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POPULATION: 200,000500,000

LANGUAGE: Spanish; English; Garifuna

RELIGION: Catholicism, incorporating aspects of the traditional religion














The Garifuna practice a version of Catholicism that uses many aspects of their traditional religion. It combines belief in saints with reverence toward gubida (the spirits of ancestors) and faith in shamans or "spirit helpers" (called buwiyes ). Their religious practicesincluding dancing, singing, drumming, and use of alcoholhave long been considered suspicious by outsiders. Established churches and people living nearby have accused them of paganism and devil worship. Some buwiyes, however, have served as Roman Catholic priests or nuns.











To Make Wattle and Daub

Materials for a 4x6-inch structure

  • Modeling clay






















A sacred dance, the abaimahani, is performed at the dugu, a feast held for the spirit of a deceased ancestor. The dancersall womenform a long line, link little fingers, and sing special music. The Wanaragua, or John Canoe dance, performed at Christmastime, includes sad songs about the absence of loved ones.





















Belize Tourism Industry Association. [Online] Available http://www.belize.com/, 1998.

Green Arrow Advertising. Belize. [Online] Available http://www.greenarrow.com/belize/belize.htm, 1998.

World Travel Guide. [Online] Available http://www.wtgonline.com/country/bz/gen.html, 1998.

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ETHNONYMS: Black Carib, Island Carib, Garinagu, Karaphuna


Identification. The term "Garifuna," or on Dominica, "Karaphuna," is a modern adaptation of the name applied to some Amerindians of the Caribbean and South America at the time of Columbus. That term"Garif," and its alternate, "Carib"are derivatives of the same root. The label "Black" derives from the fact that during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries considerable admixture occurred with Africans whom they captured, or who otherwise escaped being enslaved by Europeans.

Location. Modern-day Garifuna live mostly in Central America, in a series of villages and towns along the Caribbean coastline of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Many have emigrated to the United States, where they live in large colonies in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and several other cities. Small groups survive in Trinidad, Dominica, and Saint Vincent. Although all of them recognize a distant kinship, the Central American and Caribbean groups are virtually distinct today.

Linguistic Affiliation. In spite of their name, their language is basically of the Arawakan Family, although there is a heavy overlay of Cariban, which may once have been a pidgin trading language for them. Linguists term their language Island Carib to distinguish it from Carib as it is spoken among groups ancestral to them still living in the Amazon area of South America.

Demography. Historical sources indicate that only about 2,000 Carib survived warfare with the British to become established in Central America in 1797. Because they reside in so many different countries, and because they are not counted as a distinct ethnic group except in Belize, it is difficult to state how many there may be today. Estimates vary from 200,000 to 500,000; high fertility rates and the absorption into their communities of many other Blacks in the Americas helped boost their population over the last 200 years.

History and Cultural Relations

Archaeologists have still not been able to sort out with precision the cultural history of the various Caribbean groups, except to note that all of them apparently derived from the tropical forests of South America, coming into the Caribbean in at least three waves, dating from about 5000 b.c. to about a.d. 1400. At the time of Columbus, the ancestors of the Garifuna occupied most of the habitable islands of the Lesser Antilles, but by the eighteenth century they were primarily found on Saint Vincent, Dominica, Saint Lucia, and Grenada. For Europeans, the term "Carib" became synonymous with "cannibal," and allegations about such activities formed the justification for killing or enslaving them in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Once agricultural plantations had been established by the various Europeans, Africans were brought in large numbers as laborers. On Saint Vincent, from the time of the first major British occupation in 1763, the Garifuna sided with the previously resident French colonists in a protracted conflict that ultimately ended in defeat for both of them. In 1797 those with the darkest skin color, (termed "Black Carib") mostly resident on Saint Vincent, were forcibly removed from that island and sent to Spanish Honduras. Many of the lighter-skinned individuals remained in the islands; most were absorbed into the local Creole populations. In Central America the Garifuna joined the Spaniards and at first fought against, but later temporarily joined, the Miskito Indians, who were firmly aligned with the British in opposition to the dominant Spanish colonization. They were quick to adopt whatever innovations they admired in other groups, so that today their culture is a new synthesis, unlike any of its immediate forbears.


