On May 28, 2023, the body of Martín Morales Martínez was found floating in the Gama River in Triunfo de la Cruz, Honduras. Morales Martínez was Garifuna—a people descended from enslaved Africans, Arawak, and Carib Indians. He was also a respected land rights activist who devoted his life to fighting the theft of Garifuna coastal lands by corporations, investors, and state authorities. His was the most recent in a series of murders of Black and Indigenous land defenders in the country that show how violence, economic development, and race are colliding there—and how little progress international efforts are making in building a more secure, equitable Latin America.

The Garifuna have a long history of insecurity and displacement in Honduras. Since the arrival of U.S.-owned fruit corporations in the 19th century, their communities have endured successive waves of resource extraction—from bananas to sumptuous beachside resorts—and have seen their rights, including collective property rights, increasingly eroded. In recent years, with the support of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), the Garifuna have turned to international courts to hold the country accountable. But despite significant judicial and electoral victories at a moment when the country’s human rights record should be improving, the violence against them has only worsened.

Murders of Black and Indigenous land defenders in Honduras started during the 1990s, after the country adopted economic policies designed to fuel development in tourism, industrial agriculture, and mining. The lush, water- and mineral-rich Caribbean coastline, which is home to 46 Garifuna communities, garnered the attention of investors in beach resorts and African palm plantations, including some of Honduras’s most prominent families. Land defenders fought back by retaking stolen lands and advocating, with surprising efficacy, for the legal recognition of their rights to the territory they have historically occupied. They achieved many successes, but even gaining title to their lands did not ensure they held them securely.

Tensions inflamed dramatically after the June 2009 coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya, which thrust Honduras into a period of intensive, state-sanctioned resource plunder. Following his ouster, the government acted swiftly to overturn a moratorium on mining, passed legislation to hasten hydropower development, and in 2013 pushed through a law to incentivize foreign investment in the creation of semi-sovereign “start-up” cities in purportedly unpopulated areas of the country. Over the next decade, Honduras experienced widespread corruption at the highest levels of government and a rapid deterioration of human rights.

Amidst this political upheaval, two cases pertaining to Garifuna land rights disputes—one in Triunfo de la Cruz and the other in Punta Piedra—went to trial at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In both cases, Garifuna accused the government of violating property titles, failing to investigate and prosecute the political persecution of land defenders, and noncompliance with judicial decisions that established the communities’ prior claims over disputed lands.

In 2015, the court ruled in favor of the communities, affirming that the state had failed to protect Garifuna collective property rights. It called for several significant reparations, including returning illegally privatized land to the community and compensation for past harms. The communities were optimistic that justice would be served.

Yet the state has failed to comply with the court’s recommendations. Instead, the policies designed to foment investment and development remain largely intact. Violent attacks against land defenders have multiplied as well.

In 2019, at least 16 Garifuna people were murdered. In 2020, four community leaders from Triunfo de la Cruz were brutally abducted by men dressed in police uniform, leading many in the community to suspect direct state involvement. One of the disappeared men, Snider Centeno, was a member of OFRANEH and the acting president of the communal governing council. Meanwhile, the swelling violence and increasing death threats against activists further weakened the confidence of Garifuna in state institutions. Last year, two more land rights activists were killed in Triunfo de la Cruz—Morales Martínez and Ricardo Arnaúl Montero.

The election of left-wing president Xiomara Castro in 2021 was supposed to bring change. She ran on an anti-corruption and pro-democracy agenda that resonated among a large segment of the population—including many Black and Indigenous voters. But little has changed, underscoring the entrenched corruption within state institutions and the political and economic power of a handful of oligarchic families.

On August 29, 2023, the Inter-American Court again found Honduras responsible for the violation of Garifuna territorial rights in another significant victory. But like previous judgments, the court’s decision lacks an enforcement mechanism. Its implementation requires political will on the part of the Honduran government. That means it has not produced greater protections for Black and Indigenous Hondurans’ rights.

Due to their visible Blackness, the Garifuna people continue to be treated as non-native inhabitants without rightful claim to the lands they have resided on for hundreds of years. Change will not happen in Honduras until the state complies with the court rulings—and until the murders of Martín Morales Martínez and other Garifuna leaders are investigated and prosecuted.

The stakes are high, and global: Many Garifuna have fled to the U.S. searching for a stable future that is increasingly hard to imagine back home. Our thirst for infinite economic growth is not only fueling our climate and biodiversity crisis, but also the displacement of and violence against environmental defenders in Honduras, Latin America, and around the world. From Standing Rock to Triunfo de la Cruz, Black and Indigenous activists are often on the front lines of fights against the expansion of extractive industries and the destruction of ecosystems. The Garifuna peoples’ struggle to defend their territories is just one theater in a shared global struggle over the future of the planet and who gets to share in it.

