The Garifuna people are an Afro-latino people with a very interesting history.

The Garifuna people were brought by the Portuguese in the 1500s to the New world. The story goes that they had agreed to work on sugar plantations but unbeknownst to them, the Portuguese intended to sell them into slavery. When they found out about the plan there was a mutiny aboard the ship and a consequent shipwreck.

They eventually ended up on the small Carribean island of St.Vincent where they lived for 200 years. The Garifuna people have the distinction of being the only Afro-Americans who were never enslaved. They maintain their own culture, language, music, etc. In the 1700s, Europeans tried to enslave them and they fought back for 32 years. Finally in 1792, the Garifuna people left St. Vincent for the northern coast of Honduras.

Today, more than 500,000 Garifuna live in Central America, mostly in Honduras, but they can also be found in Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.



More pictures at this site