 A very warm welcome to USIP. Thank you so much for coming here on this icy cold day. I'm Mary Speck, a senior advisor to the Latin America program. It's my pleasure to welcome you here today on behalf of USIP and El Fado English, Central America's pioneering digital magazine. We are here today to talk about exclusion, conflict, persecution, and displacement, but also about a distinct culture's extraordinary resilience. Our distinguished panel will discuss problems that may be especially acute within the Afro-Indigenous communities of Central America, but are hardly unique to them. The need to preserve ancestral customs while also providing young people with education jobs and hope for a better future. The need to protect collective property rights with the need to promote and share the benefits of economic growth. And fundamentally, since this is the United States Institute of Peace, the need to prevent and resolve conflict, not to preserve an unjust status quo, but to protect human rights and lives and livelihoods while jointly building a future that is more inclusive, more democratic, and more prosperous. USIP, for those of you unfamiliar with our work, is a nonpartisan independent agency established by Congress in 1984 to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. We work in conflict areas around the world, including Latin America. In Colombia, we have supported the negotiation and implementation of peace accords, especially to ensure the participation of women and minorities. More recently, we have started working in Central America to support local grassroots efforts to prevent the violence that is forcing migrants to leave their communities for dangerous, often deadly journeys to the United States. Before I introduce our panel, I'd like to remind our audience very briefly about the Garifuna People's extraordinary history. Their story begins, according to many accounts, with the wreck of a slave ship off the coast of St. Vincent, then a French colony. Those escaped slaves mingled with indigenous Arawak and Caribbean peoples, forming a distinct Afro-Indigenous culture. After the British took control of the island in the late 18th century, they deported several thousand Garifunas to the Bay Islands and the northern coast of Honduras. Today, there are Garifuna communities all along the Atlantic coast of northern Central America with a distinct language and culture that they've preserved for more than two centuries. But their lives and livelihoods are under constant threat from the expansion of tourism, the African palm industry and mining or hydroelectric projects, and from the devastating effects of natural disasters and climate change. Understanding, protecting and strengthening the Garifuna peoples and their culture is not only important for Central America, but also for the United States. There are vibrant Garifuna communities throughout the US in major cities like Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, and an estimated 100,000 Garifunas in New York City. We are fortunate today to have a panel that is uniquely qualified to discuss the challenges faced by Garifuna communities, both here and in Central America. Myrta Colon was born in the Garifuna community of Trujillo in northern Honduras, the Department of Colon. From there, she migrated to the Bronx where she has worked to defend and promote the well-being of Latino and Afro-Central American communities. She is an expert on Garifuna history with degrees and certificates in social work and psychotherapy. She is president of Hondurans against AIDS and of the Central American Black Organization. She is also an advisor to the Central American Integration System, or CICA, and a founding member of Alianza Americas, which encompasses 50 immigrant organizations that work in 10 US states. Julio Guite Guevara was born in La Seva, capital of the Honduran Department of Edantida. He is managing director of Sustainable Development and Climate Change, an organization that helps implement projects in vulnerable communities. He holds a master of laws degree and formerly worked as deputy director of the D.C. Mayor's Office of Latino Affairs and as an environmental specialist with the Inter-American Development Bank. Andrew Sealy is president of the Migration Policy Institute, a global, non-partisan institution that works to improve immigration and integration processes, policies throughout through research, learning, and dialogue. He is one of the foremost authorities on US immigration policy and the author of books and articles, too numerous to mention here. Before joining MPI, Andrew founded and led the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute and served as the center's vice president. Ricardo Zuniga is a senior advisor here at USIP. Before joining us earlier this year, he was a senior member of the US Foreign Service, most recently serving as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs and as US Special Envoy for the Northern Triangle. Jose Luis Sanz, our moderator, is the Washington correspondent of El Faro and editor of El Faro English. He led investigative teams in El Salvador that won numerous awards for their work on violence, gangs, and organized crime in Central America, including the Gabriel Garcia-Marcos Prize, the Latin American Investigative Journalism Award, and the King of Spain Prize, among others, plus two Emmy nominations. Thank you, and without further ado, I'll turn the event over to Jose Luis. Thank you, my dear, thank you, Keith, Miriam, and USIP for opening your doors to this activity and to this extraordinary panel. Thank you all for being here. I have been asked to let know those who are following us through YouTube or streaming platforms that you can submit questions through the platform and someone will read them later in the Q&A part of the panel. Again, thank you all for being here. I want to start from the beginning. I mean, obviously, we can discuss for hours about the Garifuna history and the Garifuna situation and conflict in Honduras, mostly, but I want to start with you, Mirta, maybe summarizing the conflict between the Garifuna people and the Honduras government or the Honduran state. Because the history of the Garifuna people in Honduras has been one of, obviously, of exclusion, including the lack of legal recognition as a people to the moment, persecution, obviously, conflicts over land. Also, Honduras is one of the countries with highest levels of violence against human rights and environmental activists in the world. So what is the current situation and can you summarize the evolution of the conflict to the moment? Sure, thank you very much for the invitation. And yes, it has been told that we arrived to Honduras in 1797 and it was in the early 1980s that we learned that we was just occupying the area of the northern coast of Honduras where we live. We never knew, we thought that because we arrived almost 200 years later, that the land was ours. And it was then when we were told that we was just occupying the land, that the land was not ours. So what we did, and I will say, and the late Celio Álvarez Casildo led the fight in order to obtain the legal documents, the titles of the land since we were just occupying. So we were just a third, fourth, fifth generation of those who arrived and were still occupied, not owned. And so there were a lot of things that we did. And with the support of us, of the community here from the US, particularly from New York, so we did a lot of things. It was March of 15,000 people who went to Tegucigalpa to have a dialogue with the government in terms of obtaining the title. We did, we were able to obtain some titles. The title was so small that not even the community was not, did not cover not even the small community. And our community are very small. We're talking about each community, probably 6,000 people, 7,000, 8,000 people. So it's not that big. But the title was so big that not even the community was covered. So we say, yes, we're gonna take this. And then, but then we continue working in expanding the title and also in obtaining on how to deal with those people who are illegally obtaining also some part of the land and how that could be work. Will that be, they will be compensated or how that will be work? However, the selling of the land became so like kind of an everyday thing that there was a point that we didn't have no control over. So the problem continued, but we continued dialoguing, talking with