AMI has had a partner relationship with OFRANEH for nearly two decades.  OFRANEH leader Gregoria Flores visited the U.S. and AMI and CWS/ NCC years ago to educate and advocate against the selling off of coastal lands in Honduras to private tourism interests, based on upholding the Honduran Constitution that prohibited the sale of coastal lands to foreign entities. 

Over the years the accompaniment between AMI and OFRANEH has taken different forms, with AMI at least once providing modest help for the women´s cassava bread processing projects.  More often the accompaniment of AMI has responded to the urgent needs of Garifuna communities for solidarity when they are confronting land invasions, governmental or paramilitary repression, assassination, or wrongful imprisonment of land rights activists.

OFRANEH´s top leaders, typically women like Gregoria or Miriam Miranda but also including men, have a keen analysis and historical perspective on their struggles to maintain control of their lands and resources, settled more than 200 years ago in many coastal settlements along the northern coast of Honduras.  Garifuna peoples in Honduras also maintain relationships with Garifunas in Belize and also those in Nicaragua. 

On network visits with OFRANEH to Garifuna communities such as Vallecito, Punta Piedra, Triunfo de la Cruz, and other settlements only accessible by motored skiffs, it became evident to me that the Garifuna people have a close knit society with great cultural integrity from both the African and the indigenous Carib ancestors.  Their thatch-dwelling coastal villages, the division of labor along gender lines, the subsistence agriculture performed by women and now some men as well, the fishing performed by the men, and the organized power of the women and men of these communities makes for an abundant and rich community life.  The lands inhabited by Garifunas for the last 200 plus years are fertile, forested and rich in water and agricultural resources.  Their coastal waters continue to provide for their sustenance, despite the invasion of industrial fishing fleets.  The combination of plentiful fish, coconuts (threatened and decimated recently by lethal yellowing disease) and root crop and banana agriculture provide for the hearty health of these strong people.  But the excellent conservation that these peoples have maintained on their lands is now the source of conflict, as non-Garifuna, and non-indigenous peoples encroach on their lands in search of good land for agriculture, timber to extract, and now underground and undersea minerals such as oil to plunder for profit.  The land struggles and encroachments have become chronic and endemic as the legal systems are weighted against rural communities in favor of those with influence and connections in government and business.   Today the struggles are against new attempts spearheaded by the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) to privatize and break up their lands by making land titles individual (thus saleable) rather than collective.  The Garifuna peoples and leaders of OFRANEH also struggle to preserve the basis of sustainable agriculture and native seeds, including the traditional forms of processing cassava into bread performed by women’s collectives, all of this subsistence agriculture threatened by both the monoculture of African Palms in some areas, and of new laws and invasions by corporations such as Monsanto to patent and replace native seeds with hybrid or worse, genetically modified seeds.  OFRANEH is not to be fooled or trifled with in these attempts.  Together with their allies, OFRANEH continues to fight a frontal battle against these real threats to their cultural integrity and their economic future as autonomous communities. 

Thus the Garifuna peoples OFRANEH advocates for are in a constant state of struggle, and the state and business interests attempt many stratagems to divide the people and buy good will among some, to sow the seeds of disunity.  OFRANEH works in coalition with other indigenous rights, and sustainable development organizations and rural community organizations, those on the forefront for land rights, indigenous autonomy and economic justice.  As people of strong African and indigenous ancestry they suffer the profound racism of Honduran mestizo society.  But they struggle with remarkable intelligence and courage, against long odds, and AMI is proud to be associated with them and their just struggles.     Back to top 

                                                                      211 years for Garifunas in Honduras