Surviving the Americas – Garifuna Persistence from Nicaragua to New York City

Serena Cosgrove is a Sociologist and Anthropologist. She is an Associate Professor of International Studies and the Director of Latin American Studies at Seattle University; she currently serves as the Faculty Coordinator for SU’s Central America Initiative. Her previous books include the co-authored book, Understanding Global Poverty: Causes, Capabilities, and Human Development (2018), and Leadership from the Margins: Women and Civil Society Organizations in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador (2010).José Idiáquez is an Anthropologist, a Jesuit priest, and the President of the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua. His previous books include En Búsqueda de Esperanza: La Migración Ngäbe a Costa Rica y su Impacto en la Juventud (In Search of Hope: Ngäbe Migration to Costa Rica and its Impact on Youth) in 2012 and El Culto a los Ancestros en la Cosmovisión Religiosa de los Garífunas de Nicaragua (The Worship of the Ancestors in the Religious Cosmovision of the Garifuna of Nicaragua) in 1997.Leonard Joseph Bent is Garifuna; he is a Sociologist and Attorney of Law. He taught Sociology and was the director of the Training and Development Program at the Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University until his retirement in 2018. Currently, he is a consultant and practices law.Andrew Gorvetzian is a graduate student in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Prior to his studies at UNM, he taught at the Universidad Centro-americana in Managua, Nicaragua and at the United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico.

Surviving the Americas is a vivid and intimate account of the Nicaraguan Garifuna. The activist commitments and collaborative nature of the work as well as its decolonial lens provide keeninsights into the persistence of this under-acknowledged Afro-Indigenous community in the Garifuna and African Diasporas.