#LasVidasGarifunaImportan: Garínagu Call for Justice After Kidnapping of Five Leaders

Heavily armed, they arrived in three 4 x 4 vehicles in Triunfo de la Cruz, a fishing town in Honduras. They broke into the homes of five Garífuna men and forced them into the cars at gunpoint. No one has seen Alberth Sneider Centeno, Suami Aparicio Mejía, Junior Rafael Juarez Mejia, Milton Joel Martínez Álvarez, and Gerardo Misael Trochez Calix since that day, Saturday, July 18, 2020. Now, the Afro-Indigenous Garífuna community is calling for action.

While the abductors' identity remains unconfirmed, there's reason to believe its the work of the police. For one, eyewitnesses say the abductors wore police uniforms, according to NACLA. Additionally, the coronavirus made is so that a curfew confined folks to their homes. For Miriam Miranda, a member of Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, only the police had the power to carry out this crime.

Crimes like these aren’t unusual in Honduras or elsewhere in Latin America. For land defenders, Latin America is one of the most dangerous places to exist.

The Garínagu, the plural form of Garífuna, have fought to defend their ancestral land from the foreign megacorporations that want to strip it of its natural resources. Centeno, 27, president of Triunfo de la Cruz community board, for example, pushed against the Honduran government after it failed to obey a 2015 Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos ruling. The court decreed that the government should compensate the Garífuna community for stolen land as well as give them titles to stop future displacement.

The fight for their land is central to their history. The Garínagu, the plural form of Garífuna, are the descendants of an Afro-Indigenous group from Saint Vincent. Exiled by British troops, they wound up in Roatan, Honduras before spreading out across the Caribbean coast of Central America.

Nowadays, the Garínagu face threats from palm oil tycoons, drug traffickers and developers. Their land is important to their survival.

“[We have] very strong roots in fishing,” Miranda told NACLA. “Our region is rich in biodiversity, the ocean. Nature gives us the resources to be able to feed ourselves and survive.”

Since September 2019, five Garífuna leaders have been killed, the latest of whom was Antonio Bernárdez, a 71-year-old from Punta Piedra.

As the Garífuna community continues to point the finger at the police, the government has attempted to link the kidnappings to drug traffickers.

“[The government] is trying to link them to the gangs, to the drug traffickers. The same government, which actually is involved with drug trafficking,” says Carla Garcia, Ofraneh’s international relations coordinator.

Instead of taking the government at their word, they are laser-focused on justice. On social media, Garínagu have used #LasVidasGarifunaImportan to bring attention to the disappearance of the five men, as well as the constant persecution their community faces.