Image of Roatan, Honduras. Credit: iStock.
Ancestral Lands Garífuna Honduras

On Garifuna Heritage and Ancestral Territorial Recovery-A Conversation with Dr Rony Castillo

Soledad Quartucci

On Garifuna Heritage and Ancestral Territorial Recovery-A Conversation with Dr Rony Castillo

Dr. Rony Castillo is a Garifuna Activist and Scholar with extensive academic and professional achievements. Dr. Castillo’s expertise was recently applied to a vital case.

Castillo served as an expert defense witness in the Punta Gorda case informing the courtroom of the Garifuna ancestral rights to a disputed territory.

Dr. Castillo’s testimony was pivotal, influencing the judge who had previously ordered a preventive eviction, to side with Garifuna rights in a historic ruling that led to the release of detained Garifunas.

On Friday, November 25, Judge Allan Urbina, of the Roatán Civil Court, issued a definitive dismissal for the six defenders of the Garífuna ancestral land of Punta Gorda accused of the crime of usurpation. At the national level, this resolution marks a milestone in the legal interpretation of land conflicts involving indigenous populations.

Latina Republic met with Dr. Castillo to learn more about this case and also to ask Castillo to shed light on Garifuna history and the larger story of reclamation and recovery of Garifuna Ancestral land in Honduras.

This conversation highlights the urgency of Xiomara Castro’s government to provide titles to Garifuna land and keep campaign promises to guard human rights and end discriminating practices against the Garifunas, land defenders and minorities in Honduras.

Dr. Rony Castillo, Roots, Activism, Scholarship 

LR: Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us so we can learn more about the Garífuna community and the Punta Gorda Case. Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you grew up?

Dr. Castillo: I am Rony Castillo. I am from the community of Iriona, in the department of Colón. Iriona is a municipality in the department of Colón, on the Caribbean coast. Well, almost all the Garífuna communities are located in that sector of the coast.

I grew up there, I was born there, and I went to school there. Then, I left that community at the age of 12 to go to a nearby city to study high school and then I went to the city of Tegucigalpa to attend the university.

I managed to get a doctorate, here, in Honduras in Administrative Sciences and I also did a doctorate in the United States, recently. In other words, I have two doctorates.

 

On Garifuna Heritage and Ancestral Territorial Recovery-A Conversation with Dr Rony Castillo.
Rony Castillo’s Graduation. Image Source- Rony Castillo.

 

LR: One doctorate program was not enough! (joking).

Dr. Castillo: No, it wasn’t enough for me (laughter), and I did my second doctorate at the University of Texas, graduating in 2021, last year.

Since 2003, I have been directly linked to the issue of bilingual education, the right to Garífuna-Spanish bilingual education to seek recovery and conservation of the Garífuna language, but also so that children can learn in their own language.

Because, personally, I learned to speak Spanish at school. I entered school at the age of seven. Before that, I did not understand or speak Spanish.

And when I started school, it was a difficult time, since teaching was done in Spanish, a language I didn’t even know, and it was very hard in my primary school years, and so I considered, according to what I was studying and regarding rights, that children should learn in their own language and learn Spanish as a second language within an appropriate second language methodology.

I became coordinator of that program at the official level, that is, of the State. First, as a Garífuna representative fighting for Garífuna rights through that program.

Then, I became a coordinator of that program in 2008, and that is where my relationship with Ofraneh [a grassroots organization that works with more than 47 Garífuna communities in Honduras, to protect collective territorial rights and promote an alternative model of life based on Garifuna autonomy and self-determination] comes in, working with the communities and the Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, which was vigilant in pressing for the respect of linguistic rights.

So, I worked directly with Ofraneh. What’s more, they sent me to Tegucigalpa to be a representative of the Garífuna voice in the Ministry of Education to promote this program.

That’s where my relationship with them comes from, through that educational area. So, I have always worked in this area. I was even an advisor to one of the Ministers of Education in 2012 and then I decided to go to the United States to get a doctorate.

In 2015, I left for the United States and for four to five years I completed my doctorate there at the University of Texas. Then, in 2019 I did my research in Vallecito, a famous Garífuna community that is a territory recovered by Ofraneh.

In Vallecitto, they are working on a coconut project, a massive coconut plantation and processing project that is underway to process coconut, coconut oil and also to create the Garifuna University there.

So, I came to work in 2019, and the whole year I was working with Ofraneh in the area of territorial autonomy and educational autonomy. That was when I wrote my dissertation focused on how to face and project territorial autonomy through educational autonomy, that is, as parallel strategies to be able to promote territorial conservation, through an educational agenda.

So that was my perspective on my work during 2019 and 2021. After I graduated, I returned to Honduras to apply what I had learned during the dissertation.

I also linked directly with Ofraneh, and I started working directly with the cases involving the issue of autonomy, territorial self-determination and the cases before the American system, which have to do with dispossession, displacement, and territorial dispossession.

And I’m also writing, as a result of that, my book, a product of the dissertation. My dissertation is not published for this reason, it is on delay for security reasons, because it mentions several things that have to do with drug trafficking issues, what is happening in the area, etc.

I’m going to publish a book and I’m already working on it as a result of that research.

Garífuna History in their Own Words

LR: That is exciting news! Before diving into the case of Punta Gorda, can you share an abridged history of the Garífuna in Honduras and talk about some of their experiences? 

Dr. Castillo: Sure, as a short version, it can be said that the Garífuna people are a people of black and indigenous identity. That is important because, visibly, we are a black people, but culturally, we have a strong indigenous identity.

