BLACK INDIANS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

The experiences of Black Indians south of the United States has been rather different, for both economic and geographic reasons. In Dutch Guiana, which the Dutch received as a colony from England in 1667 in exchange for Manhattan Island, the original inhabitants were Arawak and Carib Indians. The Dutch imported West African slaves for agriculture and treated them very brutally, perhaps not understanding that the slaves understood quite well how to live in the tropical forest and could escape and live successfully in the interior, which was not occupied by the colonists. Hundreds of slaves escaped in the first few decades of slavery and intermarried with the two tribes of Indians. Over the next three centuries, Indians and Africans created a mosaic of hybrid societies in the interior, which evolved through time to become the Djuka, Saramaccaner, Matuwari, Paramaccaner, and Quinti tribes, with a present population of about 30,000 persons. Collectively, they became known as “Bush Negroes.”

From the first, the Bush Negroes aggressively attacked the Dutch plantations, raiding them for goods and to free other slaves, so that a “no man’s land” was created between what is now known as the district of Sipaliwini, in the interior, and the coastal area that the Dutch were developing for agriculture and mineral extraction. Dutch Guiana was renamed Suriname when it became self-governing in 1954, and political tensions became exacerbated among all the ethnic groups, resulting in an outright Bush Negro insurgency in 1986. The revolt, which became known as the “Maroon Insurgency,” was led by a former soldier named Ronnie Brunswijk, who began attacking economic targets in the interior. The army retaliated brutally, forcing many Bush Negroes to flee to neighboring French Guiana. A peace treaty, called the Kourou Accord, was negotiated in 1989, but it was not implemented. The political situation has remained tense and complex since then, but the Bush Negroes have emerged as a significant and independent political force in the national arena.

The Black Indians called Garifuna have a past that may be, in part, mythological, beginning with a pre-Columbian incident in which the Arawaks of St. Vincent Island were attacked by Kalipuna from mainland South America, who killed the Arawak men and married their women. A more reliable story concerns the arrival of Africans aboard two Spanish ships carrying slaves for the Americas in 1675, which were wrecked on the same island. The Spanish-Kalipuna-Arawak-Nigerian admixture is supposed to be the origin of the Garifuna, or Black Caribs.

More historical documents come into play with the struggle between British and French forces for control of the island. The British won in 1763 and promptly expelled the Garifuna, killing many of them out of fear that a population of free blacks would be troublesome on an island where they wanted to establish slave plantations. The expelled Garifuna were then settled around the Caribbean in appropriate places, providing the seeds for a pan-Caribbean population that now numbers about 200,000 people. The Spanish helped in the dispersion of Black Caribs, transporting them to Spanish colonies to become independent farmers, craftsmen, and even soldiers. Because of their presence in the Spanish army, the Black Caribs were made to feel unwelcome when the former Spanish colonies became independent in the nineteenth century. Consequently, many Black Caribs migrated to Belize, then under British control and called British Honduras. The date of their arrival, November 19, 1832, is referred to as Garifuna Settlement Day among Garifuna communities, and it has become a major holiday.

Because of their participation in maritime trade, the Garifuna have established colonies in major cities around the world, especially New Orleans, Los Angeles, and New York City. Present population estimates for nearly 200,000 people from various sources are as follows: Honduras, 120,000; Belize, 17,000; Guatemala, 3,000; New York City, 30,000; Los Angeles, 25,000; and New Orleans, 4,000.

The historical experience of the Garifunas has been quite different from that of other Black Indians. Instead of being forced to defend their territories from an encroaching colonial frontier, they found themselves transported around the Caribbean by various colonial powers for political and economic purposes. Spread among many countries, they have not constituted a unified political threat to established governments. But their proficiencies in the arts and crafts are widely celebrated, and they are currently the focus of efforts to increase tourism in the countries where they live. The experiences of other groups of Maroons around the Caribbean are included in the collection Maroon Societies , edited by Richard Price and originally published in 1973.