Blackness and Nationhood In Belize

Discover the soundscape of

Blackness, resistance, and nationhood in Belize.

Andy Palacio's Wátina makes me reminisce on the time I would spend with my father as a young girl, driving to different apartment buildings around Brooklyn, where he labored as a carpenter and stove technician. When he wasn't playing reggae or salsa, he would often play this CD, while I looked onto the accompanying booklet which contained English translations to the Garifuna lyrics. Immigrating from Belize to New York in the 1970s, my father was very proud of this album when it was released in 2008. While Belize seemingly might not have factored much in vortex of twentieth century international relations, Palacio brought unprecedented world attention to the small Central American nation at the dawn of the 21st century, recovering a rich legacy of Blackness and revolution beginning at it's first settlement by British pirates and enslaved Africans.

Belize was drawn in the vortex of British colonial possessions in the Caribbean as the illicit piracy that was a large part of British presence in Central America transformed into a permanent settlement.

However, such a settlement would be a process that would take about two centuries worth of fighting with the Spanish colonialists who had already claimed most of Central and South America. Moreover, settlement looked quite different in British Honduras: contrary to the common plantation-agricultural system in other Caribbean colonies, in Belize the logging camps were established mostly by non-aristocratic pirates who harvested logwood themselves for quite a while before importing slave labor. When slave labor was brought in, the environmental and geographical circumstance we have just seen, in conjunction with the non-aristocratic origins of the logging camps resulted in a unique coexisting between free and enslaved Blacks and whites in Belize, that made the territory ripe for maroonage and slave rebellions.

PROTO-NATIONALISM IN BELIZE

Nevertheless, emerging from this coexisting was the narrative of slave and master working side-by-side, one of the first attempts at defining Belizean identity. This narrative was furthered by matters of war: under the many attacks by the Spanish, the enslaved were compelled to fight alongside the British in defense of the settlement and camps. With the British emerging victorious from the final Spanish attack in 1798, famously known as the Battle of St. George’s Caye in which the enslaved also took up arms for the settlement’s defense, this battle later emerged as a foundational proto-nationalist narrative. Indeed, this historical sentiment enflamed by the battle followed Belizean identity all the way to it’s 1981 national anthem of independence, written by Samuel Alfred Haynes, an Afro-Belizean WWI Corporal and Garveyite, who spent much of his life serving Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association in many administrative capacities in United States:

Our fathers, the Baymen, valiant and bold

Drove back the invader, this heritage bold

The "Baymen" refers to the British and free and enslaved Africans who fought against, the invader, the Spanish. Shortly following battle, the slave trade in the British empire was abolished in 1807 and it became clear that full abolition was imminent, leading enslavers to increasingly use the battle to argue that ‘that the slaves gave their masters “‘invariable fidelity,”’ and that ‘the relations between masters and slaves were characterized by “mutual esteem” and “‘good comradeship’” (Nigel O. Bolland 72). Free coloreds would use similar logic to push for their inclusion in voting and political matters. For example, Assad Shoman cites George Hyde, "a free colored slave-owner and landed proprietor who was seeking to get the free colored on an equal footing with whites" as invoking the battle "as a time when “men of colour had been allowed to hold commissions in the militia and serve in defense of the settlement" (152). In another example, in 1898 Black creole shopkeepers Wilfred Haylock and Percy Hyde renewed a previously denied request for a stamp issue commemorating the battle, and "submitted a sketch with a black soldier and white soldier joining hands over a banner reading 'shoulder to shoulder'”– a similar motif to the current Belizean flag (Shoman 153).

It is against this backdrop that the Garifuna arrived in Belize at the turn of the 19th century. The Garifuna, are said to have originated from the British colony of St. Vincent, a safe-haven for runaway enslaved Africans, who intermixed with the indigenous Carib community. After holding their own against French and British attacks for over a century, the Garifuna were defeated and deported to Roatan, Honduras where they would migrate across Central America. The Garifuna and their culture flourished as they settled in what is now Honduras and Nicaragua, finally reaching Belize on November 19, 1802—a national holiday celebrated as Garifuna Settlement Day. Yet, Belize would still not be a formal colony on paper until 1862, dubbed "British Honduras."

