Roatán, the largest of Honduras’s Bay Islands, is home to enduring Afro-Indigenous Garífuna and Afro-Caribbean Creole communities shaped by exile, migration, and resistance. In 1797, the British forcibly deported over 2,500 Garífuna from St. Vincent to Roatán; while many later moved to the mainland, a significant community remains in Punta Gorda on the island’s north shore. In the 19th century, free Black migrants from the Cayman Islands and other parts of the British West Indies settled across the island—particularly in Coxen Hole—establishing English-speaking Protestant Creole communities tied to regional maritime economies and kinship networks. These Afro-descendant populations have long challenged efforts to subsume their histories within dominant national narratives. Today, intensified tourism, real estate speculation, and internal migration threaten the political and cultural life of these communities, yet both Garífuna and Creole residents continue to defend collective memory and territorial claims. From the organizing of OFRANEH to the cultural work of local centers and the late musician and former congressman Aurelio Martínez, Roatán remains a site of ongoing struggle for Black sovereignty in the western Caribbean.

Palacios, located on Honduras's Caribbean coast in the department of Gracias a Dios (historically part of the Mosquitia), carries the layered legacy of its 18th-century incarnation as Black River, a British-aligned settlement and one of the most important political and commercial centers on the Mosquito Shore. Founded in 1732 by English merchant William Pitt, Black River quickly became a node of regional power, shaped by Afro-descendant labor, Indigenous Miskitu alliances, and transimperial trade. This history continues to shape Palacios, a town that remains central to Mosquitia's Afro-Indigenous memory and territorial claims.

Limón, Costa Rica is a city shaped by Black labor, extraction, and resistance. While often sidelined in national narratives, it remains the heart of Costa Rica’s Afro-Caribbean population, rooted in late 19th-century migrations of Jamaican and other Caribbean laborers brought to build the Atlantic Railroad and work on U.S.-owned banana plantations. These workers, recruited under exploitative contracts, formed the basis of a Black community that was systematically excluded from citizenship and confined to the country’s economic peripheries. Despite Costa Rica’s multicultural rhetoric, Afro-Caribbean residents of Limón have long been subject to linguistic, spatial, and economic marginalization. Afro-Costa Ricans have resisted this exclusion through grassroots organizing, education, cultural production, and territorial defense. Institutions like the UNIA and the Centro de Mujeres Afrocostarricenses emerged as spaces of political formation and Black feminist advocacy. Artists and intellectuals—such as Eulalia Bernard, Shirley Campbell Barr, and Quince Duncan—have challenged mestizo nationalism through literature that centers race, diaspora, and structural violence. Contemporary artists like Marton Robinson interrogate the nation’s myth of whiteness and mestizaje through conceptual and performance-based work that critiques state-sanctioned erasure. While calypso has been celebrated as a symbol of Afro-Caribbean identity, even that tradition has been folklorized and commodified, divorced from its political origins. Limón remains a critical site for understanding how Black life in Central America is produced through dispossession—and how it continues to contest the terms of national belonging.

Belize City, the largest city in the country and former capital of British Honduras, is a vital site for understanding Blackness and Black identity in Belize. Originally known as Belize Town, it was the entry point for thousands of African slaves brought by the British in the 18th century to work in the logging industry, establishing the roots of the Creole population. Today, Creoles remain concentrated in Belize City and along the coast, and the city continues to serve as a cultural, political, and historical hub where Black identity has been shaped, challenged, and redefined across generations.