the government, which continued talking with them. Then we saw like an immigration or people living because we were not able to fish. I used to go, I was born in Trujillo and we will go barefooted from Trujillo to Santa Fe. It will take us hour and a half to go from Trujillo to Santa Fe. There was a point that you can't walk through the beach because the owners, they just closed the area where they purchased and you can't walk from there. And the other thing was, there is a law in Honduras that it says that if you find a piece of land where you could build the house, you could build it and stay there for three years and not no one will come and claim it as theirs that you just go and put that land on your name and it's yours. So how come if we were there for almost 200 years we can be, what is that telling us? We can put the land in our name after almost two years of living there. So that's one. The other thing that we learned, even though that I was already here in the US when this happened, the other thing that we learned is that there is also a law that protects of selling the land to people who are now born in Honduras, whether that is in the northern coast or in the borders, it cannot be sold. And that's the article 107. And I also learned about this article in order for us to be able to go. And so we were traveling back and forth to Honduras to support the work that it was being done. And then yes, we used the article 107. And then, so because we were using article 107 they decided to change the article in order for the articles to say anybody who wants the piece allowed in Honduras they can buy it, but we did. And it was reformed, but it wasn't approved then. I don't know now because we also embark in other problem on the community that we have to let go some of that work. I want to take a moment to talk about violence, too. Because the level of threat and attacks against Garifuna leaders has been also outstanding. It has been one of the factors for displacement. Can you tell us about the situation in terms of violence or threats against the Garifuna people in Honduras right now? Of course that at this, at the long run it will become a violence against those who are working. Let's say like there was a problem in an area called, they call it Bayecito, where at that point they, the Garifuna leader went and they have to kind of put a title, a former group and then in order for them to be able to obtain and not to lose some of the land, but the investor who was then being, the land being sold to him, he also wants to protect his land. So, and then so what that brings that you're gonna be fighting then with that person who is already purchasing the land and here you are claiming that it's yours. So eventually yes, they have been a lot of people protecting the land that they were killed and then they being removed from their housing that their houses, they disappeared, you don't hear from them and we still have Ms. Miriam Miranda who is leading this fight right now in Honduras and with a threat to her life and the threat is on every single day threat to her life but yes, they have been a lot of problem and the problem continues because not everybody wants to leave their home, not everybody. Some of us run, but not everybody's running and those who stand there and wants to fight so of course their life becomes in the year and not only that but also those who have no relatives to support them from US which the immigration is not only to US but it's also to Europe. We have a big community in England, we have a big community in Spain, we have a community in Italy. We are all over right now because everybody's fleeing and I'm talking especially from Honduras and not only internationally but also locally you will find that from Honduras running to Guatemala, running to Belize, running to Nicaragua even though those other countries have their own problems but also we find the life in Honduras unbearable that we have to go to those neighboring countries. Julio, you wear many hats, you are also a lawyer, you have been a human rights lawyer. I want to dive into the human rights international system and how it deals with this situation because on a number of occasions, the most recent being last December, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of the Garifuna people and their demands for recognition and the return of their lands rights but the situation does not seem to be changing. I mean, how would you describe the situation in terms of human rights and in terms of international recognition of the rights? First of all, thank you to the United States Institute of Peace for addressing this hemispheric issue but also very narrowly tailored to the Garifuna community. I think that that's the right approach and it's a pleasure to be here with distinguished leaders like Mrs. Mirta Colom. She has a president of the Central American Black Organization have been working on these issues for almost 30, probably 40 years and she has been instrumental in the fight that we have. I just want to provide a little bit of context or add a little bit more context to what she just said. Here we are talking about our country of approximately 10 million people in Honduras. A community that came in 1797, if you look at the Declaration of Independence of Honduras in section four, there is a provision that requires political representation taking into account people of African descent and here we are talking about the election of one member of Congress per every 15,000 people without excluding descendants of Africa. Although I also have to mention that the black presence in Honduras has been established since 1518. The first blacks that came to Honduras came as part of the belonging of Hernán Cortés. And there is an island that used to be a British colony called Roatan Islands. Many of you may be familiar with Roatan. In Roatan we're gonna find the Creole community which is also Afro-descendant populations. In the islands we're gonna find a population of probably 50,000 people in the three big islands combined. The human rights situation of Honduras I think that the Garifunas in Honduras and the Garifuna diaspora celebrate some of the small accomplishments. One of them has been the nomination and appointments of the first black member of the Honduran Supreme Court a few months ago, approximately nine months ago. So for the first time we were able to see a black presence in the court in the 202 years of independence that the country has. We find that has a significant accomplishment for the community, but the progress is extremely slow and limited. In the case of Honduras we are still seeing numbers at the border at the US Mexico border. I think that in 2023 and 2022 the Mexican government reported approximately 30,000 Honduras asking for asylum. Similar numbers from 2022 and in the area of also of human rights when you come and ask for asylum is essentially because your life is at risk or your family is at risk. Otherwise you don't come for those reasons. In the case of the Garifuna or the case of Honduras as a whole, let's say 80% of the population that lives in rural areas is still living with a daily rate income of $7 per person in rural areas. And if you look at the Garifuna communities which is part of these nine culturally differentiated ethnic groups, the numbers are even lower. We are talking about people surviving or making let's say three or two dollars per day. We have been asking the government and some international organizations to provide assistance to help us collect that data to do that type of tailor work that is needed. In the case of the Garifunas there are four areas, five areas that has been driving the agenda of most Garifuna organizations. Number one is land rights. Ms. Mirta already explained us or told us a little bit about it. Second is education. Garifuna organizations have been asking to be or to have the Garifuna language, the culture and the historical contribution to the country to be integrated into the curriculum of the country. That has been an uphill battle but it's also a work in progress. The third area has to do with political representation. I already explained to you the case of the Supreme Court justice. His name is Walter Miranda. And in Congress we have been having Garifunas for quite some time now. Let's say the last 30 or 40 years they have been a continuous and uninterrupted participations of Garifuna in the U.S. Congress and in the Honduran