In aboriginal and early contact times, settlements were on the windward sides of the various islands, whereas gardens were inland on more fertile soil. The earliest houses were circular, and each was inhabited by a woman, her unmarried daughters, and her small sons. Teenage boys and men spent most of their time in centrally located communal houses, where they ate; slept; debated political decisions; made and repaired weapons, tools and utensils; and entertained guests. In Central America they have repeated this settlement pattern, except that they have favored locations close to European settlements and enterprises in which the men could find wage labor and the women could sell their agricultural produce. Today they live in some sixty settlements on the coastline between Gracias a Dios in Nicaragua and Dangriga, Belize. Some of these still harbor only Garifuna, but others are multiethnic towns and cities. In the United States the Garifuna do not necessarily cluster in the same city neighborhoods, although they remain in close contact with their fellows, especially Garifuna coming from the same country.


Subsistence and Commercial Activities . The Island Carib were fishers, hunters of small land animals, collectors of shellfish, and horticulturists; both sexes participated equally in food production. Only men engaged in offshore fishing and hunting, whereas the women were largely in charge of the fields after the initial clearing. Bitter manioc was the primary staple, of which the Garifuna made a flat, unleavened bread that, when properly stored, would keep for weeks and could be carried on the long sea voyages the men frequently made to other islands and to the South American mainland. Trading and raiding were important activities that often kept the men away for long periods of time. After the arrival of Europeans, the Carib began to trade with them and to sell their labor. They also turned increasingly to plantation agriculture of commercial crops, such as cotton, and, by the time they were deported from Saint Vincent, they seemed well on their way to dependence upon a cash economy. In Central America they were at first in great demand as mercenary soldiers for both the Royalists and the revolutionary Creole forces. They also worked in the mahogany camps in Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua, both before and after independence in those areas.

After 1900, when the fruit industry had become the major employer along the coast, they worked as stevedores and in various semiskilled occupations in the major banana ports. During World War II many men worked in the U.S. merchant marine, which led them to seek continued employment in this sector later. This started what has become a migratory stream, with some individuals returning periodically to their home villages until final retirement there and others settling permanently in the United States. The second generation has produced many teachers, physicians, and engineersprofessions they follow both in the United States and in their home countries. The largest part of the population, however, remains in the underemployed working-class sector. Women joined the men as migrants during the 1960s, most working as seamstresses, factory workers, or domestics in the large cities of the United States and Central America. The village economies have been bolstered by the remittances sent home to relatives, but little capital has been invested there. Many communities are largely made up of older folk and young children living on irregular and inadequate checks sent by the absent intervening generation.

Industrial Arts. Aboriginal craft products included baskets, cotton cloth, sleeping mats, pottery, and a variety of wooden utensils, including graters for manioc, drums, and dugout canoes. All of these have survived in Central America except pottery, which was replaced by European earthenware and porcelain, probably during the eighteenth century in Saint Vincent. Most of the crafts have been forgotten today, and only a handful of persons in the more remote villages still manufacture the other items.

Trade. Although most scholars believe the Carib engaged in extensive trade in aboriginal times, it is not clear what products they exchanged. During the eighteenth century they were known among European residents in the Caribbean for their silk-grass woven bags, baskets, tobacco, fruits and vegetables, and various forest products. In Central America the women regularly appeared in town markets with superior agricultural produce, and the men sold fish, both fresh and dried. Their reputation as smugglers of arms, liquor, bullion, and consumer goods has survived to the present day.

Division of Labor. Women in aboriginal times were the primary farmers, dependent upon the men only for clearing the land. Women also caught land crabs and other shellfish, cared for pigs and chickens (known only after the arrival of Europeans), prepared the food, cared for the children, and wove cotton cloth and fiber mats on hanging looms. Men fished and hunted, made canoes, and engaged in trading and raiding excursions. They were also largely in charge of the ceremonial life, including public ritual and curing. After the middle of the twentieth century, women left behind while the men migrated took on more and more of the men's responsibilities. Today they are dominant in religious and curing rituals and ceremonies. Women have long enjoyed considerable independence of word and action. They are, in general, as well or better educated than the men and have begun to enter political life and some of the professions in their countries of origin.

