Guatemala's Caribbean — Garífuna drumming, tapado stew, and a port only reachable by boat
Livingston is Guatemala's only Caribbean port — accessible only by boat (from Puerto Barrios or from Belize), and home to the country's Garífuna community, Afro-Caribbean descendants of West African enslaved people and Arawak/Carib indigenous people who were exiled from St. Vincent to the Caribbean coast of Central America by the British in 1797. The result is a town with a culture entirely unlike anything else in Guatemala: punta music and drumming, Garífuna language, tapado (coconut seafood stew), and a Caribbean ease that feels oceanic rather than Mesoamerican. The Río Dulce canyon — a nar…
The Garífuna people were formed on the island of St Vincent through the mixing of West African escaped enslaved people (Black Caribs) and Arawak/Island Carib indigenous people over two centuries. After the Second Carib War, the British deported around 5,000 Garífuna to the island of Roatán (Honduras) in 1797; from there they spread along the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua. Livingston became the main Guatemalan Garífuna settlement. UNESCO inscribed Garífuna language, dance, and music in its intangible cultural heritage list in 2001 — one of the first entries from…