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The University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN) is a pluri-ethnic university located in the Caribbean region of Nicaragua. The university provides higher education to some of the country’s most marginalized peoples, including the indigenous Miskitu, Mayanga, and Rama, and the Afro-Caribbean Creole and Garífuna, all of whom live in the eastern half of the country. While comprising only four percent of Nicaragua’s total population, these coastal groups represent most of the country’s cultural and linguistic diversity.

The idea for creating the university came about during an organizational meeting of young Caribbean Coast leaders in 1978, attended by most of the region’s college graduates. A major topic of discussion was the idealistic dream of a regional university. In the 1970s, most costeños, or Caribbean coastal peoples, had little access to higher education because their only option was to travel far to the west to the universities of Hispanic Nicaragua.

It was not until after the war years of the 1980s that the dream could be realized. URACCAN was founded in the early 1990s, and in 1995 was recognized by the Nicaraguan National Council of Universities (CNU), the council that regulates higher education. A year later, the university began receiving government funding. The university continues, however, to compete with older, more established universities in Hispanic Nicaragua to obtain a fair share of national funding. The university is located in a poor region where tuition is extremely low (U.S. $12 per semester). Even so, a large share of the university budget is devoted to student scholarships. Outside funding sources are important to the university’s success. For example, a National Conference of URACCAN Supporters and Support Groups met in Chicago in the 1990s to raise money for the university, but most of the university’s external funding comes from European universities and organizations.

Serving a Diverse Population

URACCAN is designed to serve all of costeños and to emphasize the region’s multicultural heritage. The mestizo population of 117,143 is growing rapidly through immigration from the western, Hispanic part of Nicaragua. It threatens to overwhelm the other groups, thus underlining the importance of URACCAN’s focus on diversity.

The major languages spoken at URACCAN are Spanish, Creole English, Miskitu, and Mayanga. Signs on the university walls are written in all four languages. Miskitu has been a written language since Moravian missionaries, who arrived on the coast in 1849, recorded it in writing and translated the Bible and other religious documents (Helms 1971). The missionaries also trained local lay preachers, or sasmalkra, who preached from texts in their own language. Today various competing groups, including the Church of God, the Catholic Church, and the Seventh Day Adventists, all work on the coast. Nevertheless, in many ways the Moravian Church remains the central religious authority in the region. Moravians have recently established their own university, the Bluefield Indian and Caribbean University (BICU), which now occupies the old Moravian hospital building in Bilwi. BICU is privately funded and thus provides a second option for higher education. Costeño leaders hope that the presence of URACCAN and BICU will encourage the most capable young people to earn degrees on the coast, and remain afterward to contribute their talents to the region’s growth.

URACCAN opened its first three branches in Bilwi, Bluefields, and Siuna, and now has extension courses in La Rosita, Bonanza, Waspam, Pearl Lagoon, Orinoco, and Nueva Guinea. Today, about 2,500 students attend the university, with 200 professors teaching courses. Continuing education and technical training courses are offered, as well as courses leading to bachelor’s degrees in sociology, agro-forestry, business administration, and education.

The university also has four research institutes—the Institute for Linguistic Research and Cultural Recovery, the Natural Resource and Environment Institute, the Institute for Promotion and Study of Autonomy, and the Institute for Traditional Medicine and Community Development.

The Traditional Medicine Institute maintains a medicinal plant garden at Krabu Tingni, in a beautiful rainforest location midway between Bilwi and Waspam. A Miskitu medicinal healer is in charge of the gardens, to which other healers also have access. The resident healer demonstrates plant medicines to students and other visitors.

During his Fulbright grant from 1999 to 2000, Philip Dennis worked closely with the institute. In 1999, an outbreak of grisi siknis, a dramatic culture-bound syndrome, occurred at the Luxembourg Teachers College in Bilwi, causing a crisis in which many of the college students left after 10 young women were possessed by evil spirits. The institute hired a well-known traditional healer who treated the young women successfully with prayer and medicinal herbs, while Dennis and the healer’s husband served as assistants. Two physicians were also involved in the treatment, which constituted a remarkable example of collaboration between biomedical and traditional practitioners.

URACCAN relies on visiting professors to teach many courses. During the 1999-2000 academic year, Dennis taught an anthropology of health course in URACCAN’s first graduate program, an intercultural master’s degree in public health (MSPI). Thirty-eight graduate students participated in the course, of whom about two-thirds were physicians and nurses. Other participants included a nutritionist, a dentist, a psychologist, and a community development worker. Most of the graduate students were mestizos from western Nicaragua, but there were also a number of Creole and Miskitu health professionals. The master’s of public health degree (MPH) is an important credential for anyone involved in health matters in Central America, as it is in the United States. In Nicaragua, the traditional MPH degree is given by the National School of Public Health (CIES) in Managua. But URACCAN organized the intercultural MSPI degree for the Caribbean Coast, in recognition of the region’s multicultural nature and the particular health concerns it presents. The MSPI degree is accredited by the CIES, and coursework covers all the material in a traditional MPH program, plus cross-cultural material relevant to the coast. Dennis’ course was an important part of the MSPI’s multicultural perspective.

Most of the other courses in the new MSPI program were taught in intensive one- or two-week blocks by mestizo professors from CIES who flew to Bilwi to give lectures. Because Dennis planned to live in his research community, Awastara, to the north of Bilwi, he was able to teach his course over an 11-month period, holding classes one week each month. The MSPI students turned out to be hard-working and interested in the material, and responded enthusiastically to the fieldwork projects.

The university is developing a new master’s degree in socio-cultural anthropology in order to train Native anthropologists on the Atlantic Coast. Drawing from her extensive field experience among the Miskitu peoples of Honduras, Laura Hobson Herlihy will teach a graduate course on ethnographic field methods at URACAAN-Bilwi in spring 2004, also supported by a Fulbright grant. URACCAN’s first rector, Myrna Cunningham, said that the course will be part of the core curriculum of the new master’s program, which will be coordinated by Georg Grunberg and emphasize the region’s autonomy. Students will work with Herlihy both in the classroom and in the field, doing ethnographic research in local communities. Herlihy and Dennis both hope to keep the U.S.–URACCAN connection strong through future Fulbright exchanges.

The URACCAN was organized by and for local peoples, and tries to give voice to all the ethnic groups on the Coast. Large numbers of Miskitu students attend URACCAN-Kambla, and Creole students are prominent at URACCAN-Bluefields. However, there has been little Miskitu representation in the university administration. During his year at URACCAN, Dennis suggested that Miskitu intellectuals such as Ana Rosa Fagoth and Avelino Cox be invited to participate more in university activities, and that academic courses be offered using Miskitu as a language of instruction. In part, the limited participation of Miskitu scholars simply reflects the limited number of Miskitu people with university training. In addition, the Moravian Church-supported BICU may attract Miskitu people interested in faith-based education. Nevertheless, it seems ironic that the colonial languages, Spanish and English, continue to dominate, and that indigenous language and worldview remain underrepresented in university activities and administration. Indigenous peoples are lowest in the scale of interethnic relations on the coast, and to some extent this situation is paralleled in the university. It seems clear that to be successful as a multilingual, multicultural institution, URACCAN must invite more participation by leaders from all the region’s ethnic groups.

Miskitu people have a complex set of ideas about health and illness, and traditional healers provide a large share of the health care in the region. Historically, biomedical professionals from the United States and from the western, Hispanic region of Nicaragua have viewed local beliefs with skepticism, and have not taken traditional healers seriously. Given this context, some Creole administrators predicted the mestizo physicians in Dennis’ class would be narrow-minded and the most difficult group to work with. In reality, they asked the most perceptive questions and showed the most interest in the intercultural perspective presented. When Dennis invited traditional Miskitu healers to the class to explain Miskitu concepts of health and to demonstrate curing techniques, the mestizo physicians were the first to volunteer to help in the demonstration.

International Collaboration

Library holdings at URACCAN-Bilwi are modest indeed—one room of books. This lack of reading materials for students is a serious problem, and by necessity many classes use Xerox copies of articles or book chapters for reading assignments. For his anthropology of health course, Dennis brought textbooks from the United States, including a thick reader of medical anthropology articles in Spanish and the Spanish-language editions of Where There is No Doctor and Helping Health Workers Learn from the Hesperian Foundation. Dennis hoped that these texts would serve as useful future reference sources for the health care professionals taking the course.

Dennis also organized a large book drive at Texas Tech University, during which many colleagues in different fields donated basic texts and other books for the URACCAN library. Of course, most of these books were in English and may be of limited use to URACCAN students and faculty. But where books are available, one can hope they will eventually be of use to an aspiring scholar. Unfortunately, due to changes in U.S. Postal Service regulations, the last carton of books sent in 2003 cost about $75. At this price, it will be impossible to continue the book donation program.