In a collection of essays edited by Belizean historian Joseph O. Palacio entitled, The Garifuna: A Nation Across Borders, author Mark Moberg discusses how the British empire took a indirect rule approach with the Garifuna. They approached the essentially maroon community with a century-long legacy of bonafide resistance across multiple spaces, with much caution. Rather than dominate by force, the British implemented the alcalde system among Garifuna communities in 1877 (Moberg 90). This system, Moberg writes, in which a "headman," or "galide" (the Garifuna term) was annually elected and "was conceived of as a judicial and administrative authority selected by a native community and ultimately answerable to the British" (88). Moberg also discusses historiography on the pre-alcalde socio-political organization of the Garifuna and relays that indigenous authority was largely limited to warfare and raiding, and thus the Garifuna had quite a decentralized concept of political hierarchy. However, being steadily integrated into the Belizean free labor market, warfare and raiding were no longer common practice, and thus authority was calmly transferred unto the alcalde.

Perhaps "calmly" is a misnomer. Moberg discusses the aloof approach to the position of alcalde, perhaps a result of this decentralized notion of political authority. Although the Garifuna saw the alcalde as enjoying "legitimate authority," the resistance to and turnover rate for the position was extremely common. In a Garifuna town called Hopkins, Moberg writes, "new alcaldes were more often selected upon the resignation of a predecessor than at the time of a scheduled election" (94). Indirectly, the Garifuna were resisting external pressure and holding onto communal ways of existing. Garifuna identity would continue to be renewed in tandem with their political and geographical autonomy in Belize and elsewhere. Indeed, it would actually be to Palacio's surprise in the 1980s to find Garifuna communities outside of Belize.

PALACIO IN NICARAGUA

In a 2007 interview with Belizean Krem TV, Palacio described how in 1980, during his master’s degree at Belize Teacher’s College, he along with around 22 other Belizean students were appointed by the Belizean government to support Nicaragua’s national literacy campaign administered by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government (Krem TV Pt 1/2 34:54-35:20). Upon receiving training and informational workshops on the demographics of the coast, Palacio was informed that there were Garifuna communities there, and he immediately asked to be placed in the communities of Orinoco and Bluefields (Pt 1/2 35:40-38:08). In Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution, History professor Matilde Zimmermann, noted that while in 1969, the FSLN presented their aspiration to "encourage the flourishing" of the Atlantic coast’s "local cultural values, which flow from the specific aspects of its historic tradition," "the relationship between ethnic identity and revolutionary politics was much more complicated than the FSLN understood before 1979" (225).

Palacio recalled how the FSLN government had little command in differentiating between the Black creole and Garifuna communities that dominated the coast. Similarly in Belize the overall legacy of Blackness in Belize is related but also distinct from the presence of the Garifuna. The most obvious indication of this distinction lies in the fact that the Garifuna have their own language, in which Palacio sings, a blend of Amerindigenous and African languages while including some lexical items derived from Carib and the European languages" (Marion and Roy Cayetano 236). As a predominately oral society, their language, music, and dance are all utilized in socio-political contexts, from religious rituals to common festivities. Yet, it in the villages of Orinoco and Bluefields that Palacio was taken aback by the level of decay of the culture specifically regarding the language. He recounted that in the village of Orinoco, there were only three elderly women around the age of 70 who held Garifuna as their first language. Palacio who at the time was no older than 20 lamented that no one under the age of 50 was able to hold a conversation in Garifuna.

While traveling north on Pearl Lagoon from Bluefields to Orinoco, Palacio’s group was diverted midway at Brown Bank by a storm. On this overnight stay, he was told "there was a Carib man here like you, maybe you can talk Carib to him, and he will understand." Palacio recounts the story of being invited into the elderly man’s house lit by a fire lamp. 

"Ida biangi iawuriti?" or, "How are you, my uncle?" Palacio said to the man whose eyes lit up.

"Are you telling me the truth?!" The man exclaimed in Garifuna, embracing Palacio in disbelief.

