Brondo, Keri V. (2013) Land Grab: Green Neoliberalism, Gender, and Garifuna Resistance in Honduras, The University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), ix + 240 pp. £46.50 hbk. Land Grab, by Keri Brondo, is an ethnography of Garifuna resistance to neoliberal development policies and diminishing rights to resource management on the North Coast of Honduras. Garifuna are one of nine officially recognised ‘ethnic groups’ in Honduras and as such they are entitled to special rights and protections under the constitution. Nonetheless, their rights have been continuously encroached upon by the state and environmental NGOs. In this timely work, Brondo makes several key contributions to the ethnographic study of Garifuna land politics in Honduras. First, by centring gender as an analytical category, Land Grab reveals the gendered dimensions of land struggle and sheds light on the prominent roles played by women in the defence of Garifuna territorial rights. Second, she draws on feminist political ecology to highlight the effects of land privatisation and neoliberal conservation, which have disproportionately impacted the rights of women. Finally, she interrogates how development, in particular tourism development, produces structural inequalities that have impinged on Garifuna resource management in their territories. In the 1980s Garifuna began to identify as an autochthonous people. This shift, which was previously analysed by Mark Anderson (2009), is important if we want to understand the ways in which Garifuna blackness is articulated with notions of indigeneity and concepts of territorial rootedness. By focusing on how these conceptualisations of self and belonging play out in relation to development policies, Brondo highlights the contingent, yet deeply rooted nature of Afro-indigeneity as an identificatory category. Furthermore, Brondo makes key interventions with reference to gendered rights and activism. Ethnographic representations of Garifuna point to the centrality of gender difference in all aspects of social life (Gonzalez, 1988), especially as it relates to the construction of group identity, but Land Grab is the first study to analyse the gendered impacts of development policies. These policies have impelled greater outmigration from coastal Garifuna communities to Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and to the United States. Since the majority of migrants are young men, women are left to carry on the defence of their communities against incursions from the state, environmental NGOs and tourism investors. She states, ‘Women's environmental activism thus emerges not out of a “natural” connection to the earth but because women experience more negative fallout from environmental destruction or, in this case, regulatory measures’ (p. 109). Through her engagement with feminist political ecology, Brondo furthers anthropological debates on Garifuna matrifocality and women-led land-rights activism in Latin America. Brondo's study is based in Sambo Creek, an ethnically diverse Garifuna community characterised by longstanding conflicts over land and resources, and the Cayos Cochinos, an archipelago just north of Sambo Creek which is an increasingly popular ecotourism destination, and which was designated a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2003. Land Grab analyses the negotiation of land rights from the perspective of foreign expats, mestizos and tourism workers. Mestizo landowners, she argues, contest the autochthonous claims to place made by Garifuna activists through the assertion of an indio identity. Hence, mestizos symbolically link their contemporary land claims within Garifuna territory to a mythical indigenous past (pp. 120–122). They use this strategy to deny Garifuna rights as Hondurans, and to claim ownership over Garifuna lands they have acquired through legal and illegal channels. Brondo also underscores the importance of conservation to regional tourism development plans. She brings needed attention to the rights violations suffered by Garifuna in the Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area (MPA). These violations have escalated since the approval of the 2004 park management plan developed by the Honduran Coral Reef Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund (p. 139). Conservation policies in the Cayos Cochinos MPA have placed extensive restrictions on the extraction of marine life, significantly curtailing the subsistence practices of Garifuna living within the protected area. Additionally, naval operations are now common in the region, as are escalating clashes between Garifuna and state security forces over the management and use of natural resources. In Land Grab, Brondo skillfully addresses the topic of gender identity as it relates to land struggle and development; her work on gender in combination with her focus on ‘green neoliberalism’ serves to reframe prevailing debates on Garifuna activism in Honduras.
Read full abstract
Oct 14, 2023
José E Celis + 5
Open Access