Despite financial problems, URACCAN has been successful at forming national, regional, and international ties. Besides having a press office, a Web site, and a liaison office in Managua, the university has bilateral agreements with two Canadian universities, four U.S. universities, and three universities in Spain. Almost 30 URACCAN professors are pursuing advanced degrees in York, Canada, and Girona, Spain. One anthropologist colleague, Miguel González, former rector at URACCAN-Bluefields, is now completing his doctorate degree in political science at York University in Toronto.

The university also has ties with a vast array of non-governmental organizations, institutes, and foundations. Among them are Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbelt of Germany, Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigaciones y Enseñanza in Costa Rica; and the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation in Guatemala. These ties allow URACCAN to lead several important regional and continental initiatives, “especially regarding Indigenous, educational, health, and human rights networks,” reports the URUCCAN Update in 1998.

URACCAN and Autonomy

The Atlantic Coast region won constitutional autonomy in 1987 during the Sandinista revolutionary decade. The Nicaraguan government established two autonomous regions on the Caribbean Coast, the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), and the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). The RAAN and RAAS make up over 50 percent of Nicaragua’s territory. The RAAN regional government is located in Bilwi and the RAAS regional government is in Bluefields. URACCAN’s Bilwi-Kambla campus thus serves a large Miskitu population, and the Bluefields campus serves the Creole population.

URACCAN’s new vision of indigenous education is not only to provide life-long education to costeños, but, according to the URACCAN Update, “to help fortify the autonomy process on the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast through training and professionalizing of human resources.” The university, for example, offers many outreach or short-term courses to improve the working populations’ technical skills. These courses have a community-based and participatory focus, and provide costeños with a way to contribute to their own self-empowerment. The goal is to no longer be dependent upon mestizos from western Nicaragua. Rather, through higher education, costeños hope to be able to control their own development process in the future.

Constitutional recognition was also given to minority languages in the autonomous regions. Since then, URACCAN has played a central role in developing the Intercultural Bilingual Education Program (PEBI) on the coast. Linguists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from Europe worked with Terra Nuova, an Italian development organization, to develop new bilingual (Miskitu and Spanish) textbooks for grades one through four. These textbooks are now being used in a number of schools in the RAAN.

Unfortunately, the bilingual program has not been supported by conservative central governments in Managua in recent years. Teachers continue, however, to train at URACCAN.

The URACCAN main campus is in the town of Kambla, seven kilometers west of Bilwi. A breezy coastal city, Bilwi is the intellectual, economic, and political capital for the Miskitu people. Here, Miskitu culture is popular culture. One hears the Miskitu language spoken on the radio and television, as well as in discos, buses, and marketplaces. Due to its proximity to Bilwi, URACCAN’s main Kambla campus is strikingly dominated by Miskitu culture and language.

Transportation by bus is provided to Kambla-Bilwi students, along the red dirt road linking the campus and the city. Indeed, just getting to class is a challenge during the rainy season. The campus is remotely situated for a reason: it sits on land formerly used by the Sandinista army. The classrooms, administrative offices, and small library are in one-story buildings that formerly functioned as Sandinista military barracks. Pleasant and attractive, the campus is surrounded by pine trees with green grass and cement social spaces between buildings. The gym and auditorium buildings loom the largest on campus.

In 1998, Herlihy attended a conference for Central American indigenous people on URACCAN’s Kambla-Bilwi campus. The conference, “Central American Workshop on Territorial Rights and the Legalization of Indigenous Territories,” was sponsored by Native Lands, Centro Skoki, and URACCAN. Much of the workshop focused on the International Labor Organization’s convention 169, which deals specifically with indigenous peoples’rights. Indigenous representatives came from all the Central American countries, and from Peru and Mexico. A majority of the representatives and attendees were Miskitu, since the conference was held in their homeland. Miskitu participants in the meeting spoke first in their own language, and their statements were then translated into Spanish. The main topic of discussion among Miskitu participants was autonomy, or klauna, for the Atlantic Coast.

URACCAN’s concept of autonomy does not imply separatism. Rather, it emphasizes improving the quality of life for all costeños through education. Through inter-cultural higher education, the university aspires to build a better Atlantic Coast and a better Nicaragua. This university has so far been quite successful, especially given that the Atlantic Coast is a marginalized region in one of the poorest countries in Central America. Watching the crowds of students and faculty boarding the bus for Kambla, one cannot help but be infected by their spirit of enthusiasm and optimism. These young people see higher education as opening doors to the future.

Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Nicaragua and the Atlantic Coast

The 110,000 Miskitu constitute the largest indigenous population in Nicaragua. They live in rainforest and coastal-lagoon terrain from the Rio Coco border with Honduras to just south of the Pearl Lagoon area. This mixed group speak the Miskitu language, a member of the Misumalpan language family, and trace their ancestry to an Amerindian group that intermarried with African and European populations, starting in the 17th century (Helms 1971). While other Latin American indigenous groups experienced assimilation and culture loss due to the colonial encounter, the Miskitu have grown in population, expanded their territory, and developed a strong ethnic identity. Today, the Miskitu are the major indigenous group on the coast. They became internationally known for their struggle against the Sandinista government in the 1980s.

Mary W. Helms did ground-breaking ethnography among Miskitu people, and her ethnography of the community of Asang, on the Río Coco, has become a classic. Helms suggests that the success of the Miskitu is closely related to their relations with outsiders who have come to the coast. Indeed, the Miskitu have continually expanded their population and established their identity through their interactions with the British, North Americans, and other foreigners. The colonial Miskitu, called “Zambos-Mosquitos,” dominated other indigenous groups on the Miskitu Coast. Through their alliances with the British, they acquired firearms, which they used to build a successful economy based on raiding and trade. In the last 200 years, the Miskitu have been residents of a British Protectorate, evangelized by the Moravian missionaries, and employed by North American and other foreign companies. The companies extracted local resources including gold, bananas, sea turtles, and most recently, shrimp, conch, and lobsters. The interconnectedness of global and local social identities is not new to the Miskitu, who have participated in what Helms (1969) calls a “purchase society” since colonial times. The Nicaraguan Miskitu seem to have refashioned their social identities into new practices that have empowered them in a globalized world. The Miskitu response to global economic and geopolitical forces provides an interesting lesson in survival and adaptation.

The Mayanga (previously known as Sumu) occupied the largest land area in eastern Nicaragua before European contact, but their numbers and territory have been much reduced. The modern Mayanga peoples, with a population of 13,204, have three surviving linguistic groups: the Panamaka, the Twahka, and the Ulwa. These languages also belong to the larger Misumalpan family. Traditionally swidden farmers and hunters, the Mayanga recently have become involved in monetized economies as wage-earners. They continue to live along the upper reaches and headwaters of Nicaragua’s northeastern rivers, particularly in the large Bosawas Reserve. The Mayanga share similar cultural and linguistic traits with the Miskitu, to whom they are closely related. The indigenous Rama people lived on the Miskitu Coast before contact and spoke Voto, a Chibchan language of South American origin. The Rama, like the Mayanga, also fell victim to Miskitu expansion during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, their reduced population of 1,023 is centered on Rama Cay, a small island in Bluefields Lagoon. The Rama people have all but lost their language, and now speak their own version of Creole English (Barrett 1992). Atlantic Coast Creoles are descendants of British colonists and African slaves who have lived on the coast since the 17th century. They speak Creole English and practice Protestantism, and their population center is in the cities of Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas (called Bilwi in Miskitu). During the colonial era, Creole society included free blacks who acquired higher status and prestige than the indigenous groups on the Miskitu Coast, mainly because they were perceived as being more Europeanized. After the British formally left the coast in 1787, the Creoles stayed behind and became the dominant ethnic group, eventually displacing the Miskitu in the socio-economic hierarchy of the Caribbean Coast (Gordon 1998). Today, the Creoles number 50,000.

The Garífuna trace their ancestry to Island Caribs on St. Vincent of the Lesser Antilles. Here, the Caribs inter-married with African slaves and were later deported to Honduras in 1797. The Garífuna people’s Afro-Caribbean culture and their Arawakian language, called Garífuna, thrive along the coast in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, but in Nicaragua are now represented by only two communities. Coming from Honduras in the late 1800s, the Garífuna settled on the western side of Pearl Lagoon and now have a population of 3,068 people. Their two villages are an enclave that remains cut off from the rest of the Garífuna culture area (Davidson 1979). Although the Nicaraguan Garífuna now speak Creole English, they still maintain strong beliefs in ancestor spirits and a distinct Garífuna identity (Barrett 1992). Some young Garífuna have embraced a racialized identity as Latin American Blacks and see themselves as part of the African American diaspora.

Zacarias Copo, believed to be a big player and the missing link in the drug plane landing on the Northern Highway on the night of March 7, 2008, has handed himself over to Orange Walk Police.

He was accompanied by his lawyer, Senior Counsel Simeon Sampson, when he did so last Friday morning April 11.

Copo, 45, was being actively hunted by Orange Walk Police who suspect that he played a major role in the drug smuggling drama which ended in a shoot out between the smugglers and Belize security forces who stormed the plane and captured it.

