Red de Mujeres Hamalali Hiñariñu Garinagu (HAHIGA) is a legally recognized network of Garífuna and Afro-descendant women based in Puerto Barrios, Izabal, Guatemala. Meaning "the voice of Garífuna women" in the Garífuna language, HAHIGA plays a crucial role in promoting political participation and comprehensive community development. Through leadership programs, workshops, and advocacy efforts, HAHIGA strengthens the social, political, and economic participation of Garífuna women. It also leads the Agenda of Garífuna and Afro-descendant Women (AMGA), focusing on three key areas—education, health, and economic development—to drive sustainable and impactful change within their communities.
Established in 1979, OFRANEH is a grassroots organization committed to defending the autonomy and collective rights of the Garífuna people. Their mission encompasses the protection of social, economic, cultural, and territorial rights, as well as the preservation of ancestral cultural identity and spirituality. OFRANEH has been instrumental in legal advocacy, including cases before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and promotes community empowerment through initiatives like a network of Garífuna community radio stations.
A contemporary art institution dedicated to the promotion, exhibition, and documentation of Belizean visual culture, creative practice, and critical thought, with a focus on supporting emerging and established artists.
In the Old Days is a cultural booklet produced by UNESCO in 2012. It focuses on preserving and celebrating the oral traditions, memories, and cultural heritage of the Creole community in Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast
Isidra Sabio is a self-taught Garifuna painter and illustrator from the northern coast of Honduras, whose vibrant, Afrocentric artwork celebrates the lives and strength of Garifuna and Afro-descendant communities. Since 2017, when she began painting on canvas to fill a gap in Afro-themed art for her home, her work has been showcased in solo exhibitions in New York and Washington, D.C., and collected internationally. Through her art, she raises awareness about Afro-Latinx identity and centers the resilience of Black women. In addition to her creative work, Isidra is a trained Agricultural Engineer and holds a Master of Science from Louisiana State University. She was the first Garifuna woman to graduate from Honduras’s prestigious El Zamorano agricultural school and received a national award for her scientific contributions while working with the United Nations.
Judith Kain (1931–2001) was a self-taught Afro-Caribbean painter and lifelong artist from Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua, whose work captures the intimate geographies, memories, and social life of the Caribbean coast. Before turning to painting in her mid-fifties, Kain was deeply engaged in Creole textile arts—sewing, crochet, and macramé—which she practiced as both aesthetic and communal forms of care. After being displaced by the Contra War in the 1980s, Kain settled in Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas), where she transformed her home into a sanctuary of creativity and hospitality. Her lush landscape paintings depict idealized visions of coastal towns, traditional homes, and everyday life before the region’s violent militarization. Infused with longing and memory, her work affirms the cultural autonomy and historical presence of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities. Following her death, her home was converted into the Casa Museo Judith Kain, now a cultural heritage site that continues to preserve and celebrate her legacy and the broader arts of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast.
Casa Museo Judith Kain Cunningham, located in the Aeropuerto neighborhood of Bilwi, Nicaragua, is a cultural museum housed in the former home of artist and cultural advocate Judith Kain. Founded by her family in 2001, the museum preserves over 500 objects, including her paintings, historical artifacts, and artisanal works that reflect the rich cultural heritage of the Caribbean Coast’s Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities. It serves as a vibrant space for education, artistic expression, and cultural memory.
June Beer (1931-1986) was a painter, poet, librarian, and revolutionary cultural worker from Bluefields, Nicaragua. Born into a working-class Afro-Caribbean Creole family and raised by a single mother, Beer left formal education after the third grade but cultivated a lifelong love of reading and writing. After a brief period working and modeling in Los Angeles—where she received her first set of paints from actress Ruby Dee—Beer returned to Nicaragua and began painting and writing about the lives of Afro-descendant women and laborers on the Caribbean coast. Her visual and literary work depicted these subjects with striking dignity, intimacy, and political conviction. Beer's paintings and poems challenged racialized and gendered stereotypes, asserting the cultural centrality and political agency of the Caribbean coast. She wrote in both English and Creole, often centering Black women’s voices and experiences, and used poetry as a vehicle for revolutionary critique, personal reflection, and cultural affirmation. Her works such as Black Female Militant and “Love Poem” exemplify her commitment to Black feminist aesthetics and the broader revolutionary struggle. A supporter of the Sandinista Revolution, Beer was twice imprisoned under the Somoza regime. After the revolutionary triumph in 1979, she became head librarian of the Bluefields Public Library and a contributor to the Sandinista newspaper Sunrise. As a member of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers (ASTC), she exhibited both nationally and internationally, including in Cuba, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Before her death in 1986, she became the first painter from Bluefields to gain both national and international recognition. Her poetry and paintings remain foundational to Afro-Nicaraguan cultural and political expression.
Karen Spencer Downs is an Afro-Caribbean artist from Corn Island, Nicaragua, who has spent most of her life in Bluefields. Her vibrant paintings center the everyday lives and labor of women on the Caribbean Coast, offering intimate portraits of coastal life grounded in memory, observation, and community care. The penultimate of eight siblings, Spencer began painting at a young age and long dreamed of developing as a costeña painter whose work would gain wider recognition. Deeply inspired by the legacy of June Beer, Spencer has dedicated her practice to portraying Afro-descendant women—capturing their strength, routines, and roles in sustaining family and community. In addition to painting, she is also skilled in jewelry-making and artisan crafts, though painting remains her primary passion. In 2017, Spencer held her first solo exhibition at Galería Códice in Managua, marking a major milestone in her artistic journey. Her work offers a powerful visual archive of life on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast and the women who continue to shape its cultural and social fabric.
Katie Numi is a conceptual and contemporary artist based in Belize whose multidisciplinary practice includes performance, sculpture, painting, and embroidery. Her work explores Blackness and addresses the historical and ongoing erasure of Black women within Belizean society and art history. Numi challenges cultural institutions to confront these exclusions and advocates for greater visibility of Black women in national narratives. She also uses social media as a virtual gallery, creating alternative spaces for Belizean artists and building connections across the global Black diaspora.
