Central America

CENTRAL AMERICA – BLACK IN THE WORLD

Many people of African origin arrived in the Americas with the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries. Pedro Alonso Niño, traditionally considered the first of many New World explorers of African descent^[27] was a navigator in the 1492 Columbus expedition. Those who were directly from West Africa mostly arrived in Latin America as part of the Atlantic slave trade, as agricultural, domestic, and menial laborers and as mineworkers. They were also employed in mapping and exploration (for example, Estevanico) and were even involved in conquest (for example, Juan Valiente.) The Caribbean and Latin America received 95 percent of the Africans arriving in the Americas with only 5 percent going to Northern America.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Latin_Americans

Policy & Politics

Policy & Politics in Central America

There were several migration waves and relocations which took place and affected people of African descent.  Their place in society and opportunities of advancement remains challenged to various degrees in different parts of the world.  In our Monthly Highlights section we feature individuals who have overcome, and who are testament of the redeeming power of determination and talent.  Below are the accomplished individuals in Policy & Politics in Central America.

Business & Education

Business & Education in Central America

There were several migration waves and relocations which took place and affected people of African descent.  Their place in society and opportunities of advancement remains challenged to various degrees in different parts of the world.  In our Monthly Highlights section we feature individuals who have overcome, and who are testament of the redeeming power of determination and talent.  Below are the accomplished individuals in Business & Education in Central America.

Art & Culture

Art & Culture in Central America

There were several migration waves and relocations which took place and affected people of African descent.  Their place in society and opportunities of advancement remains challenged to various degrees in different parts of the world.  In our Monthly Highlights section we feature individuals who have overcome, and who are testament of the redeeming power of determination and talent.  Below are the accomplished individuals in Art & Culture in Central America.

Countries with significant African, Mulatto, or Zambo populations today include Brazil (57 million, if including the pardo Brazilian population with Mulatto phenotype), Haiti (8.7 million), Dominican Republic (8.5 million), Cuba (7 million), Colombia (5 million) and Puerto Rico. Recent genetic research in UPR Mayaguez has brought to light that 26.4% of Puerto Ricans have Black African heritage on the X chromosome and 20% on the Y chromosome, thus between 20%–46% of the Puerto Rican population has African heritage.^[32]

Traditional terms for Afro-Latin Americans with their own developed culture include garífuna (in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize), cafuzo (in Brazil), and zambo in the Andes andCentral America. Marabou is a term of Haitian origin denoting a Haitian of multiracial ethnicity.

The mix of these African cultures with the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and indigenous cultures of Latin America has produced many unique forms of language (e.g., Palenquero, Garífuna, andCreole), religions (e.g., Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou), music (e.g., kompa, salsa, Bachata, Punta, Palo de Mayo, plena, samba, merengue, cumbia) martial arts (capoeira) and dance(rumba, merengue).

SOURCE (http://www.ipsnews.net/2010/10/central-america-identity-of-black-people-recognised-but-needs-neglected/
“People of African descent in Central America and Mexico are among the most vulnerable, poor and excluded on the continent,” Alta Hooker, vice-chancellor of the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN), told IPS.  In spite of legal and institutional advances towards recognition of the ethnic, cultural and social identity of people of African descent over the last 20 years, their economic status and poverty rates in Central America are worse than in other subregions of Latin America, she said.

“Ever since the first World Conference against Racism and Discrimination (held in Durban, South Africa in 2001), our people have gained recognition of their human rights, but have not seen much progress in terms of having their social and economic needs met,” Hooker said.

Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama have signed international agreements to protect the living standards of blacks and ensure they are equal to those of the rest of the population, but in practice these rights “are ignored,” she said.

Although their human rights are increasingly recognised, blacks in Mexico and Central America are the poorest and most marginalised people in Latin America, according to experts.

Population: (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Latin_Americans)

Afro descendants in Central America mostly live in or near the Caribbean coast. The African of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, are of African, Garífuna, Afro-Caribbean and/or Mestizo heritage, as well as of Miskito heritage. Those of Costa Rica and Panama are mostly of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Many Afro-Caribbean islanders arrived in Panama to help build the Panama Canal and to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to work in the banana and sugar-cane plantations.

Belize

Note:Common definitions of Latin America do not include Belize

Main article: Afro-Belizean

Belizean culture is a mix of African, European, and Mayan but only 21% of the population is considered to be of African descent. The main community of African descent are the Creoles andGarifuna concentrated from the Cayo District to the Belize District and Stann Creek District (Dangriga) on the Caribbean Sea. Belize City, on the Caribbean coast, is the center of West African culture in Belize, with its population being of mixed Black African, Maya, and European.

