"Dangriga - Maybe Not!" a Dangriga Travel Page by Bwana_Brown

It was our 9th day in Belize by the time we made a small side-trip to Dangriga, since we were staying only 20-miles (32-km) south in the village of Hopkins (see my separate page for the details on that). With a population of 11,000 Belizians, we could immediately tell from the traffic and hustle-bustle that we were now in a real town instead of a sleepy palm-fringed village!

The town owes both it's beginnings and much of the culture to the 1823 landing of the 'Garinagu', a group of African descent who had managed to escape from slavery during the colonization of the West Indies. Starting from the early 1600s, over 4 million African slaves were transported to the various parts of the West Indies to work the sugar plantations. In 1635, an intended slave cargo from Nigeria washed up on the remote island of St. Vincent, off the north coast of South America, following the sinking of two Spanish ships. These Africans eventually mixed with the local Carib natives, gradually forming the Garinagu culture over the next 100 or more years. However, in the British-French wars for control of St. Vincent, the Garinagu paid a heavy price for their alliance with the French losers. At the end of the war, in 1796, the British rulers of St. Vincent forceably evicted them almost 1700 miles to the west, onto the small island of Roatan (in present-day Honduras) not far off the coast of Belize. It was from there, over the next few decades, that the Garinagu finally reached the back-water of Belize, where maybe they could be left in peace (my 'General' tip has a map that shows the location of Dangriga).

Although Dangriga turned out to be mostly a busy commercial town with few tourist attractions that we could see in our short time there, it's main claim to fame is the various cultural events that are held to celebrate it's unique heritage.