Congress. Now the other area that is dominating the agenda of the Garifuna organizations is health. We need what we have been advocating or for a health infrastructure in most Garifuna communities. Maternal mortality is extremely high in those communities. You need to travel either to San Pedro Sula or Tegucigalpa, which is a commute for many communities between three to four hours. If you want to have comprehensive access to healthcare. Particularly if you live in the community where my parents come from, which is Ploplaia, the last community almost bordering Nicaragua. Here we are talking about a commute of seven or eight hours, right Ms. Mirta? Just to have some type of access that can say, okay, I'm doing well right here. The other area is jobs and economic opportunities. I think that there are some cases where the Garifuna community has flourished, particularly around the 70s, 80s, and a lot of that grow in terms of economic opportunities was linked to the presence of the United Fruit Company and the Standard Fruit Company in the mid 1900s and a little later. Now these corporations, even though they are still in Honduras, they still have presence in Honduras, their presence is not that significant. At some point, the country started to absorb some areas such as Damaquilas or industrial processing complex infrastructures that many of us are familiar with. Now, in the case of land rights, if I can say something that I think that is important to mention, the land rights in Honduras, which is the area that has been more present in the agenda of not only Garifuna organizations but also local leaders. The land rights component, the land rights has four components, the land rights issue. Number one has to do with titling. Number two, freedom of on conferences, meaning clean and clean land. Number three, we are talking about expansion because here we are essentially talking about communal land. And communal land is not subject to access to finance because it's communal. It's extremely limited. It's similar to the case in Colombia with late 70s, right? Or the Quilombos in Brazil. And the list goes on and on because we have several examples in the Americas. So the other area that have to do, so expansion is extremely linked to the needs of having areas of land that are designed just for agricultural activities within the community. That's extremely important for us. And the other area has to do, the last area, number four, will be linked to technical and financial assistance. We have been able to track US financial contribution to the Garifunas from the 70s. Some of them are from the Inter-American Foundation that have been supporting small farmers. And we strongly believe that the US foreign assistant has to be more narrowly tailored to address these community issues. Because if we address, particularly when it comes to immigration, the issue of immigration from a common length, that success is gonna be extremely limited. Here we are talking about a Central American region where we have a huge flow of immigration. The case of the Garifuna community, unlike other segments of the population like the Salvadorian community, is extremely different. The Garifunas came here to the US in the early 1900s, mid 1900s, for economic opportunities through the United Fruit Company and the Standard Fruit Company, which had their headquarters in Orleans in New York. And then in the case of countries like El Salvador, all of us, most of us are familiar with the war in El Salvador in the 60s and 70s. They came for many other reasons. Now, recently, many Garifunas have been also escaping violence. In Honduras, as a whole, approximately 13 human rights and environmental leaders were murdered just in 2013 and 2023, and then 11 in 2022. And when it comes to, and with this, I'm finishing, when it comes to the cases before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights or before the Inter-American Human Rights System, which includes the Inter-American Commission here in Washington DC, the Court in Costa Rica and the Institute of Human Rights. There are approximately four landmark cases that have taken place over the last few years. One of the most recent one is the Garifuna communities versus government of Honduras. And I'm talking about the Garifuna community of San Juan. These cases, I believe, from 2023, and many of you can find these cases in the judgment sections of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The other case is the Garifuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz versus Honduras. And the third case is the Garifuna community of Punta Piedra versus government of Honduras. In all of these cases, the Inter-American Court have ruled or have concluded that the Honduran government failed to protect the property rights, meaning the communal land of the Garifuna community. And here they are referring essentially to Article 21 of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. But the Court also, in order to solve these cases, something extremely interesting in some of them, the Court have been using satellite images where they first take title of the community from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, in some cases. And now, to assess how much of that land has been taken over by non-indigenous people. And in addition, the Court also have, mandate or have requested that the government of Honduras create some type of basic education health, trash collection and housing infrastructure to provide some type of assistance for these communities to move on. This is just one component of what is driving the agenda of the human rights agenda of the Garifuna community. The other component has to do significantly with climate change and obviously immigration. Let me jump to that with Andrew. We will go later with the political aspect of all this with you, Ricardo. Andrew, Julio talked about some of the factors that push people to live Honduras in the case of the Garifuna people, specifically. And the climate change and the kind of natural disasters are always also factor. The Eta and Yota hurricanes in the last years have had an extraordinary impact in Honduras and specifically in the cause of Honduras. Can you tell us about the migration process and how the Garifuna migration has evolved? Sure, although I think there are people far more expert here on Garifuna migration than I am, but let me talk about the broader process. I think actually one of the most important things from a migration perspective of this conversation, I mean, there's lots of others, I think, from a perspective of the rights of people in Honduras, but from a migration side is always reminding us that we tend, when we talk about issues in this country, we almost talk in terms of race and ethnicity, right? We're very conscious of it. When we talk about immigration, we treat people as nationalities. And in fact, there's lots of context underneath nationalities. And I think it's one of the huge missing pieces. We talk about Hondurans, the number of Hondurans that have come to the border. We talk about the asylum acceptance rate for Hondurans. We talk, you know, everything is a generality. Garifuna gets lost in that. I mean, first of all, place gets lost, right? I mean, there's lots of context on why people leave. Or we say suddenly there are Ecuadorians coming in larger numbers. We don't really talk about where they're coming from, right? So there's a need for data, there's a need for conversation, there's a need for recognition of different kinds of services, different kinds of patterns of protection, all of that according to the texture. And in particular, you know, one of the things that I think gets lost is questions of race and ethnic identity, right? I mean, obviously Garifuna and Lenca as well in Honduras, but you know, Garifuna as well as various Mayan peoples, Caciquel and Mam and Kiche, and many others in the case of Guatemala, Aymara and Quechua in the case of Bolivia, in Mexico, I mean, Nidesir in Mexico, I mean, you know, 56 different ethnic groups from Socil and Saltado, Porepuchas and Mistecos. I mean, this is a really deeply, these are deeply textured societies and we tend in talking about immigration to reduce them to nationalities, right? Which I think is a problem. And for the most part, I think it's a problem for our understanding, but it's also a problem actually in how we respond, right? So I am quite certain that there are great asylum officers and immigration