Police have since booked him on charges which include causing a rogue aircraft to land on the Northern Highway, and the illegal handling of aviation fuel.

He has not been charged with drug trafficking, although it is generally known that the plane brought more than a ton of cocaine from Colombia.

Others who have been charged in the illegal landing of the drug plane include Ervin Canton, Luis Novelo, Victor Torres, Ricardo Rivero, Arnaldo Rivas, Cesar Cananche and Roy Lanza.

All have been charged with obstructing the flow of traffic, landing an aircraft without authority and dealing in aviation fuel without a permit. No one has been charged with cocaine trafficking so far.

The men have been allowed to secure bail in the sum of $10,000.00 each. The next court hearing will be on May 23.

The police have yet to capture the pilot and copilot of the plane, and they have found no trace of the cocaine, which the twin-engine plane reportedly brought from Colombia.

It is generally believed that the pilot and copilot both made it safely out of Belize.

Armed men wielding AK 47 assault rifles emerged out of the darkness and at gunpoint about a mile off the long stretch of the Northern Highway near mile 40 on the night of April 11, this year.

At that time of night traffic was light but a few motorists used their cell phones to call the police.

Police and BDF personnel who were deployed to the area, arrived in time to seize the plane, but the cargo of cocaine had already been shipped out.

It is believed the cocaine was trucked out that same night and smuggled into Mexico.

When Security Forces approached the area, the drug smugglers began to fire their assault rifles at them.

Re-fuelling was interrupted and in the gunfight which followed, one or more of the smugglers got hit. Police and BDF reported no casualties.

As the firefight intensified the drug smugglers withdrew and fled into the bushes, leaving the plane, the refuelling truck and the gear they had brought with them.

Five men were captured in the area and two more were apprehended in Orange Walk Town, but Zacarias Copo, whose truck was used for the refuelling operations, was nowhere to be found.

The truck contained 1,200 gallons of aviation fuel.

Police investigations focused on how the cocaine was shipped out of Belize into Mexico, and how the drug smugglers were able to accumulate 1,200 gallons of aviation fuel without arousing suspicion.

Investigators are not convinced that Copo was the mastermind behind the shipment, and are still looking for the person higher up who master-minded the operation and coordinated with the drug cartel in Colombia.

BELIZE’S ANDY PALACIO dedicated his entire life to preserving Garifuna music, the enchanting music of the black communities of the Central American countries of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Thanks to Palacio’s efforts, Garifuna music is today regarded as one of the best schools of world music. By the time of his death on January 19, 2008, in Belize city, Palacio, 47, had gained popularity both in Belize and abroad and had performed in the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe and Asia.

He appeared at the Festival Internacional de Cultura del Caribe in Cancun, Carifesta VI in Trinidad and Tobago, Carifesta VII in St. Kitts-Nevis, the Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia, the Antillanse Feesten in Belgium, the World Traditional Performing Arts Festival in Japan and other events in the United States, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany and the UK. He started performing in 1988.

In memory of Palacio, leading Garifuna musicians recently toured the US and Europe to celebrate the life and music of a bandleader and songwriter who spearheaded a revival of the unique music of Central America.

They started their performance in New York on April 4, at the Symphony Space, and will visit Atlanta, Miami, and other cities, concluding on August 29 with a performance in Los Angeles. The tour will promote an album titled Watina (“I called out,” in the Garifuna language), released in the US and Canada on February 27 on the new record label Cumbancha. Dates for the European tour are yet to be released.

WATINA, A 12-TRACK album performed by Palacio and the Garifuna Collective, was acclaimed as one of the best world music releases of 2007. It was declared album of the year on the European World Music Charts and won on several other charts the same year. Watina has been described as the soul of Africa, the spirit of the Caribbean and the heartbeat of Central America, resonating to the unique and threatened Garifuna culture.

Palacio was not only revered as the most popular musician in Belize, but was also a serious musical and cultural archivist with a deep commitment to preserving his unique culture. A long time proponent of Garifuna popular music and a tireless advocate for the maintenance of the Garifuna language and traditions, Palacio had undertaken a new and ambitious direction with the formation of the Garifuna Collective band.

Palacio’s passion can be traced to the history of the Garifuna people.

The Garifuna are descendants of West African slaves who were shipwrecked in 1635 off the coast of what is now the island of St Vincent. The survivors were welcomed by the local Arawak and Carib Indian populations, leading to a distinctive Afro-Amerindian culture and language.

Thus began the history of the Garinagu, more widely known as the Garifuna, one of the most unique and threatened cultures in the Americas. Their tale is one of tragedy and adversity, as well as one of triumph, community and hope.

Called the Black Caribs by the British, the Garifuna lived in relative tranquility for many years, their ranks increased by other escaped slaves who heard about this outpost of free Africans.

After siding with the French in a battle over control over St Vincent, however, the Garifuna were defeated by the British in 1797 and exiled to a small island off the coast of Honduras.

Nearly half of the Garifuna population died en route, but 3,000 people survived, and eventually journeyed out to set up small villages on the Caribbean coasts of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Today there are roughly 250,000 Garifuna in the world, including immigrant communities in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Miami. A small and often oppressed minority in their home countries, the Garifuna have valiantly preserved their heritage over the years in the face of tremendous outside pressures. Recently, however, the forces of globalisation have overwhelmed them, threatening extinction to their unique language, traditions and music.

Fewer children are learning the Garifuna language, performing the songs or memorising the oral histories and stories that serve as the legacy of the culture.

Born and raised in the coastal village of Barranco, Palacio grew up listening to traditional Garifuna music as well as foreign music on radio from neighbouring Honduras, Guatemala, the Caribbean and the United States. He joined local bands while still in high school and began developing his sound, performing covers of popular Caribbean and US Top 40 songs.

However, it was while working with a literacy project on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast in 1980 and discovering that the Garifuna language and culture were steadily dying in that country, that a strong cultural awareness took hold and his approach to music became more defined.

He opted for the language and rhythms of the Garifuna, a unique cultural blend of West African and Carib and Arawak Indian language and heritage. “It was a conscious strategy. I felt that music was an excellent medium to preserve the culture. I saw it as a way of maintaining cultural pride and self esteem, especially in young people,” he said on his record label website.

Palacio became a leading figure in a growing renaissance of young Garifuna intellectuals who were writing poems and songs in their native language. He saw the emergence of an upbeat, popular dance form based on Garifuna rhythms that became known as punta rock and enthusiastically took part in developing the form.

Palacio began performing his own songs and gained stature as a musician and Garifuna artiste. In 1987, he was invited to work in England with Cultural Partnerships Ltd, a community arts organisation, and returned to Belize with new skills and a four track recording system. He helped found Sunrise, an organisation dedicated to preserving, documenting and distributing Belizean music.

Palacio and the Garifuna Collective had been planning an extensive tour of the world this year, and Palacio was looking forward to being accompanied by women from the Umalali project, whose album was released on March, 18 this year.

According to the producers, Umalali musicians blend the rich vocal textures of women from the Garifuna communities with echoes of rock, blues, funk, African, Latin and Caribbean music.

The ongoing tour of the Garifuna musicians — consisting of the Garifuna Collective and three women of Umalali — is promoting the album Watina—Jacob Edgar, president of the record company, Cumbancha, told The EastAfrican: “The album has sold well; it is certainly one of the bestselling world music releases of the past year. It was a struggle at first because few people were familiar with Palacio and his music, but the international media response was tremendous, both before and after his death.”

The idea of the Collective came about five years ago when Belizean producer Ivan Duran, Palacio’s long time collaborator, persuaded Palacio to focus on less commercial forms of Garifuna music. Duran and Palacio set out to create an all-star, multigenerational ensemble of some of the best Garifuna musicians from Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.

The Collective unites elder statesmen such as legendary Garifuna composer Paul Nabor, with up-and-coming voices of the new generation such as Aurelio Martinez from Honduras. Rather than focusing on dance sounds like punta rock, the Collective explores the more soulful side of Garifuna music, such as the Latin-influenced paranda, and the sacred dügü, punta and gunjei rhythms.

THE WORLD TOUR FEATURES Aurelio Martinez, whose album Garifuna Soul was highly praised in the world music press; Adrian Martinez, who sang and composed the moving song Baba from the Watina album and who is a rising young star in Belize; and Lloyd Augustine, one of Belize’s most popular young musicians.

“We have no plans to tour Africa at the moment, although one of the members of the Garifuna Collective will be performing regularly and recording with Youssou N’Dour this year,” said Edgar.

Soon after his death, Palacio was announced winner of the Americas Category in the 2008 BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music. Although decided by the jury in December, the official announcement of the winners was not due to be made by the BBC until April 10.

The government of Belize honoured him with the Order of Meritorious Service in September 2007, and in November, he was named a Unesco Artist for Peace.

