When Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, the Papaloteca River delta expanded and swallowed the Garifuna fishing village Nueva Armenia. The community is surrounded by Mestizo settlements whose inhabitants the Garifuna call “Ladinos.” Residents of Nueva Armenia subsist on fishing and agriculture, trades made increasingly difficult due to global climate change.
In 1998 Hurricane Mitch changed the lay of the land in Nueva Armenia as tributaries of the Papaloteca River sliced through parts of the communities. Every winter the community continues to reel from the disaster as flooding threatens to swallow homes.
Santos Yanes oversees harvests on an African palm plantation. He dislikes his job — not because of the physical strain, but because he is keenly aware that palm crops leave the land infertile. “I have a family to feed,” he says. “I lost everything in last year’s hurricanes, so I have no choice but to serve the plantation owners. I have to take care of my children.”
Like most Garifuna men, Jesús Flores, 63, has spent his whole life fishing and diving for lobsters. Twenty-one years ago, on January 27, 2001, as he was fishing near the Cayos Cochinos, a boat of three soldiers drew near. Without asking questions, they shot him in the arm. “I still remember the sound of the bullet striking the wood of my canoe. Then I felt heat and saw blood spilling out,” he says, his eyes glossing over. His fingers never worked again, and those responsible for the attack were never arrested.
Luis Martínez, 19, was deported three times while migrating to the United States. He works as a divers’ assistant, waiting for hours in the solitude of the ocean until his companions surface. Sometimes he naps underneath the midday sun. At first he vomited constantly as he struggled to find his sea legs. “Last time they deported me I was in Monterrey, but for people like me it’s impossible to fly under the radar in other countries,” he says. “I don’t like my job, but I have no other choice.”
Teófilo Alexis Martínez Arzú, 36, goes by Lala. He started fishing when he was 12 and diving at 27. His eyes gloss over and his countenance changes as he recalls multiple encounters with the Coast Guard who, in keeping with the Honduran Coral Reef Foundation, prohibits the Garifuna from fishing, a centuries-old ancestral practice. Once he was jailed in La Ceiba for fishing near the cays. On another occasion, he saw guardsmen interrupt a break from work on Cayo Culebra and beat his companions.
Clenny David, 34, wades through swampland in a patch of Garifuna ancestral land called Africa, where men and women from Nueva Armenia gather wood from fallen trees to build ancestral health clinics. Soaked in the humid heat, the men chop wood while the women carry it to rafts to be transported to the community.
Divers scour the nine miles of ocean separating Cayo Chachahuate from the mainland village Nueva Armenia for lobsters, a key economic boon for local Garifuna communities. They often work at night, when the crustaceans are most active and they can avoid the Coast Guard. The cays also offer refuge for fishermen when storms roll in. Cayo Bolaño is the most popular spot for resting and taking shelter, but harassment from the military often prevents fishermen from landing there.
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Public Project
The Fishermen Who Defend the Land
Copyright
Carlos Barrera
2024
Updated Jun 2024
The Garifuna nation encompasses 65 communities spanning the Caribbean coasts of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Fifty-two of them live in Honduras, subsisting mostly on small-scale fishing and the harvesting of plantains and coconuts. Among them is the village Nueva Armenia, 25 miles east of La Ceiba, the capital of the department of Atlántida.These communities ardently defend the land and the sea, a primary source of sustenance. In 2003 they went to international court to denounce the plundering of land by the Honduran state and private companies looking to build tourism hubs or plant African palm.The fishing village Nueva Armenia encapsulates the problems facing the Garifuna nation in Honduras. The community is surrounded by palm plantations, the delta of the Papaloteca River, and the crystal-clear Caribbean Sea. Established in the municipality of Jutiapa since 1900, it inherited its name from the colonial settlement Armenia. Local elders say the community was displaced to the river delta when the Standard Fruit Company seized Garifuna ancestral land.Ancestral Garifuna territory in Nueva Armenia spans 4,000 acres, now mostly in the hands of palm plantation owners and foreigners, according to the local Land Defense Committee. The theft of the land has devastated the community, compounded by mining, unemployment, and authorities’ prohibition of fishing near the archipelago Cayos Cochinos, under the argument of environmental conservation. Leaders of the centuries-old community face persecution and harassment for defending what has been theirs for generations: the land.
