There is only one road that curls along the spine of the Honduran island of Roatán, one of its Bay Islands in the western Caribbean Sea and an extension of the world’s second-largest barrier reef, which stretches down and eastwards from Belize in the north. Small, dusty roads come to join this main road. Any tarmac extends down for a few hundred feet and then usually disappears.

Roatán has a minimum of public transport, but one bus does go to the eastern reaches of the island, as far as Oak Ridge, 15 miles east of Coxen Hole, the island’s main town. This bus is known as Bus 1, while Bus 2 goes to the popular tourist destination of West End. (If you want the highlife and lots of people-watching, then Bus 2 goes to where you want to go, and Bus 1 does not.)

Bus 1 takes a deviation off the main road (it’s not much of the main road, although crews were working on it when I was there in April) to the left and travels downhill to the town of Punta Gorda. It is regarded as the only completely Garífuna community in Honduras.

Garífuna?

The Garífuna originally are descendents of islanders living on the Caribbean island-nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines but claim origins from Brazil. Called Black Caribs by the British, the Garífuna—an alternative name is the Garínagu—were considered a threat to the colonial overseers of these islands and given a pretty unattractive ultimatum: stay and be victimized and imprisoned on the local island of Baliceaux, or “enjoy” a new life on a far-flung island no one previously had much cared for: Roatán. The United Kingdom had gained ownership of the islands of St. Vincent & the Grenadines in 1763 at the Treaty of Paris, which made it at the time the world’s number-one superpower and gave it control of, among other places, Canada and all of what would become the United States east of the Mississippi (this assumption, of course, would be fought over within the United States less than 15 years later). I also have seen written that the Garífuna are a mix of Maroon slaves and an ancient people called the Kalinago, who were descended from a mix of Arawak and Carib people.

The Garífuna, like the Americans, also rose up against their colonizers, but with results that were far less successful. Finally defeated in 1797, the Garífuna were told to get on a boat and go to Roatán, or at least the “darker” ones of them were. Any that looked lighter skinned—those deemed to be Amerindian and therefore “not so dangerous”—were allowed to stay. Most of these boat refugees died. So did many of those who remained and were sent to the prison island of Baliceaux, but as the Garífuna proudly relate, at no time have any of them been held in slavery.

The usual numbers quoted in relation to this exodus are that 5,000 Garífuna left St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and 2,500 made it to Roatán.

And they are still there, in Punta Gorda and in smaller villages such as Pollytilly Bight. With limited resources on Roatán, some Garífuna migrated to the Honduran mainland—where they initially were handicapped by a lack of Spanish language—to become soldiers, while others hopped along the Central American coast to such places as Little Corn Island and Bluefields in Nicaragua; Livingston in Guatemala; and Dangriga (in the district of Stann Creek) in Belize, where ironically, until 1981, they were subject once again to British law when Belize was known as British Honduras. Other Garífuna centers include New Orleans, Los Angeles and Chicago. Overall, the worldwide population stands at approximately 500,000, and this people also has its own flag, three horizontal stripes of yellow (at the top and representing the Amerindian, or yellow, caribs, the ones who were not forced to resettle in Roatán), black (at the bottom and representing the Black Caribs) and white (in between the black and the yellow and representing—depending on your political correctness—peace or the white man’s involvement in the Garifuna’s history).

Belize’s Garífuna has an annual festival called Settlement Day. It is held in November in a town that shares Punta Gorda’s name.

I happened to be in Honduras’ Punta Gorda on April 12, which is when the Garífuna celebrate their arrival on Roatán, or perhaps better put, their survival on Roatán, much in the same way as Thanksgiving in the United States celebrates the survival of the pilgrims. April 12, 2008, was a Saturday, which always is the best day for a party.

The women (see the accompanying slide show) were particularly brightly dressed. Bright dresses and headscarves dominated, and I was told that these costumes generally only come out once a year, for this festival. The men—if they were not dancing—were more soberly dressed.

To the back, along Punta Gorda’s beach, was set up a stage, on which was gyrating and singing a man wearing red and yellow strips of paper and ribbon. On his face was a mask bordered in yellow and with bright eyes and lips. His robe was a rainbow mix of red, blue, mauve, purple, green, white, black and yellow, while his pants seemed to be made from clumps of blue and white wool. His bare arms were spiraling as he sang a song and danced a dance that looked as though it could have come from Brazil (of course, this is likely) or a West Africa country such as Mali or Niger. A band comprising mainly of drums accompanied him. The sounds and colors were memorable, and the smell of cooked fish added to the impression.

A little farther down the beach was a helicopter that soon would carry away the festival’s main guest of honor, the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who is affectionately called “Mel.” He was supposed to have been accompanied by a neighboring president, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, but the rumor spread that Ortega had canceled the engagement, due to the fact that the two countries had rekindled—apparently the night before—an argument concerning the exact maritime border between the two countries, a spat that rears up from time to time. (A peaceful country nowadays, Honduras forever placed itself dear in historians’ and travel writers’ hearts in 1969 when it and neighboring El Salvador waged war against one another for approximately 100 hours in an action called the Football War—in Spanish, La Guerra del Fútbol—the commencement of which coincided with the start of a soccer match between the two countries.)

When the helicopter finally departed, army and police members started to join in the dancing. This is a very relaxed town anyway, and it certainly was on the day of the festival. The main street, which parallels the beach, is dusty, but everywhere were people dressed as colorfully as those described above. Some groups were dressed identically.

That the Garífuna also live in New York City should be of no surprise. They are one of the city’s more than 200 ethnic minorities who to some degree speak a language of its own.

On May 31, 200 to 300 members of this community met at the City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for the 4th Annual Garífuna Community Forum NY 2008. Organized by the Garífuna Heritage Foundation (www.garifunaheritagefoundation.org), the event consisted of speakers, dancers, musicians and storytellers. Some bands, including Libaya Baba (see photos in the accompanying slide show and visit http://libayababa.org) played independent gigs in Brooklyn later that evening. Hailing from Los Angeles but of Belizean descent, the band was dressed in bright yellow (a color taken from the Garífuna flag), their t-shirts displaying the band’s name, which means “descendents of the elders,” and the word “wagiameme,” which means “still us,” a reference to the fact that the Garífuna people and language remain alive and active.

Several weeks before, I attended a performance by the Hamalali Wayunagu Garífuna Folkloric & Modern Dance Company. Part of the New York City-based Garífuna Heritage Center of Arts & Culture, it puts on colorful shows that involve such Garífuna dances as the chumba, gunjei, hungu-hungu, paranda, punta, samei and wanaragua. The most popular type of Garífuna music today is called punta rock, which derives from one of these dances. Libaya Baya plays more traditional music, but with no less enthusiasm and energy.

The Garífuna’s latest battle is to try and persuade the government of St. Vincent & the Grenadines not to sell the island of Baliceaux to hotel developers. This might be difficult, considering that the nearest island to it is the famed isle of Mustique, home to the rich and famous, including the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and the late Princess Margaret. On another neighboring island, Bequia, is an elitist escape called Balliceaux (note the slightly different spelling) that is yours for between $3,500 and $4,000 a week.

Considering its history, understandably the Garífuna are not keen to see their former prison home go in the same direction.

Back on Roatán, visitors can learn more about the Garífuna at a cultural center called Yübu, which opened last year on the main road above Pollytilly Bight. It is open between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, costs $5 admission, has a museum and puts on dances and drumming. Its Website— www.garifunaexperience.com —was not working at press time.