A historic African community finds a new home, and hope, in Los Angeles

Before you even place your order at the Guisina Saraba Food Truck, time starts to move a little slower. As the sunshine shutters through the palm trees blowing in the wind and the sounds of cars slicing down mimics waves from the sea crashing on to the shore, you almost forget you’re standing on a sidewalk in South Central.

It reminds me of home, not Belize, but the Garifuna home my mom made for us here. When I told her that there was a food truck that served our indigenous food, she couldn’t believe it. Much like the Garifuna community in Los Angeles, Guisina Saraba was a hidden gem in plain sight in the South Los Angeles neighborhood.

Winston Miranda, 47, is trying to change that. Running the only Garifuna food truck in Los Angeles, Guisina Saraba is bringing the taste of the Caribbean Sea to people in the Southland.

People like Miranda represent a small and quiet diaspora of The Garifuna people, an Afro-indigenous descendants of captured Africans, who were shipped to the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They staged uprisings that allowed them to escape and intermix with indigenous Carib and Arawak Indians, according to historical accounts. Because of their disobedience, they were exiled and landed across the Caribbean Sea in present-day Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. It’s been estimated that 70,000 to 100,000 Garifuna people reside in the United States in urban hubs like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Migration and learning to make a new place home is like an ancestral fulfillment. 

But the migration carries costs and burdens. In Honduras, and under the pressure of forced assimilation, Garifuna people are swept into the shadows of Latino and American history. Here are the stories of how 3 three different Garifuna people in the U.S. preserve the integrity of their culture.

Following in his mother’s footsteps, Miranda moved to the states in 1984, eager for life beyond his hometown in Dangriga, Belize. He enrolled in culinary school at the Art Institute of Seattle, splitting his time between here and Belize. After graduating, the entrepreneur was inspired to build a culinary home of his own.

Saraba, in the name, directly translates from Garifuna to “wake up.”

“I want to wake up people’s taste buds,” he said. And for the last decade, Miranda has. 

“It puts a smile on my face to hear people say ‘Saraba, Saraba, Saraba.’”

Learning from his great grandmother and his mother in the kitchen, Miranda started cooking at seven years old. As he grew older, cooking and baking became means of survival. After his mother departed to the United States to attend school, Miranda fended for himself. Starting his hustle at an early age, Miranda built a menu for the hungry patrons at his school including panades, Belizean empanadas made with recado-seasoned masa stuffed with fish, and tableta, a sweet treat made with shredded coconut.

One of Guisina Saraba’s signature meals is hudut. This staple in Garifuna cuisine is a geographic coalescence. In Belize, Miranda said he used to make every element from scratch. 

With a coconut milk base, lasus as it’s called, seasoned with salt, pepper, cilantro and onions.

Hudut was concocted as a product of the tropical environment that surrounded Garifuna people. Mashed plantains, your preference of ripe or unripe, a whole fish, red snapper caught from the glistening Caribbean Sea, and okra, brought in to the Americas from the Transatlanitc slave trade that brought Garifuna people to the shores of Central America in the first place. 

Time is a virtue when cooking hudut. It is typically a dish reserved for special occasions because of the care that goes into it. Back home, Miranda was used to making everything from scratch. From hand picking, shredding and straining coconuts for the coconut milk base to selecting the red snapper fish his grandfather would catch. From making the soup to beating the plantain, it takes about three hours to prepare.

But at Guisina Saraba, every day’s a birthday, a graduation, a holiday.

While he can’t get the ingredients for this homegrown dish from the motherland, he makes sure to source locally at the markets in Downtown early for the highest quality to make his dishes taste like home. 

Now, serving these specialized dishes is still a means of making a living, but it’s also a matter of continuing the legacy of Garifuna people not only in Los Angeles, but around the world.

There was some apprehension from his colleagues, Miranda says. Especially given the discrimination Garifuna people face in some parts of Belize, Miranda felt it was necessary to assert his pride for the Garifuna culture.

“I remember where my cousin was telling me like, ‘Man, you gotta start making burgers and fries and all that,” Miranda said. “And I told him ‘Hell no, I’m not making no burgers and fries.’ Imma make our food and I’m gonna stick to our food where we eat back home.”

By staying committed to the plantains and coconuts that raised him, over the last five years, he says he credits his success to L.A. eaters’ imposing curiosity.