The post In Honduras, Defending Your Land Can Be Deadly appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

At home they played Bob Marley, The Rolling Stones, and Silvio Rodríguez, and I was constantly listening, but my parents also instilled in me a deep respect for Belizean culture in all its manifestations.

Later, I studied music in Havana, Cuba, and developed a great love for the blues, Jazz and modern African music. Gradually, I began to realize that I had something equally great, right there in my own backyard: Garifuna music. I realized that Garifuna music has the same soul and power that existed in some of my favorite recordings, whether it was Fela Kuti, Jimi Hendrix, or Muddy Waters.

But outside of Belize, almost no one knew about it. And because Belize is a small, mostly poor country, it didn’t have the resources to develop a strong local music industry. There weren’t any professional recording studios and very little infrastructure when I started Stonetree in 1995.
 
For many years everybody thought that I was totally insane. Everybody thought, “What is this guy doing recording all these old people’s music?!” This was in the early ’90s when everybody in Belize was trying to be more modern than anything else, because in Belize we were a little bit behind all the time.

Ivan Duran (right), founder and owner of Stonetree Records, with musician Aurelio Martinez. Courtesy of Stonetree Records.

When I first discovered Garifuna music, there were two completely separate scenes in Belize. One was devoted to the totally traditional, almost ceremonial aspect of the music, where there are many drums, chants, and in some cases—like in paranda, a genre of Garifuna music—there also is acoustic guitar. That was almost dying out. And then there was the more popular punta rock scene, which was what the younger kids liked to dance to.

I wasn’t very interested in that; I was more interested in digging into the roots of Garifuna music, the styles of music that were considered by most Belizeans as “not-cool,” and even primitive. That was also the case within the Garifuna community’s younger generation. They thought, “That was my grandma’s music, that has nothing to do with me.” For them it was all about the modern sound of punta rock, drinking Belikin beer, and partying all night.

But to me it was always about the soulfulness of those paranda melodies, that I found always very intriguing, and the traditional drum patterns that went with them.

At that time, all the veteran Garifuna musicians were playing only in their own communities and weren’t popular. There had only been a handful of musicians who had performed outside of the country. Closer to home, their appearances were mostly confined to folkloric-type cultural presentations, like, “The Queen of England is visiting, let’s have a Garifuna, a Creole, and a Maya group perform!” and they would dress in colorful outfits and play. But this had little to do with what was really happening on the ground. You never got that sweat, and that dirt, and that dust that the music had.

Our first real breakthrough was with the Paranda album (Stonetree 1998). We spent nearly four years recording all of the remaining Paranda maestros, the music felt like it was in its dying stages but these artists still had the strength to pull off one last act. 

It was a painstaking process: We literally had to recreate in the studio something that almost didn’t exist anymore. Our process in some ways was similar to what Alan Lomax did when he made his field recordings in the American South. We were talking to the elderly musicians, and they would tell us how the music was played, how back in the day the paranderos would go from house to house singing songs, and people would give them food and rum, and they would make up songs on the spot. Back then, Garifuna paranderos were both entertainers and storytellers for the community. We wanted to create that ambiance again, with them in the studio.

The late Paul Nabor, a Garifuna musician who helped popularize the paranda style of music, which has experienced a revival in popularity in recent years. Courtesy of Stonetree Records.

And when that album came out, in Belize everybody loved it. Why? Because the songs were so beautiful, the melodies were so timeless, this was the first time they were hearing it on a record. And when they heard them, that’s when the whole appreciation of paranda music came back in full force. Back then I thought that would be the last paranda record we would do because there wasn’t anyone else to record. At that time, everybody thought the next big thing coming out of Belize would’ve been a punta rock artist, with 10 dancers in a sexy-looking video clip. Nobody expected all of a sudden the attention would be on 72-year-old Paul Nabor singing these beautiful songs about his community, and being invited to perform in France! By reviving Garifuna music, Belizean musicians are building new communities of listeners, and reaching new followers of this centuries-old cultural heritage, both at home and in North America, in Europe, and in other parts of the world.

I believe young paranda artists like Andy Palacio and Aurelio Martínez are the true heroes for having revived paranda music after the album was released. They took this music around the world and more importantly they instilled a new sense of cultural pride in the younger generation.

Of course, this music is not for mass consumption; we’re not trying to compete with Brazil or Cuba or Jamaica or any other musical powerhouse. But you have this little niche and this almost precious little thing going that, hey, when people discover it, they will pay more attention because it is so unique.
 
We’re still struggling today in Belize with recognizing that what we have that is special and worth supporting. Still today, many people in the country, including the political classes, don’t realize the full value of it. We’re still a society that thinks that development means more paved roads and cement sidewalks and fewer trees. No one will ever get more votes for supporting local culture.

But creating a group identity isn’t just about building more roads through the jungle. And music plays such an essential role in that identity, in defining who we are as a nation and as a culture, because it’s so direct, it has no filters. All you need to have is your ears and a soul. We need more musical roads to the soul of Belize.

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