By Catherine Bremer
MIAMI, Honduras (Reuters) - Without tap water or electricity, Chaves Sanchez lives happily by a Caribbean beach that for generations has provided ample fish to feed his family and keep a palm-frond roof over their heads.
Yet the powder sand, turquoise sea and sun of this unspoiled corner of northwest Honduras have investors salivating. Planned tourist complexes could spell the end of the centuries-old way of life of the black minority here known as Garifuna.
Sanchez fears a $100 million luxury hotel complex and golf course to be built next to his tiny wooden-shack village will destroy the local habitat and turn his sons from traditional fishers into low-paid menial workers.
"This is paradise. But in the future, who knows?" said Sanchez at his palm-fringed village, ironically named Miami, typical of the laid-back Garifuna communities dotting Central America's Caribbean coast.
"Tourism is OK if it's done properly, but these developments won't benefit us," he said.
Descendants of Arawak Indians and African slaves who were shipwrecked near a Caribbean island in 1635, the Garifuna were deported to Honduras in 1797 by British colonialists and soon spread to the coasts of Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
More...
|
