa García, Gerardo Mizael Rochez C.lix and Joel Martínez Alvarez, in addition to the man, Junior Rafael Jurez Mejoa. He says they were put in trucks through armed men in police uniforms and investigators from the Police Investigations Section.
Centeno Tomus, the youngest president in the community.
The men took an early morning curfew to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At the time, only the police and the army could roam the streets. His disappearance sparked protests on the net that did not facilitate his safe return.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez tried to denigrate OFRANEH leaders by claiming they were in the drug trade.
The Garifunas are descendants of former African slaves and arawak indigenous peoples who went into exile from the British island of St Vincent in 1797. Today, Garifuna communities stretch along the Atlantic coast of Belize, Nicaragua. In Honduras, communities have retained collective titles of the communal lands where they reside.
But under pressure from national elites and foreign investors to build resorts and other projects along pristine beaches, Garifuna’s Los Angelesnd has been usurped. The demise of the leaders of the Triumph network of the Cruz Angels comes when the Garifuna communities have mobilized to protect their culture and their world from angels.
The government of Juan Orlando Hernandez responded to this mobilization with a brutal crusade of violence, disappearances and criminalization of network leaders. This is new: since 2015, at least twenty-five Garifunas have been killed, 19 of them in 2019 alone.
“We see this as a systemic spoil,” Benedit says.
“When they start murdering the leaders, who else will be there to defend, who will take up their place in the net? It’s terror. They are looking to leave the Garifuna network without constituting the opposite network to the state.
Garifuna communities have been at the forefront of defending land and territory in Honduras. Communities along the pristine beaches of the Atlantic coast face the stripping of their communal lands through industry and personal businesses.
“This has been a constant struggle for Garifuna communities for their territory,” said Dr. Luther Castillo, a Garifuna doctor trained in Cuba who runs a Garifuna solidarity hospital in Ciriboya, Progressive. “Our territory is horny for large-scale tourism and African palm plantations, although our communities have ancestral documentation on the land. They were obviously invaded.
Garifuna communities hold the communal titles of their lands. But the expansion of tourism projects and monoculture has left them room to sow seeds and fish.
He adds: “A garifuna without land lives.”
Land stripping has accelerated since the 2009 coup opposite democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who inaugurated a series of far-right administrations that encouraged investment across the country. This resulted in the theft of Aboriginal lands.
“For them, they see the beaches as a wealth, and we the deficient cannot live on those beautiful beaches,” Benedit says. “They need these lovely places to expand on their own, not Honduras, for us. They need to take us, the Garifunas, for their expansion,” he continues. “It’s racist.”
Faced with the expropriation of his angels for tourism projects and the stripping of the Angelesnd, the Triumph network of the angels Cruz challenged the theft before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In October 2015, the court ruled that Honduras had violated the collective right to ownership of the network and that the state had not consulted other Garifunas prior to the structure of the projects in accordance with Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization, which requires states to consult with other indigenous persons before projects affecting their territories. The court ruled that the land be returned to the Garifuna network and investigate the deaths of Garifuna leaders in the area.
However, according to Benedit and Castillo, the management of Juan Orlando Hernandez refused to comply with the decision. Centeno Tomus, as president of the community, among those who demanded that the national government comply with the court’s decision.
Castillo and Benedit characterize the disappearances and increased violence against Garifuna communities to an earlier ruling by the 2015 Inter-American Court of Human Rights that identified the right of garifunas to their lands. Since this decision, there has been a crusade of violence and intimidation against The Garifuna communities. This violence has been greater in years.
“The state is guilty of everything that happened there,” Castillo says. “If the state had complied with the court’s decision, we would not want a territory defense committee. Failing to comply with the decision, the state sends a message to those who have invaded the Garifuna lands that they can continue with the blessing of the state.
Members of the House suggested Pompeo “talk about human rights and anti-corruption efforts in Honduras”. But Trump’s management has kept quiet about human rights violations and corruption in Honduras, despite Hernandez’s fraudulent and illegal re-election in November 2017 and his brother Tony Hernandez’s conviction in New York of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
Continued attacks on Garifuna communities have led to the exodus of others to the United States, adding caravans of asylum seekers and migrants in recent years.
“We expect the United States to see the stage in [Honduras], but only the disappearance of our leaders,” Benedit says. “Everyone needs to migrate to the United States, escaping unemployment, insecurity, ins andeeth, and the dictatorship that Juan Orlando Hernandez is forming. How can Trump look a blind eye to such a corrupt government?”
Jeff Abbott is a freelance journalist lately in Guatemala. “The Other Americans” is a column created through Abbott for The Progressive on human migration in North and Central America.
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