Afro Central Americans in New York City

Garifuna Tales of Transnational Movements in Racialized Space

Sarah England

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780813080147, 9780813029887
• eBook ISBN: 9780813072722
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: Social Sciences

Descended from African maroons and the Island Carib on colonial St. Vincent, and later exiled to Honduras, the Garifuna way of life combines elements of African, Island Carib, and colonial European culture. Beginning in the 1940s, this cultural matrix became even more complex as Garifuna began migrating to the United States, forming communities in the cities of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Moving between a village on the Caribbean coast of Honduras and the New York City neighborhoods of the South Bronx and Harlem, England traces the daily lives, experiences, and grassroots organizing of the Garifuna.

Concentrating on how family life, community life, and grassroots activism are carried out in two countries simultaneously as Garifuna move back and forth, England also examines the relationship between the Garifuna and Honduran national society and discusses much of the recent social activism organized to protect Garifuna coastal villages from being expropriated by the tourism and agro-export industries.

Based on two years of fieldwork in Honduras and New York, her study examines not only how this transnational system works but also the impact that the complex racial and ethnic identity of the Garifuna have on the surrounding societies. As a people who can claim to be Black, Indigenous, and Latino, the Garifuna have a complex relationship not only with U.S. and Honduran societies but also with the international community of nongovernmental organizations that advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples and blacks.



Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. Transnational Movements, Racialized Space
• 2. From Indigenous Blacks to Hispanic Immigrants: A History of Garifuna Movement and Labor Migration from the 1600s to the 1990s
• 3. Families in Space: The Transnationalization of Matrifocal Kinship
• 4. “Los Pobres Allá Somos Los Ricos Acá en Honduras”: Navigating the Contradictions of the International Division of Labor
• 5. ¿Superando o Desintegrando?: Disparate Discourses of Development in Transnational Grassroots Organizations
• 6. Black, Indigenous, and Latino: The Politics of Racial and Ethnic Identity in the Garifuna Diaspora
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author