Land Grab: Green Neoliberalism, Gender, and Garifuna Resistance in Honduras

6. Roots, Rights, and Belonging in Sambo Creek

115 six Roots, Rights, and Belonging in Sambo Creek Identity formation involves the creation of subjects through discourse. Discourse refers to the practices that create the conceptual frameworks that inform people’s thoughts, words, and actions. The production of discourse happens through systems of control and rules of exclusion and inclusion (Foucault 1973). Chapter 1 revealed how coastal and foreign elites had historically excluded the Garifuna from a “native status” through particular nation-building discourses. Yet within the last two decades, the Garifuna successfully created and deployed a new subject identity as indigenous peoples . Riding home from an interview with a leading member of OFRANEH in 2002, my friend Zita, who had asked to accompany me to the interview, thanked me for bringing her along, reflecting, “Ella es tan inteligente. Aprend í bastante de ella” (She is so intelligent; I learned so much from her). “Really? That’s great,” I said. “What did you learn?” “Que somos indígenas. Yo nunca lo habría dicho antes, pero ahora tengo sentido” (That we are indigenous. I never would have said it before, but now it makes sense). And in that moment I saw the making of indigeneity. Zita would bring back her newfound identity and share it with her fellow Sambeños. Having just recently rotated onto the patronato, she was also now well positioned to raise consciousness within the community over their shared history and identity, and its connections to local resources. But while Zita may become involved in indigeneity making, other Sambeños are drawn into their own identity projects to undermine Garifuna rights and maintain an ethnic hierarchy where Indo-Hispanics maintain power and control over local resources. In 2002, at the height of Sambo Creek’s land occupations, I visited with a friend of the Castillo family. Maria, a well-to-do mestiza, had interacted 116 • Land Grab with OFRANEH activists in the past. Responding to Sambeños’ claim that significant portions of their historical territory had been usurped by more powerful interest groups, Maria exploded. They say this is their ancestral land?! This is not their ancestral land—their ancestors are from Africa! If they want to recuperate land, go to Africa! This country’s ancestors are indios, not Africans! The only people with any right to land here are indios. That woman I spoke to at OFRANEH, she said they are indigenous; that they are fighting for their ancestors’ lands. But she had the hair and dress of an African! . . . What are they thinking —dressed as Africans and saying this is their land? And Vincente—he has long, dreadlocked hair, and green eyes—the indios here don’t have green eyes! I don’t have green eyes—look! [widening her eyes] I was intrigued by her use of the label “indio,” often applied colloquially to, and sometimes among, mestizos of lower status, but I had yet to hear a mestiza woman of status self-identify as indio. I interrupted her to clarify: “Are you using the word indio like I do mestizo or ladino?” “Yes, mestizo. We are mestizo—pure Indians don’t exist anymore. We have mixed; first with the Spanish and then with other races. But we are the ones with rights, those with my skin [showing me her arm], not moreno skin. We are [the ones] with ancestors here, not the Garifuna. Their ancestors are in Africa. I have a right to this land!” Maria’s reaction to Garifuna indigeneity and territorial rights points toward the ways in which notions of race, culture, history, and “roots” are caught up in claims to local resources within Sambo Creek. As we saw in the past chapters, the recasting of the Garifuna from Negro, Afro-Honduran, or autochthonous—all past identities ascribed to and/or assumed by the Garifuna (Euraque 1998, 2003)—to indigenous (Anderson 2007, 2009; Brondo 2006, 2010) has given Garifuna communities international avenues of recourse for asserting their cultural rights. Yet the successful production of Garifuna indigeneity has also set in motion new expressions of localized racism and questions about which “types” of Hondurans have the right to coastal territory under a growing tourism economy. Place-Making in Sambo Creek: Race, Class, and Indigeneity A countereffect of the land reclamation process in Sambo Creek has been heightened local racism as historical power holders work to maintain their Roots, Rights, and Belonging in Sambo Creek • 117 positions within the class and ethnic...