 

“The Garífuna people are a people of black and indigenous identity. That is important because, visibly, we are a black people, but culturally, we have a strong indigenous identity,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

There are also two important factors in this identity and that it is role of the woman, who is the one who roots, guards and promotes the culture, (which is an eminently indigenous culture).

 

“The Garífuna Woman, Roots, Guards and Promotes the Culture, an Eminent Indigenous Culture,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

In other words, the modes of behavior and the entire management or leadership style of the Garífuna woman is informed by her indigenous identity and even, spirituality.

 

 

And the other important aspect is the issue of the Garifuna elderly. So, this culture is rooted in the figure of the elderly and in the figure of the woman.

And this is very important because beyond what can be said, beyond what can be stated historically, this is what has given this culture validity to this day.

 

“The Garífuna community has some stories. I say, some, because to date, various stories have been circulated, about how the Garífuna people came to be, but none of those have been written by the Garífuna in the first place,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

And secondly, some do not coincide with the oral tradition.

 

Oral Traditions Reveal A Heritage of Longevity, Autonomy, Resilience

As an academic and Garífuna activist, I have analyzed all of them. I studied all those stories for many years, during my doctorate, and there are some specific things that I want to refer to regarding Garífuna history. One, is that the Garífuna people are a people who were rooted strongly in San Vicente when colonization arrived.

In other words, this is very important because the Garífuna people faced the British colony and the French colony. They confronted over 100 years of war. No people that arrived as slaves could have faced not only war, but also negotiations.

In other words, they signed two treaties with the British. During those years, I am talking about the 1,600s through the 1700s when they were definitively expelled, and in 1773, when the last treaty was signed. According to what the treaty established, the British left the territory to the community of San Vicente, now to the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

So, they left the territory to the Caribbean people, that’s how they referred to the Garífuna people, which they divided into black Caribbeans and yellow Caribbeans. But that was nothing more than a matter of trying to divide the people between the lighter Caribbeans and the darker skinned ones.

The Caribbean people were there.

So one of the questions is, if the Caribbean people were there before, how did they get there?

 

 

There are several theories.

Some colleagues who have studied this found that there were expeditions of Black peoples to the Caribbean before colonization, and that some group could have remained there, in the Antilles, and mixed with the Arawak People or indigenous people, which by the way, our language is of Arawaka origin.

That is its root along with the Taíno language and various languages that were spoken in the Caribbean. Even Garífuna comes from a Maipure language that was said to be the lingua franca in the time before the colony; it was the lingua franca in all those Antilles minors. So that is a very important point.

The second point establishes that there were some who were not enslaved. So that is another point, because it has been controversial.

 

“It is believed that all the black people in America came as slaves. This is not true, necessarily, of the Garífuna. This is backed by oral traditions,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

 

Oral traditions and the elders have been saying through time that the Garífuna were never enslaved and one of the proofs is that they did not lose their language.

It is the only black pueblo that speaks their own language in the Americas. Well, in Colombia there are the Raizal people and the Palenque people, but this language I am speaking about is a pre-colonial language. The first thing that colonization, slavery, enslavement takes away from you, is the language.

 

“The Garifuna people were expelled, not deported,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

We achieved that, and the Garífuna people were expelled, which is the third element. They were not deported. They were expelled from San Vicente, that is, after the war, after one of the leaders was killed, Satuye, at the end of the 18th century, in 1796ish, around that time, they were expelled from San Vicente, not deported, because those who are not from a place can be deported, for example, they can deport me from the United States, but they can’t expel me. They can’t deport me from Honduras, right?

So, it wasn’t possible to deport them, but they were expelled first to an island called, Baliceaux. It’s like 40 miles from San Vicente. In this small island of Saint Vincent, Baliceaux, many of our people died before leaving that island.

The 4th element is that it is believed that they left because of the English. Many were captured by the English as prisoners. Others stayed in San Vicente. The French also stayed, as did some of the “red” or “yellow” Caribbeans.

In other words, not all of them left San Vicente, but the group that they said was unruly, they took them out and it was so that they would be eliminated from that island. But how did they get to Roatán?

Well, one of the theories is that the English themselves took them out, however this theory is contrasted by oral tradition.

There is a song, and it is an ancient song, a Garífuna song, that we refer to as the Garifuna national anthem, which is the Yurumein, the Garífuna word that refers to San Vicente. So the song says, “Yurumein nege buga wagairabai.” The translation is: “San Vicente was our territory.”

This is how the song begins, and the last word of the song is “our territory,” which means, the place where we are from. The words in the song make reference to the place where we belong, from where we are from, where we were born.

So the song begins by narrating this statement, “the place where we are from.” So that’s how the song begins. There’s a verse of that song that establishes how they got out of there and in Garífuna it means, through a raft, and the song says, “we left by raft.” That means that there is no mention in the song of being taken by the English from that island.

Rather they say that they were expelled from San Vicente by the whites. They don’t mention which whites but obviously it was the British who were there at the time. So, this story concludes with the arrival in Roatán in 1797.

Roatán, which is the first Garífuna community in Central America, and from there they dispersed to Belize, Guatemala, from there, they went to the mainland to Trujillo and from there they created all the communities.

There is something particular about that, it is that all the Garífuna communities were founded in that period of time, that is, in the first ten years of the arrival of the Garífunas they founded almost all the Garífuna communities in Honduras, they even founded one in Belize and founded one in Guatemala.

This is very different from the mestizo culture that we have in the country, because they may found a community here and there.

From that moment on, the Garífuna community settled in those communities and still lives there today. And Roatán, that word, “Roatán,” our ancestors say that it is a Garífuna word that in Spanish translates to “dame tiempo,” or “give me some time” or “give me a chance.” So, this is a little bit about our history.

