• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to footer
  • Search
  • Things To Do in NYC
  • Art
  • Dance
  • Festivals
  • Film
  • Music
  • Sports
  • Theatre
New York Latin Culture Magazine®

New York Latin Culture Magazine®

World-class Indigenous, European & African Culture since 2012

  • New York
  • Latin
  • Culture
  • Magazine
  • Subscribe
  • Sponsor

Honduran Culture in New York City

Honduran Culture in New York City includes the Central American Independence Parade. New York’s Garifuna community is Honduran. 🇭🇳


Mother's Day in New York City (David Castillo/Dreamstime)

Mother’s Day in New York City and Around the World Started as a Celebration of Peace

SECOND SUNDAY IN MAY 🇧🇷🇨🇦🇨🇱🇨🇴🇨🇺🇪🇨🇭🇳🇮🇹🇵🇪🇵🇷🇺🇸🇺🇾🇻🇪

New York City Wine and Food Festival NYCWFF (coffmancmu/Adobe)

New York City Wine and Food Festival (NYCWFF) Fundraises for God’s Love We Deliver Out of Brooklyn This Year, Oy Vey

BROOKLYN
North 🇺🇸 🇨🇷 🇬🇹 🇭🇳 🇲🇽 🇵🇦
Caribe 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇯🇲 🇵🇷 🇹🇹
South 🇦🇷 🇨🇴 🇪🇨 🇵🇪 🇻🇪
Africa 🇬🇭 🇪🇹 🇲🇦 🇿🇦
Asia 🇨🇳 🇮🇳 🇱🇧 🇯🇵 🇵🇭

Hispanic Day Parade NYC Desfile de la Hispanidad de New York (Shiningcolors/Dreamstime)

Hispanic Day Parade NYC Desfile de la Hispanidad New York Celebrates the Culture of 20 Hispanic Countries on Fifth Avenue

FIFTH AVENUE Midtown/Midtown East, Central Park/Upper East Side, Manhattan 🇦🇷🇧🇴🇨🇱🇨🇴🇨🇷🇨🇺🇩🇴🇪🇨🇸🇻🇬🇹🇭🇳🇲🇽🇳🇮🇵🇦🇵🇾🇵🇪🇵🇷🇪🇸🇺🇾🇻🇪

Junta Hispana (Juan Moyano/Dreamstime)

Junta Hispana is a Hispanic Product Sample Fair with Family Entertainment

FLUSHING MEADOWS CORONA PARK, Queens 🇦🇷 🇧🇴 🇨🇱 🇨🇴 🇨🇷 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇪🇨 🇸🇻 🇬🇹 🇭🇳 🇲🇽 🇳🇮 🇵🇦 🇵🇾 🇵🇪 🇵🇷 🇪🇸 🇺🇾 🇻🇪

More Honduran culture


Honduran New York City

Honduran Culture in New York City (Roberto Galan/Dreamstime)
Honduran Culture in New York City (Roberto Galan/Dreamstime)

New York has Honduran communities in the West Bronx, Central Islip Long Island, and New Jersey. There is a vibrant Garifuna community in Crotona, The Bronx.

Honduran Film in NYC

  • The Havana Film Festival New York often screens some Honduran film.

Honduran Government in NYC

  • The Honduran Consulate is in Manhattan’s Garment District. 🇭🇳

Honduran Music in NYC

  • Aurelio Martínez & the Garifuna Soul Band play in NYC. 🇭🇳

Honduran Parades in NYC

  • The Central American Independence Parade and Festival is a celebration of Honduran Garífuna culture in The Bronx. 🇭🇳
  • Manhattan’s Hispanic Day Parade usually has Honduran marchers.
  • The Queens Hispanic Parade usually has Honduran groups.

Honduran Culture

Honduras is a Mestizo country, meaning it is an Indigenous culture with Spanish colonial influences. Being a Caribbean nation, it has African Diaspora culture too, especially represented in its Garífuna community.

Garífuna People

The Garífuna are a proud Afro-Carib people from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The colonizers couldn’t defeat them, so in 1797 many were exiled to Roatan Island in Honduras.

Garífuna culture has persevered endless colonial nonsense and remains strong today.

Honduran Dance

Garifuna punta

The traditional Honduran folk dance is punta, the Garifuna courtship dance. It’s a hip dance that recalls women’s coming-of-age dances in many communities in Mother Afrika. It’s name comes from Punta Gorda, Roatan, Honduras, where the first Garifuna were exiled in 1797.