Panama City has long been a central site of Afro-Panamanian life, resistance, and cultural production. From its founding in 1519, the city became a key node in Spanish imperial trade, dependent on enslaved African labor to transport goods across the isthmus. By the 17th century, Afro-descendants outnumbered white colonists in the capital, yet they remained socially and politically marginalized under a caste system that tethered rights to whiteness. Enslaved Africans resisted this system through maroon rebellions—most famously those led by Bayano—and built autonomous communities in the surrounding hills and jungles that disrupted colonial trade routes. In the early 20th century, Panama City again became a site of transformation as thousands of Afro-Caribbean workers from Jamaica, Barbados, and elsewhere migrated to construct the Panama Canal. These workers were subjected to Jim Crow-style segregation under the "silver roll" system, which reserved the lowest pay and poorest conditions for Black laborers. In response, Afro-Caribbean Panamanians developed a vibrant infrastructure of resistance through labor unions, such as the Canal Zone Workers Union, and civic groups like the Comité Pro-Reforma Constitucional. They also asserted their rights through education and the press—organizing schools, founding bilingual newspapers, and shaping political discourse through community advocacy. Cultural resistance flourished as well. The Congo tradition, born of maroon performance, continues in the city’s working-class neighborhoods and annual Carnival, while artists like Giana De Dier repurpose colonial archives to center Black Panamanian women’s memory and presence. The Afro-Antillean Museum—housed in a former Methodist church built by Barbadian canal workers in 1910—anchors this history in Panama City, preserving oral histories, photographs, and ephemera that trace Afro-Panamanians’ enduring contributions to the city. Yet economic disparities and structural racism persist, with Afro-Panamanians consistently underrepresented in national politics and disproportionately affected by poverty. Despite these ongoing inequities, Black residents of Panama City have shaped the city’s political struggles, cultural identity, and urban fabric through generations of organizing, artistic expression, and refusal.

Colón, Panama has been a crucial site of Afro-Caribbean resistance, labor, and cultural production from the colonial era to the present. Enslaved Africans first arrived in the early 1500s, with many resisting through shipboard rebellions, maroon communities, and the creation of palenques. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw major migration from the Anglophone Caribbean, as tens of thousands of Afro-Antillean laborers came to build the Panama Railroad and Canal. These migrants faced systemic racial discrimination through the U.S. “gold and silver roll” system and were segregated into “silver towns.” Despite this, Afro-Caribbean communities in Colón fostered powerful political and cultural networks, especially through institutions like the Panama Tribune and the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) at Liberty Hall, which became hubs of early Black feminist writing, labor organizing, and anti-racist advocacy. Figures like George Westerman and Pedro N. Rhodes led efforts for constitutional reform and diasporic solidarity. Today, Colón remains majority Afro-descendant and continues to challenge racial inequality through grassroots activism, cultural memory work, and demands for state accountability.

Located in what is now referred to as Caribbean Nicaragua—but historically part of the Mosquitia—Big and Little Corn Island have long played a central role in Afro-descendant and Indigenous histories across the southwestern Caribbean. Big Corn Island, in particular, became a key site of British colonial settlement, maritime trade, and resistance. Its economy was shaped by enslavement and plantation labor, but its legacy is defined by emancipation, cultural endurance, and regional Afro-Caribbean kinship.

Dangriga, the oldest and largest Garifuna settlement in southern Belize, is a key site for understanding both the history of the Garifuna people in Belize and the broader Afro-Caribbean experience in Central America. Situated in the Stann Creek district–an area known for its citrus industry, industrial port and, more recently, growing tourism industry–Dangriga is recognized as the “cultural capital of Belize.” This title reflects its influence on Garifuna musical genres like Punta Rock, language and spirituality. Formerly known as Stann Creek Town, the name Dangriga–meaning “standing waters” in Garifuna–was officially adopted in he 1970s and gained renewed visibility during the cultural resurgence of the 1980s. National celebrations such as Garifuna Settlement Day were first commemorated here, drawing thousands from across the Americas to participate in rituals, music, and collective memory.‍

The San Andrés and Providencia Archipelago, long entangled in British, Spanish, and Colombian territorial claims, is home to the Raizal people—Afro-Caribbean descendants of enslaved Africans, Jamaican settlers, and maritime communities with deep ties to the western Caribbean. Historically linked to the Mosquitia and Central America, the islands were first settled by English Puritans and enslaved Africans in the 1630s as part of a short-lived colonial experiment that gave way to privateering, migration, and resistance. Over the next two centuries, San Andrés and Providencia became hubs in a transnational Afro-diasporic network stretching across the Caribbean basin. Although officially annexed to Colombia in the 19th century, local autonomy and Protestant, English-speaking identities persisted. Since the 1950s, however, Raizals have been displaced by mainland Colombian migration, extractive tourism, and assimilationist policies that threaten their land tenure, language, and cultural practices. In response, Raizal communities have organized across the archipelago and diaspora—from Marcos Archbold’s UN appeals in the 1960s to AMEN-SD’s sovereignty movement—asserting their rights as a distinct Afro-Indigenous people. Despite demographic marginalization, Raizals continue to preserve collective memory, oral traditions, and cultural resistance across local churches, schools, and elder councils.