officials who actually understand some of this texture. I mean, I think I know people out there who are phenomenal, but it doesn't tend to be part of our conversation, which means we miss key areas of this as we think about asylum policies, as we think about legal pathways. I mean, we're talking about legal pathways. We tend to talk about countries as opposed to who has access to those legal pathways, right? The second point maybe is to say, I mean, asylum is hard to get in this country, not because the asylum grant rate is low. It depends actually on the moment and it really depends on the luck of the draw, the judge you get right now, immigration judge, but also because the system is so backed up that people of protection needs can end up waiting for five or six years to get even the initial decision. And so I think there's a huge question on how we correctly resource the asylum process, not just immigration courts, but really empower asylum officers to make first decisions. I do think actually tidying up some of the filters is a good idea, which is something under debate in Congress at the moment, but really having an asylum system that works in some sort of real time and can make decisions. And there's a huge question, I think, which this administration that Ricardo was part of until recently has actually tried to think about doing protection closer to where people live. This is sort of the idea behind the Safe Mobility Offices. It's very much a work in progress, but the notion that people shouldn't have to hire a smuggler and get to the US border to ask for asylum, that in fact there should be ways we identify people ahead of time. Some of this exists, some of this infrastructure exists right now in Central America through something called the Protection Transfer Arrangement, which allows some people to be identified by NGOs and UNHCR ahead of time for resettlement as refugees, but it is really nascent, and the idea of the SMOs is to increase this, but very much a work in progress. And then the question of other legal pathways, because not everyone fits into the protection criteria of asylum, and this happens with climate, right? And including climate emergencies. I mean there have been moments that instruments of protection like TPS have been used for climate emergencies, but it is not one of the reasons that gets you asylum generally, right? And so thinking of other legal pathways that are more agile, that are possible when there are particular crises really matter, thinking about regular legal pathways like H2V says H2A and H2B for people that don't wanna move to the United States, but would like to come and work for a period of time, make money and return, but wanna stay anchored in their communities. There are huge questions, that has actually expanded a lot in the past three years, but there are, in Central America, but there are huge questions about who has access to those pathways because they tend to follow historic recruiting corridors. And so it's really important to actually look at who has access and not just the numbers on this. There are quite, you know, JV says, C and D, one V says, there are other opportunities out there in the Central America Miners Program. There are other pathways, you know, and I think this administration's been very active in trying to sort of stretch the law at the margins and see how you increase some of these pathways. But, you know, my hope is always that down the road, there is a real conversation about, you know, particularly at a time where the US needs workers, you know, also how we create some of those legal pathways around work because, you know, some people head to the US because of protection needs, some people head because they know they have a job waiting for them. You know, and we would be good idea to actually begin to create those legal pathways in a more structured way to allow people then to do that legally. Final comment, I think maybe is on diasporas because the Garifuna people, you know, and Julio know this far better than me, but it is a community that lives across multiple countries. Right, I mean, this is a people that is heavily in Honduras, of course, but almost as many in the United States, so it's fair to say, and significant communities in Guatemala and Belize and elsewhere. And so, you know, the importance of diasporas, and I think particularly since we're in Washington and we're USIP, I think one of the questions is also how in policy conversations in this country do we make sure we're talking to people in diaspora organizations who often have deeper knowledge of the issues that are going on in their own countries, who often have ideas on migration. And I think that's a huge challenge. I think that's something that doesn't happen naturally in the policy making process. And I think that is a huge opportunity and it's actually something, I know you've done some of this, Ricardo, I mean, it is something that is, it turns out to be really helpful to US policy makers when they do it, it just doesn't happen naturally most of the time. And there are real opportunities to think of remittances in more creative ways as well because as remittance in Honduras, the remittance rate is about, remittances are about 27, 28% of GDP less time I checked. I can't remember the exact number. That is a lot. Okay, if you told me that 28% of GDP was made up of, oh, say, copper. People would be laser focused on copper. But we assume remittances are individual contributions to families, they're transfers between families, there's nothing policy can do about it. And that's somewhat true. We don't want governments getting involved in remittance streams, but it matters the cost of remittances. It matters whether those remittances go into financial institutions. And by the way, if those remittances can go into financial institutions that actually lend in local communities, not just the big banks, but in actual cooperatives and micro banks and institutions that are closer to where people live, not only does that create some savings for people, but it also creates real opportunities to actually invest in communities of origin of migrants. And that's an area that I think is almost entirely untapped right now in Latin America and the Caribbean. And it's a huge issue that I think Honduras actually does have a fairly extensive cooperative micro bank network out there. And one question is how do you support that as a way of making sure that remittances not only help households, but can actually help the larger community around and not just the big banks. The big banks are important in this, but they, when you send the big banks, big banks will lend in the big cities, right? So the question is, how do you get this in the local financial institutions? Ricardo, I'm with you. You participated in the design of the Biden administration's root causes strategy, and you were part of the implementation of the strategy. I want you to remember that you are not anymore, State Department official, to forget that we are in an electoral year. And tell us, do you think in the case of Honduras and specifically in the case of, or for Garifuna's, that the strategy had a real impact in terms of, in terms of migration, but obviously in terms of supporting human rights or making a real change? So thanks for those reminders, Jose Luis. That's useful, although it was a very journalistic question. So first of all, thank you very much for the chance to be here, and it's really wonderful to be here with real experts. So let me just start by saying one that, what you've heard here about the complexity of the challenge, you have to understand as part of why the Biden administration approached this with real humility. Because there is a long history of U.S. assistance in Central America, many billions of dollars, and then we look at the circumstances, and so a lot of the questions are, what can we do differently? And those were, there have been extremely challenging times in Central America in the 1980s, you mentioned the wars, certainly multiple natural disasters, long standing structural problems being really what is underneath all of this. This is, I think I specifically said many times when we were in conference rooms, we are not going to change 500 years of history with the funding for the root cause of strategy. We can try to do a couple of different things. One is, and really I'm talking about the migration-focused piece of this. When you boil it down, when