Land Tenure. Because their agriculture was largely of a shifting nature, land tenure has not been a major issue for the Island Carib or the Garifuna. So long as there was sufficient land and a small population, tenure was determined by "first come." The very concept of landownership was problematic for them aboriginally, which no doubt worked against them in making treaties with the Europeans. Not until the twentieth century did land scarcity become an issue in Central America, and by then most of the Garifuna were adapted to an economy supported by male wage labor.


Kin Groups and Descent. Both kinship terminology and early accounts suggest the former existence of a matrilineally oriented system, but it is not clear whether there were clans or sibs. Early European contacts seem to have altered the aboriginal system. Today they have informal nonunilineal kin associations, active primarily in religious activities and in mutual aid for domestic purposes.

Kinship Terminology. Modern usage is Hawaiian when using the native language, but the Eskimo system of their neighbors is more prevalent.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. The Island Carib may have preferred marriage between cross cousins, and men of higher rank were polygynous. Chiefs excepted, residence was uxorilocal. Today marriage is informal and brittle. Women commonly bear children before a permanent union is established, with or without a legal or religious ceremony. In both aboriginal and modern times, male travelers frequently had wives in more than one location.

Domestic Unit. What has been called the matrifocal household has been typical since at least the 1940s. This formerly was extended through at least three generations of women, but since the 1970s, probably owing to the massive emigration of both men and women, has often been reduced to a grandmother and her grandchildren under the age of puberty. Among more highly educated and affluent Garifuna, monogamy and the nuclear family are highly valued.

Inheritance. Modern Garifuna tend to dispose of their private movable property in the form of gifts to favored persons if and when they feel death is imminent. They favor children or grandchildren who have remained at home to care for them or who have sent back larger sums of money. To control the behavior of their descendants, older people commonly threaten to withhold an inheritance or to dispose of all their property before death.

Socialization. Boys are raised permissively until early manhood, when they are suddenly shoved out of the maternal fold and expected to earn their own living as well as to support their mothers and sisters. Girls are required to "grow up" more quicklyto work at domestic tasks at an early ageand are more severly reprimanded when they transgress. In the absence of the men, women seem to have more difficulty disciplining their sons.

Sociopolitical Organization

Political Organization. Prior to contact with Europeans, there may have been incipient chiefdoms. Leaders were men who excelled in warfare or in supernatural affairsthe older ones usually having greater prestige. In European-colonized Saint Vincent and Central America, these leaders were endowed with greater derivative authority than they may have had aboriginally. Presently, the Garifuna engage in political action within their own countries but do not yet vote as an ethnic block. Few have achieved either elective or appointive office at any level, but recent revitalization efforts may change this.

Social Control. Persons who act in socially deviant ways may be subjected to public criticism, frequently in song or proverb. More serious infringements may be referred to the ancestors in religious rituals. The ancestors, when they assume human form by possessing a descendant, may loudly chastise the culprit and even call him or her to a face-toface confrontation. Withcraft, which is most often directed toward outsiders, is a force to be feared.

Conflict. The Island Carib were in an almost constant state of war against each other, against Arawakan groups in the Greater Antilles, and, later, against Africans and Europeans. After deportation to Central America, they hired themselves out as mercenaries and also engaged in isolated conflicts with Miskito Indians. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, however, they have largely eschewed violence in both their public and private lives.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Both Island Carib and modern Garifuna believe that human affairs are governed by a higher god, but also by the spirits of their deceased ancestors, whom they both love and fear. Since the nineteenth century, most have also been Roman Catholic. In addition to the ancestors, the shamans call upon "spirit helpers," who assist them in curing and locating lost objects. There may have been a belief in nature spirits in previous times, but today these have been replaced by a faith in Catholic saints and angels.

