The Garifuna Are Our People Too

Written By Jordan Reeves

Fashion is art. We believe that art inspires us to think. Maybe it even shifts our perspectives or helps us imagine a different world than the one we know.

We’ve been following the story of the Garífuna people in Honduras. Private developers and corporations are targeting their lands, the government is prioritizing commercial projects over indigenous land rights, community leaders are facing criminalization and death threats for defending their territory, and there's no compliance with international court rulings that recognize traditional Garífuna lands. 

We stand with the Garifuna people.

Vienna Herrera, a Global Investigative Journalism Network fellow and editor at Contracorriente, has covered what's happening to the Garífuna people. She said, “The Garífuna community descended from enslaved Africans, who inhabited the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. In 1797, they settled along the coast of Honduras. In the last decade, these communities have struggled against land displacement due to extractivist projects, drug trafficking, forced disappearance, and judicial harassment.”

She tells the story of Olivia Sierra. A community matriarch, Sierra has been displaced at least six times in the city she has always called home. That’s why she facilitates a safe space for displaced Garífuna women. Devastatingly, Sierra’s granddaughter was murdered. After that, Sierra’s daughter and grandson were granted asylum in the United States.

The United States may be complicit in the dispossession of Garífuna lands. The U.S. provides security assistance, training, and equipment to Honduran military and police forces. The U.S. has also backed Honduran regimes that have helped privatize Garífuna lands. There are even U.S.-led financial institutions that have funded large-scale infrastructure and tourism projects on Garífuna land. And U.S. lawmakers that supported the Garífuna people took legislative action to help stop the dispossession of their land.

So why is this happening?

According to Herrera, “The ancestral lands of the Garífuna people are of interest to hotel resorts, which has led to violence against them. Kidnappings, murders, threats, criminalization, displacement, and disappearances are among the problems that have left a mark on a place that has been emptying for decades due to economic insecurity.”

This isn’t a new issue. Between 1887 and 1901, former Honduras presidents, Luis Bográn and Manuel Bonilla, granted the Garífuna people 7,000 hectares — that’s about 20 times larger than Central Park or roughly 70% of the size of the entire city of Paris, France.

But it wasn’t long before the land granted to the Garífuna people was taken back. A 2021 Grassroots International investigation says, “Despite the fact that national legislation and international conventions ratified by Honduras ban the sale of lands under a community property title, in 1978 the Mayor of Trujillo granted full ownership over part of this ancestral land to the municipality, which in turn transferred it to a US citizen, who then sold it to Carrol Campbell and Bienes y Raíces Juca, who would later subdivide the land into plots for sale.”

In 1994, the Juca company accused Garífuna people of “invading” lands they sold to developers. But this begs the question: How can the Garífuna invade land that was stolen from them? The truth is, it’s impossible to know how many times Indigenous lands have been stolen. It has happened countless times across thousands of years all over the entire planet. That’s probably why people have been asking the same question for generations. But even if we don’t know the answer about what happened back then, we do know that it’s happening right now.

It’s happening to the Garífuna.

According to a report published by Amnesty International, “On 8 October 2015, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, founding the Honduran state guilty of violating the right of the community to collective property. Already on 28 April 2006, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted the community of Triunfo de la Cruz with precautionary measures, asking the government of Honduras to adopt the necessary measures to protect the right of the community to ownership of ancestral lands.”

An article by Theodora Bradford for The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) says, “On July 6, [2026], over 200 police officers entered the Garífuna community of San Juan to carry out an eviction. They deployed tear gas, fired live ammunition and arbitrarily detained five human rights defenders and members of the Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH)... While security forces eventually withdrew and those arrested have since been released, no one has been held accountable and the community members are now facing charges of ‘aggravated usurpation.’”

 
 

This matters to us. The mission of Guillén Paz is to celebrate and preserve the culture and heritage of Latinoamérica. That includes the Garífuna people. The United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed the Garifuna language, music, and dance as Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

We believe that celebrating and preserving the culture and heritage of the Garifuna people is necessary. But necessary doesn’t quite capture it. It is essential to include the Garífuna in our mission because as so many leaders have said throughout the years, “None of us are free until all of us are free.”

Our hope is that we begin to see how much we share in common. Not just our humanity.

But also our home.


Jordan Reeves

Hi! My pronouns are they/she/he. I’m queer, trans and non-binary, and I grew up in Hueytown, Alabama. I taught science at McWane Science Center before I moved to NYC in 2010 and helped start TED-Ed, which has been viewed nearly 2 billion times online. I left TED to start VideoOut, a platform that uses digital media as an advocacy tool for LGBTQ+ folks, which has reached millions with its message of solidarity and support, promising that “even when things aren’t getting better, you are not alone.” I have produced over 40 events around the United States, managed countless volunteers, and filmed 400 LGBTQ+ stories. I’ve worked with major brands like Hulu, Verizon, P&G, and AARP to create LGBTQ+ inclusive content. I started VideoOut Entertainment to change the way society thinks about marginalized communities. My goal is to work alongside the most talented creators (especially LGBTQ+ folks, people of all genders, and people of color) to tell stories that are too often missing in the canon of television and film. I believe that our stories will change the world! I’m an ethical vegan, a passionate advocate for the queer and trans community, and an auncle (queer word for aunt/uncle) to five absolutely crazy nieces and nephews. I live in Los Angeles — say “Hi!” @danjorree.

http://www.videoout.org
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