In his acceptance speech on receiving the 2007 Womex Award, Palacio said: “I see this award not so much as a personal endorsement but in fact as an extraordinary and sincere validation of a concept in which artists such as myself take up the challenge to make music with a high purpose that goes beyond simple entertainment. I accept this award on behalf of my fellow artistes from all over the world with the hope that it will serve to reinforce those sentiments that fuel cultures of resistance and pride in one’s own.” Palacio lived in San Ignacio, Belize, where he was accorded a state burial. He died of respiratory failure after a stroke and heart attack.

For a second year in a row, the United States has escaped a severe hurricane hit, pushing memories of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans another notch into the past.

But for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, the 2007 hurricane season ending on Friday has hardly been benign.

“No, not at all. The consequences for the poor have been very high,” said Judy Dacruz, a representative in Haiti of the International Organization for Migration.

The 14 tropical storms that formed in the Atlantic this season killed more than 200 people in Martinique, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and Mexico and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to often impoverished and vulnerable communities throughout the region.

U.S. experts and media have labeled initial predictions the six-month season would be busier than normal “a bust” because only one weak hurricane struck the United States — a far cry from 2005 when a record 28 storms formed, 15 of which strengthened into hurricanes, including Katrina.

The 14 storms beat the long-term average of 10 per season while the number of hurricanes, five — or six if you count Tropical Storm Karen which most weather experts expect will be posthumously upgraded — is about normal.

Yet most of the storms were perplexingly short-lived, lasting on average just 2.4 days, the lowest ratio since 1977, according to a noted hurricane season forecasting team at Colorado State University.

“Our 2007 seasonal hurricane forecast was not particularly successful. We anticipated an above-average season, and the season had activity at approximately average levels,” Philip Klotzbach, Bill Gray and other CSU forecasters said in an end-of-season report on Tuesday. The CSU team had predicted there would be 17 storms this year.

DIFFERENT VIEW

In the Caribbean and Central America, though, few were breathing sighs of relief.

In the Mexican town of Mahahual on the Yucatan Peninsula, Hurricane Dean destroyed a cruise ship pier which had been a key source of income. “Windows, doors, electrical systems — except for the basic structure of the hotel, everything was destroyed by Dean,” said Rodolfo Romero, owner of the boutique Hotel Arenas.

Dean, which became a maximum-strength Category 5 hurricane, killed at least 27 people as it roared through the Caribbean in August and struck the peninsula.

Hurricane Felix in September also became a Category 5 storm on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity, killing 102 and leaving another 133 missing in Nicaragua, according to the Pan-American Health Organization.

Dean and Felix were the first two Atlantic hurricanes since records began in 1851 to make landfall in the same season as Category 5 storms.

The last storm of the season, Noel, soaked the Dominican Republic and Haiti, killing more than 150 people as rivers broke their banks and surged through towns.

“It’s been very busy, especially in Central America but also in the Caribbean,” said Tim Callaghan, a senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. “We have provided disaster assistance to Dominica, Belize, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico.”

Even when no actual storm was swirling somewhere, unusually heavy rainfall characterized the wet season, washing away roads in Jamaica and flooding sugar fields in Cuba.

A rain-swollen river burst its banks at the end of October in Mexico, leaving four-fifths of Tabasco state under water and 800,000 homeless.

“The hurricane season was more intense this year on a regional level as there were states of alert in every country,” said Walter Wintzer, director of the Guatemala-based CEPREDENAC center for disaster prevention in Central America.

Indian people were never intended to survive the settlement of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere, our Turtle Island. With the strength of a spiritual base, AIM has been able to clearly articulate the claims of Native Nations and has had the will and intellect to put forth those claims.

The movement was founded to turn the attention of Indian people toward a renewal of spirituality which would impart the strength of resolve needed to reverse the ruinous policies of the United States, Canada, and other colonialist governments of Central and South America. At the heart of AIM is deep spirituality and a belief in the connectedness of all Indian people.
During the past thirty years, The American Indian Movement has organized communities and created opportunities for people across the Americas and Canada. AIM is headquartered in Minneapolis with chapters in many other cities, rural areas and Indian Nations.

AIM has repeatedly brought successful suit against the federal government for the protection of the rights of Native Nations guaranteed in treaties, sovereignty, the United States Constitution, and laws. The philosophy of self-determination upon which the movement is built is deeply rooted in traditional spirituality, culture, language and history. AIM develops partnerships to address the common needs of the people. Its first mandate is to ensure the fulfillment of treaties made with the United States. This is the clear and unwavering vision of The American Indian Movement.

It has not been an easy path. Spiritual leaders and elders foresaw the testing of AIM’s strength and stamina. Doubters, infiltrators, those who wished they were in the leadership, and those who didn’t want to be but wanted to tear down and take away have had their turns. No one, inside or outside the movement, has so far been able to destroy the will and strength of AIM’s solidarity. Men and women, adults and children are continuously urged to stay strong spiritually, and to always remember that the movement is greater than the accomplishments or faults of its leaders.

Inherent in the spiritual heart of AIM is knowing that the work goes on because the need goes on.

Indian people live on Mother Earth with the clear understanding that no one will assure the coming generations except ourselves. No one from the outside will do this for us. And no person among us can do it all for us, either. Self-determination must be the goal of all work. Solidarity must be the first and only defense of the members.

In November, 1972 AIM brought a caravan of Native Nation representatives to Washington, DC, to the place where dealings with Indians have taken place since 1849: the US Department of Interior. AIM put the following claims directly before the President of the United States:

1. Restoration of treaty making (ended by Congress in 1871).
2. Establishment of a treaty commission to make new treaties (with sovereign Native Nations).
3. Indian leaders to address Congress.
4. Review of treaty commitments and violations.
5. Unratified treaties to go before the Senate.
6. All Indians to be governed by treaty relations.
7. Relief for Native Nations for treaty rights violations.
8. Recognition of the right of Indians to interpret treaties.
9. Joint Congressional Committee to be formed on reconstruction of Indian relations.
10. Restoration of 110 million acres of land taken away from Native Nations by the United States.
11. Restoration of terminated rights.
12. Repeal of state jurisdiction on Native Nations.
13. Federal protection for offenses against Indians.
14. Abolishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
15. Creation of a new office of Federal Indian Relations.
16. New office to remedy breakdown in the constitutionally prescribed relationships between the United States and Native Nations.
17. Native Nations to be immune to commerce regulation, taxes, trade restrictions of states.
18. Indian religious freedom and cultural integrity protected.
19. Establishment of national Indian voting with local options; free national Indian organizations from governmental controls
20. Reclaim and affirm health, housing, employment, economic development, and education for all Indian people.

A canoe sits on the Rio Hondo River, which runs between Mexico and Belize. Villagers in a border town say goods and people – including many Chinese hoping to make it to America — are smuggled into Mexico from Belize.

Since the late 1980s, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from China’s Fujian province have been smuggled into the United States.

The business of human-smuggling has evolved as security has tightened in the U.S. And the smugglers, called by Chinese as “snakeheads,” have become more sophisticated.

In the summer of 1993, a rusty steamer ran aground off New York City. Nearly 300 passengers plunged into the chilly waters, desperate to touch American soil. Ten would die in the water, within sight of shore.

The boat was called the Golden Venture, and its passengers were immigrants smuggled from Fujian.

The capsize of the Golden Venture became national news. It was the first time many people had heard of people being smuggled from China. The incident was a source of embarrassment for both the Chinese and U.S. governments.

Changes in the Human-Smuggling Business

Fourteen years later, the flow of Fujianese to America continues, but the business of human smuggling has changed significantly. When the smuggling began two decades ago, the cost of coming to the United States was around $15,000. Now, immigrants pay $60,000 to $80,000 to be brought to America.

In one village in Fujian, people gather in the communal area. Old men play cards in the corner; others drink tea and talk. There are very few women and no young people.

Villagers say smuggling is an open business here. One of them says everyone knows how to find a snakehead —but that you need to have the money to go.

People who can go are aided by family, friends and former neighbors who have already prospered in the United States. Sometimes people living abroad lend money to pay for the snakehead.

For the most part, human smuggling is no longer about packing hundreds of people into dangerous ships. Nowadays, smuggling involves airports and cars and crisscrossing the globe on scheduled flights. Snakeheads use methods that mimic legal means of entry.

Getting a Fake ID

Smuggling people through legal points of entry — instead of skirting them — requires fake documents. And Bangkok is one place to get phony papers.

In Thailand’s capital, there is a closed-off street known as Kao Sarn Road. At night it lights up with bright signs advertising tattoo and massage parlors. The air smells of humidity, grilled meat, people and booze.

You can buy fake IDs, driver’s licenses, press cards and even fake degrees. The people who sell these documents set up shop among racks of knock-off Puma T-shirts and fake Chuck Taylors. They sit on cheap, plastic lawn chairs behind card tables.

You won’t find fake passports on these tables, but they’re available if you have the connections and the cash. At the end of Kao Sarn Road, a restaurant owner and part-time stolen passport dealer says the documents are in demand. The man didn’t want his name used.

