Tourism, development, representation, and struggle on the north coast of Honduras

This dissertation explores the outcomes of development efforts on the north coast of Honduras. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a Honduran Garifuna community, I focus on how community groups have responded to community changes and mobilized to advocate for their own interests. The Garifuna, an Afro-Indigenous group, have farmed and fished on the Caribbean Coast of Honduras for more than two hundred years. The Honduran government and private enterprises have pressed the Garifuna to abandon longstanding systems of communal land ownership in the interest of economic development and tourism. This work documents the realities of community livelihoods, land use, local politics, development outcomes, and community discourses. The study finds that tourist development has increased land speculation and decreased access to resources the Garifuna have previously used. Livelihood activities that many community members see as central to Garifuna identity are no longer viable. In response, community members and their allies have strategically represented the community and its indigenous identity, which have ultimately served to mobilize international support and a successful case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.