Land Loss and Garifuna Women’s Activism on Honduras’ North Coast

This paper reports on the gendered impacts of Honduras’ neoliberal agrarian legislation within the context of tourism development. It draws on ethnographic research with the Afro-indigenous Garifuna to demonstrate how women have been most affected by land privatization on the north coast of Honduras. Garifuna communities are matrifocal and land had historically been passed through matrilineal lines. As the coastal land market expands, Garifuna women have lost their territorial control. The paper also treats Garifuna women’s activism as they resist coastal development strategies and shifts in landholding. While women have been key figures in the Garifuna movement to title and reclaim lost ancestral land, the movement as a whole has yet to make explicit the gendered dimensions of the land struggle. The neglect may be attributed to the activists’ adoption of an indigenous rights discourse

La pérdida de la tierra y el activismo de las mujeres garífunas en la costa norte de Honduras

El presente artículo fue publicado originalmente en inglés en el Vol. 9 # 1 de noviembre de 2007. Se volvió a imprimir en español como respuesta a la solicitud que me hizo la Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), cuyos integrantes desean incluirlo en la petición que hacen a la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) respecto a su lucha por recuperar su territorio ancestral. El artículo trata sobre los impactos de género que tiene la legislación agrarian neoliberal de Honduras dentro del contexto del desarrollo turístico. En el artículo se recurre a la investigación etnográfica con la población afro-indígena garífuna, para demostrar cómo las mujeres han sido las más afectadas por la privatización de la tierra en la costa norte de Honduras. Las comunidades garífunas son matrifocales e históricamente la tierra ha pasado de generación en generación por línea materna. A medida que aumenta el mercado para los terrenos de la zona costera, la mujer garífuna ha perdido su control territorial. Este artículo, también trata sobre el activismo de las mujeres garífunas en su resistencia contra las estrategias para el desarrollo de la zona costera y los cambios de propietarios de la tierra. Mientras las mujeres han sido la figura principal en el movimiento garífuna para la titulación y reclamación de las tierras ancestrales perdidas, el movimiento, como un todo, todavía tiene que hacer explícitas las dimensiones de género en la lucha por la tierra. Esta negligencia puede atribuirse a la adopción que los activistas han hecho del discurso de los derechos de los indígenas

Entanglements in multispecies voluntourism: conservation and Utila\u27s affect economy

Through a case study of conservation voluntourism this article brings together critical political ecology, multispecies ethnography, and studies of humanitarian tourism to advance a political ecology of multispecies conservation voluntourism. The article presents multispecies conservation voluntourism as a field that produces and is produced by an “affect economy”, or an economy based on the exchange or trade in the relational. Since the mid-1990s, life on Utila, Honduras, a popular discount backpacker scuba destination located along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, has been deeply transformed by the growth of dive tourism, the ecological destruction it has produced, and now the conservation voluntourism industry emerging in its wake. Seventy percent of Utila is comprised of mangroves and associated wetlands, home to several endangered and endemic species. Using examples of whale shark tourism, lionfish hunts, and iguana tracking, this article shows how conservation organizations operate as affect generators, enabling the privilege of engaging in multispecies encounters. Engaging in multispecies conservation voluntourism produces value in the form of cultural capital which is then exchanged for material outcomes by volunteers in the global economy; at the same time, this form of voluntourism obscures local relationships to nature and alters multispecies assemblages from past configurations

Land loss and Garifuna women\u27s activism on Honduras\u27 north coast

This paper reports on the gendered impacts of Honduras\u27 neoliberal agrarian legislation within the context of tourism development. It draws on ethnographic research with the Afro-indigenous Garifuna, to demonstrate how women have been most affected by land privatization on the north coast of Honduras. Garifuna communities are matrifocal and land had historically been passed through matrilineal lines. As the coastal land market expands, Garifuna women have lost their territorial control. The paper also treats Garifuna women\u27s activism as they resist coastal development strategies and shifts in landholding. While women have been key figures in the Garifuna movement to title and reclaim lost ancestral land, the movement as a whole has yet to make explicit the gendered dimensions of the land struggle. The neglect may be attributed to the activists\u27 adoption of an indigenous rights discourse

Practicing anthropology in a time of crisis: 2009 year in review

The breadth and reach of practicing anthropologists in 2009 suggests that anthropology has entered a new phase of advanced engagement at local, national, and international levels. In this article, I review thematic areas in which practicing anthropologists made significant contributions in 2009, including fiscal crisis and business anthropology; U.S. race relations, civil rights, and policy reforms; human rights, environmental change, and displacement; global health and human rights; and war and peace. New areas of expansion are also discussed in the arenas of public archaeology, museums and heritage, and engaged scholarship. Innovations in anthropological research and communicating ethnographic findings with the broader public are reviewed. ©2010 by the American Anthropological Association