“Most of them are foreigners. There’s a hotel called Malaysia Hotel at Lumpini that has some people who make fake passports. It is the biggest source of fake passports in Thailand,” he says. “At the hotel, they do everything for you.”

The restaurant owner started dealing passports about 10 years ago. He is a middleman, buying passports and selling them to the next middleman. He doesn’t know who ends up using the passports.

“It’s not that every passport has the same price. For example, the U.S. passport is almost worthless because everything is very strict. It’s the same with the U.K. passport,” he says. “You cannot fake it. There is high demand for passports from Israel and Japan.”

“People will use the same passport. They peel back the cover and switch the picture,” the dealer says. “They change the name, the signature — like how they do it with fake student IDs.”

Newer passports that use photos from digital cameras are made in Malaysia, he says.

Traveling Along the Smuggling Route

For the Chinese who are smuggled through Bangkok, the journey starts out legally. Many of them fly into Bangkok International Airport on legal tourist visas with their own Chinese passports — but these tourists never go home.

In Thailand they get fake documents and then move on to the next stop along the smuggling route.

Once they’re on the road, the Chinese travel a meandering route — through Russia, Europe, Africa, Latin America and Canada — before finally reaching the United States.

Good smugglers — the expensive ones — run a full-service operation. They escort the immigrants each step of the way, providing food, lodging and transportation.

Working through local operators with local nicknames, snakeheads in China work with the “pig daddies” in Thailand who hand off their charges to “coyotes” in Latin America.

On the Belize-Mexico Border

With Mexico to the north, Belize has become a stopover for smugglers traveling by land from Latin America to the United States.

Residents of Douglas in Belize know their village is a popular spot to smuggle goods and people into Mexico. The village lies next to the Rio Hondo River, which divides the two countries.

Belize has a surprisingly large Chinese population, making up more than 3 percent of the country’s total population of 300,000. Those familiar with the trade say the smugglers are local Chinese-Belizean businesspeople.

Two men with bikes and a gaggle of kids show up when they realize someone is at the banks of the Rio Hondo. The river’s edge is lined with trees and sugarcane. The water is still. Tied to the embankment are little canoes that locals say are used to shuttle contraband between Belize and Mexico.

The sun sets, and the light quickly slips into darkness. One of the men, in a white T-shirt and jeans, initially doesn’t seem surprised by the visitor. But after some questioning, he becomes suspicious and says the canoes are used for fishing.

Later that night, one of the men is still out by the water. He leans on his bike as if waiting for something or someone.

Reaching America

After the Chinese cross into Mexico, they travel north and are smuggled across the border into America. Every week, 50 to 100 Chinese nationals are caught trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border.

Those who make it to the United States are taken to a safe house and handed cell phones. They call home to say they’ve arrived safely. The snakeheads immediately go to the relatives’ homes either in China or the United States to collect payment.

Once they’re released by the snakeheads, these new immigrants fan out across the country, boarding Chinatown buses that take them to every corner of the U.S.

They go to jobs offered by Chinese immigrants who’ve already made it. They seek prosperity — the same prosperity that others who have traveled a similar path before them have found.

As a true melting pot of various cultures, Belize has woven bits and pieces of many ethnicities to make what we know as our beautiful country. With many cultures coming in, tradition and custom sometimes disappear as the days go by. However, a group that is not going silently is the Garifuna. With November 19th, being their special day and designated a national holiday, Garifunas countrywide live up to this year’s theme of Proudly empowering our children in their Garifuna heritage. On May 18th, 2001, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed the Garifuna language, music and dance a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity. Belize’s very own Andy Palacio, celebrated musician and singer was honored with the title of Artist for Peace by UNESCO. With much history, culture, tradition, song, food, religion, the Garifunas have certainly left their mark in Belize.

Grappling with the ramifications of the end of slavery, a new ethnic group, the Garifuna appeared. In the early 1800s, the Garifuna, descendants of Carib peoples of the Lesser Antilles and of Africans who had escaped from slavery, arrived in the settlement. The Garifuna had resisted British and French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles until they were defeated by the British in 1796. After putting down a violent Garifuna rebellion on Saint Vincent, the British moved between 1,700 and 5,000 of the Garifuna across the Caribbean to the Bay Islands (present-day Islas de la Bahia) off the north coast of Honduras. From there they migrated to the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and the southern part of present-day Belize. By 1802 about 150 Garifuna had settled in the Stann Creek (present-day Dangriga) area and were engaged in fishing and farming.

The Flag

Any country or entity has a flag which symbolizes their history and what they stand for. The Garifuna have their own with a black strip, which is located at the top. This black band represents the black ancestry of the Garifuna people. The people have always acknowledged the African input into what became the Garifuna people, a phenomenon that occurred in St. Vincent starting in the seventeenth Century.

This colour, at another level, recognizes the hardships and injustices that the people have had to endure, their struggles for survival and the odds that they have had to overcome in the course of their history. As tough as these experiences have been, they helped to strengthen the Garifuna spirit and shaped their spirituality which is based on the principle of reciprocity, mutually beneficial two-way relationship between individuals or nations.

The yellow strip at the bottom of the flag symbolizes the other half of the ancestry of the Garifuna — the Amerindians or Yellow Caribs as they were referred to by Europeans. These were actually a mixture of Caribs and Arawaks and formed the host community in which the fusion of Africa and South America took place to give rise to the emergence of the Garinagu as a distinct group indigenous to the circum-Caribbean region.

In contrast to the hardships experienced in the course of history, the yellow symbolizes the hope and prosperity. Yellow is the color of grated cassava, which is further processed to make ereba, one of the Garifunas’ staple foods. It is the color of cassava juice, a color that is further brought out in the process of turning it into dumari, an additive for enhancing sauces, soups and stews. Yellow is also the color of the rising sun, which brings new promise and much hope for a better life. Yellow, therefore, represents hope, plenty and prosperity, as well as the Carib/Arawak input into the Garifuna identity.

The white strip, located in the middle between the black and the yellow, reminds them of the role of the white man (Europe) in the history and formation of the Garifuna people � the forcible removal and enslavement of the African, the seizure of Garifuna land, which precipitated the Garifuna resistance, and the forcible removal of the people from St. Vincent. Even after the arrival and dispersal in Central America, it was still necessary to deal with the white man.

At another level, white symbolizes the peace that has eluded the Garifuna people for most of their turbulent history - the peace for which they continue to yearn.

Garifuna culture

Garinagu are a resilient tribal people who have survived many years of extreme hardships. Despite these, ethnological studies show that they are the only black people in the Americas to have preserved their native culture. Because their ancestors were never slaves, they have been able to preserve their rich and unique Afro-Caribbean heritage. Also, the Garifunas traditions, deep sense of kinship and participation in community cultural activities have provided them with a sense of solidarity and cultural identity during times of turmoil.

Religion and spirituality

Garinagu are a proud people devoted to their roots and their religion consists of a mix of Catholicism, African and Indian beliefs.

Belief in and respect for the ancestors is at the very core of their faith. The Garifuna believe that the departed ancestors mediate between the individual the external world. If a person behaves and performs well then he will have good fortune. If not, then the harmony that exists in relationships with others and the external world will be disrupted leading to misfortune and illness.

The religious system thus implies certain responsibilities and obligations between the living and deceased. Food and drink should occasionally be laid out for the ancestors who may also appear in dreams. A spiritual leader, a Buyei leads the contact of a family with the deceased. In preparation of these spiritual gatherings with healing, drumming and dancing, a feast of seafood, meat and cassava bread is prepared.

Garifuna spiritualism is creatively expressed through music, dancing and other art forms.

Food

Traditional Garifuna foods are based around fish, chicken, cassava, bananas, and plantains. Most of the meals are rich and hearty.

One of the staples of the diet is cassava. Cassava is made into a bread, a drink, a pudding, and even a wine! The cassava bread is served with most meals. The process of making the bread is very labor intensive and takes several days.

Hudut is a very common traditional meal. Hudut consists of fish cooked in a coconut broth (called sere) and served with mashed plantains or yams. Dharasa is the Garifuna version of a tamale made with green bananas. It can be made either sweet or sour.

The foods are very labor intensive and used to be cooked over an open fire hearth. Today, stoves save time, but some families still prefer the taste of the fire hearth.

Music

Garifuna music is similarly different from the rest of Central America; the most famous form is punta. An evolved form of traditional music, still usually played using traditional instruments, punta has seen some modernization and electrification in the 1970s; this is called punta rock. Traditional punta dancing is consciously competitive. Artists like Pen Cayetano helped innovate modern punta rock by adding guitars to the traditional music, and paved the way for later artists like Andy Palacio, Children of the Most High and Black Coral. Punta was popular across the region, especially in Belize, by the mid-1980s, culminating in the release of Punta Rockers in 1987, a compilation featuring many of the genres biggest stars.

