The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras

by Christopher Loperena

The future of Honduras begins and ends on the white sand beaches of Tela Bay on the country's northeastern coast where Garifuna, a Black Indigenous people, have resided for over two hundred years. In The Ends of Paradise , Christopher A. Loperena examines the Garifuna struggle for life and collective autonomy, and demonstrates how this struggle challenges concerted efforts by the state and multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, to render both their lands and their culture into fungible tourism products. Using a combination of participant observation, courtroom ethnography, and archival research, Loperena reveals how purportedly inclusive tourism projects form part of a larger neoliberal, extractivist development regime, which remakes Black and Indigenous territories into frontiers of progress for the mestizo majority. The book offers a trenchant analysis of the ways Black dispossession and displacement are carried forth through the conferral of individual rights and freedoms, a prerequisite for resource exploitation under contemporary capitalism. By demanding to be accounted for on their terms, Garifuna anchor Blackness to Central America―a place where Black peoples are presumed to be nonnative inhabitants―and to collective land rights. Steeped in Loperena's long-term activist engagement with Garifuna land defenders, this book is a testament to their struggle and to the promise of "another world" in which Black and Indigenous peoples thrive.

Genres: Anthropology

232 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2022

Reviews

[Peter Sandwall · Rating 3 out of 5]

a twisted knot at the intersection of race, land, development, and exploitation -- recognized as a distinct ethnic group, the Garifuna are shipwrecked Africans who, "were never slaves." this text outlines their struggle, seeking communal ownership of valuable land on the North Coast of Honduras. laying claim by ancestral right, purporting themselves as indigenous, with a deeper connection to the land than more recent inhabitants. the expansiveness of and contradictions within Latin American and Caribbean culture are on full display in this confusing case study.