“A Dot on a Map”: Cartographies of Erasure in Garifuna Territory

This article explores the complexities of territorial dispossession in a post-Washington-Consensus global development policy context. In particular, it explores a contemporary development paradox in Honduras: the transnational recognition of the rights of indigenous people alongside massive land dispossession of the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna in the name of development. Cartography is considered both in terms of physical mapping projects and ideological boundary-making through rhetorical dispossession. In state-sponsored communal mapping projects from the late 1990s into the early 2000s, the Garifuna were denied both currently inhabited land and that which they historically accessed. Anything that sat beyond mapped borders became “open” to foreign purchase. Legislation passed after the 2009 coup d’état further erased the Garifuna\u27s historical occupation of coastal lands by embracing model city” development and megatourism. Despite post–Washington Consensus development discourses of equality and official rhetoric of inclusion and celebration of indigenous rights, this case study demonstrates cartographic processes continue to erase Garifuna historical rights to territory

The spectacle of saving: conservation voluntourism and the new neoliberal economy on Utila, Honduras

Drawing on ethnographic research on Utila, Honduras, this paper suggests that conservation volunteerism suffers from “fictitious conservation”, surrounded by “spectacle”. The “spectacle of saving” associated with the promotion of conservation voluntourism advances the creation of new neoliberal citizens while further concealing the micropolitics of commodified nature. Volunteer conservation tourism creates value in the trade of experiences in or with “nature” while detracting from the labour and value produced through grounded local interactions with natural resources. While voluntourists are busy “saving” endangered species, they are also collecting the entrepreneurial skills and competencies to be successful as the new neoliberal economy. Thus, as a site of fictitious conservation under neoliberalism, conservation voluntourism advances the creation of new neoliberal citizens while justifying its own existence by furthering ecological devastation, obscuring uneven development processes and devaluing local labour and relationships to natural resources. The paper closes with a proposal to reconfigure volunteer arrangements to move nature-based voluntourism towards a rights-based conservation approach through three strategies: (1) collaborative programme design by embracing “friction”, (2) expanded understanding of local impacts, and (3) redesigning volunteer activities to embed a social justice pedagogy using the steps of transformative learning

Land loss and Garifuna women\u27s activism on Honduras\u27 north coast

This paper reports on the gendered impacts of Honduras\u27 neoliberal agrarian legislation within the context of tourism development. It draws on ethnographic research with the Afro-indigenous Garifuna, to demonstrate how women have been most affected by land privatization on the north coast of Honduras. Garifuna communities are matrifocal and land had historically been passed through matrilineal lines. As the coastal land market expands, Garifuna women have lost their territorial control. The paper also treats Garifuna women\u27s activism as they resist coastal development strategies and shifts in landholding. While women have been key figures in the Garifuna movement to title and reclaim lost ancestral land, the movement as a whole has yet to make explicit the gendered dimensions of the land struggle. The neglect may be attributed to the activists\u27 adoption of an indigenous rights discourse

When mestizo becomes (like) indio ... or is it garífuna?: Multicultural rights and making place on honduras\u27 North Coast

This article explores the relationship between power, resource control, and identity construction within the context of Garífuna efforts to reclaim ancestral territory on the north coast of Honduras. The articulation of Garífuna indigeneity has enabled the Garífuna a means through which to assert their right to self-determination, access and control over prime resources within a growing tourism economy where land is highly desirable. The focus of this article is on the responses of ordinary members of the dominant majority population (mestizos) to the emergence of multicultural rights, as they attempt to make place and demonstrate their right to resources within a Garifuna community. © 2010 by the American Anthropological Association

Land grab: Green neoliberalism, gender, and garifuna resistance in Honduras

Land Grab is a rich ethnographic account of the relationship between identity politics, neoliberal development policy, and rights to resource management in Garifuna communities on the north coast of Honduras, before and after the 2009 coup d\u27état. The Garifuna are a people of African and Amerindian descent who were exiled to Honduras from the British colony of St. Vincent in 1797 and have long suffered from racial and cultural marginalization. Employing approaches from feminist political ecology, critical race studies, and ethnic studies,Keri Vacanti Brondo illuminates three contemporary development paradoxes in Honduras: the recognition of the rights of indigenous people at the same time as Garifuna are being displaced in the name of development; the privileging of foreign research tourists in projects that promote ecotourism but result in restricting Garifuna from traditional livelihoods; and the contradictions in Garifuna land-rights claims based on native status when mestizos are reserving rights to resources as natives themselves. Brondo\u27s book asks a larger question: can freedom, understood as well-being, be achieved under the structures of neoliberalism? Grounding this question in the context of Garifuna relationships to territorial control and self-determination, the author explores the reregulation of Garifuna land; neoliberal conservation strategies like ecotourism, research tourism, and voluntourism; the significant issue of who controls access to property and natural resources; and the rights of women, who have been harshly impacted by development. In her conclusion, Brondo points to hopeful signs in the emergence of transnational indigenous, environmental, and feminist organizations