Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 395-421). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-223).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Florida, 2009. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 273 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation documents a Garifuna community in transition as it seeks to attain international protection as an indigenous community. The Garifuna, an Afro-Indigenous group, have farmed and fished along the Caribbean Coast of Honduras for more than two hundred years, and they are attempting to protect access to natural resources that have been privatized and limited by development programs. Local Garifuna activists have mobilized community members to safeguard local resources by ensuring that community-held land titles are honored and that the community is preserved as culturally Garifuna. While tourism has been a major driver for the region economically, using the Garifuna culture and natural resources as attractions, the benefits have not been equitably distributed. Claims of economic success through tourism do not match the actual lived realities of community livelihoods, land use, local politics, development, and community discourses.

This thesis explores the connections that the Garifuna indigenous group of Belize has with their former homeland, the island of St. Vincent. After emerging as a distinct ethnic group during the 17th century, the Garifuna were exiled from St. Vincent by British colonial rulers in 1797. For the Garifuna people, the connection to the island is more than historical. It is also spiritual. Interviews were conducted in July 2006 in Belize with members of the Garifuna community who have made the journey back to the island. In addition to presenting the results of those interviews, this thesis will also provide a history of the Garifuna people, describe some of the spiritual aspects of the culture, and a discussion of the current literature on pilgrimage.

Collection of poems.

Freiburg (Breisgau), Universiẗat, Diss., 2001.

End-of-life (EOL) care decisions present a challenge for family caregivers. Despite the increasing number of terminally ill patients in need of pain management and comfort care, there is limited qualitative data about how populations in the developing world can access culturally appropriate resources and EOL support. In this phenomenological study, 17 Garifuna family caregivers in southern Belize were interviewed about their experience caring for terminally family members. The conceptual frameworks were Kübler-Ross’s hospice approach and Watson’s theory of human caring. The two theories were selected based on their significance to this process: Kübler Ross’s hospice approach and its impact on the family system during the end stage of life and Watson’s theory of human caring for its emphasis on the impact of the importance of meeting the basic needs of individuals. NVivo 12 was used to code and generate themes for further analysis. Caregivers who said they would not utilize support outside of the home were those who were committed not do so at the request of the patient. Caregivers who cared for their family member and those who could financially afford to hire caregivers in their home to assist with their relative said they would not utilize nonfamily support. All others, regardless of relationship to the patient, indicated they would have accepted care if the environment were safe, caring, and culturally sensitive. Additionally, the caregivers saw their needs as secondary and insignificant compared to the comfort and care of the patient. This study may contribute to positive social change by revealing strategies and services that could be included in the design of a health services delivery system to meet the needs of individuals facing EOL decisions.

Based on two years of multi-sited ethnographic research, the dissertation investigates Garifuna struggles over racial and cultural identity and land rights against the backdrop of neoliberal tourism development on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Garifuna are descended from Africans and the Carib Indians of St. Vincent; they are a transnational people with roots in Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Guatemala and several cities in the United States. The dissertation examines the conditions under which some Garifuna embrace the opportunities offered through state-backed tourism projects and explores why others reject tourism development altogether, choosing instead, to assign greater priority to autonomy and territorial rights. Garifuna who oppose state-sanctioned tourism projects are positioned as adversaries of the state who are incapable of harnessing the power of development and, in turn, barred from traditional channels of participation. In this vein, the development apparatus delivers land rights activists a double bind—Garifuna culture is a commodity necessary for the growth of the national tourism industry, but not a basis for expansive rights. Finally, the dissertation analyzes the ethical debates that animate Garifuna land politics in the struggle to wrest authority from the state and local entrepreneurs over the processes of development. Garifuna cultural traits that tend toward the collectivistic, toward the valorization of ancestral practices, or toward the autonomous development of their communities are defined as culturally “conservative.” I argue Garifuna culture is commodified in accordance with the racial structuration of Honduran society, which has deep effects at the community level, resulting in fragmentation and dispossession. This work sheds light on the everyday politics of autonomy in Triunfo de la Cruz—a Garifuna village situated on the white-sand beaches of Tela Bay—and reveals how notions of communal belonging are defined through processes of political struggle. / text

Forces of development are constantly affecting rural communities in the expanding world economic system. My research with the Garifuna fishermen of Hopkins, Belize, demonstrates the systematic articulations among national export-oriented economic development strategies, rural impoverishment, and environmental degradation. Within a political ecology framework, I document the impact of a shrimp trawling program on the subsistence fishermen of Hopkins, Belize, its impact on the effective marine environment of the subsistence fishermen, and their responses to it. The data gathered for this micro-level study are based on a total of six weeks of on-site, participant observer research in Hopkins on two separate trips. Taped interviews with approximately three-quarters of the active fishermen of Hopkins, along with interviews with other Hopkins residents and government fisheries officials, fishery production and export records from three sources, (the World Bank, the Belize Department of Statistics and the Belize Department of Fisheries) and my own observations provide the documentation of the trawlers impact on the marine environment and the subsistence fishermen of Hopkins. Much of the work of other geographers on Third World development issues shows that rural communities have suffered from political, economic, environmental, and cultural factors that threaten their way of life. My work reveals the current situation in Hopkins, Belize, as part of this process. / Master of Science