On the way to Guatemala, we see how the proscribed existence of the Garifuna people, descendants of African slaves and Arawak Indians, contrasts with that of several much more airy bathing areas.
The vehicle's importers had not even bothered to repaint it, as was happening all over Central America. The old former US school bus hummed along the Hummingbird Highway that linked Belmopan's mysterious capital, Dandriga, a no less peculiar town already perched on the Caribbean Sea. The driver talked to passengers the entire trip and seemed to maintain the dizzying speed from a kind of brain autopilot that only turned off to pick up passengers. Even so, we arrived shortly after sunset, already late to catch a call to the south. "Here's our dandriga, fellas” announced the driver in the inevitable cavernous ragga voice as he opened the doors of the tan-yellow bus. "Love it or Leave it!"
It was under the twilight precipitation that we were able to appreciate its main street, full of shops of adventurous and opportunistic Chinese families, decorated by the headquarters of the two main political parties in Belize, among various other businesses and institutions. Around the centre, a poorly littered domain of prefabricated one-storey houses and among coconut trees give way, in a centrifugal way, to more and more stilted stilts.
Elderly people and children in their care listen to the telephone on the worn out porches of their homes. Under stakes that support others, groups of black men and teenagers maintain convivialities, games, or businesses as intriguing as the unlikely African Central America around them.
As we approach the humble inn where we were going to stay, tropical chords of Garifuna music increase in volume that seem to come from Guinea-Bissau or even Cape Verde. The historical origins of many of the residents – they were also curious about our incursion in those non-touristy places – was not very far away but was lost in time and in the complexity of the diasporas suffered by those people.
In the 2500th century, the Caribbean from the delta of the Orinoco River dominated Saint Vincent and several other small Antilles. The first genetic confluence that generated the Garifunas took place when a slave ship allegedly coming from Nigeria sank. The natives rescued many of the survivors, took them to Saint Vincent and gave them women, as it was taboo in their tribes for men not to have mates. However, the French and the English disputed Saint Vincent and the Antilles. Countless conflicts later, at the top, the British ended up separating the “pure” caribs from those already mixed with former African slaves. They determined that the latter, more independenceists, were dangerous and exiled some XNUMX of the newly named black Caribbean survivors on the now Honduran island of Roatan. Roatan proved too small for the new inhabitants.
These soon asked the Hispanic authorities to welcome them to the continent. The Spaniards thanked the free labor and the Garifunas settled in the lands that are now Belizean, Honduran, Nicaraguan and Guatemalan through which we were traveling.
The next morning, we shared Dandriga with several hundred of the 7% of Garifuna Belizeans identifiable by their more African than Indian looks and their much more Indian than African commonplace language they use if other compatriots or outsiders do not force them to resort to Spanish or English Creole.
"You just have to go to the end of this street and take a right!" we think it explains to us, in an almost imperceptible and angry Creole, the native of a somewhat reddish black who, around noon the next day, we asked where the buses to Placencia departed.
Proud and somewhat irascible, Belize's Garifunas are not lacking in reasons to be revolted. Their communities are present almost only in the south of the nation, by decree of a British governor of what would become British Honduras. This XNUMXth-century decree determined that the Garifuna would have to stick to the “bottom” of the territory, in practice so as not to mix and destabilize Belizean slaves of only African origin.
Last September, the Dandriga community came together behind the official representation of their Mayor Gilbert Swazo. They took the opportunity to accuse the country's prime minister of pettiness and remind him of the discrimination they have long been victims of, all triggered by a manager of the First Caribbean International Bank having banned the use of the Garifuna language in the bank's local branch.
Other reactions proved to be much more mediatic. Shortly after the world premiere of the saga “Pirates of the Caribbean”, the Garifunas joined the Caribbeans of Saint Vincent, Dominica and Trinidad in protest against Disney for the sequel introducing them to the world as cannibals, without which, in their view , for this there are historical foundations.
Irony of irony, many Hollywood millionaires use and abuse Belize as a bathing playground. As a rule, their incursions were along the northern coast closest to the second largest barrier reef in the world. But, with time and competition, they spread to the long peninsula of Placencia, where we have moved in the meantime.
At first, this which is the most privileged coastline in Belize almost only welcomed backpackers. Until famous personalities such as Francis Ford Coppola discovered it and began to invest there in private homes and exquisite resorts where the damage caused by the many devastating hurricanes that pass through there were demanding major repairs.
We walk the beach from end to end and take a look at the Blancaneaux' Turtle Inn that the director bought and remodeled to offer his followers an alternative of equal luxury to another one. resort Coppola brand on a northern cayo (islet).
We did not detect garifunas enjoying the vast sands between the village of Seine Bight and Placencia. Instead, American and Canadian vacationers stroll and board, staffed by local guides and helmsmen, on short snorkeling excursions in the crystal clear waters offshore, or on other shark-whale shark diving excursions in the barrier reef that is some 30km away.
But this is not the time for whale sharks, and the others are too unpredictable predators for our tastes. Guaranteed the dose of maritime relaxation we were longing for, we retrieved our backpacks at the headquarters of one such Ocean Motion and got into a boat full of Mayan women who were returning home from another day of selling their handicrafts among gringos. During most of the trip, a girl follows all the movements of our, for her fascinating, photographic action, in front of the mother who is breastfeeding her youngest child. After disembarking and an additional four hours by bus, we arrived at PG, so the Belizeans have less work to pronounce on the town of Punta Gorda.
We had reached the southern edge of Belize and the damp and jungle perpetuated an alliance that no investor had yet managed to break. We were once again in Black Caribbean territory, but the location on the border with its southern neighbor gave the village a strong Belizean multiethnicity. On these sides, Americans, British and Canadians who teach or work in humanitarian organizations coexist. In much larger numbers, Belizeans Creoles, Chinese, Indians, Maya Kekchi and Mopan. We still slept a night in the peace of cosmopolitan PG. At dawn, we sailed first to Livingston, then to the Dulce River, both sheltered in a luxuriant marine nook that was already Guatemalan but, for a while longer, still Garifuna.
