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Belize, St. Vincent: Garifuna Culture

Categories: Caribbean, Belize, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Arts & Culture, Development, Ethnicity & Race, History, Indigenous, Politics

…the Garifuna language, which integrates Arawak and Carib, and which was declared a ‘masterpiece of the oral intangible heritage of humanity’ by UNESCO in 2001, is severely threatened. It possesses forms and structures used exclusively by males, and is the only survivor of the island languages descended from Arawakan.

In The Los Angeles Review of Books, Robin Llewellyn reviews a study of the Garifuna (Black Carib) [1] by Professor Joseph Palacio.