The Central American Independence Parade & Festival in Tremont, The Bronx, marches from the Happy Land Fire Memorial at 10 am to the Central American Independence Festival in Crotona Park on Sunday, September 9, 2018 where the Festival runs until 6 pm.
The Parade celebrates Honduran independence from Spain on September 15, 1821.
It also commemorates the arson fire at the Happy Land social club in 1990, where nearly one hundred people died while celebrating Carnival. Most were Garifuna Hondurans.
Central American Independence Parade Route
The Parade starts Sunday, September 9, 2018 at 10 am.
Start
Happy Land Fire Memorial
1960 Southern Blvd, Bronx, NY 10460
(at East Tremont)
Marches down Southern Blvd and Boston Road
Finish
Charlotte St at Crotona Park East
Central American Independence Festival
The Central American Independence Festival in Crotona Park runs until 6 pm.
Garifuna
Carib culture lives in us. The Carib were the Indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles.
In colonial times, the only way to be free was to hide in the mountains and forests. There African and Carib mixed.
One of the places you could hide was the island of Saint Vincent. The British controlled the town (appropriately named Kingstown), but not the rest of the island.
Up through the time of American independence, we gave the colonizers a hard time and mostly stayed free.
After a rebellion in 1795, we were finally defeated in 1796. Blaming the rebellion on Africans, the British separated 5,000 of the darkest of us, and expelled us from St. Vincent to Jamaica and finally the island of Roatán, Honduras in 1797.
It’s a long story and only half of us survived the journey, but today we are the only line of Carib to have survived colonialism. That’s something to be very proud of.