Livingston, Guatemala—known as Labuga in Garifuna—is a coastal site of Black, Indigenous, and Caribbean convergence, shaped by displacement, survival, and enduring refusal. Founded by Garifuna exiles expelled from St. Vincent in 1797 and rerouted through Roatán, Livingston became an Afro-Indigenous stronghold on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Afro-Jamaican migrants—many arriving via British labor circuits in Central America—also settled in Livingston, contributing to its Afro-Caribbean character. These intertwined communities formed the social fabric of the town, even as the state rendered Blackness both marginal and expendable. While often celebrated for its cultural richness, Garifuna and Afro-Caribbean communities in Livingston continue to confront land dispossession, racialized development, and state neglect. UNESCO’s 2001 designation of Garifuna music, dance, and language as Intangible Cultural Heritage offered symbolic recognition but little protection from structural inequality. Transnational organizing has long undergirded local resistance. Regional movements like the Organización Negra Centroamericana (ONECA) and its Guatemalan branch, the Organización Negra Guatemalteca (ONEGUA), link Labuga to broader Afro-descendant struggles across Central America. Activists such as Tomas Sánchez and Juan Carlos Sánchez draw on media, education, and oral history to reclaim Black presence beyond state-sanctioned multiculturalism. Through the Garifuna Cultural Center, National Garifuna Day, and locally-rooted artistic production, Livingston remains not a static heritage site but a living terrain of Black and Afro-Indigenous futurity—defined by kinship, cultural endurance, and political struggle across borders.

La Ceiba, Honduras is a key site of Afro-Caribbean presence and resistance, shaped by the histories of the Garífuna and Bay Island Creole peoples. The Garífuna, exiled from St. Vincent in 1797, settled along the Honduran coast and built matrifocal, land-based communities. They have long resisted colonial violence—from 18th-century wars to contemporary struggles against land dispossession by tourism and agribusiness. In the early 20th century, U.S.-backed banana companies like Standard Fruit seized Garífuna lands around La Ceiba, displacing communities and fueling environmental degradation. Today, organizations like OFRANEH, led by Garífuna women such as Miriam Miranda, fight to defend collective land rights and cultural sovereignty. La Ceiba has also been a site of labor resistance, including the massive 1954 banana workers' strike in which Garífuna and Creole women like Teresina Rossi Matamoros played central roles. Despite persistent violence—including the targeted killings of land defenders—Garífuna communities continue to resist displacement, assert their territorial claims, and challenge the folklorization of their identity for tourism. Through music, activism, and ancestral practices, La Ceiba’s Afro-descendant communities persist as a vital force for Black and Indigenous sovereignty in Honduras.

Bluefields, historically part of the Mosquitia, has long been a central site of Black life, memory, and struggle on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast. Rooted in maroon resistance, enslavement, and British colonial entanglements, its Afro-descendant communities forged distinct cultural and political identities well before formal emancipation in 1841. Across generations, Black residents have organized for land rights, regional autonomy, and cultural survival—from a 1790 uprising to post-revolutionary movements and beyond. Through music, Maypole traditions, visual and literary arts, and grassroots activism, Afro-descendants in Bluefields continue to assert sovereignty, belonging, and historical continuity on their own terms.

San Miguel holds a vital yet often overlooked place in the history of Afro-descendants in El Salvador. During the colonial period, the region’s gold mines and plantations relied heavily on enslaved African labor, with many Africans arriving in the 1540s and 1550s. Over time, San Miguel became one of the principal areas where Afro-descendants settled, and today many Afro-Salvadorans trace their lineage to this region. Despite this deep-rooted presence, San Miguel—like the rest of El Salvador—has been shaped by a long-standing national narrative of mestizaje that denies Blackness and pushes Afro-descendants to the margins. In the 20th century, particularly under President Hernández Martínez, racialized migration laws and assimilationist policies further erased Afro-Salvadoran identity. Yet San Miguel has also been a center of quiet resilience and cultural survival. Contemporary artists and activists like Carlos Lara, based in San Miguel, are reclaiming Black identity through visual art, community storytelling, and digital media. Local celebrations and oral histories continue to affirm African heritage in the region, even in the face of national erasure. Through creative and political work, San Miguel’s Afro-descendant communities are making visible a legacy of Black life that has long shaped the region.