Costa Rica

Main article: Afro-Costa Rican

About 8% of the population is of African descent or Mulatto (mix of European and black) who are called Afro-Costa Ricans, English-speaking descendants of 19th century black Jamaicanimmigrant workers. The indigenous population numbers around 2.5%. In the Guanacaste Province, a significant portion of the population descends from a mix of local Amerindians, Africans and Spaniards. Most Afro-Costa Ricans are found in the Limón Province and the Central Valley.

El Salvador

Main article: Afro-Salvadoran

A total of 10,000 African slaves were brought to El Salvador. The African population completely mixed into the general Mestizo population, creating Afro-Mestizos in the certain areas where the Africans were brought. El Salvador has no English Antillean (West Indian), Garifuna, and Miskito population, largely due to laws banning the immigration of African into the country in the 1930s, these laws were revoked in the 1980s.^[70][71] Karla Cubias is a singer and Semi-Final 2 of the fourth season of the television program Latin American Idol.

Guatemala

Main article: Afro-Guatemalan

Only 2% of the Guatemalan population is considered black or mulatto. The main community of African heritage are the Garifuna, concentrated in Livingston and Puerto Barrios. The rest are Afro-Caribbean and mulattoes who lives in Puerto Barrios and Morales. All these places belong to Izabal department, on the Caribbean coast. Sadly, because of unemployent and lack of opportunities, many Garifuna from Guatemala had left the country and move to Belize and the United States. Also many people of African descent are located in different regions of the country but most notable are in Amatitlán, San Jerónimo, and Jutiapa, although most of them may not recognize it because the loss of culture in these places.

Many of the slaves brought from Africa in The Colonial Times came to Guatemala to work on cotton, sugar cane, tobacco, and coffee plantations. Most were brought as slaves and also servants by European Conquistadors. The main reason for slavery in Guatemala was because of the large sugar-cane plantations and haciendas located on Guatemala’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Slavery didn’t last too long during those times and all slaves and servants brought were later freed. They spread in different locations in Guatemala primarily on Guatemala’s North, South and East areas. It is said that these freed slaves later mixed with Europeans, Native Indigenous, and Creoles (Criollos) of non African descend. The national folk instrument, the marimba, has its origins in Africa and was brought to Guatemala and the rest of Central America by African slaves during colonial times. The melodies played on it show Native American, West African and European influences in both form and style.

Among the notable Garifuna from Guatemala are social leaders (Mario Ellington and Dilia Palacios Cayetano), musicians (Sofía Blanco, Silvia Blanco and Jursino Cayetano), poets (Nora Murillo and Wingston González), athletes (Teodoro Palacios Flores and Mario Blanco), soccer players (Guillermo “la Pantera” Enríquez Gamboa, Tomás Enríquez Gamboa, German Trigueño Castro, Clemente Lalín Sánchez, Wilson Lalín Salvatierra, Carlos Delva, Norman Delva, David Suazo, Tomás Suazo, Braulio Arzú, Ricardo Trigueno Foster, Guillermo Ramírez “el Pando”, Florencio Martínez, Renato Blanco and Marvin Avila), basketball players (Juan Pablo Trigueño Foster), a wrestler (El Cadete del Espacio) and a model (Deborah David).

From the Afro-Caribbean community comes doctors (Henry Stokes Brown and his son, Wilfredo Stokes Baltazar; Arla Cinderella Stokes), psychologists (Elizabeth Stokes), deacons (Sydney Samuels), a poet (Alan Mills), a journalist (Glenda Stokes Weatherborn), athletes (Roy Fearon, Salomón Rowe, Octavio Guillespie and Lidia Graviola Ewing), soccer players (Ricardo Clark, Jorge Lynch, Jerry Slosher, Royston Hall, David Stokes, Tony Edwin, Oscar Sims, Willie Sims, Vicente Charles, José A. Charles, Martín Charles, Selvyn Pennant, Douglas Pérez McNish, Mynor Pérez McNish, Carlos Pérez McNish, Leonardo McNish, Arturo McNish, Alfredo McNish, Julio César Anderson, Hermenegildo Pepp Castro, Stanley Gardiner, David Gardiner, Kenneth Brown, Mario “la Gallina” Becker, Freddy Thompson, Elton Brown and Jonny Brown), basketball players (Jeremías Stokes, Tomás Guillespie and Peggy Lynch), and a former Miss Guatemala (Marva Weatherborn).