you're really talking about, is giving people a logical reason to stay at home, especially people who want to stay at home. And the root cause of strategy is not for really designed to deal with either cultural migration or family migration where people want to go for reasons of family and reasons to be able to work temporarily. That's not really what it's about. It's about people who don't want to leave, who would prefer to stay and to give them a reason to do that. And we tried to do that two ways. And I'll answer your question first off, has it been effective clearly not enough? I mean, I think we can, I can point to examples of assistance. I can point to what I would say are inputs. Things that we have put into this, but in terms of the outputs, the results, the ground speaks for itself. What we're seeing is really the response. It is not enough. We try to do two things. We tried to do two things with US assistance. One was large and systemic, and that was focus on governance. People will not stay if they do not feel represented, if they do not feel like they have access to justice, if they do not feel like they have a government that is responsive to their basic community needs. That's true for everyone. So at the large systemic level, that is why we focused on issues like elections and democracy really everywhere, but especially from Nicaragua North. That's why it was so important. Then there was a recognition, I think a greater recognition by Samantha Power at USAID, by the vice president, by the White House, that the way that we had delivered US assistance in the past did not reach, people was not felt. Here I want to make a shameless propaganda for the Inter-American Foundation, which is one of the best instruments of US assistance in existence. It is very small in terms of the amount of funding that it has, but it's important because it's ideal for a situation like this, where there is a specific community that is rooted to a location that has this identity of wanting to stay and live within its traditions. The Inter-American Foundation is so important because what it does is it works with ideas that come from communities, where the community is put in half of the commitment, and the Inter-American Foundation comes in with the other half to work on plans that are developed and administered by the community. That's US assistance at its best, but it's small, and it is intended to be small scale. And the challenges that face the Garifuna community are systemic, large, structural, and movements of history. And this is what we're seeing. Every challenge, every area of work of the Garifuna community that Julio described is an area where USAID or Department of Justice or Department or US Department of Agriculture has a program and has a presence in Honduras, but not focused on the Garifuna community necessarily. It's about the large country. And the effort there is to try to create a system within which the Garifuna can have some success in achieving progress in their relationship with the Honduran state, in their relationship with the other actors there, companies, other communities, et cetera. It is very, very challenging. And I think our experience shows just how hard it is even when you have committed communities to have a long history of involvement and know what they want and know how to get it, but and in fact, have a strong international presence. It is still very difficult and it has to do, I mean, just I'll close with this, just like one example, Julio, you mentioned the importance of land and access to communal land and the importance of agriculture. Well, a lot of what we do as a donor or a cooperator is try to foster greater job growth, greater job opportunities, greater investment. Well, that's also intention in many cases with the needs of some local communities. And so resolving that is a very difficult and I would say, imperfect is the diplomatic term. It's really, it's just hard. And I think that having feedback, constant feedback talking to the United States government, but not just to the U.S., to the Honduran government and in connection with other donors is really important. So, Jose Luis, I don't know if that was sufficiently plain or honest, but I think it was less government speak than I normally would use, so. You're trying, you're lying. All right, I'm trying, I'm trying. I want to take some questions. You usually let that for the last minutes, but I think we will take some questions from the audience and then come back here for our last extensive round with you all because I'm afraid if not, we will take all the time from the Q&A space. So maybe three for questions and we come back. Yes, there are my, can you introduce yourself Hi, my name is Contessa Bourbon. Thank you for this informative forum. I'd like to ask how is government helping this community, the Galipuna community? Is there other projects in housing, help and education for the people? What do you recommend? I'm talking about the Honduran government or the U.S. government? Honduran. Honduran government. Okay, here on them there. Thank you very much. My name is Bina Nepram. I'm the senior advisor on indigenous issues here at the United States Institute of Peace. Thank you so much for sharing this excellent panel. My question is very simple, but I wanted to know is the Galipuna community engaged with other indigenous communities in Honduras and also at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to come together to understand and find ways of responses towards dealing with this really complex crisis, dealing with land rights, absence of your history and all of that which has been explained. And finally, I also wanted to know what are the strategies? Because we know indigenous communities are also very resilient communities. And I wanted to know if what are your traditional ways in which you have learned to navigate and to be resilient and to work towards peacebuilding in this particular issue? I happened to also meet the daughter of Bartha Casares who was killed because of our environmental defending work. And I wanted to know what are your connections with other indigenous communities in Honduras to collectively fight for your rights, your justice and your peace. Thank you. Thank you. Some questions there. My name is Hope Isaacson. This was a little bit more general, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts about corporate America's role in this conflict, especially land disputes similar to how the United Fruit Company, their presence in Honduras, and their expropriation of land through, throughout Central America for banana plantations in the past that has been continued by corporate America, not by the United Fruit Company per se, but by many companies that use these international bases to bypass U.S. regulations. And I just want to hear your thoughts on that because despite the money that we've sent to Central America, we do have a significant role in that in terms of our corporations. Thank you. Any other questions? Jerome? Yeah, there. My name's Emma Beetle. I just had a question specifically. You see, closer to the mic. Near me now. Speaking specifically about the diversity of the Garifuna people, now intercontinental diversity, how can we implement frameworks or information sharing networks or policies to increase unity of the Garifuna people across continents? And what have you all seen previously in work that's been effective to unite indigenous communities that have been mass-displaced? Thank you. We have the last one. Elvia Duque, race and ethnicity program officer at Race and Equality. Thank you for this amazing panel and it's good to see familiar faces, excuse me. And my questions is regarding what response would you give to what they say in Honduras to the needs of the Garifuna community and what I heard during my last visit to Honduras. They, I heard this all the time that the Garifunas are doing well because they have money sent to them from the USA and the consequence of this statement when the Garifuna community tried to approach or tried to dialogue with within the states in Honduras and with any other communities than is of course in Honduras. Thank you. Most of the questions are for you, Mirtha and Julio. So let's go with you and then I can add some questions for you too. Okay. I'm gonna ask some and probably not complete but then Julio will do that. First, if we have a program for housing, health and I don't know of a program of housing, they