Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson.
Photograph courtesy Workplace of Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson
The Board of Administrators of the Bronx-based Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc., introduced on Sunday that Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson will host the 16thAnnual Garifuna Heritage Month Celebration on Thursday, March 7 on the Bronx County Borough Corridor.
José Francisco Ávila – a Garifuna/Afro-Latino creator, self-publisher, distinguished Garifuna/Afro-Latino social justice activist and chairman of the Board of the Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc. – instructed Caribbean Life that the occasion will happen within the Rotunda, 851 Grand concourse, The Bronx, beginning at 5:30 p.m.
Ávila – who was born in Honduras, raised in Boston, and is managing associate of Garifuna Afro-Latino Leisure LLC – mentioned Garifuna Heritage Month celebrates “Garifuna heritage, tradition and contributions to the event of society.”
He mentioned that every yr since 2008, the Garifuna in New York observe Mar. 11 to April 12 as Garifuna Heritage Month “in observance of the 227th Anniversary of the Forcible Displacement of the Garifuna Individuals by the British from their Ancestral Homeland St. Vincent ‘Yurumein’ (presently often called St. Vincent and the Grenadines) to Central America in 1797.”
Ávila mentioned New York Metropolis is house to the most important Garifuna inhabitants exterior of Central America, with an estimated inhabitants of 250,000, with over half the inhabitants calling the Bronx house, “which makes it the most important Garifuna group exterior of Central America.”
“Though the Garifuna have been migrating right here looking for a greater life because the Nineteen Thirties, the group was nearly obscured till the Pleased Land Social Membership hearth (within the Bronx) on Mar. 25, 1990,” he mentioned. “A lot of the victims had been Garifunas.
“Because of the assist of elected officers, together with then-Council Member Vanessa L. Gibson, who, in 2014, introduced the primary annual proclamation on the New York Metropolis Council, declaring Mar. 11 – April 12 as Garifuna-American Heritage Month, in New York Metropolis, New Yorkers can acquire a higher appreciation of Garifuna historical past, heritage, tradition and traditions, and of the position Garifunas have performed, and can proceed to play, in New York’s society,” Ávila added.
He mentioned Garifuna Heritage Month additionally pays tribute to the “widespread tradition and bonds of friendship that unite america and the nations of the Garifuna Diaspora (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”