 

 

Land

LR: Well, thank you very much, Rony. I also wanted to ask you about the topic of collectivity, the community and ways of life. If you could speak on the relationship of the Garífuna community with the land and expand on the collective aspect of the community and its impact on daily life. How does collectivity guide daily life, and if you could comment on the most urgent social problems the community faces today?

Dr. Castillo: Yes. The issue of the land is key. Because in San Vicente when the Spanish colonizers arrived, the only areas that were not conquered or invaded by colonization, were Saint Vincent and Dominica, the main islands where these black Caribbeans were.

What’s more, the word Caribbean comes from an expression of Christopher Columbus who said, “the only thing I found were some cannibals.” The word Caribbean comes from the word, cannibals.

They were fighting for the land, the territory. And, according to some anthropologists, one of the reasons why the colonizers had not entered there was because the land was assumed as not productive, that it was arid.

However, this has been shown to be untrue. It was a productive land, because there was even commercial exchange with the French and English with production of sugar cane, and the production of various other products there. It was not productive for all products, but there were products from that region.

They say the same about Roatán, that the Garífunas dispersed to the coast because there was no plant they wanted, referring to the corozo, which is a porous plant that did not exist in Roatán which was an important tree for building houses for the Garífuna.

But that’s not true. In Roatán there is plenty of corozo. Even now when I arrive in Roatán, I find corozo there, so this means that it was there back in that time, too. I highlight this example because of the value that the land has for the Garífuna community, which is part of their identity; an integral element of the Garífuna identity; the land and the sea.

When we speak of territory, we include not only the land or plot where one builds, or where one sows, or where one does productive activities, but also what constitutes the functional habitat of the Garífuna community. In other words, what you need to live in the Garífuna community. And the community has a very particular distribution of land or territory.

The houses are organized like a collective of houses, it is like a group of houses. There is also a common place to grow rice. In other words, when the community plants rice, they plant it in a specific place, and everyone plants it there. They plant in one place.

When they go to plant cassava, there is only one place they plant it in, and the word in Garífuna to describe it, denotes this collectivity.

But what about the other lands that the Garífuna are not planting? Let’s say that in September they are planting rice, and not planting cassava. There are some lands that remain resting, others call them, fallow.

So, the Garífuna community also has that relationship with which they let land rest to recover its nutrients. That practice is not understood because it is based on a different concept of property.

 

“For the Garifuna, the land is a part of the beings with which one lives. Which is why, Garífuna land is not for sale, this is why no sales are promoted and renting is not promoted,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

That is, the mestizos are not going to understand that the uncultivated land is resting. I mean, how is the land going to rest? Because for the Garífuna, the land is a part of the beings with which one lives. So, it is part of the nature with which one lives, which is why this land is not for sale.

That is why no sales are promoted. Renting is not promoted.

 

“When a Garífuna loses land, it is as if they have lost a mother, as if they are an orphan, now. We consider that when losing the territory, the culture disappears, the Garífuna people disappear,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

However, when the community arrives in Honduras, they establish themselves in certain territories before colonization and they also fight for the country’s independence.

That’s why we stay. So, part of the territory also includes the sea, includes the forests, the rivers, and this area where you work, where the houses are. So, these territories are collectively owned because they are communal, that is, they are not owned by individuals, but by the community, by a collective.

 

“Garífuna territories are collectively owned, they are communal, not owned by individuals but by the community, by a collective. This is why the land cannot be seized, the land does not prescribe, it cannot be used as a collateral. The highest authority, the assembly, makes all land decisions,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

That is why the land cannot be seized. The land does not prescribe. Let’s say you buy a piece of land, let’s say, 50 years ago you say you were working on it, you are a third person from outside the community, but they got you a piece of land there and sold it.

That terrain does not prescribe. It will always be from the community. In other words, at some point you have to return or hand over that land, because this land is not like it is in other areas where after working the land for five years you may have it.

In the Garífuna communities, you don’t have rights over it and also you can’t seize it because you can’t take it to court to decide to put it as collateral for something. And that is like the characteristic of this community. And also, the elders, the highest authority in the community, and the assembly that makes decisions.

It is not even the Board of Trustees, because the Board of Trustees is an administrative figure created to lead the community. But the highest authority is the assembly which under the exercise of self-determination, the community decides to whom to deliver that land within the community and how the recoveries are made along this same line.

To summarize, the relationship with the land is a relationship of life, of existence itself. We believe that we exist in a territory and with a territory.

 

“The relationship with the land is a relationship of life, of existence itself. The Garifuna believe we exist in a territory and with a territory,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

For this reason, the Garífuna in the United States do not lose connection with their territory.

Their point of reference is always their territory in the communities. They talk about my pueblo, they even create patronal fairs in the United States with the name of their Garífuna community, organized as if they were in Honduras.

They’ll tell you, ‘here we are, the patronage of Iriona,’ and these are people who have been in the U.S. for like 20 years and don’t have the documents to return, but they have their [Garifuna] community as a reference.

And it is not simply by community, but by their territory, by the link to the territory. So, that is why when a Garífuna goes anywhere, he is going to return, he asks that he return dead or alive to his original territory.

 

“When a Garífuna dies away from their territory, their wish is to be buried in that territory. For the Garífuna, the dead are considered to move onto a new stage in life, continuing to live among Garífuna in that territory,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

That is, if a Garífuna dies away from their territory, their wish is to be buried in that territory. And that is important, because for the Garífuna, the dead are considered to move onto a new stage of life, just different from us, but the dead continue to live among us in that territory.