Palacio discussed how it was an "emotional experience" for both of them. For him, the experience of meeting the elder and seeing the "level of decay" of the culture in Orinoco "brought home what to [him] seemed like the future of Garifuna culture in Belize." It was in these moments on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast that he decided that he would "dedicate all [his] efforts, [his] whole life to make sure this does not happen to [the Garifuna] in Belize." (Pt 1/2 39:15-44:31)

After six months in Nicaragua, Palacio wanted to continue his work in Orinoco and Bluefields but was unable to due to the intensification of the Contra Wars, an attempt by the United States to overthrow the FSLN government. However, contrary to the indigenous and creole communities on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, some of whom fought on the side of the US, the Garifuna communities became committed members or at least supporters of the FSLN after Palacio and his cohort’s visit. In 1986, the Garifuna community of Orinoco progressed exponentially and went on to be included in FSLN’s autonomy pilot projects (Peter Sollis 513), which gave indigenous and creole communities on the Atlantic Coast definitive geo-political rights.

Again, in a different context, we see Garifuna identity converge with geographic and political autonomy. Yet, back in Belize Garifuna identity was also deeply impacted by political geography, as the communities exist in coastal, rural, and ultimately underdeveloped spaces. However, Joseph O. Palacio writes that "the village was, therefore, the joining of two opposing forces--the site for indigenous cultural expression and a place reliant on the outside world for economic subsistence (108). In other words, although the physical and economic isolation had significant impact on the migration and labor patterns of the Garifuna, it also created the atmosphere for indigenous practices to flourish.

Migration became extremely important to Garifuna identity in the twentieth century as the travelling from village to village created the conditions for a pan-Garifuna identity, and ultimately the installment of Garifuna Settlement Day in 1948, as well as the registration of the National Garifuna Council (NGC) in 1981, the same year Belize gained independence. The founding of the NGC also gave support to Garifuna who were migrating to urban centers like Belize city in search of bettering their lot. Palacio writes that "among the several groups receiving inspiration from the energy and vision of the NGC were artist who felt liberated enough to experiment with various artforms that use Garifuna roots. [They] were able to win approval in their community as well as within the larger Belizean society and diaspora" (Palacio 118). The genius of post-independence Garifuna music, Palacio continues, was that it "firstly respected its rural indigenous wellsprings," and "secondly, it broke across the boundaries of village territoriality" (Palacio 118). It would be this atmosphere of impending independence that would be a key driver of Andy Palacio's music.

BLACKNESS AND NATIONHOOD

During Palacio’s time in Nicaragua, Belize was on the verge of independence from Great Britain. While Blackness and national identity had has proximity from the proto-nationalist days described above, in the aftermath of World War I, this connection was amplified as on July 8, 1919 Samuel A. Haynes and a contingent of soldiers marched on Belize Town (now Belize City) in rebellion for the discrimination faced while stationed abroad. Soon after, Haynes would find himself developing links with revolutionary Black nationalist leader, Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. His legacy and importance to the formation of Belizean identity is solidified in the fact that his poem was selected as the national anthem.

In 1973, after 9 years of being a self-governing colony in 1964, British Honduras became Belize, before final gaining full national independence in September 1981, in which it selected it's national anthem and raised its new flag. The new flag retained the British Honduras badge, but it was now at the center of a white disk, which is bordered by a green "wreath bearing 50 leaves, a reminder of the year 1950, when the first opposition to British rule began," (Britannica) surrounded by a deep blue background bordered by red. Within the disk contains a scene of two male-figures holding tree-felling tools on either side of the badge. A tree sprouts from behind the badge, while under the men’s feel is a grassy plain bordered by a ribbon which contains the words “SUB UMBRA FLOREO,” Latin for “under the shade we flourish.” This is indeed indicative of Belize’s complex history beginning with British settlement and the lucrative mahogany trade which became one of Belize’s key exports.

In her dissertation entitled, “Elite Reproduction and Ethnic Identity in Belize," Karen Judd discusses how this discourse around legitimacy and participation shaped Afro-Belizean identity in the sense that the creoles

“perceived a need to recognize and celebrate their own heritage as natives, and began to recast the history and legacy of the battle toward this end. Because their struggle was for acceptance and recognition of their rights as natives, not for independence or revolution, the symbols of their heritage required validation by the crown and the colonial authorities." (226)

This would clearly evolve throughout the years as Belizeans reinvented their identity according to the important historical shifts that occurred, including an influx of mestizo peoples due to fight and independence movements happening in the Spanish-controlled territories. As a matter of fact, early Belizean nationalism had strong anti-Spanish and thus anti-mestizo sentiment. Despite the cultivation of an Afro-nationalist and nativist identity built on narratives like the Battle of St. George’s Caye, as the calls for independence became more prevalent, it became important to exchange ethnic divisions within the country, which was in large part created by conflict between Spanish and British empires, for a Belizean identity. "In the original design," of the Belizean national flag, the figures were both of African background, but before it’s official hoisting, one figure was changed to represent the mestizo (Britannica).

