Monday, July 29, 2002 Online Edition 28

Networking for the good of the community

The donated van is clearly marked to make is mission known
to all. 

By ELIZABETH NUTTER-
VALLADARES
Special to Honduras This Week

One of the definitions for the word “network” is “a group of cooperating people”. In December 2001 a group of cooperating people were brought together by Dr. Luis Castro to meet with Mary Dean, a frequent visitor from Austin, Texas, to discuss possible interest in obtaining a van equipped for providing dental services. Ms. Dean knew that such a van existed. Dr. Castro had mentioned in a private discussion with Ms. Dean that local dentists were short of supplies and lacked adequate equipment for serving outlying areas and schools. 

The group that Dr. Castro called together included the area’s four dentists, Dr. Francisco Cueva, Dr. Hilda Santos, Dr. Jakny Emilio Molina and Dr. Max Aguirre. Representing the Municipality of Copan Ruinas was Maria Eugenia Aviles whose husband Mauricio Arias, was the incoming mayor. Representing Santa Rita de Copan was Ms. Erika Bueso; president of the Lion’s Club and completing the group along with Dr. Castro and Mrs. Dean was Liz Nutter-Valladares. The result of the meeting was that these professionals would finalize a commitment to try to bring the dental van to Copan Ruinas. Mrs. Dean, a retired executive director of an Austin medical facility who provided medical services through volunteer doctors and nurses to the less fortunate, agreed to writing the proposal to get the prospective van donated. The group unanimously accepted the responsibility to provide services and the supplies for the dental van as well as committing to the responsibility to transport the dental van from Austin, Texas to Copan Ruinas, Honduras. 

After completion the proposal was sent via electronic mail the first week of December to Monsignor Richard E. McCabe at the Emmaus Catholic Church in Lakeway, Texas just outside of Austin. Notification was received in early January that the dental van would be granted to the dental group in Copan Ruinas! The documentation providing for the transfer took longer than expected, but the paperwork required was completed and the donation of this magnificent gift took place in late April. Special thanks go to Deacon Boyce Foreman of Emmaus Catholic Church who facilitated the difficult process for providing correct documentation for the transfer. The van was driven to Freeport, Texas by church volunteers then loaded into a container owned by American Fruit Company, a Honduran based company that donated the space to bring the van to Honduras. This generous gift from Emmaus Catholic Church is non-denominational, non-political and will be utilized to serve anyone in need of dental care and too poor to pay for it. The Copan Ruinas Dental Group will be making periodic 6-month reports to Emmaus Catholic Church detailing how the use of the van and its equipment is helping the people of Copan Ruinas/ Santa Rita, and outlying areas.

In a petition presented to the Congress of Honduras by the city of Copan Ruinas, taxes were exonerated on the vehicle. The next step was to present these papers to the port authority in Puerto Cortes, Honduras where the van had arrived May 2, 2002. The process was completed on July 17, 2002. After taking possession of the dental van, it was driven to the Copan Ruins/Santa Rita area in western Honduras. Mauricio Arias, the mayor of Copan Ruins was just in time for the initiation this month of a dental campaign. The committee and area dentists have already planned to make full use of this incredible gift. This week the sister cities of Santa Rita and Copan Ruinas will host a dental brigade that will arrive from the United States in July. This brigade was organized by the Santa Rita Lions Club; Cachapa, and together with local dentists they will work to educate area residents about the importance of dental care. Also received was a large donation from UNICEF who had provided several years’ worth of dental supplies.

The success of this endeavor is due to the effort and time of countless individuals networking internationally for the good of their communities in Honduras! Congratulations to the communities of Copan Ruinas and Santa Rita for uniting and making a positive effort to provide better quality of life for their communities!

Souls of Midnight

By ROSIBEL PACHECO DE GUTIERREZ

TEGUCIGALPA – A Honduran movie, conceived, written and directed by young Juan Carlos Fanconi, Almas de Media Noche premiered on Thursday July 11th and is still running due to full houses every night in both Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. A digital version was also shown at the "Tenth Movie and Video Sample" in San Jose, Costa Rica, and was the only long-range film at the event.

