Oh, To Build A "Loubabagu" Art School!
  Don Andrés shares his dream of building an art school for Garífuna children. San Antonio, Honduras. Photo credit: Drew Irwin.  
Don Andrés
Garífuna Elder
San Antonio, Trujillo, Honduras

Oh! How I would like to found an art school so that youngsters learn to work! This is what I would like to do most in life. I for one don't want my children to dance or sing for someone else to make a living- to earn a few pennies like I did. During my eighteen years with Loubabagu, this small hut is all that I got. I should have made ten more during my eighteen years.

The Hondurans here want to sell out. They want to compromise their beaches and borders to make hotels. This is why an art school is necessary - so that the children learn to work and see that their work is appreciated. May they not only learn to dance and sing. May the children, the youth of Honduras, make curious and beautiful things. May they sell their art. May they
  Garífuna children from the community of San Antonio, Honduras. Credit: Drew Irwin.  
sell their work. May they value their work and value their art. It is because of tourism, but not only due to tourism, that they can produce valuable things and go out to sell them. They can export their work, not only tourism.

There is a friend of ours who makes drums as you like. His name is Ignacio Mejía and lives in the community of Corozal. Yesterday, I was sitting here on the beach when four drummers passed by. Some tourists chased down the drummers and bought their drums and other things.

First of all, I believe that we should educate and make our people aware, especially, our children. Workshops would have to be opened to begin dialogue, to make them aware of their needs and to encourage them to work. That's because there are a lot of people that hardly want to work now. Mostly, they are the young. I see them with nice watches, shorts, tennis shoes - these shoes that cost five, six hundred lempiras. And they don't work! Where do they get it? I don't know where! Some have brothers and sisters in the
  Garífuna kids return from a lively game of soccer! San Antonio, Honduras. Photo credit: Drew Irwin.  
them. I don't know how they do it.

Before, ten, twenty years would pass before you saw a bicycle here. We never saw one unless we went to the city. Now, there are more bicycles here than in the capital, Tegucigalpa. How can the people possibly buy so many bicycles? Life is so expensive here now. The poor lempira is thirteen to the U.S. dollar. And I still see people tossing bicycles, good shoes, and other luxuries here and there. And they don't leave the community. How they do it, I don't know.
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Credit: Interview and transcription by InCorpore Cultural Association© with Don Andrés; San Antonio, Trujillo, Honduras; July 1998. All rights reserved. Edited and translated by K.Stevens, Stanford Center for Latin American Studies, 2/18/00.