 

 

Greatest Challenges facing the Garífuna Today

LR: Can you inform us a bit on the current social problems, the most urgent ones facing the community?

Loss of Territory, Displacement & Impact 

Dr. Castillo: Yes. I think we have several problems. But within what we can emphasize, this issue of the loss of territory is important. And I think we could put it as number one, because the displacement of this territory has been massive and there has been an invasion.

In other words, there are communities that do not have a piece of land to plant on, or to carry out their spiritual activities or their common activities. So people go to the city because they don’t even have enough to build a house, so they go to the cities to look for work, to a miserable job and end up leaving for the United States.

Migration

So, migration is one of the other important problems that the community is experiencing. Today the community is empty. There is a large number of our people who live abroad. It is believed that there are 200,000 Garífunas in New York alone, that is, only there in New York, in the South Bronx, is where the largest number live and live a miserable life involved in drugs, many violent people, a lot of violence.

The Garífuna community is a community that has not been characterized as a violent community. Frequently, in the United States, the black community tends to live in what is considered a violent area, different from Honduras. Black communities, in this case the Garífuna, are the most peaceful communities.

People visit these communities on the weekend to do tourism, to walk with their children, that is, without any fear and even those who are close to the city, within the city where there is a lot of violence in Honduras, but in the communities that are nearby, in the Garífuna communities, people walk calmly without thinking about any kind of violence, but in the South Bronx, in the United States, in New York, there is a lot of violence.

The Garífunas have shot each other, there are many street children, young people who left Honduras in the 2014 wave are living difficult situations in the area. I was there about a month ago in New York and witnessed the difficult situations that require action.

Drug Traffic

The other problem, of course, comes from other related issues, the problem of drug trafficking, which has entered the community and has co-opted and intervened the communities. Remember that the Caribbean is key to drug trafficking, because for the transportation of that drug to the United States, it passes through these communities.

Well, before it used to be a transit area, now in the municipality of Iriona, they have dismantled about five laboratories so far this year; laboratories that produce cocaine, to process cocaine and plant crops. So, what is happening is alarming, what is happening is also coming in with this drug trafficking.

They have entered Protestant churches as well. In other words, there are communities that have eight churches, a community of 3,000 inhabitants has eight churches and many of them are run by people with ties to drug trafficking, which is also a way of covering up their criminal actions.

They also plant the trees. They bring the chemicals to process them there. And of course, there are now young people, many consuming.  So, this is a tragic scenario that the communities are experiencing and there are communities where we can no longer access to defend their rights.

So that’s to tell you some of the problems apart from the education ones, and others including food security and environmental problems.

Deteriorating Health

So, we have to look for strategies to enter those communities, to address the issue of health, because the community is also sick. There is a lot of diabetes. There is a lot of hypertension.

There are many preventable diseases and now there are many, many people. Before, one of the issues we never had to face was malnutrition. Now, our people die of malnutrition, Garífuna children are dying from malnutrition.

 

 

Understanding the Case of Punta Gorda

LR: I am really sorry to learn about these problems. I hope that solutions can be strategized soon. Transitioning on to the topic of Punta Gorda. What is the spiritual significance of Punta Gorda for the Garífuna people?

Punta Gorda, The Promised Land

Dr. Castillo: Punta Gorda is the beginning of the Garífuna people. It is the second Saint Vincent, which was moved to Roatán. Many people died at sea. Hence, why the sea is so important for us. It is not only to fish or to get food, but also that spiritual relationship formed by the death of so many of our people who died crossing the Caribbean Sea and who were displaced from the Caribbean, which is the title of my upcoming book, Los Desplazados del Caribe; The Displaced from the Caribbean.

We are not the pilgrims from the Caribbean, as some have tried to define us. We were not pilgrims, because our people did not come on a pilgrimage.

 

“For the Garifuna, the sea is so important to us. It is not only to fish, but also that spiritual relationship formed by the death of so many of our people who died crossing the Caribbean Sea, who were displaced from the Caribbean,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

The Garífuna people are not considered to be a people of God. The people of Israel are the ones considered as the people of God; but the Garífuna people also made a similar journey across water. The people of Israel crossed the Red Sea. And we crossed the Caribbean Sea, right? But where were they headed?

To a land flowing with manna, a promised land of milk and honey. That promised land is Punta Gorda, founded by the first Garífuna community, and from there, spreading to different places by family, maintaining that collectivity.

In other words, the deep value of Roatán is the concentration of that territorial continuity that the Garífuna community built.

 

 

In other words, the Garífuna people did not have borders. There were communities in Belize, from there they went to Guatemala, from there to Roatán and then to Trujillo, and elsewhere. In other words, the community did not have borders. What’s more, in the Garífuna language there is no word for “border.”

 

“The community did not have borders. What’s more, in the Garífuna language there is no word for “border.” Instead of “border” we say, “connection.” We say, “I am connected with you, not I am divided from you.”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

When we speak in Garífuna instead of “border” we say, “connection.”

We say, I connect with you, not that I am divided from you. I have a connection with you in this place, in this tree, in this river or in any natural element that allows me to identify that that connection.

 

“Roatán also constitutes that connection, the connection center of the territorial continuity of the Garífuna community.”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

 

LR: Thank you very much. And now, talking more in depth about the Punta Gorda case, for our audiences who are not familiar with the case, could you give us a brief timeline of what took place?

The Punta Gorda Case-A Timeline of Events

Dr. Castillo: Yes. Roatán is a community within Punta Gorda, and the Isla de la Bahia, a strong tourist area. There is a Garifuna community in Roatán, and here, there is a different black town, who call themselves, the black English-speaking town, because they speak English. So I’m stating the difference between these two groups, because they have a different practice of territorial possession.