Categorized as a terror/mystery, the plot weaves superstitions and legends of the antique Lencas depicting life after death. The six main characters are young college journalist students that start an investigative journey (proposed by Guillermo Zola, a University professor) to a small town in northern Honduras with the purpose of clearing up the mysterious death of a journalist in that area. This transcendent journey becomes an expedition digging into multiple levels and dimensions, in which the past mixes with the present, in which the life of the departed journalist is projected upon one of the students, Alex Palacio (played by Juan Fernando Lobo). 

The movie has duration of 125 minutes, it is in DVCAM format, and you can visit at its Internet Web site: www.almasmedianoche.com.

Monday, July 22, 2002 Online Edition 27

Armida Garcia: one of Honduras’ young, award-winning poets

Armida Garcia, one of Honduras’ most promising young writers talks to HTW about her career

By ALEJANDRA FLORES BERMUDEZ

Recently, in the nineties, there has been a boom of Honduran, young, award-winning women writers, on an international and national level. Armida Garcia, a national award winner, is author of a book entitled “Justified Solitude.” Garcia is also a member of the ANDEH (National Association of Honduran Women Writers) and continuously reads poetry in different recitals organized by groups of poets at different universities and cultural centers, trying to improve the difficult environment Honduras offers its artists. As is a representative of this boom of the nineties, Garcia contribution is highly valued as part of the Honduran women writer’s movement.

HTW: Armida, we know you won a national literary award, tell us about your experience.

GARCIA: This story is a little bit humorous. It happened in 1994. I had a classmate at the UNAH (National University) when I studied Literature who worked at the National Library. I had heard about the contests promoted by the Ideas Group but I never found out more information about them. One day, my classmate said, “There’s a contest and there’s still time to send your work. I’ll find the bases for you’. But she forgot and one day, while I was passing by the library, I remembered and wrote down the requirements of the bases. They were simple and the minimum was 100 verses. I write short poems and I considered that the amount of verses could be difficult. But I started to work and submitted 101 verses.

I finished the day the contest closed. You could only hand in your work until noon and it was 2:00 p.m. when I reached the library with my poems. When I arrived there was a multitude of people downtown marching and protesting. It was a nightmare. All the stores and movie theaters nearby were closed and the crowd was also gathered in front of the library. I thought it would be impossible to hand in my poems. The library was closed as well as the stores surrounding it. But I gathered strength and pushed myself to knock on the door to see if there was someone inside. Finally a young boy came to ask what I needed and I gave him my poems.

Time passed until one day, at the university, a teacher congratulated me. I didn’t remember the poems and didn’t know this teacher was part of the jury. His words kept haunting me until that night when the telephone rang and a member of the Ideas Group told me I had won first place in the literary contest. I was overwhelmed. The night the awards ceremony was held was a very rewarding experience. It made me decide I seriously wanted to write literature.

HTW: Later you published these poems in a book called ’Justified Solitude’ which you illustrated yourself.

GARCIA: Winning the Ideas award assured me that my work wasn’t bad, in fact, it was good. If I had won a contest, I thought that there must be something valuable in my poems and that I should continue writing. The contest gave me confidence and it gave me a path to follow. After much consideration, I finally decided to publish. Manuel Salinas Paguada, a literary critic and researcher always helped me and he hooked me up with Guardabarranco Editorial and they published my book on their own account. It was a wonderful experience to finally see my work in print. The title, “Justified Solitude” came about because I believe that in a work of art, if you decide to talk about a topic you must earn the right to do so. 

Personally, I have lived many painful experiences and I felt solitude was a state I had experienced and learned to enjoy as well as to suffer in. I learned to taste a great range of forms of solitude, like the taste of a cup of coffee or of wine, I learned to distinguish many types of loneliness. I felt I had gained the right to talk about solitude. I started to write a lot of poems. I had the conceptual thread. When I write, I always go over and over the concept in my mind, I think out the images I feel that correspond to my thoughts and feelings. In some poems, I gave human characteristics to the objects surrounding me at home, because they were my only companions, no one or nothing else was present. I thought of them acting out many events, it seemed like playing with them and I enjoyed it a lot, I had some good laughs. At the beginning it hurt, but then I started to enjoy the process of creation. I liked chairs because they seemed so obedient, so humble, people could sit down on them and they would always sit patiently making company even if the visitor went or you yourself got up. I created my own world of objects and images. I used to also exaggerate a lot by using hyperbole’s. Personification, hyperbole’s and metaphors are my favorite figures in literature. They are with what I identify the most, what I can exploit.

