This chapter offers a comprehensive portrait of Elizabeth Forbes Brooks, known as Miss Lizzie, a revered Creole teacher, choreographer, and cultural activist from Bluefields, Nicaragua. It traces her pivotal role in reviving and preserving the palo de mayo tradition—a dance rooted in European May Pole rituals and transformed through Afro-Caribbean and Creole expression. Positioned at the intersection of performance, memory, and politics, Miss Lizzie’s decades-long work infused the palo de mayo with historical depth, artistic innovation, and community pride. Through teaching, storytelling, and performance, she cultivated a cultural revival that emphasized Creole heritage, Afro-descendant identity, and gender empowerment. The chapter situates her within broader struggles for autonomy, cultural preservation, and racial justice on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, framing her legacy as both deeply local and symbolically national.
This paper analyzes the transnational circulation and impact of “Rotundamente negra” by Afro-Costa Rican poet and cultural activist Shirley Campbell Barr. Originally published in 1994 with limited circulation in Costa Rica, the poem has since become a powerful tool for Afro-descendant women across Latin America and the Americas. Through social movements, conferences, and digital platforms, the poem has been embraced as both a personal affirmation and a collective political statement. Its widespread recitation and interpretation reflect how Black women use it for identity formation, consciousness-raising, and activism, transforming it into a shared instrument of empowerment in the face of racial and gendered marginalization.
Nicole Ramsey's "Unruly Diasporas" (Small Axe, 2024) examines how memory and diasporic community formation serve as tools for Afro-Belizeans in the United States to preserve their histories amid colonial and postcolonial contexts and natural disasters. Utilizing autoethnography and testimonials from Belizean women, it explores the role of memory and placemaking within the broader context of Caribbean and Central American migration. Focusing on the Belizean exodus following Hurricane Hattie in 1961, this essay also highlights the displacement and exile of Black migrants and examines the visibility, erasure, and transnational presence of the Belizean community in Los Angeles shaped by environmental challenges. It underscores the critical role of oral histories in capturing Black Belizeans’ experiences, especially given the limited archival records owing to regional erasure. The author emphasizes the importance of centering and preserving counternarratives that challenge marginalization, offering insights into the ongoing exclusion and sociocultural challenges faced by the Belizean community.
Voces Caribeñas is a multiethnic women-led organization based on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, with presence in Bilwi-Puerto Cabezas, Bluefields, and Managua. Formed ahead of the 1998 regional elections, it has grown into a vital political and community space for Black, Indigenous, and mestiza women and youth. Caribbean Voices promotes human rights, gender equity, sexual and reproductive rights, and anti-racist advocacy. Through collective organizing, education, and national and international engagement, the organization works to empower young women and amplify their voices in political, social, and economic spheres across Nicaragua’s autonomous regions.
Walasaha is a politics podcast by Dominique Noralez, an Afro-Indigenous Belizean of Garifuna descent. As a storyteller passionate about the intersections of art, history, and humanity, Noralez uses the platform to explore political issues through a cultural and personal lens rooted in Garifuna identity and Belizean experience.
Walter Ferguson, also known as Mr. Gavitt, was a legendary calypsonian born in Panama in 1919 and raised in Cahuita, Costa Rica, where he lived most of his life. A self-taught musician, Ferguson became a foundational figure in Costa Rican calypso, composing over 200 songs in English Creole that captured daily life, humor, and the social realities of the Afro-Caribbean community on the country’s Caribbean coast. Though he supported his family as a farmer, his calypsos became widely known, initially distributed through hand-recorded cassette tapes and later celebrated through vinyl, CD releases, and international recognition. His influence shaped generations of Costa Rican musicians, and his legacy is honored annually through the Festival Internacional de Calypso Walter Ferguson.
In this essay, historian Victoria González-Rivera reflects on her father's experiences as an Afro-mestizo man in Nicaragua. She examines how systemic racism and a national narrative centered on mestizaje contributed to his lack of racial self-awareness. González-Rivera discusses the broader implications of racial silence in Latinx communities, highlighting the need for confronting anti-Blackness to foster a more inclusive understanding of identity.
In Women of Belize (Rutgers University Press, 1996), Irma McClaurin reveals the historical circumstances, cultural beliefs, and institutional structures that have rendered women in Belize politically and socially disenfranchised and economically dependent upon men. She shows how some ordinary women, through their participation in women's grassroots groups, have found the courage to change their lives. Drawing upon her own experiences as a black woman in the United States, and relying upon cross-cultural data about the Caribbean and Latin America, she explains the specific way gender is constructed in Belize.
Zee Edgell was a pioneering Belizean writer, journalist, and educator whose work helped define Belizean literature. Her debut novel, Beka Lamb, was the first Belizean book to gain international acclaim and explored themes of nationhood, gender, and identity. She went on to publish three more novels focused on Belizean history and women’s lives. Beyond her writing, she served as the first Director of the Women’s Bureau in Belize and later taught English at Kent State University. Honored with the Order of the British Empire in 2007, Edgell left a lasting legacy before her passing in 2020.