have been program of housing but not from the government of Honduras but from international programs. They have been the health issue. I learned with the COVID that most people who we told they have retired and go back to Honduras and that they remain in the US because of the health. Because like Julio said before, if you're living in Ploplaia, which is eight, nine, 10 hours from Ploplaia to go to get to not to get to La Ceiba, it's like about 12 hours by car because it's the only way. There is no airplane. You have to go by road and very bad road. By the time you get to Tokoa, you are lifeless. So you have to move. There is no, and the other thing, there is no health system that covers that. The other day, a friend of mine with this, the son is a doctor in one of the community. I think it's after Limón. And there was a shooting that he was almost shot. And then he doesn't want to return to work there in that place. And then they're not gonna have a doctor then. The only doctor who was working in that area. That's one. But I think we go a little bit more in terms of the education. There is no, even in Trujillo, we don't have no college in Trujillo. In order for people to, you go to grandma, you finish your grandma's school, sixth grade, and we're talking about 50-something community in Honduras, you have to go to the city. And who's gonna support you as a child? Who's gonna support you in the city? And yes, like Albia just mentioned, and then the U.S. from the U.S. And then probably later on, we're gonna probably talk a little bit more about what's happening in U.S. with this community. But then, if you don't have no relatives, and then you're not gonna go to college. Because even first, the college is now free. Second, you have to move from the community in order for you to go to the city. And yes, in terms of getting involved with other indigenous people, first, the Central American Black Organization is not composed only of Garipuna people. We have the Mesquitos in the organization. We have English speaking Blacks of Central America in the organization. So, and I know also that Orfrané also was part of organization in Honduras that was of indigenous, also composed of indigenous organization. But then, we also go beyond the Central American. We have been part of all the process of the U.N. in the declaration of International Decadence of Afro-descent. We have, so we have engaged in all of those process. And then we support others and other also support us. When we commemorated the 200 years of the arrival of the Garipuna people to Honduras, we were able to bring more than 200 people all over to Honduras to that commemoration. And that is beside people from the region, from the different countries who also came because we already have been working also with them. Julio? Yeah, thank you Mrs. Mirta. And these are great questions. We are talking about five questions. I'm gonna try to be very brief on my reactions to each of them. The first one on how the Honduran and the U.S. governments are helping the Garipuna community. And in the Honduran side, there has been an ongoing relationship between Garifunas and the government. The Garifunas are legally recognized in Honduras, has a culturally and ethnically different community. We are part of the government body that comprise of all the nine ethnic groups and this government body is responsible for de-identification, design and implementation of certain government policies to work with each of these agencies. Now, generally, over the last 15, 20 years, there have been changes in these offices. At some point back in 2010, it was a ministry on indigenous people that was led by Garifuna. That's happened right after the coup. Many of you remember the coup that we had in Honduras back in 2009, 2010 Honduras was trying to open diplomatic relationships with many of the countries that broke relationship with Honduras. So they created a ministry on indigenous people that was led by a member of the Garifuna community. That ministry only lasts three years or four years. Right after, it became like a directory, like an specific office, a very small office when the new government took over. And since then, many issues that have to do with land rights, education and all the other policy aspect that I mentioned went down because this ministry didn't have financial resources to implement many other policies. Hondurans are very, or Garifunas are very entrepreneurial people. It will depend heavily on the remittances that come from the Bronx, mostly. In the Bronx, there are approximately 300,000 Garifunas just in the Bronx. We have to mention that there is a significant number in Florida, in another in Massachusetts, states like North Carolina have a significant Garifuna community. Obviously Los Angeles in LA in Baltimore in the DMV area. There is a significant Garifuna community in Baltimore. Many of these folks send $300, $400 a month to their family because with those $2, that daily rate of $2 we won't be able to survive. But if any of them come across an opportunity to cross the border, they will go ahead and take it. Unless we come up with a policy that help us address many of these historical and structural racist infrastructures that we have in the country. Now at the US government, the Honduras, the Garifuna people also have been, for the last 40 years, I will say, come into Washington DC. Sometimes they come to talk to members of Congress to try to raise awareness about the issues that Garifunas have. Sometimes they will come to some of the multilateral development banks that have specific projects in the Garifuna communities. And sometimes they will come to some of the agencies that do mostly bilateral work. We understand that dynamic because there is a 40 years of ongoing relationship with each of these agencies. However, we see the greatest challenges is in making sure that each of these agencies create a strategy tailored to work with segment of the populations like the Garifuna community. If you look at the country strategy of most of the multilateral development banks that are in Washington DC, we have been asking the executive director of the US, we have been asking the president of the multilateral development bank or vice president in some cases, responsible for Latin America or Honduras to work with us to incorporate in that country strategy aspects that have to do with each education, land rights, jobs and economic opportunities, climate change, you name it. That has been a very big challenge. And a lot has to do with the fact that Washington DC is heavily driven by projects in a scale. The incentive in most multilateral development banks in some bilateral stew are based on the size of the operation. So often for those type of projects, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina tend to be a lot more attractive because you start moving up in the scale of opportunities within the organization if you work with those type of transaction. So the incentive to work with the Garifuna populations like the Garifuna community is very limited. The other aspects that we have been also trying to address is the whole issue about hiring, retention and promotion of members of people that come from communities like the Garifuna community which also have been a very uphill challenge. Often members of the Garifuna community, if there is a specific $400, $300 million project in Honduras, we have to compete with the procurement and acquisition processes require us to compete with members of the 46 members or 150 members of the countries because the resources come from all of them. So unless we come up with a very tailored approach because now we are still operating on the infrastructures that were created 50 years ago or 40 years ago. Now we have technology technologies all over to assess in a relatively timely fashion manner the macro aspects of the region. Now it's time to start looking at the micro elements of every single transaction that we in the US have with each of these governments, particularly in the case of the government of Honduras. I have found very effective conditionalities in every single financial transaction if there is a loan agreement or a technical cooperation agreement. Okay, I'll give you these resources but it's subject to you clearing up the land issues that you have with the Garifunas. 