Preservation Strategies of the Garifuna Language in the Context of Global Economy in the Village of Corozal in Honduras
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PRESERVATION STRATEGIES OF THE GARIFUNA LANGUAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL ECONOMY IN THE VILLAGE OF COROZAL IN HONDURAS By SANTIAGO JAIME RUIZ ALVAREZ A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2008 1 © 2008 Santiago Jaime Ruiz Alvarez 2 To my Daughter Naruni N. Ruiz Green, as well as to the great Garifuna leader Lombardo Lacayo and the Garifuna people worldwide 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the helping hand of many great people and institutions, whose names I won’t be able to mention all in this page. Nonetheless, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Allan F. Burns, my main advisor, and to Maria Coady, Peter Collings, and Richard Stepp, members of my supervisory committee, for their valuable support and guidance. My gratitude also goes to the people of Corozal, for their support, time, and knowledge, particularly the youth leaders and school teachers who voluntarily joined the research team in every stage of the fieldwork. My appreciation goes to Abel Green and Milton Thomas, my dissertation research team leaders, for their quality and hard work, intelligence, and commitment. My gratitude goes to the staff of the Anthropology Department, for their patience and constant support, especially to Salena Robinson and Rhonda Riley. My gratitude also goes to Debra Anderson and the rest of the team at the UF International Center. My appreciation goes to my friend Dr. Antonio de la Peña, for his help giving me strategies especially in these closing days of great stress, as well as to my friend Miguel Centeno for generously sharing his expertise in software and his daily phone calls to verify that I was taking enough water daily. I sincerely thank all those institutions, programs, and individuals who made financially viable the completion of this dissertation, among them: the Latin American Scholarships, Tinker Field Research Grant, Polly and Paul Doughty Research Award, Curtis Wilgus Fellowship, and Tropical Conservation and Development Field Research Grant. Also thanks to Shelton Davis and Joel Reyes for the internships and professional experience at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. My gratitude goes to the “Programa de Educación Intercultural Multilingüe de Centroamérica (PROEIMCA)-Componente Honduras” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Finland, for providing almost fifty percent of the necessary funds to allow me to work full-time in the writing process this year. My gratitude also goes to my friend Nick Faraclas 4 for his insights and contributions to this dissertation. My sincere appreciation and gratitude goes to my friend Fr. John Gillespie and the staff of the Saint Augustine Catholic Parish for generously providing me with room and board during my years of coursework. My profound gratitude to the Burns’ family and Mesones’ family, and Nakamatsu family, for making me feel like a member of their great families during all these years in Gainesville. Last but not the least, to my spouse Sandra for her invaluable analytical imput and enormous leadership in the organization and coordination of my research teams, and for her great patience and understanding during these years of absence and distance from home, without her and my daughter Naruni’s understanding and support, the completion of this dissertation would not have been possible. Thank you all as well as those other many supporters whose names I have not mentioned here! 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................9 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................10 ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................14 Introduction .............................................................................................................................14 Research Working Questions .................................................................................................14 Importance of Study ...............................................................................................................15 Why Is the Preservation of Garifuna Language and Culture Important? ...............................17 Interculturality ........................................................................................................................24 2 AFRO-DESCENDANT PEOPLES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST: THE FIELD SETTING AND RESEARCH STRATEGIES .......................................................................27 Historical Context of the Garifuna People: From the Caribbean to Central America ............27 Afro-Indigenous Roots of the Garifuna People and the St. Vincent Period ....................27 Successful Struggle against Colonialists .........................................................................28 First Attempt of Garifuna Exile: From the King of England ..........................................29 The Golden Decade of the Garifuna People ....................................................................30 Death of the Chatuyer and the Garifuna Exile ................................................................31 Exile from St. Vincent to Balliceaux ...............................................................................31 Exile to the Island of Roatan in Honduras .......................................................................33 Circum-Caribbean Basin: Afro-Descendent Peoples and Their Territory .............................34 Demographic Profile .......................................................................................................34 Estimates on the Garifuna Population .............................................................................35 Bay Islands’ English-Speaking African Descendents .....................................................37 Mosquitia Geography and Demographics .......................................................................37 Afro-Descendents of Belize: Demographics and Geography .........................................38 Characterization of Research Site ...........................................................................................39 Geography .......................................................................................................................39 History .............................................................................................................................40 Sociolinguistic Characteristics ........................................................................................42 Importance of Corozal as Research Site: In Summary ....................................................43 6 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...........................................................................................50 Introduction .............................................................................................................................50 Native Researcher ...................................................................................................................51 Stakeholders ............................................................................................................................55 Research Design .....................................................................................................................55 Descriptive Analysis of the Implementation Process of the Research Methodologies ..........56 First Field Visit: Summer 2001 ..............................................................................................57 Second Field Visit: Summer 2002 ..........................................................................................64 Third Field Visit: Winter 2004 and Spring 2005 ....................................................................70 4 LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................................78 Introduction .............................................................................................................................78 Western Social Science and its Adequacy for the Study of Sociocultural Events in Garifuna Settings .................................................................................................................81 Multidirectional Horizontal and Diagonal Garifuna Language Transmission in Corozal......93 Youth Motivation as Key Factor .....................................................................................94 Issues of Unequal Power Relations .................................................................................95 Youths and Other Key Actors in Language Preservation in Indigenous Contexts .........96 Garifuna and Indigenous Resistance Approach versus Colonized Society’s Pessimism .......98 Fishman Critiques His Own Work in the Context of Social Science ..............................99 Western Community and Nuclear Family versus Garifuna Community and Extended Family Structure ........................................................................................101