HTW: You illustrated your book and I know you have illustrated others.

GARCIA: I did so in my book because I felt I had more to say to solitude, pain, and death. I refer to death symbolically because death can mean many things; it can be seen as a state of mind, a transformation, or a step to another stage. It’s always an opportunity to come back different. Many people I have known, have died people who had very deep ties with me. When that happens, you feel you’ll never see them again, that you’ve lost them, but you can keep in touch with them through many aspects of your own life. Many old cultures believed in reincarnation and that death was a step to another level of conscience or stage. That’s the reason I used death in my poems. I wasn’t creating anything new related to death but I really do like to believe in death as a step to another stage. I think we always search for answers or ask questions that others can respond to themselves as they read a writer.

I illustrated my book because I felt there were things I still had to say. In some poems I couldn’t find the words that would precisely express my ideas so I thought of speaking through images on drawings. I could see the images in my mind but the only way to express them was through drawings. I don’t have a technique for painting or drawing. I’m just an amateur but I really love to draw. I liked playing with the idea that a woman can be a plant. I really love plants. They are a symbol of happiness but feeling that someone looks at you as a plant is very sad, not a bit enjoyable. I thought it was cruel to feel someone has planted you in a pot; that you’re a rose that has to produce thorns to defend yourself of the outer world. I drew a nude woman with her back towards us with huge thorns to defend her. I think that all of us keep something beautiful inside, kindness and forgiveness and this is symbolized by the head of the woman which is a rose and she is not facing us; it really was myself turning my back to everything that could hurt me.

I learned that people could hurt me only if I let them do so and decided never to let anyone hurt me again. I can leave and put a stop to any painful situation and that was what I intended to represent in my drawing. It’s one of the drawings I like the best. There’s also a woman who is a tree. Trees are symbols of generosity, of eternity. I’ve also illustrated other books. For example, I illustrated some books for the Ministry of Education and recently, author Luz Aida Maldonado asked me to illustrate her book of poems. The constant idea in her book is time. I symbolized time with trees and leaves, which are really eyes, which are clocks. 

HTW: Tell us about your new book.

GARCIA: I’m writing a book, which shows aspects other than pain and suffering, rather than lack of love. Due to my new condition of life in which I’m a happily married wife and mother, as well, love is now a more mature aspect of my life. I’m married to Rainier Alfaro, a Salvadoran poet who founded the literary workshop called “Talega” in San Salvador that appears in poetry anthologies of El Salvador. As I said, love is now a more mature aspect of my life. Rainier is my partner, my friend and my lover and I love to us is a means of solidarity. It is not a possessive love; it’s love that looks for liberty so that we may grow as people to become a better human being, to find the positive aspects in ourselves. We both share with each other. In my new book I talk about nostalgia. I had to live in El Salvador while I was pregnant. I had to leave abruptly, leaving behind family and friends, cobblestone streets, the noisiness of the black birds at 6:00 in the afternoon at the Central Park. I was not psychologically prepared. 

My new book is called ‘Evening of Birds’. I write about more simple topics in a deeper way and in a calmer one, too. The experience with Rainier is fantastic. Poetry brought him to me. I would sometimes like to write about this gift that happened precisely through poetry: Rainier and my son. They are a precious gift. Pedro Valle, another Salvadoran poet came to Honduras before I had met Rainier. He took my book and shared it with the other poets of the literary workshop. So Rainier already had read me when he first came to Honduras in a cultural exchange of literature. When we met, we fell in love. He had to adapt to Honduras and stayed with me six months. 

Then we left to El Salvador. Experience in literature in El Salvador is a bit different. Publishing is really expensive so only a few poets get to publish their books. Because it’s costly to publish, writers look to publish in other ways like sheets they illustrate, newspapers, and magazines. El Salvador holds more literary congresses and seminars than we do and they have more contact with foreign writers, they invite them to El Salvador.