Other forms of Garifuna music and dance include chumba and hunguhungu, a circular dance in a three beat rhythm, which is often combined with punta. There are other songs typical to each gender, women having eremwu eu and abaimajani, rhythmic a cappella songs, and laremuna wadauman, men’s work songs. Other forms of dance music include matamuerte, gunchei, charikawi and sambai. Paranda music developed soon after the Garifunas arrival in Central America. The music is instrumental and percussion-based. The music was barely recorded until the 1990s, when Ivan Duran of Stonetree Records began the Paranda Project. In the Garifuna culture, there is another dance called Dugu. This dance is a ritual done for a death in the family to pay their respect to their loved ones.

In 2001, Garifuna music was proclaimed one of the masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO.

Steeped in rich traditions and amazing ancestry, we join the Garifunas in celebrating Garifuna Settlement Day. They have joined our country and formed part of it; integrating themselves to our roots and have grown to prominent businessmen, entrepreneurs, teachers and have joined our Belizean workforce with such strength. Their music, their dance, stories, food, history — it all makes them a proud and much welcome addition to ‘Our Belize Community.’

Garifuna music is similarly different from the rest of Central America; the most famous form is punta. An evolved form of traditional music, still usually played using traditional instruments, punta has seen some modernization and electrification in the 1970s; this is called punta rock. Traditional punta dancing is consciously competitive. Artists like Pen Cayetano helped innovate modern punta rock by adding guitars to the traditional music, and paved the way for later artists like Andy Palacio, Children of the Most High and Black Coral. Punta was popular across the region, especially in Belize, by the mid-1980s, culminating in the release of Punta Rockers in 1987, a compilation featuring many of the genre’s biggest stars.

Other forms of Garifuna music and dance include chumba and hunguhungu, a circular dance in a three beat rhythm, which is often combined with punta. There are other songs typical to each gender, women having eremwu eu and abaimajani, rhythmic a cappella songs, and laremuna wadauman, men’s work songs. Other forms of dance music include matamuerte, gunchei, charikawi and sambai.

Paranda music developed soon after the Garifunas arrival in Central America. The music is instrumental and percussion-based. The music was barely recorded until the 1990s, when Ivan Duran of Stonetree Records began the Paranda Project.

In the Garifuna culture, there is another dance called Dugu. This dance is a ritual done for a death in the family to pay their respect to their loved ones.

In 2001, Garifuna music was proclaimed one of the masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO.

Sylvana Woods, Myrna Manzanares and Yvette Herrera proudly display their Kriol Dikshineri.

The Belize Kriol Project launched the new ‘Kriol-Inglish dikshineri’ at the House of Culture in Belize City on Wednesday, October 31. The first 1,000 copies of the first edition were printed by Print Belize through funding from the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) and the Ministry of Education.

In its 474 pages, the ‘dikshineri’ contains over 5,000 kriol words, their English equivalents and meanings, enhanced by the use of the word in a sentence, its etymology, the parts of speech and variants. The first section, some 360 pages, lists the words alphabetically according to their ‘kriol’ spelling, while the second section lists the English word alphabetically with their ‘kriol’ equivalents.

National Kriol Council President Myrna Manzanares welcomed the dignitaries, students and the general public to Wednesday’s launch. The editor-in-chief for the ‘dikshineri’ project was Paul Crosbie of Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) International, who also had some anecdotes to share with the audience at the launching.

The King and Queen of ‘Kriol Kolcha’, Wilfred Peters and Leela Vernon entertained the audience with renditions of Belizean brukdown music, including Vernon’s hit called ‘kolcha’. Vernon also presented specially sculpted bookends, “A to Z”, to the Governor General Sir Colville Young, for his work in keeping the ‘kriol’ language alive. The Governor General did his doctoral thesis on the subject of the Belize ‘kriol’ language, as Minister of Education Francis Fonseca noted when he took the podium to add his thanks and acknowledgements to the National Kriol Council for their achievement. NICH director Yasser Musa also chimed in with a few choice words of praise for the National Kriol Project and the new ‘dikshineri.’

The Ministry of Education is making copies of the ‘dikshineri’ available free of cost to the school libraries of every primary, secondary, and tertiary –level school in the country. The dikshineri retails for $30.00 but was available for the wholesale price of $25.00 per copy at the launching. If you can’t afford your own copy, simply go down to the local library, as every media house, cultural organization, the National Archives Department and the National Library Service were furnished with free copies.

The Belize Kriol Project is where the writing arm of the National Kriol Council meets paper, and it has published some 15 books in the ‘Kriol’ language since it began in 1993, including a ‘Kriol’ grammar book and several translations of bible passages and hymns into ‘Kriol’. The project has also maintained a presence in the local media with its weekly “Weh Ah Gat Fi Seh” column in the Reporter, and online at www.kriol.org.bz

With the publication of the new ‘Kriol-Inglish dikshineri’, the Belize Kriol Council has saved the language from the fate of some 2,000 other languages spoken around the globe which are on the verge of extinction because they are not written languages. Those 2,000 other languages are dying because only the parents and the grandparents of those ethnic groups still speak their language or dialect; the younger generation understands the language but prefers to speak another more widely accepted and written language.

Sylvana Woods and the National Kriol Council are to be congratulated for keeping the language alive as an intrinsic part of our Belizean culture. ‘Nuff rispek’.

Unwitting couriers lured with cash, agents say.

The Mexican vacation was supposed to be free for dozens of Columbus-area residents. But they paid the price when they went to prison for smuggling drugs home in their sneakers.

Most were in their early 20s, recruited by members of an international drug ring that shipped cocaine from the Central American country of Belize to Columbus by way of Houston.

The lure was an all-expenses-paid vacation to Chetumal, Mexico, and $1,000 in cash when they returned.

The trip sold itself, said Internal Revenue Service agent Bernard Clark. “All the kids started jumping on board.”

Some of the couriers didn’t know until they got to Mexico what they were being asked to do, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robyn Jones Hahnert. Others were told before they left home.

When they returned to Port Columbus, they wore the shoes with cocaine hidden in the soles.

Investigators got a break when the ringleaders became bolder and greedier.

The trips became more frequent. Shipments that started with a pound or so of cocaine in each shoe doubled to more than 2 pounds apiece. And the shoes eventually caught the eye of U.S. customs agents.

“They had women wearing men’s size 12 shoes,” Jones Hahnert said. She likened them to “Bozo the clown shoes.”

More than 30 couriers ended up serving a few months to a few years in federal prison. Others charged in the case included people who recruited the couriers and kept an eye on them once they had the cocaine, and people who sold the drugs in the Columbus area.

But for 10 years, the three brothers thought to be the ringleaders of the operation remained at large.

Now, thanks to a U.S. marshal who never gave up on the case, two of the three are in custody, accused of smuggling 74 kilos — nearly 163 pounds — of cocaine into Columbus, Jones Hahnert said.

All are natives of Belize and took refuge there when they learned they were being sought, Jones Hahnert said.

MS-13 Gang Member Deported to Honduras

Earlier this week police rounded up 16 suspected members of the feared Salvadoran criminal gang – the Mara Salvatruchas or MS-13. Six of those suspects have been charged for displaying gang insignias because of tattoos and today another suspected gang member was deported. He is Walter Suazo – a Honduran national. He was served with an expulsion order yesterday and today he was deported back to Honduras.

Dive Boat with 19 Tourists on Board Erupts Into Flame

Tonight a boat worth more than half a million dollars is at the bottom of the sea and 19 tourists are lucky to be alive after a fire at sea. It occurred yesterday afternoon near Lighthouse Reef where the tourists were on a dive tour. The divers had just finished lunch when the boat experienced engine trouble. Police are investigating. The boat is valued at $700,000 and was insured.

Friday, 26 October 2007

Belize on Friday confirmed 80 cases of “classical” dengue fever since the start of the year and appealed to residents to take all necessary precautions against the spread of the disease.

An official statement said that the majority of the cases were in the Corozal district and Belize City and that there has been only “one confirmed case of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever”.

“The Ministry of Health is addressing the increased number of cases seen recently in Belize with insecticide spraying and treatment of mosquito breeding sites,” it said urging citizens to help stem the spread by washing water storage containers at least once a week, changing the water in flower pots every four to five days and avoid having containers that can collect water on their premises.

Dengue, also known as “Break-bone Fever”, is an infectious disease that is transmitted by the bite of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which breed in fresh water stored in natural or artificial containers.

The Ministry of Health said that dengue fever usually occurs during or after the rainy season and the symptoms include high fever, severe headache; backache; muscle pain; joint pain and swollen lymph nodes

“Dengue Fever is a disease that must be taken very seriously, in particular if you have had these symptoms in the past, and every effort should be made to keep yourself, your family and your community safe by maintaining a clean environment.

“The haemorrhagic form of Dengue Fever is more severe and associated with loss of appetite, vomiting, high fever, headache and abdominal pain. Shock and circulatory failure may occur. Untreated haemorrhagic Dengue Fever results in death in up 50 per cent of cases.”