 

 

Punta Gorda is the only Garífuna community there, and they maintain their culture, their language, (although some has been lost), but they still speak Garífuna.

Investigating What Happened to Ancestral Land

In September, the community, taking note that it was losing territory which was affecting their ability to build an ancestral center, expand the cemetery and build a soccer field, the community started looking into what had happened to its ancestral territory.

So they decided during an assembly held on September 3, (I think they convened at the end of August, but the decision was finalized at the beginning of September) to recover their territory.

In this case, a section of that territory, that is about 20 square kilometers (I am not certain of the exact measure), but it is a considerable piece of land that is at the entrance of the community and there is nothing being grown or worked on there, in that space.

Not even a timber plant. Everything is natural there, that is, still. There is that corozo, which is an important material to build houses, to put the roof on the houses, especially the houses where cassava is made, where some specific activities are carried out by the Garífuna community. So, the community decided to recover it.

It turns out that there is supposedly a person who claims to be the owner of that territory and who also registered it in the National Property Registry. Someone gave this person a title to this land.

This person is not from the area, but the person claims that years back, someone from the community who was a friend of theirs, sold it to them. They have created a sales letter, but it lacks support. But additionally, in the Garífuna community, the territory is not sold and if someone sold it, both of them committed a crime, the one who bought it and the one who sold it.

 

 

Garífuna land is not sold, bought or lent. And since it does not prescribe, this could have happened 100 years ago. The Garífuna community of Punta Gorda is 225 years old, but they say that this happened 50, 40 years ago. However, all the paperwork was endorsed in the 90s. They say it was done this way because previously, everything was part of the Municipality of Roatán.

Now it is divided into two municipalities, now it belongs to Santo Guardiola. In the 90s, they created the municipality of Santo Guardiola. Now, Punta Gorda is no longer from Roatán. Now, it is from Santo Guardiola. But it has always remained as Punta Gorda from Roatán.

 

 

So, the community recovered that territory, entered there and took possession of it. These people who believe they have been wronged filed a complaint with the Public Ministry and the Public Ministry ordered an eviction called a preventive eviction. And the police arrived with many, very violent, racist military policemen who carried out brutal actions. So, they beat up the compañeros there.

That day, not many people were around because it was boat day. In Roatán, they call it boat day, because when cruise ships arrive then, some people work on the cruise ships. That morning, many of them were working on the ship, especially men, so the police studied all of this, knowing that at that time there would be more women and fewer men.

Because if there had been perhaps ten more men, they would not have evicted. Still the people resisted, they did not want to leave and with more people present it would have been more catastrophic, but thank God, there were no deaths although many community members were beaten and six of them were arrested.

So, randomly they grabbed six. Surely, they already knew who they were going to grab and detained them. After that, well, we introduce ourselves to accompany them with Ofraneh and that’s where the trial begins.

Historic Trial

That trial was a historic trial. We are still in the process, because surely they are going to file another appeal. However, we did see some interesting things in this trial. One is that the Public Ministry that defends the public cause, and must defend the people, sided with the private property group.

Private vs. Collective Land

On our end, we focused on collective property, so it was a trial of private property versus collective property, and the Public Ministry sided with private property. In other words, the private prosecutor did not need to speak. The Public Ministry did everything. For our part, we also raised our defense of the compañeros and added an important element of the lawyers.

Dr. Rony Castillo, Expert Witness

Common Property & It’s Foundations

We called an expert witness, which was brought in by the defense. I was the expert witness at this hearing. Some of the questions that you asked me today, are the questions that the judge asked me to expand on, and some of the things that the lawyers asked me to explain were what common property consists of, what are its foundations, what is the relationship between the land and the Garífuna community, the symbology and what Roatán means spiritually and a little bit of the history of the Garífuna community. How were the Garífuna communities formed? What does the ancestral territory mean? I explained all these different concepts for about an hour and a half.

Land in Conflict, Proven as Ancestral Land

And then the judge and the different lawyers asked me to delve deeper into some things. And my testimony served the judge to make the decision. And we demonstrated that the land in conflict is ancestral land over which private property holds no valid claims. We also demonstrated that the case requires an analysis from a collective property perspective. We also helped to demonstrate that detention and evictions were illegal.

Then they released the detained community members with a definitive dismissal of all the crimes that had been charged against them. And the community is in possession of that territory.

Xiomara Castro’s Administration, Called to Title Garífuna Territory

Of course, what remains to be done next, is to title the territory, something the State has to do. Our territory does not need a title, but the State must provide one to prevent third parties from intruding in Garífuna territory.

 

 

“We must formally define Garífuna territory. We are not invaders, we are recoverers,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

In other words, they must formally define where the Garífuna territory is. We are not invaders, we are recoverers, and the State is the one that has failed because it has not titled the territories of the Garífuna community. This would have prevented what happened in court.

 

“Garífuna territory does not need a title, but the State must provide one to prevent third parties from intruding in Garífuna territory,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

LR: How important! Your contribution as a witness was so vital. What a great way to put your knowledge to use for something so, so important, which changed, I think, probably radically the scope, shall we say, of this trial.

Dr. Castillo: Totally.

LR: The fight does not end, here. But, how inspiring to know that one studies, understands these things. And there’s a bigger use of this knowledge beyond writing a book, beyond giving a talk. Knowledge can be used for territorial defense. I think this application of knowledge by scholars is so important.