Religious Practitioners. Called buwiyes, shamans are born to their calling, receiving training through dreams and apprenticeships. A very few have become Roman Catholic priests and nuns.

Ceremonies. In addition to the usual Catholic rites, Garifuna have included some prayers and other rituals in their ceremonies in honor of their ancestors. They also sacrifice pigs and roosters, dance, sing, beat drums, and ritually drink alcohol in an effort to get the ancestors to pay attention to them and to assist them in their human trials and tribulations. Several other ritual occasions are celebrated during the year, but these are all taken from either the Catholic calendar or British secular observances. "John Canoe" is an important dance performance during Christmas and the New Year.

Arts. Dancing and singing are the primary means of artistic expression, as they were aboriginally.

Medicine. A wide range of bush medicines is known and used by most Garifuna today, both at home and in their U.S. urban homes. They also respect and use modern Western medicine when they deem it appropriate, but when all else fails, they refer their illnesses to the ancestors, who can either save or doom them.

Death and Afterlife. AU Garifuna anticipate a continuing interaction with their loved ones after death. They believe that if not properly propitiated, the dead ancestors can wreak great harm upon them, and they look forward to having such power in their own hands.


Gonzalez, Nancie L. (1988). Sojourners of the Caribbean: Ethnogenesis and Ethnohistory of the Garifuna. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Gullick, C. J. M. R. (1985). Myths of a Minority. Assen: Van Gorcum Press.

Kerns, Virginia (1983). Women and the Ancestors: Black Carib Kinship and Ritual. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Whitehead, Neil L. (1988). Lords of the Tiger Spirit. Leiden: Foris Publications Holland.


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Gonzalez, Nancie. "Garifuna." Encyclopedia of World Cultures. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 28 Jun. 2016 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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Gonzalez, Nancie. "Garifuna." Encyclopedia of World Cultures. 1996. Retrieved June 28, 2016 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3458001349.html







The population of people known as Garifuna, Black Carib, Charaib, andas they refer to themselves in Belize, Central Americaas Garinagu, is the product of ethno-genesis (a genetic and cultural mixture) resulting from the collision of the Atlantic slave trade, colonial settlement, and the regions aboriginal people. In the 1600s a cargo of slaves was shipwrecked off the coast of either Dominica and/or the Island of St. Vincent located in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean. These escapees found refuge among the aboriginal Carib Indians, and, over time, recruited othersmostly menthrough raids of local plantations. This pattern of marronage produced a new group that populates Central America, specifically Honduras; Bluefield, Nicaragua; Livingston, Guatemala; and Belize. In 1974 William V. Davidson estimated the Garifuna population at 70,000 to 80,000 with the largest concentrations in the Honduras and Belize. In 1998 Mark Moberg placed the Garinagu population at 120,000. And in 2000, Pamela Conley estimated there were 200,000 people living in Honduras, with 15,000 and 6,000 residing in Belize and Guatemala respectively (Conley 2000). Smaller groups of a few thousand live in Nicaragua and the Windward Islands. Late-twentieth-century migration accounts for the presence of Garinagu in Brooklyn, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

The Garinagus arrival to the coastal countries of Central America is a testimonial of group survival and what Moberg terms their extraordinary adaptability (1998, p. 1014). A hunter gatherer society, who were fiercely independent (1998, p. 1014), the British violently exiled them from the Island of St. Vincent in 1797 after intense military engagement that included the First Carib War (17721773) and the Second Carib War (17951796). Land disputes marred their relationship with the British, in stark contrast to their peaceful relationship with the French. At the end of the second war, the British, says anthropologist Joseph Palacio, viciously extricated [Garinagu] men, women, and children from their hideouts (Palacio 2000, p. 4). Approximately 4,338 people, who were not among those decimated during the final altercation, were temporarily held on the desolate island of Baliceaux before being exiled to Roatan in Central America. From Roatan, which the British clearly intended as a place for their demise, the Garifuna with Spanish assistance migrated to Honduras. In 1832 a small group left the (Spanish) Honduras for Belize (formerly the British Honduras). What has emerged from this interaction of African and aboriginal Arawak/Carib Indians is an adaptive group with several unique cultural characteristics.