The statement urged citizens travelling to countries where dengue fever is epidemic to take all necessary precautions to reduce their risk of acquiring the disease and named countries like Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Suriname, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador and Honduras that have had dengue fever outbreaks this year.

Manatees or sea cows - they are the aquatic darlings of the conservation world and it just so happens that Belize has been traditionally known as the last remaining paradise for the West Indian specie. But a series of manatee deaths, both natural and man-made over recent years, have caused these gentle herbivores to become more endangered than ever.

It’s been a while since we’ve had the displeasure of reporting the discovery of dead manatees on Belize’s coastline; nevertheless, these 400-800lb. creatures have not have a good day for some time with an increase in deaths from propellers of fast moving vessels that clip them while grazing on the sea grass beds in near shore estuaries or when sleeping near the surface.

The latest discovery however was a tad different when representatives from the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) and the Protected Area Conservation Trust (PACT) spotted the scant remains of a female carcass sometime last week while on a site visit to “Garobo Point” – an area south of Deep river.

The meat was literally stripped from the bone, which fetched a high price in Guatemala and Honduras where they are considered delicacies. This certainly means that the poachers have not given up their habit – a practice that was not in existence for the last seven years.

During a telephone interview, George Emmanuel, TIDE’s Communication Coordinator say that preliminary investigations have concluded that the manatee was slaughtered during the second week in September while Belizeans were under severe threat of Hurricane Felix. “The offenders risked their lives to seize on this opportunity to hunt illegally. While we were at home boarding and caring for our families they were out at sea hunting. We will pursue every lead to find these offenders and continue to work to prevent any further slaughters to these mammals.”

During the approach of both Hurricanes Dean and Felix, the National Advisory Committee warned us against staying out at sea due to the life threatening dangers posed by the powerful storms. During that time, TIDE did not carry out its normal twice-daily patrols of the Port Honduras Marine Reserve (P.H.M.R.), making it easy for the killers.

Emmanuel is also almost certain that the perpetrators are not Belizeans, but rather foreigners from a neighbouring country since “unlike Guatemalans, Belizeans do not eat manatee meat.”

This and other deaths have proven to us that we must increase our efforts to work along with our neighbouring countries, our local partners as well as the Government.

Manatees in Belize are listed as endangered under Belize’s Wildlife Protection Act of 1981 ever since fishermen would set up camp for days or even weeks in Belize to capture and kill those graceful creatures.

Protected manatee habitat areas include Bacalar Chico, Southern Lagoon, the Bay of Honduras and most recently, Swallow Caye Wildlife Sanctuary – just a 40 minute speedboat ride from the city. It’s home for a relatively large population of them, so chances of seeing one is almost 100%.

Manatees are usually found feeding or playing in a deep murky hole behind the island or inside the creeks leading into the mangrove. Current population at this spot is believed to be about 18 adults and calves.

It’s one of the golden rules of the natural world – birds live in trees, fish live in water.

The trouble is, no one bothered to tell the mangrove killifish.

Scientists have discovered that it spends several months of every year out of the water and living inside trees.

Adaptable: The killifish can alter the way it breathes

Hidden away inside rotten branches and trunks, the remarkable creatures temporarily alter their biological makeup so they can breathe air.

Biologists studying the killifish say they astonished it can cope for so long out of its natural habitat.

The discovery, along with its ability to breed without a mate, must make the mangrove killifish, Rivulus marmoratus Poey, one of the oddest fish known to man.

Around two inches long, they normally live in muddy pools and the flooded burrows of crabs in the mangrove swamps of Florida, Latin American and Caribbean.

The latest discovery was made by biologists wading through swamps in Belize and Florida who found hundreds of killifish hiding out of the water in the rotting branches and trunks of trees.

The fish had flopped their way to their new homes when their pools of water around the roots of mangroves dried up. Inside the logs, they were lined up end to end along tracks carved out by insects.

Dr Scott Taylor of the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Programme in Florida admitted the creatures were a little odd.

“They really don’t meet standard behavioural criteria for fish,” he told New Scientist magazine.

Although the cracks inside logs make a perfect hiding place, conditions can be cramped. The fish – which are usually fiercely territorial – are forced to curb their aggression.

Another study, published earlier this year, revealed how they alter their bodies and metabolism to cope with life out of water.

Their gills are altered to retain water and nutrients, while they excrete nitrogen waste through their skin.

These changes are reversed as soon as they return to the water.

Previously their biggest claim to fame was that they are the only known vertebrate – animal with a backbone – to reproduce without the need for a mate.

Killifish can develop both female and male sexual organs, and fertilise their eggs while they are still in the body, laying tiny embryos into the water.

They are not the only fish able to breathe air. The walking catfish of South-east Asia has gills that allow it to breathe in air and in water.

The climbing perch of India can suffocate in water unless it can also gulp in air.

In 2004 Leonardo di Caprio took a holiday to Belize’s Cayo Espanto Island Resort with then girlfriend, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen. He loved the island an Belize so much that in July 2005 he bought the 106 acre (41.6ha) Blackadore Caye just a few miles west of Ambergris Caye for a reputed price of $1.75 million.

The island is two miles long, with beaches either sided dotted with coconut palms dipping into the surrounding tropical waters. At that time (over two years ago) he planned to develop the island into an environmentally friendly, albeit luxury resort using renewable energy resources, but nothing happened until recently.

Now it has been announced that Di Caprio has agreed to partner with the Four Seasons Resorts chain to create a ‘green hotel’ on the island. The plans will include several exclusive villas, private pools and direct access to the beach. The development will be as environmentally sensitive as possible, respecting the islands tropical vegetation and wildlife. Di Caprio is heavily involved in environmental concerns, and his environmental film on the human impact on the environment “The 11th Hour” has just come out.
Ambergris Today in Belize states that he is planning to sell lots at the island to other Hollywood stars and celebrities, including Robert DeNiro and Tiger Woods.

If Di Caprio’s island dream comes true, he will find himself competing for business with “The Brando” a deluxe private getaway being developed on Marlon Brando’s former island of Te’tiaroa in Tahiti, and also due to open in 2008.

An undercover operation between the Police Department, the Immigration Department and the Department of Human Services has led to the arrest of a brothel operator in Corozal District.

Hilberto Triminus, a 50-year-old businessman, is facing one count of human trafficking for employing a 16-year-old Central American girl as a prostitute.

Police say when they raided Triminus’ brothel near mile 85 on the Northern Highway, they found six undocumented women and a girl.

Only one of the adults has so far come forward to accuse Triminus of keeping her at his establishment and working her there under harsh conditions.

The raid on Triminus’ took place in August and came after authorities conducted an undercover check to find out if Triminus was working the women at his brothel without their approval and consent.

Police say they also found 0.1 gram of crack cocaine at the establishment.

Triminus has been released on $500 bail and is to return to court on October 30.

Mario Arzu, the lead investigator for the Immigration Department, says the arrest of Triminus resulted from an extensive investigation. The women and the girl are all Central American immigrants who were brought into Belize and allegedly exploited for sex.

All the females have been placed in protective custody and will remain there until the end of the trial.

All those detained have given statements to the police and have agreed to testify.

The Human Trafficking Act, now classifies undocumented women working in bars and brothels as victims. not perpetrators.

Authorities no longer arrest them and charge them with breaking immigration laws, but encourages them to testify against the person or persons who brought them to Belize and forced them to work as sex slaves.

Arzu explained that the multi agency task force has been conducting a number of investigations to determine if other undocumented women across the country are working under similar conditions.

Arzu said that the task force is now focused on conducting investigations and interviews with victims. These are followed by arrests and prosecution.

According to Arzu, most women working as prostitutes in Belize under harsh conditions are tricked into coming to Belize.

These women and girls come from poor families and villages in Central America.

The perpetrators entice them to come to Belize, and once they are here, hold them in a form of bondage.

The victims are told that they can earn good money by working in classy restaurants and hotels.

Once they are in Belize however, their travel documents are taken away, and they are forced to pay back the money spent in bringing them to Belize.

Many of the women find themselves making loans to meet their living expenses and to send money back home.

Arzu says the victims are not only required to work as prostitutes in brothels but sometimes end up as field workers in the banana and citrus orchards.

Most cases do not reach the court for prosecution because the victims refuse to testify. Some prefer to return to their home country.

Prior to the enforcement of the Trafficking in Humans Law, the Immigration Department led the charge in raids of brothels across the country.

Undocumented immigrants, mostly women, were then taken into custody, charged and in several instances, sent to jail for breaking Immigration laws.

The multi-agency task force now meets regularly to determine their next move based on intelligence gathered by the Department of Human Services and the Immigration Department.

Once there is sufficient evidence to determine that an offence has been committed, the police leads the operation ending with the arrest of the suspected perpetrator.

Belize beefed up its enforcement in combatting human trafficking last year after the United States placed the country on its Tier-3 list.