Dr. Castillo: And I want to say something about that. And it’s good that you point it out because it has been believed that the educated person in universities becomes removed from the masses, moves away from the communities, from the people, as if that were the objective of the university and that as knowledge increases, one moves away, becomes removed, a little more.

And I even remember, before, when I was studying at school, the  people who had a bachelor’s or postgraduate degree did not speak Garífuna. They came to the community, and we saw them as people who served as a reference but also as isolated from the community, no longer serving the struggle. So, it is something that I think also makes a difference, that we put knowledge at the service of the communities’ struggle.

 

“We must put knowledge at the service of the communities’ struggles,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

LR: And I think you touched on this topic a little bit already. Regarding the Case of Punta Gorda, in what way is this not the whole story of reclamation, but one of many parallel battles going on to reclaim other Garifuna lands?

Fighting on Several Fronts for Land Restitution

Dr. Castillo: Yes, totally. This is part of a whole. For this reason, the importance of this trial is also great, because it also establishes jurisprudence, that is, it provides elements for other struggles in other communities.

Now we have several fronts for land restitution. We have two sentences from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the community of Punta Piedra, which are also in Iriona, Colón near my community, and one in Triunfo de la Cruz in the Bahía de Tela. There are two sentences that have have ordered the State to restore territories that have been usurped and that have been taken from the community.

In other words, it mandates the State to title them, delimit them, and compensate them in the name of the community of Triunfo de la Cruz, and they have to compensate some people who have made improvements on some of them. They have to return them to their territory, to the communities. That is the sentence.

These are two sentences that have not been complied with yet and are from 2015, both sentences are from over six-seven years ago. And there are also other cases. For example, in the community of San Juan there is a case that went before the Inter-American system before the Court that we were recently involved in, which was also Valle de Tela.

We had the first hearing before the Court, and soon there will be a sentence. The Court talks about coming to make an on-site visit, but surely in 2023 there will be a ruling on how it will end, and this will be similar to these two cases that already exist because it is almost the same situation, similar land usurpation, disrespect for the unbounded state, lack of respect for the ancestral territory. And the same happens in Cayos Cochinos, for example. Cayos Cochinos belongs to Isla la Bahia, as a department, it is another Garífuna territory.

Protecting Territories as a Way to Displace 

They founded the Garífuna community, but they were displaced from there. This was done by turning it into a protected area, as an archipelago. So by declaring it protected areas the communities were displaced from there, and they created a management plan that totally prohibits the communities from continuing to carry out their regular activities in those communities of Cayos Cochinos.

This case is also under review by the Inter-American system, and another community in Puerto Cortés, and we also have a contested case (totaling seven cases) regarding State Property Law that is challenging the Honduran Property Law, which allows them to register titles against ancestral territories where they are also pooled internationally.

We are in litigation over these territorial cases and the people have made several recoveries. There have been about 12 recoveries in different regions. In Trujillo, for example, there have even been 33 compañeros who have a legal case on a recovery that was made there in the Bay of Trujillo, which is another important area. Focusing on Punta Gorda, I will say that this case is part of a bit of everything that the community is doing in the fight for its territory.

LR: Thank you very much. And now, moving on to the topic of lessons learned, from the Case of Punta Gorda, what are the weaknesses in the systems of investigation and protection of indigenous rights and land rights in Honduras? And what can be learned from this case to protect the Garífuna community?

Lessons Learned from the Punta Gorda Case

What does the Castro Administration need to do?

Dr. Castillo: First, is the State has not assumed its role as guarantor of rights and there is no application of Convention 169. In other words, it’s not even a matter of making new laws. If Convention 169 were applied, there would be no need to make other laws, because it establishes how the territories of the communities should be protected.

 

“The Honduran State has not assumed its role as guarantor of rights and there has been no application of Convention 169. It’s not a matter of making new laws. Convention 169 establishes how the territories should be protected,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

In the Constitution of the Republic there is an article that refers to protecting the territories of the communities, Article 76. This Constitution was made in the 80s, at the time of the military dictatorships. In the 80s, the military seized the territories from the Garífuna communities.

In other words, we have cases that we have won against the military. For example, the case of General Cabus from the Air Force. In the 1980s, he seized the territory of Vallecito and also took Río Miel, one of the communities in litigation and in the courts. He sold that territory, seized it and sold it to third parties, while it was from the Garífuna community. In other words, that’s where that Constitution comes from, it comes from military groups and it comes from practically that transition to democracy, but which does not establish a guarantee of the rights of the community.

Convention 169-The Frustration of a Court System Unaware or Unwilling to Study and Apply the Laws and Familiarize themselves with the history of problems

Convention 169 establishes the self-determination and autonomy of the communities, but the lack of applicability is a weakness with the system.

There is a lot of racism. It can be said that there is lack of knowledge, but I hardly believe much in ignorance, because if you are a judge, you have studied, you are a person who has studied to apply justice, you are going to know what the applicable laws are in the country.

Now when you tell me it is due to ignorance, if you have to handle a case, you have to review the applicable laws. This is what a trained person does. But no, they say they don’t know Convention 169, that they are not familiar with collective property. The judge thanked me at the trial, that is, he applauded me. It’s an incredible thing. And the prosecutor, the lawyer representing the lady who claimed to own the land, thanked me, too.

 

“They said they didn’t know about Convention 169, or collective property,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

How is this possible in the year 2022? What are the universities doing? There is an institutionalized structure that does not allow the flow of justice for a certain group. In other words, justice is constituted for a specific group.

Everything was raised in favor of the private property group, including the media, and the prosecutor, because they did not consider that there can be two forms of property.