Garinagu speak the gendered language of Garifuna with different dialects for men and women, an aspect reflective of the social ecology of the Island of St. Vincent, whereby Red Caribs appropriated Arawak women as war prizes and intermarried with themwith women preserving their Arawak dialect. In the early twenty-first century the language retains this distinctive gender feature and reflects both African and aboriginal Arawak/Carib Indian influences. Garinagu are noted in the region for their linguistic versatility, and are often fluent in multiple languages (Garifuna, Spanish, English [in Belize], and indigenous Maya languages). This multilingualism has translated itself into professional capital, with many becoming educators and teachers, especially in the rural (Maya) areas of Central America.


Palacio describes Garinagu as an anomaly because of the amalgamation of aboriginal cultural traits and African cultural survivals (2000, p. 2). Garifuna myth and folklore reveal strong aboriginal Indian components while diet reflects many West Indian Afro-American food ways. Historically reliant on a subsistence lifestyle, cassava carries symbolic significance as a diet staple, and as the food that enabled Garinagu to survive exile. Cassava is especially important to the dügü ceremony, a sacred religious ritual used to appease dead ancestors after a family experiences a difficult period; all relatives are required to attend the dügü, a communal event designed to reestablish spiritual, physical, and social equilibrium. Contemporary Garinagu religious practices reflect the syncretism of African ancestor worship and Roman Catholic beliefs.


With the exception of Belize, Garinagu remain politically and economically marginalized in most of the countries where they reside. A reputation for resistance caused British colonial administrators to separate them from other colonized groups of Blacksa divide and conquer strategy that in the twenty-first century translates into ethnic tensions between Garinagu and other Africandescended populations; for example, in Belize, there is very little intermarriage between African-descended Creoles and Garinagu. The groups strong African phenotype caused some to question the validity of their claims of aboriginal ancestry. However, in 1992 they applied for membership within the Ottawa-based World Council for Indigenous Peoples and were accepted. Preservation of the Garinagu cultural heritage, especially language and the dügü ritual, as well as the struggle for land rights, continues to be a priority. The pervasiveness of the punta, however, throughout Central America, a dance derived from the dügü, attests to the ways in which even marginalized cultures have an impact on the larger societies.

SEE ALSO African Diaspora; Discrimination; Indigenismo; Indigenous Rights


Conley, Pamela. March 2000. The Garifuna: A Changing Future. http://www.planeta.com/planeta/00/0003garifuna.html.

Gonzelez, Nancie L. (Solien). 1979. Garifuna Settlement in New York: A New Frontier. International Migration Review Spec. issue 13 (2): 255263.

Interview with Joseph O. Palacio. AprilMay 2002. The C.A.C. Review (Newsletter of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink) 3 (34). http://www.centrelink.org/AprMay2002.html.

McClaurin, Irma. 2000. Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Moberg, Mark. Winter 1992. Continuity under Colonial Rule: The Alcalde System and the Garifuna in Belize, 18581969. Ethnohistory 39 (1): 119.

Moberg, Mark. December 1998. Visual Anthropology: The Garifuna Journey. American Anthropologists 100 (4): 10141015.

Palacio, Joseph O. 2000. A Re-consideration of the Native American and African Roots of Garifuna Identity. Paper presented at the Professional Agricultural Workers Conference (PAWC), 58th Session, Tuskegee University, December 35. www.centrelink.org/palacio.html.

Palacio, Joseph O. 2001. Coastal Traditional Knowledge and Cultural ValuesTheir Significance to the Garifuna and Rest of the Caribbean Region. Paper presented at the Belize Country Conference, November 2124.

Rust, Susie Post. 2001. The Garifuna: Weaving a Future from a Tangled Past. National Geographic 200 (3): 104.

Irma McClaurin

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