Today, the Garifuna and Afro-Caribbean people of Guatemala are organized in a group called Organización Negra Guatemalteca (Onegua). According to its website, Onegua is “a non-governmental organisation established in 1995 with a mandate to promote the interests and fight for the rights of Guatemala’s Garifuna and Afrodescendant populations”. There is also an association, called Asociación Raíces Afrodescendientes Guatemaltecas.

Most recent on 26 November 2009 Afro descendants mostly of Garifuna heritage and all mixes came to The Catedral Metropolitana located in Guatemala City for an event described as “an event like no other” which was a church event organized by Garifunas from Izabal, Guatemala to prove that after 200 years of Garifuna existence in Guatemala they are not considered part of the population of Guatemala. Main reason for this event was to prove a point to stop discrimination against afro descendants and other ethnic groups in Guatemala. According to the 2002 census of Guatemala only 5,040 people identified themselves as afro descendants during that time, making it 0.04% in total of the Country’s population.

Those numbers have gradually increased during the years after the afro descendant event which took place in 2009 by the Garifunas which caused a huge controversy all over the Country when it was aired on T.V. After that event many different regions of Guatemala have identified some habitants as afro descendant with some mixed ancestry.

Honduras

Main article: Afro-Honduran

The official census of Honduras indicates that 2% of the population, or about 150,000 individuals, self-identified as black during the last official census. A more recent and accurate estimate indicates that there are around 600 000 Garifuna Afro-Hondurans (8% of the population) which is closer to the estimate given by the National Assembly of Afro-Honduran Organizations and Communities. The census number is based on self-identification and does not use the American definition of blood quantum to identify “blackness” as Henry Gates does in his estimate of the black population of Honduras: “Estimates of people of African descent in Honduras vary widely, from 100,000 to 320,000 (1.8 to 5.8 percent of the country’s 5.8 million people in 1994).”^[72] The actual number of Hondurans of African descent may be much larger, but they often get classified as “mestizo.”^[73]

If one uses the blood quantum definition of blackness, then blacks came to Honduras early in the colonial period. One of the mercenaries who aided Pedro de Alvarado in his conquest of Honduras in 1536 was a black slave working as a mercenary to earn his freedom. Alvarado sent his own slaves from Guatemala to work the placer gold deposits in western Honduras as early as 1534. The earliest black slaves consigned to Honduras were part of a license granted to the Bishop Cristóbal de Pedraza in 1547 to bring 300 slaves into Honduras.

The self-identifying black population in Honduras is mostly of West Indian (Antillean origin), descendants of indentured laborers brought from Jamaica, Haiti, and other Caribbean Islands or of Garifuna (or Black Caribs) origin, a people of Black African ancestry who were expelled from the island of Saint Vincent after an uprising against the English and in 1797 and were exiled toRoatan. From there they made their way along the Caribbean coast of Belize, mainland Honduras and Nicaragua. Large Garifuna settlements in Honduras today include Trujillo, La Ceiba, and Triunfo de la Cruz. Even though they only came to Honduras in 1797, the Garifuna are one of the seven officially recognized indigenous groups in Honduras.

Slaves on the north coast mixed with the Miskito Indians, forming a group referred to as the Zambo Miskito. Some Miskito consider themselves to be purely indigenous, denying this Black African heritage.^[74] They do not, however, identify as such but rather as mestizo.^[75] The Black Creoles of the Bay Islands are today distinguished as an ethnic group for their racial difference from the mestizos and blacks, and their cultural difference as English-speaking Protestants.There has been practically no ethnographic research conducted with this population.^[76]

All these circumstances led to a denial by many Hondurans of their Black African heritage which reflects in the census even to this day. “Blacks were more problematic as national symbols because at the time they were neither seen to represent modernity nor autochthony, and their history of dislocation from Africa means they have no great pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas to call upon as symbols of a glorious past. Thus Latin American states often end up with a primarily “Indo-Hispanic” mestizaje where the Indian is privileged as the roots of the nation and blackness is either minimized or completely erased.”^[77]

Nicaragua

Main article: Afro-Nicaraguan

About 9% of Nicaragua’s population is African and mainly reside on the country’s sparsely populated Caribbean coast. Afro-Nicaraguans are found on the autonomous regions of RAAN andRAAS. TheAfrican population is mostly of West Indian (Antillean) origin, the descendants of indentured laborers brought mostly from Jamaica and other Caribbean Islands when the region was a British protectorate. There is also a smaller number of Garífuna, a people of mixed Carib, Angolan, Congolese and Arawak descent. The Garífuna live along in Orinoco, La Fe and Marshall Point, communities settled at Laguna de Perlas. Nicaragua has the largest population of blacks in Central America.