HTW: I can tell your love of minerals and nature has influenced your books.

GARCIA: I think sensorial experiences influence poetry. When you taste coffee, for example and feel the soul of it, watching the rays of sun filter through the window and observing the shadows of the trees on the street...all that you can see and feel, listen and touch, everything depends on your point of view about life, in the same way you will find responses in these situations. Nature talks to us in a clear and transparent way like a mother. Regretfully, sometimes we are deaf. I like to talk to my plants. Maybe they won’t answer me with words, but they answer in other ways. I love to study symbols in different cultures. Man has always believed in the power of light. I believe the more natural your life becomes, if you’re in contact with nature, the better off you are.

Monday, July 15, 2002 Online Edition 26

Garifuna music/dance film available on Internet

Spirit of my Mother - a film by Ali Allie
"Here is your food mother, so you can rest in peace."

By WENDY GRIFFIN

Most people who have watched Garifunas sing and dance, have probably thought, "I wish there was a video of this so that I could show other people." Now a new video, which includes several styles of Garifuna dances, including punta, parranda, and dances of the ceremony dugu is available over the Internet at www.garinet.com.

"El Espiritu de Mi Mama" (The Spirit of My Mother) is not a documentary. It is a movie almost an hour long about a young Garifuna woman who lives in Los Angeles. Three years after the death of her mother she is troubled by dreams of her mother who asked to be "refreshed", for a change of clothes, and for some food. In order to make the dreams go away, she returns to Honduras to see what ceremony is needed. The Garifunas believe that the dead trouble the living because they need something like food or a mass.

The trip to and in the unnamed Garífuna village is beautiful, particularly when compared to the asphalt and concrete jungle where she lives in LA, where street after street shows only gang inspired graffiti and despair. The approach to the village is by canoe. Her relatives live in traditional clay houses with palm frond roofs. From her aunt's house she goes to visit the Shaman or buyei, and we even get see to the shaman call the spirits to find out what kind of ceremony is needed. English subtitles help the English speakers follow the movie, but the most of the movie is in Spanish.

Critics have given mixed reviews to the movie, saying it is somewhat confusing. For example, when the mother asks to be "refreshed" and to change clothes, this usually refers to a Garifuna ceremony called the bath of the soul. Clean clothes are ladi out. A hole in the ground is dug. Relatives gather at dawn and throw water into the hole saying "Here is your bath". This is reduced in the movie to a shirt lying in a hole in the ground with no explanation.

The drumming is really good in this film, including some nice close ups. The punta dancing is also high quality, although there is nothing to indicate that the people are at a wake, just out of the blue, they are dancing punta which you will recognize by the rapid swaying of the women's hips. 

A dugu has a lot of activities going on at once. The men go out fishing and come back at dawn three days later for probably the prettiest moment of any Garifuna ceremony. The women cooks are busy cracking open coconuts and grating them to make coconut bread. The drummers and are drummer, and the dancers are singing and dancing. The singers of Grupo Duvali have wonderful voices especially the soloist.

The camera tries to take this all in, sometimes confusing people who are not Garifunas, especially since some scenes seem out of order. For example, the picture on the cover of the video shows the young woman Sonia looking out to sea wrapped in a white sheet. The last act in a dugu ceremony is rubbing down the affected person's body with rum and wrapping them in a white sheet to help keep the spirits from coming back and bothering them again. With no explanation, it is hard to imagine why she is doing this.

However, the color and the sound are excellent. It is not easy to film Garifunas in the bright tropical sun, but especially the aunt and uncle in the Honduran Garifuna village are beautifully photographed as if you can imagine them sitting down to talk to you in the shade of their patio. 

The maker of the film said he wanted to show the importance of culture in one's life, even when the culture is not valued or is not well known by the person. In Honduras, Sonia finds not only peace with her mother, but with her mother country Honduras and with her mother's culture.

