Garifuna

Here in the Bronx, that global dialogue forces a very immediate local question.

When a traveler asks an artificial intelligence engine or a travel platform where to find and experience Garifuna culture in New York City, what answer does the machine return? And more importantly, who benefits from their visit? Welcome back to the Garifuna Experience Podcast.

I'm your host, Jose Francisco Avila, licensed New York City sightseeing guide and your field partner in community cultural economic development.

Today, we're taking an essential leap forward from a concept we introduced in Episode 61, Garifuna Towns.

Garifuna Town is not an imaginary line drawn on a desk, nor is it an official municipal district granted from the top down.

It is an organized, community-led economic strategy designed to make the Garifuna presence in the Bronx visible, directly connect living heritage to our neighborhood, small businesses, and construct ethical visitor experiences that reinvest directly into our people.

In this episode, Building Garifuna Town, from cultural vision to economic strategy, we present a field report and a concrete operational blueprint built across five foundational pillars, story, experience, enterprise, digital discovery, and community control.

The most common failure in destination marketing is the colonial assumption that a neighborhood is empty until an outside campaign names it.

Yes.

The authentic Garifuna village tours sold on the cruise ships.

What's the issue there?

Well, the Garifuna people have an incredible rich history on the island, primarily centered in the town of Putagorda.

Right.

But the tours sold on the ships are heavily commissioned, sanitized bus stops designed to funnel you into buying souvenirs.

So it feels fake.

It does.

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In Honduras, protests have taken place for seven weeks outside the Supreme Court in the capital, Tegucigalpa, calling for landmark rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in favor of coastal Garifuna communities to be upheld.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Labrador reports that a Spanish reality TV show called Sobrevivientes or Survivors was scheduled in September to start shooting its new season in Cayos Cochinos, in one of the areas disputed by Garifuna communities along the Caribbean coast of Honduras.

Upon landing at a beach called Playa Uva, the production crew ran into protests by the Garifuna people, an Afro-Indigenous community that has lived there for centuries.

The filming of the TV show in a protected nature reserve in Honduras has ignored court rulings as recent as March of this year, prohibiting them from operating without prior consultation with the community.

On September 17th, Honduran police sailed to the island.

Protesters began a sit-in against the filming.

This is Garifuna leader Mabel Robledo, who's been at Playa Uva since mid-September protesting the reality

Well, right now, I'm getting ready to go to Belize.

So I'm listening to the Garifuna Collective, which is an amazing, amazing group of musicians.

Garifuna is a certain group of folks, you know, culture that is down there in Belize and, you know, descendants of slaves, and they've kind of retained some of their music and culture while still being within Belize.

And I would highly recommend checking out the Garifuna Collective.

sick

sweet where have you not traveled that you're itching to go to

Reyes Nunez says, "I am Afro-Latina from La Buga, Livingston, Guatemala.

Garifuna." I w- you know, I didn't see the Garifuna, but I was about to say you're a Garifuna.

But, you know, all on, on that entire coastline.

Take care, brother.

One word, three question marks.

That was the response to a poster I shared over the weekend celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month and featuring 16 prominent Garifuna people.

A Garifuna community member named Hector commented, Hispanic? I replied with a laughing emoji.

But that exchange deserves more than an emoji.

Because behind those three question marks is a conversation worth having.

Can we be Garifuna and Hispanic? Garifuna and Black? Garifuna and Indigenous? Can we participate in Latino life without allowing our own history to disappear inside it? And who gets to decide which words belong to us? Mabuiga.

Welcome back to the Garifuna Experience Podcast.

I'm your host, Jose Francisco Avila.

It was a particular album by Petrona Martinez, and it features different figures.

But the interesting thing about traveling through different parts in the Caribbean and also Africa, for example, Belize or Honduras, Panama, different places where I found very similar musics in terms of dynamics, the type of dialogue with the drums, also women leading in different communities, for example, in the Garifuna community, but also there's Bulleringa in Panama, for example.

But for me, the big takeaway from this is that their ancestors, in the end, triumphed.

The colonialism tried to silence them, to diminish them.

To paraphrase the great Frederick Douglass, what to the Garifuna and Afro descendants is September 15th.

What is the meaning and significance from their point of view? Welcome back to another episode of the Garifuna Experience podcast.

I'm your host, Jose Francisco Avila.

If you're tuning in this week, you know that September brings a familiar vibe across our neighborhoods.

historical re-evaluation.

Let's set the timeline properly.

By 1821, the Garifuna people had already been on the Central American mainland for 24 years, having been exiled by the British from their homeland, Yurume, to Roatan in April 1797. and quickly spreading across the Honduran, Guatemalan, and Nicaraguan coastlines, as well as into Belize.

During those early decades, our ancestors did not simply sit on the margins, waiting for a republic to be declared.