At the time, the US accused Belize of not only failing to enforce the laws governing human trafficking, but also failing to meet minimum standards to fight human trafficking.

What was done
Polk et al. analyzed environmental changes on Belize’s Vaca Plateau via “vegetation reconstruction using δ13C values of fulvic acids extracted from cave sediments,” which provide “a proxy record of Maya alteration of the environment through agricultural practices,” in conjunction with “speleothem carbon and oxygen isotope data from another nearby cave in the study area” that “provide information regarding climate variability.”

What was learned
Starting at approximately AD 500, according to the three US researchers, increasingly more negative δ13C values in the sediment record indicate “the declining practice of agriculture,” which they say is “characteristic of a C3-dominated environment receiving little contribution from the isotopically heavier C4 agricultural plants.” This inference makes sense, because (1) the period of initial agricultural decline coincides with the well-known Maya Hiatus of AD 530 to 650, which was driven by an increasing “lack of available water resources needed to sustain agriculture,” and (2) the study area “would likely have been among the first sites to be affected by aridity due to its naturally well-drained upland terrain, causing a shift away from agricultural land use that preceded [that of] many other lowland areas.”

In line with this scenario, it is not at all surprising Polk et al. report that as early as AD 800 their δ13C values indicate the Vaca Plateau “was no longer used for agriculture, coinciding with the Terminal Classic Collapse” of the Maya, which Hodell et al. (2007) identify as occurring, in total, between AD 750 and 1050. These latter figures thus indicate that the Ix Chel archaeological site on the Vaca Plateau was, indeed, one of the very first sites to say goodbye to the Maya people, as the recurring and intensifying droughts of the Medieval Warm Period gradually squeezed the life out of the Maya’s waning culture.

What it means
The results of the study of Polk et al. are just another example of the devastating human consequences of the catastrophic droughts that plagued many parts of North, Central and northern tropical South America during the globe-girdling Medieval Warm Period; but as such, they constitute yet another important testament to the reality of the Medieval Warm Period and its “globe-girdling” nature.

Friday was Independence Day and here in the city it seemed the celebration was bigger than ever. The night started with a fireworks display at 10 pm. And at midnight, the Belize flag went up for the 26th time. The following morning the same dignitaries, with a few notable exceptions – the opposition leader had an especially long handshake for national hero George Price and the guest of honor, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. But the ceremony had to wait for this – a skydiver bringing down the Belizean flag, received by Chairman of the September Celebrations Committee Godfrey Smith. And from that amusing diversion, it was unto the Independence Day addresses by political leaders,

Hon. Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“Belzie fi all a wi? Not completely, not totally. Not as long as there are still huge pockets of unemployed poor, of alienated youths, of marginalized single mothers. Not as long as on the south side of Belize City and in too many district towns young men continue to drop like flies and murder most foul stalks the land. And that is why finally this particular independence celebration is so important. It is the last before the next occurrence of that five yearly event that is the fullest expression of our democracy. I am talking naturally of free and fair general elections. General elections that will come by March. General elections that I think will mark the end of an era, the lifting of the long nightfall, the beating back of the Gemini curse of incompetence and corruption.”

And while Barrow focused on the negatives of the Musa administration, Prime Minister Said Musa attacked what he called a spirit of cynicism.

Rt. Hon. Said Musa,
“Cynicism is a luxury we cannot afford. Negativity drains the human spirit, it paralyzes when as a people we need positive energy to keep on working, moving forward. No turning back. If George Price had yielded to the paroxysm of cynicism that rocked Belize in 1981, he would never have led us to independence. We must never be wary of daily sipping at the poisonous propaganda of cynicism and doubt. A people’s morale and self-confidence must be lifted, their potential enlarged not dampened and crushed. In 26 years we have proven that as a people we are capable of self-government, capable of making difficult choices and capable of adapting to changing times.”

From there it was unto the official parade, which featured political personalities from both sides; marching bands, scores of flags, thousands of students, and a big bad jump up behind Kenny Gladden.

San Pedro is a tourist mecca known for its night life along “Front Street” (not the official name, which the locals never use), water sports, and its long coral reef, popular with divers.

There’s a dark side, however. Belize is a very dangerous place, among the top ten countries worldwide for homicide. You can literally shoot someone in the street and the police will do nothing because they are so low paid that they’re unwilling to risk their lives chasing bad guys. They only act when there’s a mass killing, such as happens with great regularity between rival drug gangs.

San Pedro has long stretches of sparsely inhabited sand dunes. These contain private docks for “cigarette” speedboats laden with drugs making their way from South America to Miami. The dealers stop off for the night, and sell whatever they can locally. At least a third of the locals are crackheads, and tourists are continually panhandled and occasionally assaulted by crazed druggies looking for money. Another third of the locals are hookers who work the tourists; many of them under 16. AIDS is an epidemic in Belize, and it is rampant in San Pedro.

The local government — and the national government as well — is corrupt from the very top to the very bottom. It is no secret that in San Pedro you can get a driver’s license in ten minutes for a $100 bribe, but it takes months if you go through “channels”. The Traffic Department is not only corrupt, but inept as well. The only person who actually knows how to do something there is away from her full time job most of the time, working as a DJ at a local watering hole. If you are in San Pedro and get in trouble, the only honest government officials on the island are the people who work in Immigration; they are serious and very proud of their jobs. Go to them in an emergency, but if you listen to me, you shouldn’t be in Belize in the first place.

Another place to go if you get in trouble in San Pedro is any hardware store. All the hardware stores in San Pedro are owned by a tightly knit social group of Arabs — some of them related — who have been so oppressed in their native countires that they have deep sympathy for people on the run from corrupt governments or who find themselves down and out through no fault of their own. They will definitely help you whatever your needs are. They know how to deal with the local government if you need to get something done.

For years, Belize City has had an unsavoury reputation for drug-running, money-laundering and muggings.

With tourism now in mind, the government is working hard to improve its image.

Straddling a creek on Central America’s Caribbean coast, Belize City feels more West Indian than Latin.

That is not just because a majority of the population of 50,000 plus is black, and speaks English.

The town is said to be built on foundations made of ship’s ballast and empty rum bottles, left by 18th Century British traders, who came to extract timber from the forests upriver.

You can still see the sleeping quarters underneath the grander gingerbread houses, where African slaves used to be chained up for the night.

The town’s main drag, south of the swing-bridge that is Belize City’s major point of reference, is called Regent Street, though it could be a million miles from the smart London thoroughfare after which it was named.

Makeover - Old Warnings

“Do not wander off the main streets.”

“Always take a taxi from the bus station.”

“Carry some dollars in an easily accessible place, so you can just hand them over if someone pulls a gun on you.”

Belize was the last British colony to survive on the American mainland.

Over the years, I had been given so many dire warnings about Belize City that I had studiously avoided it on earlier travels round Central America.

But then more recently I had heard that the government was cleaning the place up, in an effort to boost Belize’s tourist trade.

A visitor stands out a mile in Belize City, as the humidity and the temperatures are so high that you are a dripping wreck before you have walked 200 yards.

The locals, in contrast, saunter or cycle by in immaculately dry and ironed shirts, even the cheeky schoolboys who regularly stop to try and beg a dollar.

You quickly learn to walk on the shady side of the street. And you make regular pit-stops at cooler buildings, such as St. John’s Cathedral, at the bottom of Albert Street. The cathedral is made out of curious grey bricks that were, like the city’s foundations, brought here as ship’s ballast.

Painted on a board outside, there is an earnest exhortation in Spanish: “Hoy, no manana” - today, not tomorrow.

The locals do not exactly give the impression of having taken this message to heart.

New money

North of the swing-bridge, past a smart but anonymous shopping centre that is designed to cater for the burgeoning cruise ship trade, there is a part of town more open to sea-breezes.

The huge hotel lobby has 500 slot machines on one side, leading into a casino.

There one can see some of the urban planning that has been taking shape in the authorities’ efforts to give Belize City a new image.

Landfill is enabling them to build a sweeping promenade, and some of the old buildings - battered by the hurricanes that come blowing in from time to time - have been beautifully restored.

Even if many of the local people are unemployed or poor, there is obviously a lot of money around as well.

Outside the Princess Hotel - the city’s finest - 4×4s and top-of-the-range limousines are lined up, while inside, the elite can enjoy the air-conditioned facilities.

Bizarrely, the huge hotel lobby has 500 slot machines on one side, leading into a casino. On the other, there is a cinema showing The Passion of the Christ… four times a day.

Talk about God and Mammon. I watch as a large American lady tourist pauses indecisively as she ponders these two alternatives, then heads off into the bar where they are selling pina coladas, two for the price of one.

On patrol

Back on the street, beaming smiles, tourist police on bicycles stop to wish one good-day.

Still a comparatively recent phenomenon, these police are largely credited with the marked fall in assaults on foreign visitors.

Their eagerness seems designed to extract the confession that one has not been mugged, or even felt remotely threatened.