Description:
The Garifuna are a Central American, Afro-Indigenous people descended from shipwrecked West Africans and local Indigenous groups on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. For over two centuries, the Garifuna have experienced oppression, exile, and continued diaspora that has stretched their communities to Honduras, Belize, and beyond. However, little has been written about the experiences of the Garifuna in Nicaragua, a community of about 5,000 who live primarily on the Caribbean coast of the country.
In Surviving the Americas, Serena Cosgrove, José Idiáquez, Leonard Joseph Bent, and Andrew Gorvetzian shed light on what it means to be Garifuna today, particularly in Nicaragua. Their research includes over nine months of fieldwork in Garifuna communities in the Pearl Lagoon on the southern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and in New York City. The resulting ethnography illustrates the unique social issues of the Nicaraguan Garifuna and how their culture, traditions, and reverence for their ancestors continues to persist.
Brief description: José Idiáquez is an Anthropologist, a Jesuit priest, and the President of the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua. His previous books include En Búsqueda de Esperanza: La Migración Ngäbe a Costa Rica y su Impacto en la Juventud (In Search of Hope: Ngäbe Migration to Costa Rica and its Impact on Youth) in 2012 and El Culto a los Ancestros en la Cosmovisión Religiosa de los Garífunas de Nicaragua (The Worship of the Ancestors in the Religious Cosmovision of the Garifuna of Nicaragua) in 1997.
Review Quotes: Ethnographically rich! Surviving the Americas intervenes to decolonize Garifuna ethnography by attending to critical discussions of indigeneity, intersectionality, and resilience.
-- "Keri Vacanti Brondo, Professor of Anthropology, University of Memphis"