The dance is ritualized lovemaking, but more than anything, punta is a community gathering similar to a Taíno areíto, Native American powwow, and New Orleans Congo Square. That means there is storytelling, drumming, singing, and dancing, buying and selling, and looking for love. It’s what communities used to do after work, and in some places, still do.

Punta can be festive or religious. The drumming has that droning sound which is a marker of religious ceremony, and traditions that are more African than European. You also hear the caracol (conch shell) which you also hear in Haitian raga and Dominican gaga.

The dance is unique, but will be familiar to dancers of Cuban rumba guaguancó and Puerto Rican bomba. Generally a man and woman enter the community dance circle. The core movement is the hip rotation that American dancers call Cuban motion. The two dancers play a courting game like two chickens in the ring.

When men or women dance alone, they sometimes play a flirty game with the lead drummer, just like in Puerto Rican bomba and Cuban guaguancó. It’s pretty cool.

Banda Blanca’s “Sopa de caracol” helped popularize punta across Honduras. It’s more modern.

Holy Week

During Holy Week, like in most Latin countries, half the country goes to church, and the other half goes to party out in nature.

Comayagua, Choluteca, Copán, and Intibucá are famous for their Holy Week processions. People make beautiful sawdust carpets along the procession’s path.

Patron Saint

Our Lady of Suyapa, “La Morenita” is the patron saint of Honduras.


Honduras

The Republic of Honduras is a mountainous Central American country with large Caribbean and smaller Pacific coastal plains. It is a biodiversity hotspot.

The capital is Tegucigalpa in one of the central valleys. San Pedro Sula, in the northeast, is the second city.

Most Hondurans speak Spanish with some Garifuna, Mískito, and local Indigenous languages.

Indigenous Peoples

Honduras had ancient Mayan culture at Copán and other sites. It still has many Indigenous communities.

Indigenous culture is more Mesoamerican in the west, and more Isthmo-Colombian in the east. Lenca are the largest Indigenous community.

Colonizers

Spanish thieves started coming around in 1502, and began war in 1524. They took regional control by 1539, but never fully conquered the people.

Africans

After decimating the Indigenous Peoples first with European diseases and then by working them to death, Spaniards brought trafficked Africans, mostly from the Kongo region of Central Africa.

The first Garifuna arrived in 1797.

Independence

Honduras gained independence from Spain with other Central American countries in 1821, and from Mexico in 1823. After many attempts to create a union of regional countries, Honduras declared full independence in 1838.

Americans Were Bananas

American fruit companies (now Chiquita Brands International) and the U.S. government completely corrupted Honduran politicians to receive exploitive business concessions. The Americans made lots of money, but the Honduran people got very little.

The Americans used workers from the English-speaking Caribbean because they had no base from which to fight back or run away from the abuse. There were seven American military incursions between 1903 and 1925.

The many American interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America are a stain on American history.

Regional Wars and More Americans

Border tensions with El Salvador turned into war in 1969. It ended quickly, but started a period of instability with hurricanes and regional wars partly caused by Americans hunting communists until 1999.

Things are better now, although the migration and trafficking routes to the United States destabilize all of Central America.

Agricultural Economy

Major exports include coffee, bananas, and shrimp. There is beginning to be some light industrial development.


Published April 30, 2025 ~ Updated April 30, 2025.

Filed Under: North American NYC

Subscribe

Get New York Latin Culture Magazine weekly in your email. We don’t share, rent, or sell addresses. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Footer

Search

Things to do in NYC

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

New York City

Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island ~ New Jersey

Latin Music and Dance

Bachata, Ballet, Cumbia, Classical, Flamenco, Hip Hop, House, Jazz, Merengue, Modern Dance, Opera, Pop, Reggaeton, Regional Mexican, Rock, Salsa, Samba, Tango, World Music

North American

African American, Honduran, Indigenous, Jewish, Mexican

Caribbean

Cuban, Dominican, Haitian, Puerto Rican, Trinidadian

South American

Argentine, Bolivian, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Venezuelan

African

African American, Nigerian, South African

European

French, Portuguese, Spanish

Follow

X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, YouTube, TikTok

Subscribe

Get New York Latin Culture Magazine in your email

advertise

Sponsor

Details

Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy

New York Latin Culture Magazine® and Tango Beat® are registered trademarks, and New York Latin Culture™ is a trademark of Keith Widyolar. Other marks are the property of their respective holders.

Copyright © 2012–2025 New York Latin Culture Magazine®. All Rights Reserved.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we assume you are ok with it.Ok