This complicated history culminated in a firm but hard to fully identify Belizean national identity leading up 80s. Against this backdrop, combined with his experiences in Nicaragua and the sounds of revolutionary artists of the 80s, came the crystallization of Palacio’s political consciousness. He recalled that songs like Bob Marley’s "Zimbabwe" and Peter Tosh’s "Equal Rights" were getting to him as he was developing a "revolutionary zeal." Returning to Belize, Palacio wrote and completed his master’s thesis in 1982 on "implementing the literacy methods" of the revolutionary Brazilian educator and political thinker, Paulo Freire, "within a classroom setting." (Pt 1/2 45:40-46:40). In 1987, he was invited as a working artist by Cultural Partnerships Limited, a community arts organization based in England.

WÁTINA

At the same time, having never given up on his dream of becoming a musician, Palacio was inspired by the emerging Belizean Turtle Shell Band formed by Pen Cayetano, a musician that drew on Garifuna culture to pioneer the famous Belizean "Punta Rock" Afro-beat sound. Punta Rock gains its name from "Punta Gorda," the neighboring city to Barranco with its own lively Garifuna community. In Garifuna culture and thus Punta Rock, the drums are central instruments. The Garifuna use a dual-system, a primero drum, a smaller drum used for high pitch sound, and the segundo a bigger drum used for heavy bass sound.

Though Palacio struggled with pursuing music while in his teaching career, he gained a glimpse of success when his songs "Bikini Panty" and "Gimme Punta Rock" gained lives of their own in the country later in the decade. In the mid-90s Palacio met Belizean producer, Ivan Duran, and in 1995 produced Keimoun, a moderately successful album that expanded past Belize’s borders. In 1999, a turning point for Palacio, he was featured on Belizean Garifuna elder musician, Paul Nabor’s album Paranda: Africa in Central America, also produced by Duran and Stonetree Music. Paranda itself was an earlier form of Garifuna music that predated both Pen Cayetano and Palacio. Nabor’s album brought together chief Garifuna musicians across Central America, and thus elevated Palacio’s cultural and political position exponentially within the Garifuna community, but also within wider Belize. In 2003, Palacio was appointed director of culture at the Belize Arts Council and in 2004 he was appointed as the cultural ambassador and deputy administrator of the National Institute of Culture and History of Belize.

As his political and musical trajectory converged over his love for his Garifuna people, Palacio began using his English and literature background to compose songs that discussed issues surrounding Garifuna preservation in Central America and Belizean independence. In his observations Palacio noted that, "decisions that affect small countries weren’t necessarily being made [in those small countries]." "That in many cases," Palacio continued, "we were being tossed around on this global sea of turbulence and…powerful governments will make puppets out of small states." Palacio asserted that he "had no love for colonialism…no love for subjugation of other people’s cultures and the imposition of a superior culture over people because they have less military might." Looking toward to the future he felt that "people who had enriched themselves through the colonial process had no right to continue to impose their will on the less fortunate," and thus, he wanted to see "colonialism ended," "equitable distribution of wealth," and ‘to become a "proud citizen [of Belize] and not a British subject" (Pt 1/2 51:20-53:59).

Though the crux of his musical career began in the late 90s, Palacio truly burst onto the international scene with his seminal 2007 album, Wátina. He brought together Garifuna musicians across Central America, including Nabor (d. 2014), the beloved Belizean Garifuna elder who outlived even Palacio, to produce this critical synthesis of Afro-beat and Garifuna culture. Palacio along with Duran, were given the 2007 WOMEX Award for the album, and Palacio himself was named the UNESCO Artist for Peace just before his death in January 2008 at the age of 48. Wátina closes out with "Ámuñegü," or "In Times to Come" and in the song, Palacio laments:

"Kaba funa san ayanuha Garifuna numa amunegu?" (who will speak Garifuna with me in times to come?)

The link between the Garifuna and present-day Nigeria is also elucidated:

"Kaba funa san anuga wabute amunegu?" (who will bake cassava bread with me in times to come?).

