Service

Wed. 8/7/15- It is 6:48 in the morning and we are being encouraged by what has unfolded so far. Yesterday Bro Julian Arana provided us with a manuscript of a demand on behalf of the residents living in the town of Labuga in in regards to the tragedy that took place on the 4th July 2015.The town of Labuga is organizing a meeting today to evaluate the petition in Barrio San Jose at 4:00 in the evening.

Lately, we have been seeing more of the Ambassador of the United States in Guatemala, Todd Robinson, expressing his point of view in regards to the political climate of the country. We first saw the current ambassador of the United States on national television on the 23rd April 2015 expressing his point of view in regards to the extension of CICIG for another two years in Guatemala.

On the 30th April 2015, Ambassador Todd Robinson was in Labuga to visit the Garifuna People of Guatemala and said in so many words that it was an honor to be among the Garifuna People. Since then we have managed to share our voice by interventions like this. We were reading page 373 this morning from the Long Walk to Freedom, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. The word that caught our attention this morning is the concept of Service.  Allow us to share this message with you from Madiba: “we may serve the cause greater in death as martyrs than we ever could in life.”

A few days ago, we borrowed a book from Beluba Luba Furendei which is a youth center a few meters from the cemetery going northbound in Labuga. In this case, the book is in Spanish and would like to do what we can to get the message across. It is The Art of War by Sun Tzu, but it is a message written by Roberto Curto that caught our attention, to paraphrase, “Let’s not forget that the ink of the studious can loss more that the blood of a martyr.”

This morning at 7:27 we once again say Maria Trinidad Lopez of CODISRA, in a conference along with Doctor Henry Stokes promoting the recognition that the Garifuna People received from the United Nations. It was hard for us as Garinagu not to see anyone representing the Garifuna People of Guatemala nevertheless in the background; was our people and our culture.  From our point of view it is inconceivable not to have a Garifuna representative in an event of this magnitude.

We were at the presidential palace of Guatemala on the 13th January 2015 regarding the elections for CODISRA. Because by law, the Garifuna People through the peace treaty of 1996 are entitled to have a Garifuna representative in this particular institution. We were told by Maria Trinidad Lopez at the time that elections were to have been held in October of 2014. A few weeks later an official invitation was circulated among the Garifuna People to apply for the job, however as far as we are concern nothing has changed.

Au- Le

Lúbara Huya