In Hollywood films, the sad heroine finds new happiness and a new love and lives happily ever after. In Latin America stories the heroine is left, she has to raise her children alone, and has to cope with a life of poverty and illness. The film has as its theme song, a song whose refrain is "Sadness is natural" to give us an idea where this film is going.
The video "El Espiritu de Mi Mama" is for sale at www.garinet.com. This trilingual (Spanish/English and some Garifuna) website is trying to create a virtual village for Garifunas from around the world. Besides the video, the site also sells Garifuna music on CD's and cassava bread. Some Garifuna crafts like Garifuna dolls will be available later this year. The website uses the secure "PayPal" to accept credit cards, or you can pay by check. The cost was $24.95 plus shipping and handling. The website, with lots of Garifuna related information and communication tools, is run by Jorge Garifuna Nelson, a Garifuna computer programmer in Los Angeles.

Honduras celebrates 500th anniversary of discovery by Columbus

By WENDY GRIFFIN

Ten years ago the world celebrated Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World with symposiums and other events. But it took Columbus another 10 years to find his way to Honduras. A smaller celebration is planned later this year.

Columbus' son later wrote about his father's travels. On his fourth voyage in 1502 Columbus was determined to find the way to India sailing further west from Hispanola, the modern island which Santo Domunigo and Haiti now share. He estimated that it was 12 leagues, or about 36 miles across from Punta Caxinas, the point at the mouth of the Bay where Trujillo and Puerto Castilla are located.

When they arrived at Bonacca, some natives were also pulling their canoe on shore. It was eight feet wide and as long as a galley with room for 25 men, plus some women and children. The center part of the canoe was covered with palm fronds, like a little roof, to protect people from the hot sun. The canoe was made all from one tree, as the Miskito Indians and Garifunas still do today.

The Indians they stopped were merchants. They had sleeveless cotton blouses, embroidered and dyed with several colors and design. There were breechcloths for the men of the same workmanship, which he said looked like the style of Western Mexico. Women also had cloth that they wrapped themselves in, probably similiar to the hiupiles and wraparound skirts still used by Guatemalan Indians today.

They also carried long wooden swords with a groove on each side with pieces of stones that could cut a man. These were the style of sword used in Central America, called the "macana", from which we get the modern word "macanazo" when we are going to really hit someone. There were axes of stone and copper. Also there were copper jingle bells, probably similar to the style you can see today in the Roatan Museum at Anthony's Key Resort. The men carried crucibles for melting copper. They also had stones which may have been copper or may have been gold, depending on which authority you believe. 

They also carried roots like seen in the West Indies, probably referring to yuca. Also they had grains, including corn beer, known in Honduras as chicha. The merchants had cacao, which was used for money. Columbus' son notes they valued it so highly that when it fell on the ground, they picked it up as if someone had lost an eye. This may be because they used it for ceremonial drinks. 

The Spanish set all the people free except for one old man named Guimbe. The Spanish sailed along where his language was understood. Then the Admiral sent him away. This was before they came of Cape Gracias a Dios (the border between Nicaragua and Honduras) on the "Coast of the Ears". Traditionally it was thought they set him free around Rio Tinto and the modern town of Palacios where the high school is called "Rio de la Posesion" in memory of this voyage.

Much ink has been spilt trying to guess what was the native origin of Guimbe. Some have said he was Jicaque (Tolupan) which is highly unlikely. Until recently the Jicaques have worn clothes made of tree bark, as did the Pech, Tawahkas and later Miskito Indians. The civilization of the people of the Bay Islands was not Pech. It was probably the Pech that they ran into when they got to Palacios. The civilization of the Bay Islands was the same as the area around Trujillo, and inland towards San Esteban, Olancho and east towards the White City in the Mosquitia. 

I count Guimbe as one of the greatest hero in Honduras. As a merchant on the trade route from Naco, near San Pedro Sula, to Trujillo, the Bay Islands, and further down the Coast, he knew where large Honduran towns were. From Punta Caxinas Columbus was less than 12 km away from towns like Chapagua (which means damp house in Nahuat) that were local capitals with 1,000 homes each. There were also important centers on the Bay Islands. But Guimbe led Columbus away from these towards the visually unimpressive Pech, and probably gave his compatriots almost a generation of peace from being made slaves by the Spanish.