March of the Drums: There is nothing to celebrate

The following statement was released during a mass march of black and indigenous peoples in Tegucigalpa on April 1st, 2011 commemorating 214 years since the arrival of the Garífuna people in Honduras.

March of the Drums: Position of the organizations that make up the 2-14 Alliance

THERE IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE!

In the glorious Month of African Heritage we commemorate one more year in which this land was blessed. Blessed because more than two centuries ago the African plant set foot on it bringing with it the richness that decorates it today.

Today after 214 años, our own drums, symbols of resistance, powerful arms of struggle, urgently call us to deeply reflect on our historical reality.

In the midst of the commemoration of the Month of African Heritage in Honduras, we want to emphasize the term commemoration. We commemorate, we do not celebrate. Because we cannot celebrate the infamous inhumane and genocidal exile that our ancesters suffered from San Vicente, a flagrant violation of the most elemental human rights that even today the aggressor powers refuse to repair.

To celebrate would be an affront to the memory of our ancestors, mutilated brutally in the crossing from Africa to St. Vincent, from St. Vincent to Balliceu and from Balliceu to Port Royal, Honduras. The memory of the more than 3,000 Garífuna brothers martyred in Balliceu, plus those who gave their lives in the battle for dignity against the English army and the millions who were murdered in the crossing from Africa plunging into the depths of the ocean invite us to reflect about this term. Let us remember today that occasion that left an un-erasable impression on the historic destiny of our people.

Today as we did also 214 years ago we have had to once again embark on the crossing not of the Caribbean sea but of the battered paths and roads of fifth class that lead to and from our communities throughout our Honduras, from Plaplaya in the department of Gracias a Dios and Masca in the department of Cortes, we have come early in the morning to find ourselves here in Tegucigalpa the capital of the country, here where they decide our future and our destiny, in most cases without taking us into account, without consulting us, or believing that with one telephone call or one text message sent from the private telephones of mercenaries, infamous traffickers of the ignorance and misery of our people, this action is more than sufficient to decide if we continue living or die.

Because of this all of the organizations and sectors that make up the 2-14 Alliance and to the sound of the ringing of the drums, the maracas and the Garífuna conch say with one voice... de los tambores, las maracas y el caracol garífuna planteamos y decimos a una sola voz…There is nothing to celebrate...

There is nothing to celebrate..

Because the spirit of our ancesters orders us today to reorient the steering of the destiny of our people, to re-take the true leadership of Satuyé and Barauda. A leadership able to differentiate talk from practice, inescapably linked to the people, for the people and by the people. And not the remote control pseudo-leadership exercised from the comfort of the big cities, completely disconnected from the daily reality of a community that is bleeding and agonizing through the systematic loss of its ancestral richness.

There is nothing to celebrate

Because Satuyé and Barauda left us an orphan leadership of small-minded interests and personal ambitions, crustacean culture perpetuated by a sys

tem that divides us with crumbs and then with shameless audacity demands of us and calls us to unity. Today our people is victim of pseudo-leadership imported from western models, converted into instruments of destruction, division, effervescence of small conflicts, directed at weakening the harmony, the peace and the co-existence of solidarity inherited from Satuyé, Barauda and Wamulugu.

There is nothing to celebrate

If our Garífuna people is victim to torture. We cite the recent brutal and repressive breaking up of the peaceful march at the community Triunfo de la Cruz, when our sister Miriam Miranda, president of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras was captured, tortured and illegally jailed, as a result of a state policy of racial intolerance that replaces dialogue with the baton and the tear-gas bomb.

There is nothing to celebrate

When our beaches after the death of coconut are devoured by coastal erosion and there is no concrete strategy for mitigation and adaption to climate change, leaving our communities in absolute vulnerability.

There is nothing to celebrate

Because due to the stubbornness of the current regime in maintaining a model as exclusive as the neoliberal one, more than 200,000 brothers and sisters have had to emigrate from our communities risking their lives to go in search of an uncertain destiny, leaving behind parents, children, grand-children and other loved ones, when our youth find themselves forced to emigrate due to the absence of opportunities and the blackmail that says if we don't give up out territory it is because we are opposed to "development."