From these regions comes writers and poets such as Carlos Rigby, David McField (current Nicaraguan ambassador in Jamaica), Clifford Glenn Hodgson Dumbar, (also a painter), Andira Watson and John Oliver, and diplomants and politicians like Francisco Campbell (current ambassador in the USA) and Lumberto Campbell. Among the musicians are Caribbean All Stars, Atma Terapia Arjuna Das, Osberto Jerez y Los Gregorys, Caribbean Taste, Spencer Hodgson, Philip Montalbán, Grupo Gamma, Anthony Matthews and Dimension Costeña, Charles Wiltshire (also known as “Carlos de Nicaragua”, who played with Mano Negra in its 1994 record Casa Babylon) and dancer Gloria Bacon. Miss Lizzie Nelson is a cultural promoter, Altha Hooker is the dean of the Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe, Neyda Dixon is a well known journalist and Scharllette Allen was elected as Miss Nicaragua in 2010.

Honduras

Main article: Afro-Honduran

The official census of Honduras indicates that 2% of the population, or about 150,000 individuals, self-identified as black during the last official census. A more recent and accurate estimate indicates that there are around 600 000 Garifuna Afro-Hondurans (8% of the population) which is closer to the estimate given by the National Assembly of Afro-Honduran Organizations and Communities. The census number is based on self-identification and does not use the American definition of blood quantum to identify “blackness” as Henry Gates does in his estimate of the black population of Honduras: “Estimates of people of African descent in Honduras vary widely, from 100,000 to 320,000 (1.8 to 5.8 percent of the country’s 5.8 million people in 1994).”^[72] The actual number of Hondurans of African descent may be much larger, but they often get classified as “mestizo.”^[73]

If one uses the blood quantum definition of blackness, then blacks came to Honduras early in the colonial period. One of the mercenaries who aided Pedro de Alvarado in his conquest of Honduras in 1536 was a black slave working as a mercenary to earn his freedom. Alvarado sent his own slaves from Guatemala to work the placer gold deposits in western Honduras as early as 1534. The earliest black slaves consigned to Honduras were part of a license granted to the Bishop Cristóbal de Pedraza in 1547 to bring 300 slaves into Honduras.

The self-identifying black population in Honduras is mostly of West Indian (Antillean origin), descendants of indentured laborers brought from Jamaica, Haiti, and other Caribbean Islands or of Garifuna (or Black Caribs) origin, a people of Black African ancestry who were expelled from the island of Saint Vincent after an uprising against the English and in 1797 and were exiled toRoatan. From there they made their way along the Caribbean coast of Belize, mainland Honduras and Nicaragua. Large Garifuna settlements in Honduras today include Trujillo, La Ceiba, and Triunfo de la Cruz. Even though they only came to Honduras in 1797, the Garifuna are one of the seven officially recognized indigenous groups in Honduras.

Slaves on the north coast mixed with the Miskito Indians, forming a group referred to as the Zambo Miskito. Some Miskito consider themselves to be purely indigenous, denying this Black African heritage.^[74] They do not, however, identify as such but rather as mestizo.^[75] The Black Creoles of the Bay Islands are today distinguished as an ethnic group for their racial difference from the mestizos and blacks, and their cultural difference as English-speaking Protestants.There has been practically no ethnographic research conducted with this population.^[76]

All these circumstances led to a denial by many Hondurans of their Black African heritage which reflects in the census even to this day. “Blacks were more problematic as national symbols because at the time they were neither seen to represent modernity nor autochthony, and their history of dislocation from Africa means they have no great pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas to call upon as symbols of a glorious past. Thus Latin American states often end up with a primarily “Indo-Hispanic” mestizaje where the Indian is privileged as the roots of the nation and blackness is either minimized or completely erased.”^[77]

Panama

Main article: Afro-Panamanian

Blacks in Panama are the descendants of West African slaves but later on blacks from the Caribbean islands arrived.^{[citation needed]} The Afro Colonials are the group of Hispanics, while the Antillanos are those of Caribbean descent.