And I told them, that there are two forms of property, private property is not the only means to refer to property, collective property also exists, and there is a different way of seeing the world, of being and belonging to the world.

 

“Collective property also exists, and there also exists a different way of seeing the world, of being and belonging to the world,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

It is the worldview, that relationship to the land is different in the Garífuna community. And all this is described in Convention 169.

So these are weaknesses with the system, the judges; the racist police. The police said they were complying with an eviction notice. They said they were only serving an eviction mandate. The police said they were fulfilling a mandate from the judicial system.

Racism in Police Practices

But the question is: Why was the mandate carried out with so much hate against this pueblo? Why so much viciousness, why so much violence? Why so much brutality? Because, if I were asked to comply with an order, I would comply with it, I would do the eviction, and that is it. I would do what they send me to do. But the treatment by the police during this time was cruel, even when people were already in jail.

When the young women were placed in jail, they left handcuffs on them for the whole day. There was a young woman who had been beaten.

 

“They called them, ‘negros hijos de tanta,’ some terrible things. I was in the detention center all night,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

I was there taking care of the compañeras and the compañeros and the treatment that the police gave us was something I had never seen.  So my question was, why so much brutality? This means that there is a racist institutionalized system here.

LR: With the new government of Xiomara Castro what can she and her administration do to change this mentality against indigenous groups, people of color, to stop this type of mistreatment, not only by law enforcement, but also negative social attitudes against Hondurans?

Steps the Castro Administration Must Take

Dr. Castillo: I think they have to start by acknowledging that Xiomara’s government has made a mistake from the beginning by continuing with victimizing narratives about the communities, that is, re-victimizing the communities by calling them, “pobrecitos,” saying that what they need is money, that they need this, that they need that. I believe that we must see them as a people with rights and not as pobrecitos. We are not an underdeveloped community. They assume that to live in a community equates to underdevelopment. No, that is not underdevelopment.

 

“The development approach has to be built along with the communities, since the community’s version of development is not what the government wants to develop,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

That’s what I think. What does development mean to me? Well, perhaps what I want is to live peacefully, calmly in my territory. Because in these communities people eat, people can still eat without purchasing items, that is, in the communities money is not the most important thing and that sometimes causes a clash.

I spent six years in the United States. In the United States, money is the most important thing, and if you don’t have money, you can’t live.

In our communities there are people who exchange things with you to be able to live. You sow rice, or you sow this other thing. When people catch fish, they distribute it to the neighbors, giving them a little. In other words, this is still done today in my community.

Sure, there are things that need to be bought, but what I want to tell you is that is not the most important thing. So, the government has to figure out some things. The Honduran State is bankrupt. It has no money; the State was looted. So, look, there are some things the State can do that don’t require money: Recognize ancestral territories.

 

“There are some things that the State can do that don’t require money: Recognize Ancestral Territories,”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

In other words, to recognize those ancestral territories, does not require money. And the recognition is a principle for the fulfillment of the sentence. We have reminded the State, and the case of San Juan, we fought it against this government.

The entire trial, the defense of the State, was led by this government of Xiomara Castro’s Attorney General’s Office, they even used the same arguments used during the time of Juan Orlando’s narco-dictatorship.

We faced the same arguments. We met with Xiomara’s government’s attorney three times, (with Juan Orlando’s we never did). We met with the current administration’s attorney and told them, “This will be a simple case if you recognize the violation of human rights.”

One thing that Xiomara Castro can do in good faith is to recognize that the State, not her specifically, but the current State has violated the ancestral territorial rights of the Garifuna community.

From there, we could move forward. We are going to monitor compliance with the sentence. We can also talk about other cases, like how to resolve the case of Cayos Cochinos. They want to talk about this case, but we said no, because they have yet to demonstrate good will.

Because it’s one thing to gather to take photos. In other words, they have met with us several times and we have taken several photos, almost with everyone except with Xiomara. She has not called us, but we have met with most of her ministers and taken photos. But there have been no concrete actions. This is a weakness.

 

“We are not going to continue taking photos. We want to solve structural problems. We are okay with going step by step, starting somewhere, but the government must demonstrate good will. We are not going to continue holding meetings that have no kind of future. So this is one of the main weaknesses in our system, and it has to do with racism.”

Dr. Rony Castillo

 

Because, if you don’t recognize the rights of these communities, you are promoting impunity, you are promoting racism which then trickles onto social networks, and even publicly.

LR: I am sorry to hear this. Even as the State is without funds, why not run an anti-discrimination campaign, give talks to start changing racist narratives, call for an application of the law. These steps don’t have to cost money. On the topic of Garífuna advocacy, can you tell us a little bit about Ofraneh, the organization’s role and some of its achievements?

Ofraneh

Dr. Castillo: It is considered the Garífuna mother organization. It is the main organization of the Garífuna communities, because it is made up of the community assemblies, that is, it is the only organization that is made up of people who come from different communities. They are what constitutes the assembly of Ofraneh. It was also founded around 1978, around the end of the 70s, at the beginning of the 80s.

First, it was created to defend the rights of the community and black communities. Its focus included educational rights, health rights, territorial rights. And later on, Ofraneh becoming stronger in certain areas, in certain spaces, and we can say that today it is the organization that obviously watches over the rights of the Garífuna people, but also of all indigenous peoples, it has helped to constitute even indigenous organizations.

In the case of the towns, they have helped establish other towns, they have helped the Misquito towns, they have helped different towns to organize themselves according to our experiences, and they have worked hard for their leadership. Also, the women are a key characteristic of this organization in that its leadership is rooted on women. Because women are also the basis of spirituality in the Garifuna community.

