This study records an oral history and ethnography of the Afro-Caribbean individuals and families who settled in Tortuguero, a small village in northeastern Costa Rica. It is the product of nine months of field work in Costa Rica by the author and subsequent library research in the United States.
The purpose of the study is twofold: (1) to describe and analyze the Afro-Caribbean social structure, cultural life, and ethnic identity within Tortuguero, and (2) to place Tortuguero within the larger context of that phase of the African diaspora that placed people of African descent on the islands of the western Caribbean and on the eastern coast of Central America from Belize to Panama.
The author uses the concept of creole cultures and societies to analyze and interpret the descriptive, ethnographic data in the book. He argues that creole cultures and societies, and the ethnic identities associated with them, although structured on past traditions, are essentially dynamic and emergent and are constantly in the process of being re-created and remolded.
Culturally, the Afro-Caribbean residents of Tortuguero are African, Amerindian, and European/American. They have black cultural roots that reach back through the ex-slaves and freedmen of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, San Andres, and Jamaica to West Africa. They have red cultural roots, entwined with their black roots, that connect with the Zambo-Miskitu and the Garifuna (Black Carib) in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, back to the Carib Indians of the Lesser Antilles. They also have European/American roots that reach back to their overlords, employers, and co-workers in Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, San Andres, and Jamaica - to the many British, Spanish, and North American men and women they courted and married in the places where they lived and worked. Their most shallow cultural roots are Iberian, cultivated only recently as a result of their exposure to the dominant Costa Rican institutions, particularly the media, the public schools, and the Roman Catholic Church. Linguistically, about half of the residents of Tortuguero speak English, or a creolized form of English that had its origin in Jamaica. The other half speak Spanish. Many, however, are bilingual.
The history and experiences of the Afro-Caribbean peoples in Costa Rica is one of the little-known chapters of the African diaspora. Less research has been undertaken among the Afro-Caribbean communities of Costa Rica than among those in most other areas of the Caribbean and Central America. Yet it is a significant chapter of the African diaspora, the details of which need to be told. This book makes a major contribution toward that goal.
