September-October, 2000: Miriam Miranda, Garifuna Hondureña

Rights Action (formerly Guatemala Partners) announces a September-October, 2000, Speaking and Fundraising Tour Featuring Miriam Miranda, a Garifuna woman from Honduras

Is your university, school, church, institution or community organization interested in organizing an educational and fundraising event(s) for Miriam Miranda --accompanied by Kate Robinson a Rights Action staffer based in Guatemala-- in late September and October, in eastern US & Canada?

Miriam Miranda is a Garifuna woman. The Garifuna people were forcibly settled along the Caribbean coast of Central America --concentrated in Honduras-- in the late 1700s by the Spaniards, who forcibly rooted them off the Caribbean Island now called San Vincent and the Grenadines. Many Garifuna people perished in the forced relocation.

Garifuna roots go back to when escaped African slaves (from European slave plantations in the Caribbean) inter-mingled with Indigenous Caribe people on the island of San Vincent and the Grenadines, and resisted colonization and domination attempts by the Spaniards, English and French.

Miriam is from the community of Vallecito, on the north shore of Honduras. For more than 16 years she has been working in the human rights movement, focusing mainly on women's rights and the rights of indigenous and black people, including the crucial struggle for communal access to and control over land.

Co-director of OFRANEH (Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondurena), and of CONPAH (Confederation of Autochthonous Peoples of Honduras), Miriam will talk about the following:

• Historical and ongoing violations of political, cultural, economic, social and civil rights of Honduras' majority poor population, particularly its indigenous and black populations.
• Tourist and other "development" schemes, in part funded by international "development" organizations, that pose a threat to communally owned property and sustainable development possibilities of black and indigenous communities.
• The struggle for access to and control over land -particularly communal land--, in the context of national and international pressures to privatize landholdings.
• The planned construction of the "El Tigre" dam along the El Salvador-Honduras border (rumoured to be funded in part by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank), that may displace thousands of campesinos and Lenca people.

If you are interested in hosting (an) event(s), let us know as soon as possible.

Contact person: Eva Morales
Rights Action
1830 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington DC 20009
USA

T: 202-783-1123
E: emorales@rightsaction.org