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

Representations of Utopian Urbanism and the Feminist Geopolitics of ‘New City’ Development

Increasingly over the past few years the building of new cities “from scratch” has become a key strategy to promote development across much of the Global South. While several projects are currently under construction, many others exist primarily as proposals awaiting adequate investment or government action. This paper builds on previous literature that considers representations of such projects – promotional materials, digitally-produced video simulations, and master plans – as key components in the production of imagined urban futures. Through an exploration of the proposed Zone for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDE) in Honduras, this article demonstrates a feminist geopolitical approach focused on how such representations of utopian urbanism circulate through the local communities slated for new city development. I examine how representations of future urban spaces and future urban governance regimes become appropriated by local residents in organizing opposition or otherwise making sense of the proposed project’s potential impact on their lives.12 month embargo; published online: 30 Dec 2018This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

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

Garifuna Land Rights and Ecotourism as Economic Development in Honduras’ Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area

Ecotourism has been embraced by a number of developing nations hoping to improve their economies in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible. The Afroindigenous Garifuna population located in the Cayos Cochinos, a Marine Protected Area (MPA), is undergoing a livelihood transition from fishing to ecotourism. This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted with Operation Wallacea (Opwall), a private scientific research expedition organization, to begin to explore the potential barriers to the promotion of ecotourism as an alternative livelihood strategy. The historical struggle for territorial control in the region is presented as having created distrust between the Garifuna communities reliant on MPA resources and the organizations working to conserve those resources. Funding priorities of conservation organizations working within the area are considered, and the impact of the relationship between the NGO that manages the local resources and its major funding source has on the ability of the Garifuna to control and manage their traditional resources is explored. Finally, Garifuna mobilization to regain control over local resources and economic development is discussed

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

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

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