The sixteenth Annual Garifuna Heritage Month Celebration will be held on March 7 in the Bronx County Borough Hall, according to a statement released by the Board of Directors of the Bronx-based Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc. Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson will play host.
The event is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Rotunda, 851 Grand Concourse, The Bronx, according to José Francisco Ávila, a well-known Garifuna/Afro-Latino novelist, self-publisher, and chief executive officer of the Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc.
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Being a managing partner of Garifuna Afro-Latino Entertainment LLC, Ávila was reared in Boston after being born in Honduras. She stated that Garifuna Heritage Month honors “Garifuna heritage, culture, and contributions to the development of society.”
He noted that since 2008, March 11–April 12 has been recognized as Garifuna Heritage Month by the Garifuna community in New York, “in observance of the 227th Anniversary of the Forcible Displacement of the Garifuna People by the British from their Ancestral Homeland St. Vincent ‘Yurumein’ (presently known as St. Vincent and the Grenadines) to Central America in 1797.”
Ávila stated that an estimated 250,000 Garifuna people are living in New York City, and more than half of them reside in the Bronx. This is the greatest Garifuna population outside of Central America, “which makes it the largest Garifuna community outside of Central America.”
“Although the Garifuna have been migrating here in search of a better life since the 1930s, the community was virtually obscured until the Happy Land Social Club fire (in the Bronx) on Mar. 25, 1990,” he noted. “Most of the victims were Garifunas.
“Thanks to the support of elected officials, including then-Council Member Vanessa L. Gibson, who, in 2014, presented the first annual proclamation at the New York City Council, declaring Mar. 11 – April 12 as Garifuna-American Heritage Month, in New York City, New Yorkers can gain a greater appreciation of Garifuna history, heritage, culture and traditions, and of the role Garifunas have played, and will continue to play, in New York’s society,” Ávila remarked.
According to him, Garifuna Heritage Month honors the “common culture and bonds of friendship that unite the United States and the countries of the Garifuna Diaspora (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”
