Central American Black People

Central America's Black People

        There is a very healthy presence of black people and their culture just past Mexico, in Belize, from Guatemala, Honduras, up to Panama. The history of these descendants of African slaves is that of war and endurance.
        The Garifunas of Belize, Guatemala and Honduras are a product of the war and manipulations of the old slave masters, the English and the Spaniards. Depending on who won, so also moved the fate of the black slaves who were forced to fight for causes they knew absolutely nothing about.
       The legend of the Garifunas goes like this: From the island of Saint Vincent, took off a ship full of African slaves. This ship sailed for days without end, under the harshest conditions. In the middle of the wild sea, the ship was destroyed with engine problems. Only the fittest of the African slaves who were on board, could swim to safety. These ones who survived, began to form special pacts with local Indian populations to begin to form the Garifuna culture.

From Honduras where there were a great number of these "survivors", the British took slaves to work the English plantations in Belize. Since Guatemala and Honduras, have real easy links by the sea, these sea faring descendants of Africa did not see any boundaries between the Garifunas of Honduras and Guatemala, or even of Belize. In this way the culture of their lost Africa, which they remembered, survived intact in their music, dance, food, and other social behaviors.

Researchers in Nigeria have been able to trace the records and prove that a majority of the Garifuna people descended directly from the Calabar people of Nigeria. The Calabar, a sea faring bunch themselves, like the Garifunas, were once ruled by a powerful king by the name of King Jaja of Opobo.
King Jaja was one of the fiercest of the defenders of their native lands against the British in Nigeria. When British colonial government finally took hold in Nigeria, King Jaja was punished severely. He was banished to

exile with his people, in the British controlled Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. The descendants of King Jaja there, were used and manipulated in many wars by the British against the Spaniards. When Spain won or lost, they too used the slaves according to their interests.
Therefore, the Garifunas were ruled with fake promises and lies that did not give them much. Recently, however, they have begun to fight for rights to their coastal lands and islands, where they had been perpetually abandoned, condemned to a fate of storms, hurricanes and natural disasters, until suddenly investors are buying up or taking over seaside properties all over the world.
The story of the Garifunas is not too different from that of their relatives, the rest of the descendants of African slaves in Central America. The black people you meet in Nicaragua, Costa Rica or Panama, share similar things in their culture mostly, musically and in dance. These similarities can also be detected with the rest of the black people of the Caribbean islands like Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba etc.