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To understand Andy Palacio and his place in the world music community, one must first understand the precarious position of his oft-forgotten Garifuna people. Two slave ships loaded to the gills with captive West Africans sank off the coast of St. Vincent Island in 1635, and when the survivors swam to shore, they were taken in and given refuge by the indigenous Carib peoples who lived there.
The displaced Africans and hospitable Caribs lived and worked together, intermarried, and ultimately created a hybrid culture -- the Garifuna. The staunchly independent Garifuna community resisted colonization and European domination tooth and nail. Once the colonizers had learned that the Garifuna were too stubborn and too strong to enslave, they resorted to moving them around, ultimately forcing them to the Caribbean coast of Central America in modern day Nicaragua, Honduras, and Belize.
Over the course of modern history the Garifuna have endured marginalization and oppression to a point where their very culture and language face extinction. Enter Andy Palacio. Palacio was born and raised in Barranco, Belize, a city where Garifuna language, traditions, and musical expression still live and breathe.