30 years ago we saw a very close relationship between the OAS, particularly the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and some of the multilateral development institutions where you were able or we see some cases where some transactions were linked or subject to some of these human rights issues but from let's say the last 30 years until now we have been coming across cases, most of the cases, in fact, most multilateral development institutions are moving toward the approach of becoming more like a policy based or credit line type of organizations because they have been delivered in many of the aspects or projects and programs that have to do with Garifuna communities to some of the sub-regional or local banks which also have put the Garifuna community in a very awkward situation when you are dealing with a government where you don't have representation or the participation of members of the community is limited, just with that. I also want to quickly talk about the other question about how we are integrating other networks with indigenous communities. The Garifunas were part of the creation of the declaration on indigenous people that was created by the UN back in 2006, 2007 we were part of that process. Similarly at the OAS, I was part of that process and since the Garifunas are Afro and indigenous we have been able to integrate and to certain extent navigate both networks extremely well. We went to the summits of the Americas, we went to COP26, COP27, COP28 recently in Dubai. We are preparing to COP29, we are preparing to COP30 in Brazil. All of this work is being done in coordination with regional and international networks and that's how we have been able to make some progress in the areas that we have been talking about. In April, there is a delegation and more likely Ms. Mirta is gonna be there. There is gonna be the third session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent which is gonna take place in Geneva between the 16 and the 17 and the idea is to create a unified approach with all the other allies that we have to advance the agenda for recognition, justice and development of Afro descendants and indigenous people. Thank you. Thank you. Ricardo, there was a question about America, corporate America. I want you to address that topic and also I want to put it together with a question on how to make sure that Garifuna people or people like the Garifuna one and be part of the whole development process in Central America. In a previous conversation, you told me that you're worried about Central America losing the train of the, sorry, I mean in terms of development and in terms of production chains and profit change and value chains at an international level. That problem obviously is worse for communities or people that are more focused in some areas like fishing or agriculture and also are marginalized by the governments. So can you kind of address those two topics? Look, I mean I think the question of, it is a very complicated set of questions. You mentioned the role of United standard fruit in the history of the Garifuna. In a somewhat positive way, which is not necessarily how you would always hear the role of standard fruit and United fruit described in well, anywhere in Honduras. And yet it does come to this central tension that I mentioned earlier between fostering job growth but also understanding that these larger economic forces including international corporations put pressure on communities that have, particularly ones where you're talking about communal resources and land in particular. Because a lot of the traditional economic activities in Central America at large, that including in the Garifuna community can't compete with say corn exports from or fruit exports from large producers all over the world and it's not just, I know it was specific to US corporations but the reality is that many of the challenges facing Garifuna have to do with Honduran corporations and other corporations, some who are multinational, some that are financed locally, some that are financed multinational. But this is particularly where you're talking about extractive industries. It's corporations from all over the world, China, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, Europe, everywhere, it has much more to do with what the local environment is like, what safeguards exist. And importantly, because this was raised here, some corporations face much more pressure to behave in socially responsible ways than others and that pressure exists for a reason and has been used effectively to draw attention where there are violations and where money is involved. I mean, I think of it much more in terms of environmental cases where there are very sophisticated firms, law firms and advocacy firms that have found ways to ensure, for example, that supply chains are exempt from deforested products and so forth or in labor chains. The issue of forced labor is the other one where you've seen this. So there are mechanisms for doing this, but there is this tension. How do you, what kind of job growth, what kind of job creation in Northern Honduras is going to be complementary to Garifuna culture and what kind of growth is actually going to put further stress on Garifuna culture? I don't have a good answer there. I think that that's a serious challenge in Central America right now, and to your larger point about where Central America is and sort of like this is a new era. The one thing I would say that is also different about this in terms of like this is all about globalization, there is also now a turn to not racing to the bottom. You see this more in like the point of industrial policy in the United States and the Biden administration and to some extent even on the Republican side has been that about jobs in the United States, that sometimes it's worth paying a higher cost in order to preserve a way of life. Well, that applies in other parts of the world as well. And so if that's a value that should be part of corporate culture then I think that that is, there is room to make that a point. Yes, it costs more to preserve a certain culture and that is a cost worth paying, but making that case requires the support not just of governments but of multilateral banks to incorporate that, to include that. And what you're talking about is a move in a very different direction, conditionality that's moving in a different direction away from support for rights and ways of life because that's really what we're talking about. Thank you, and we have just a few last minutes and I want to jump into the diaspora, the garrifuna diaspora. Shortly, Andrew, I want you to talk about, and then Julio and Mirna just grabbing up. What can you say about the role of the diasporas in terms of, in this kind of type of cases? I mean, they're the experts on this but let me say in general, let me on diasporas, I mean, I think there is an often untapped knowledge that diasporas have about their own communities back in their countries of origin, they're in deep ties. I mean, increasingly people do engage in transnational activity and transnational activism, right, as through the garrifunas. And there is an ability, I think, for US policy makers, for US businesses, for that matter, for US NGOs, to learn from how diasporas see what's going on in their own communities. It's not a substitute also for talking to people there, but it is, I think, a necessary pathway and I think we often underestimate how deep those ties are. In the case of the garrifuna in particular, I mean, it is a really powerful, you've got almost half and half, right? I mean, I can't remember exactly which is more at this point, but it is a very divided people at this point with the numbers in the United States, as well as across Central America. But the ties are incredibly close, right? And obviously we've talked about the finances as well. I mean, the financial side is incredibly close. And the ability to generate, but this is a challenge in the case of garrifuna because of the conditions on the ground, but what's worked in some other cases is also questions of investment. I mean, how do you generate the ability of people to go back and invest? But you can't do that if you don't have policies on the ground that make it possible for people to go to middle school and high school and college, if you don't have health clinics, if you don't have roads that get people in there, right? I mean, we haven't said remittances, remittances are a powerful way of pulling people out of poverty. It is not a development strategy absent of the things that you