Just as Europeans were bringing African goods and knowledge across the Atlantic, they were also bringing Ameri-indigenous productions into Africa and the across the Caribbean. In, "The Spread of Cassava (Manioc) in Igboland, South-east Nigeria: A Reappraisal of the Evidence," history professor Obi Iwuagwu discusses how cassava, thought to be primarily originated in the Americas, was brought by way of the Portuguese into West Africa in the second half of the 16th century. It has now become a key staple in both Garifuna and Nigerian societies, pointing to the complicated synchronicities and migrations of Africans across and within the Atlantic. Though Palacio laments the apparent loss of Garifuna history and culture, embedded in his words is also hope-filled mission, "chuluhali dan lun lareidahoun, chuluhali dan lun harufudaha houn" (the time has come for it to be preserved, the time has come for it to be taught).

The song itself ends with a repetitious call and response, fading out with the voices of children who sing along: "Feiridiwanali ei: gumugubei"––"Lest we lose it: altogether."

In many documents regarding his role in Nicaragua, Palacio’s role is often anonymized as a "Belizean Garifuna volunteer" (Jane Freeland 193). But this starting point in the role Palacio was to play in music and politics was much more critical from the point of view of the Garifuna people across Central America and the African diaspora more broadly. In one 2002 interview, a Nicaraguan Garifuna elder recalls that for at least 50 years before the intervention by the FSLN and Palacio, the Garifuna people on the coast "didn’t know what [we] were." Palacio and the FSLN, he continued, "[visited] the communities and helped us to recognize that we are Garifunas," and "now, actually you can enjoy, you can see the expression, the different dancing, the drumming, the conch shell, and different things around us" (Gallaugher 30).

Similarly, in a short post-humous documentary on Palacio’s life, Peter Ciego, former director of the Garifuna Museum in Belize, sums up my sentiment best: "we believe Andy has completed his mission, and his mission was to put the Garifuna music on the world map." Ciego continues, "in my opinion, Andy will not rest in peace—in the sense that we will always be talking about him, so we will not allow him to go aside and take his rest" (Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective documentary 2:47-3:00). In other words, without Palacio’s intervention, the obscurity of the Garifuna culture would have remained and worsened, and the development of land in accordance with Garifuna customs would not have been a new nationalist prospect which the Garifuna peoples across Central America rallied around. "The Nicaragua experience," Palacio recalled, changed his mind about what kind of music he wanted to make: "I want to do something that will reflect my commitment to the survival of my culture and creating a Belizean identity." (Pt 2/2 8:15-8:28)

When my father immigrated to the United States, Belize had not been an independent country yet. Such a predicament raises several questions: is there a national culture without nationhood? Must the last five centuries of Belizean history converge under nationhood to be legitimized? The Garifuna's protectiveness over their geographical autonomy gives us pause. Their history is one of migration, mobility, and resistance; their nationhood was embodied, rather than limited to physical land Garifuna identity is both multi-territorial and multi-ethnic, making it pliable and adaptable to several historical contexts. Similarly, it is indeed quite difficult and complex to pinpoint Belizean identity within a larger global context. An unsatisfying answer for those interested in racial and ethnic binaries, Belizean identity multiplicitious and multilayered—it is at once British, anti-British, Afro-diasporic, Caribbean, and in later years, influenced by mestizo and Spanish heritage.

Andy Palacio's life and career is a personification of the convergence of Garifuna and Belizean identity. Fiercely proactive and protective over his Garifuna culture, he grounded it in a larger international context which was characterized by anti-imperialism, nationalism, and Black power. Wátina was a culmination of his experiences in education, politics, and music, and he thus inserted himself in the pantheon of Black artists of the era that were calling for Black liberation and cultural revolution. Out of the Nicaragua experience, the political awakening of Belizean independence, and ideological and cultural influences from other Afro-diasporic music such as Reggae, Funk legends like Kool and the Gang, and emerging Hip-Hop giants like Sugar Hill Gang, came the reinvigoration of Garifuna culture, manifested through Palacio’s Afro-beat. Out of Palacio’s activism and performances all over the world, including at the famous New York City venue, Sounds of Brazil or "SOB’s", Garifuna Afro-beat was heard around the globe. Perhaps more importantly, in communities of Garifuna people throughout Central America, cultural pride in their West African heritage reverberated again.

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