And we cannot talk about Ofraneh without talking about Miriam Miranda, a key leadership figure. She is an emblematic woman who, together with Bertha, constituted valuable women in the fight for the right of the Honduran people against the coup. They were in Tegucigalpa for almost three months.

These two women went to Tegucigalpa to fight against the 2009 coup d’état together and they have generated an important space in the struggle. Ofraneh’s work has always been characterized as innovative, a spearhead organization. It has created spaces.

For example, it has created SUNLA, the investigative committee that searches for the Garifuna who were forcefully disappeared from Triunfo de la Cruz, creating an unprecedented Garífuna space that joined that search to demand justice, but also to investigate what happened to these compañeros that were disappeared.

And Ofraneh is also working on a food security project in the Garífuna community and has recovered, Vallecito which is an area still in conflict, but they recovered over 1,200 hectares of land and Ofraneh has managed to plant almost 110 hectares of coconut to recover one of the fundamental pillars of Garífuna food security, which is coconut.

First, to take away the cost of coconut, and also, to recover coconut for its health aspects, because coconut is also part of medicine. Coconut is not only part of the diet, but also medicine and also to prevent its high cost, since coconut oil is very expensive and we want to reduce the cost, and send it to the communities so they can have access to it.

And also, Ofraneh is involved with the issue of supporting the recovery of the territory. And something important about Ofraneh, I think it is the only organization here in Honduras that has won cases over territories before the Inter-American system and handled it alone. Ofraneh did not use intermediaries to handle cases as in other towns that have used other organizations to help them.

Ofraneh took these cases directly over 20 years ago, almost 20 years in 2003, starting in the 2000s and took the cases to the Inter-American system and today there are two rulings in their favor.

The Garífuna community has used the justice system as a peaceful organization based on spirituality, with its instruments, with the drum, that is, the instruments of war, of struggle are the drums, the maracas and the smoke. The smoke that purifies, that cleans, that calms the environments.

This is the strategy used by Ofraneh and Miriam Miranda, a leading international human rights defender from Honduras and also a product of the work she does with the Garífuna communities and other areas as well. She also works hard, for example, on the subject of Covid-19.

This work was constituted as an important element for the protection of the community. Because there were no hospitals, there were no places to go. Ofraneh created 33 community spaces and from there arose the ancestral health centers, which have also remained permanent centers to attend to health problems, and also the community’s integral problems, not only of physical health, but also spiritual, finding oneself, connecting with the communities. Part of what the organization does and continues to do is the defense of the territory, this is a pillar of their work along with the issue of Garífuna identity.

LR: What an important organization! Thank you very much for sharing that. As for Roatán and tourism, I read a quote that said, “The foreigner is worth more than the local in Roatán.” What advice do you have for tourists visiting Roatán? What can we do to be conscientious tourists, so as not to contribute to a system of abuse? To be respectful of the Garífuna community?

Dr. Castillo: Yes, that is a very important question, especially for people from outside who say, well, “we didn’t know, we didn’t know this problem existed here. What can we do to not violate the rights of communities?” When one is to approach a Garífuna community, any Garífuna community, but let’s say it’s Roatán which is very touristy, that community of Punta Gorda, on Sundays looks like a carnival. Every Sunday, everyone visiting the island will encounter that community, right?

And I think that respect is important, and respect means that if you have any questions, you have to ask the community about its leader. Do not assume that the person who talks to you is the leader of the Garífuna community. These communities have leadership structures, that is, because there are also people who are dissidents. There are people who do not agree that the Garífuna territories must be recovered.

There are people who believe that the territories should be sold, but there is an assembly, normally it is the communities made up of assemblies, so one always has to ask for the community elder or ask who the land defense committee of that community is, or ask who is the president of the board of trustees of that community.

So talk to those people and tell them ‘they have offered me a piece of land here,’ so don’t go to the municipality to ask about a piece of land belonging to the Garífuna community, which has been a mistake, because you may think that the structure of the Rule of Law, or the municipalities have the information, but the Garífuna communities have autonomy, autonomy and self-determination, and this gives them the power to decide on those territories and what happens within them.

So, if you want to know about a piece of land within the community, let’s say that someone offered it to you, don’t go to the municipality to tell them, ‘look, they offered me a piece of land, I want to have it measured.’ No, this is not the procedure.

Go to the community, look for the community leaders and let them be the ones to determine if it is possible to hold an assembly to decide if they are going to sell it or not. So, if the community decides to have an assembly, you will almost certainly not have a problem with that land, although I tell you that in those territories the lands are not sold, but if someone from the community determines you are going to do something good for the community and you plan to contribute to the community, you will have to talk to the assembly.

For private property, how would you know which is the ancestral territory? It is not delimited, so you should ask the community because the community does know where its limits are. They will be able to inform you, ‘this is the territory, be careful because it belongs to the community, but from there and there you can negotiate with those who are selling to you.’

It is important that any action you want to take in that community is laudable with the community. Don’t underestimate the community because it sometimes knows more than the State, where it works, what works, how things work within its territory.

To learn more, visit: 

Ofraneh

Dr. Rony Castillo 

Watch our Interview with Dr. Rony Castillo in Spanish

 

 

Soledad Quartucci | Latina Republic

Dr. Soledad Quartucci is the founder and CEO of Latina Republic, a 501(C)3 California-based nonprofit organization. Latina Republic is committed to improving the diversity and professional development of storytellers in the media industry as representation matters and affects the stories we tell. Latina Republic makes space for and empowers unheard voices and trains the next generation of leaders in the U.S.

 

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