put in there, right? And if you don't, there aren't schools, if there aren't healthcare facilities, if people aren't connected by roads, the money you send back still matters, right? It changes the lives of average households. It does create some consumption, but it's not gonna generate development without the other inputs. And that's something that governments have to do. The U.S. government can be supportive, the Canadian government, others, but ultimately that's on the hunter and government to make that happen. No. Julio? Yeah. I think that is also worth to mention that the situation of the garrifuna community is a situation of, we have approximately 50 million people of indigenous people in the region, 50 million, just in Latin America and the Caribbean. So there are a lot of commonalities, but in the case of people of African descent, we are talking about 150 million. Just in Latin America and the Caribbean, that doesn't include the approximately 53 or 56 million African Americans, and people like the garrifuna community that after the third generation, they also self-identify as African American. I often have to wear that hat because I'm a phenotypically African American too. When people see me walking on the street, they are looking at an African American unless they hear me talking. So just in Latin America and the Caribbean, we are talking about 400 million hectares of land mostly forest under the managed control or supervision of people of African descent or indigenous people. That provides us with a wealth of opportunities despite of all the challenges that we are describing. There are a lot of opportunities, particularly now that we are talking about nature-based solutions. In the area of climate change, we see that there is a huge, every one of the 46 garrifuna communities that we have just in Honduras, not to mention the one in Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua has a river. All of them have that potential for a small hydro or some type of renewable energy or energy efficiency program from solar, wind, and I think that that's where we need to go collectively over the next few years, but changing the financial infrastructure in a way that address local issues. And in that regard, a rich capacity building, research and implementation is key. That's why organizations like the Inter-American Foundation that do a very localized work is important in the region. Or when it comes to research, the Migration Policy Institute that is able to track the level of details that very few organizations in the whole region, in the whole Western Hemisphere is able to conduct. I think that that's the direction on which we have to move. We have to deviate a little bit from that historical practice of essentially dealing with central government. When you deal with a central government, there is a whole issue, because often it's a relationship between two governments or a multilateral development institution. And you can start a program today and tomorrow there is a change on either of the two governments. And that means that that specific program will be repurposed or a reframed restructure. And that has been a general practice over the last few years. Just with the latest natural disaster we had in Honduras, Eta and Yota, that you mentioned in 2020, there were $4 billion of loss in the infrastructure. And multilateral development banks and some bilateral institutions were figuring out the way of helping with the relief, reconstruction and recovery. And generally the easy way is to work with the central government because when you work with a community-based organizations or local organizations, you have to do a lot of a legwork. But that legwork can be facilitated if you address these issues with organizations that have the historical infrastructure to do it like the Inter-American Foundation of the Migration Policy Institute. And in this case, I believe that U.S. Institute of Peace that is also navigating this water. Thank you. Myrta. It's very challenging to work on one to one with the community and also to work with the government on the... It's very, very, very challenging because you are in two areas at the same time. And sometimes you don't know which one is the priority. Which one could be addressed first or last. But I remember when I came to this country, we have a lot of organizations here in New York from the different community and what they were doing, it was to fundraise because they were the one who put a light electricity in their community. They were the one who put a school in their community or a small clinic in their community. They were the one in charge of doing that. So that's one. The other thing is that throughout the Central American Black Organization, we were able also with the United Nations Declaration on the International Declaration of Afro-descent, we also came and approached the system of integration of Central America so that we could work. So with this, I'm saying that we have tried our best to work with the regional government regionally. It's not that we have not approached them to work with us, with our community. And we're talking about 2014 that we sit down with the Central American integration system and create a proposal on how to work with the community. And that proposal, that was 2014 and it's still a draft. And traveling almost every year, two, three times a year to the office in Central America so that we could talk about it, so that we could work on it and it's still a draft of today. And however, some of the pieces of the proposal was taken and so meet a proposal for them to get some financial resource to say that they're working with the community and they have been able to get some funding and we know because they're telling us but then they put their people to work on it. They're not bringing us to work with them on that. So it's not gonna get far because if we're not involved, we're the one who knows the community. If we don't get involved, so it's gonna be like a problem. Like that many things, and we right now are one of our priority, like Julio said, is the language. We're losing our language and our kids is not longer speaking our language but they are speaking, either they speak English in Belize or they speak Spanish in all of the other countries. And we want to maintain that language because it's our identity. It's ours, it's to keep the inner piece, inner individual to keep that, it's the language. So we approach UNESCO in order to help us and UNESCO is willing to do that but they can't give us the financial resource. It has to go through the government. So those are the challenges that we face because that's fine, we don't have no problem because we have tried to work with our governments but will that be real? And because we end up not believing if we try and try and try and nothing work seems to be working, what else to do? And then the other piece of this is the community here and I was saying that the people were working and sending money to building whatever in their community. Now we can't send money anymore because there is a huge community of need with a lot of needs, not only in New York but throughout United States but the biggest one is in New York and we have to work with asylum seekers, we have to work with TPS, we have to work with basic need like housing, we have to work as basic need as food and what do you do? What else can you do? I'm getting tired, I'm ready to retire and I'm not seeing no doors that is opening. It's frustrating. It's, I don't know how to call it but our community, I think continue to push, continue to be there. Tuesday next week we're going to Albany, we already have a bus to Albany for advocacy for the people living in New York and the state of New York. In April we're coming to the US, I mean to here to Washington and we were able to obtain the throughout Congressman Richie Torres to declare April 1st to the 30th as a Garifuna Heritage Month. We are right now in the census of the US and no, we have not been sitting down. We have been working and we continue to do so but we still need of support. Thank you, Mirta, Julio, Ricardo, Adrio has been an amazing conversation. The conversation has opened a lot of areas of work and you share amazing ideas of thank you, thank you, USIP. I want to thank, I forgot before, Fundaciona Vina for helping El Faro's work in topics like migration and thank you, you all for being here. Again, applause, thank you so much. Thank you.