By Wellington C. Ramos
From the time our people were forcefully removed from Baliceaux, St Vincent and the Grenadines, where they were imprisoned, tortured, killed and buried in 1797, to Roatan, Honduras, their lives have never been the same in the countries of Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize and the United States of America, where they live today.
The genocide that was committed by the British against us has never been addressed and forcefully challenged by our government in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This is a challenge not only for the government in Saint Vincent but for all of us as Garinagu people and we must organize ourselves to take on this challenge. Otherwise, months, years and decades will pass and no action will be taken against France and Britain for their genocidal acts.
Due to the fact that they failed to enslave, colonize our nation and subjugate us as slaves, they became hateful towards us. We fought against these two powerful nations and were victorious in some of our wars against them, which led to treaties that were signed.
Afterwards, the British decided to dump us in a far isolated place by the name of Roatan on April 12, 1797, which is now a part of Honduras in the Bay Islands. They collaborated with the Spanish to change our original names and gave us Spanish names, which we bear up to this day. This was done deliberately to change our identities so that we could not trace our families back to our motherland, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Yet, despite this, when I visited Saint Vincent and was moving around in the country, I saw so many people who looked at me and my relatives in Belize and the other countries where we live. What the French and the British failed to realize is that our physical removal from our motherland did not separate us from the souls and spirits of our ancestors who were left behind, travelled with us and remain with us up to this day.
When St Vincent and the Grenadines became independent on 27 October 1979, they had the power to declare that the descendants of those who were removed from St Vincent by the British, who mostly live in the diaspora countries of Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize and the United States, are citizens of our nation and must be recognized as such.
All Garifuna people, from the time they were removed, continue to tell their children that St Vincent is their motherland. It is not too late for the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines to take this necessary and justifiable bold action in their parliament. This will be highly appreciated by their brothers and sisters, who were all left homeless and nationless by the British.
When our people were removed from their homeland, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, their citizenship status in the diaspora countries was not determined. When these countries started to acknowledge us, they treated us like strangers, even though we were born there.
This human rights violation is happening in all the diaspora countries, especially in Honduras, where they continue to kill our people who are advocating for our land and human rights. The government of St Vincent has a legal obligation to its removed citizens but has never condemned the way that its citizens are being treated in Honduras and the other diaspora countries.
This is not the way for a nation to treat their sons and daughters from our soil. The only way for this problem to be resolved is for our brothers and sisters in St Vincent and the Grenadines to apply public pressure on their government to grant us our citizenship rights in our motherland. Visiting St Vincent and the Grenadines is no remedy for the ordeal, pain and suffering we have endured in the countries where we currently reside.
For me, it was seeing many people who looked like me and did not know how we were related to each other. You can visit the cells up the hill where they were imprisoned before they were removed to the isolated island of Baliceaux. Also, I to visit Baliceaux and see some of my ancestors’ human skeletal remains surfacing from their burial ground as if they were animals.
My people at home have lost their history, language and culture, and some of them like some of us believe most of the lies that the British taught us in their schools after they committed genocide against us. Let us all come together as one people to reconnect for justice on behalf of our Garinagu people. We must commit ourselves to making sure that the heinous crimes they committed against us do not go unpunished.
Our people in St Vincent and the Grenadines, along with our people who live in the diaspora, must all come together to seek justice for these gross human rights violations. Included in the resolution must be a proposal to make Baliceaux a Garifuna Memorial Site, with an ongoing cultural exchange program among the Garinagu people from the diaspora countries to meet there annually.
Baliceaux can be constructed to be a place where it can bring residual revenues to the people and nation of Saint Vincent with the following programs Anthropological and Archaeological Research Program, History Research Program, Cultural Exchange Program, Garifuna Language Workshop, Garifuna Arts & Crafts Workshop, Farming Workshop Program, Student Exchange Program, Garifuna Spiritual Reconnecting Healing Program, a Museum, Tourism Program and other programs that will generate revenues for maintenance, management and to sustain the annual cost of the island.
The island will give our people the opportunity to reconnect with themselves and our ancestors’ spirits for healing. I witnessed and felt the spiritual impact our ancestors who were buried there had on me. Proposing to sell this historical site will bring more problems to the people and nation of St. Vincent because our ancestors are unhappy with the way they were treated before and after their deaths.
Some of our people must stop engaging themselves in trivial activities and plan real fundamental and significant activities to tell and live the true story of our resilient Garifuna nation. How much longer must we wait for this injustice to end? We have gone from being independent and resilient, self-sufficient people to a people who are now dependent on some of our governments.
Many of our Garifuna people are hoping for our conditions to improve, while we are being deprived of the opportunities to acquire the necessities of life to survive daily. This unrealistic hope and dream will never materialize. Unless we get a hold of our own destinies and futures and make every one of us independent.
Dependency is a recipe for failure and poverty. While Independence is a plan for success and wealth. I am more than confident that my people, will not continue to endure these pains and sufferings for too long and will take some action to better their future.