“We’re a very indigenous group. And we got to keep the culture passing it on to the young ones. So if they do plan to go to Belize, or Honduras, they’ll know exactly what they’re eating. And, and how to cook the food from scratch,” Miranda said. 

For Miranda, Guisina Saraba is not just for the adventurous L.A. foodies: it’s an heirloom. Miranda teaches his daughter, 9, not only how to speak Garifuna, but also how to make the traditional foods. 

“We have a very large community, a large Garifuna community here in L.A.” Miranda said. “I really want to… open like a cultural center for Garifuna people. When they can learn how to play the drums, learn how to learn about the clothes, learn about the food, learn about every aspect of the Garifuna culture.” 

“And that’s like my number one goal, right is to introduce not even the Garifuna people, but other ethnicities to learn more about the Garifuna culture.”

By sharing the delicious Belizean Garifuna cuisine with Los Angeles, Miranda is cementing a place for his heritage in the city’s memory. And it all starts with the food truck.

Despite spending her whole life in L.A., Cherise Cayetano, 23, refers to her family’s hometown Dangriga, Belize, Central America as ‘back home.’

“I was just so used to spending my time between LA and like Belize or like New York the few times you would go, that it just feels like home to me. So I think that’s why I like to say ‘back home.’”

Great granddaughter of famed Garifuna journalist and Garifuna rights activist, Thomas Vincent “T.V.” Ramos, Cayetano hadn’t always felt the same sense of pride in her family’s history. The stigma, and in cases in our home countries discrimination and violence, of being Garifuna predates her. But anti-blackness and xenophobia still permeate Latinx culture beyond the confines of a country.

Cayetano detailed the frustrations she had with people not understanding or accepting her culture.

“I used to hate it,” she said. “As a kid, I had to go through those like, periods of self doubt, and just like, even hatred at one point, truly honestly, to like, come out of it on the other side to like, really realize the beauty and the importance of our people in our culture.”

“The story of Garifuna people is Los Angeles like the same way that Pico-Union is kind of known as like Little Salvador,  without like us really claiming it is that I feel like getting to know people also have that it’s just not as well known, or people don’t care to know unless they know someone who is of our culture.”

Both Cayetano and Miranda noted how Belize often gets left out of conversations surrounding the mass migration of refugees from Central America to the United States in the 1980s.

“If we think about Central America in the 80’s. I’m like, I know people kind of focus the northern triangle to be like Honduras, Guatemala, is our I think often we forget that the northern square is very real. And Belize is included in that. And a lot of imperialism, and the violence that was experienced in the northern triangle, also bled into Belize.”

Cayteno says that her mother, who moved to the U.S. in her 20s often wonders how her life would have been if she hadn’t left but that she can’t imagine going back after starting a life in L.A. But, she still keeps pieces of Belize with her by streaming the country’s radio station and speaking Garifuna.

“I was born and raised here, but when I think of like what I want to do in the future, or like how I want to spend my life, as soon as I hit retirement, I want to enjoy my time with the grandkids I’m going to have,” Cayetano said but ultimately, all I want to do is spend like the last 20 years of my life back home. Like just selling fruit off the side of the street and having my grandkids come visit me.”

By owning her identity, spending more time with her grandmother, and eventually becoming president of USC’s Latino Student Association, Cayetanos is continuing to educate young people outside of this culture about the Garifuna people, keeping it alive in her memory and others.

“And I’m still learning through it today. Like even now, I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I’m Garifuna’ and people will look at me like, which way but now ‘Let me tell you what I am.’”

In passing the culture to younger generations, institutions have been dedicated to ensuring posterity of the Garifuna heritage. Children have joined dance groups, take music classes, and take Garifuna language lessons.

Cherise Cayetano noted this as her favorite Garifuna song. The main theme of the song describes overcoming hardship in little steps — one day at a time.

The Garifuna Flava Restaurant is more than just a restaurant to Garifuna people in Chicago. It’s a place of gathering after significant cultural events, including Garifuna heritage. Being such a rarity, it earned Garifuna Flava a featured spot on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. 

Castillo says gathering without the pandemic has taken a toll not only on the community but on his individual business. He misses the hallmark of not only what kept his business afloat, but what kept the Garifuna heritage alive: the beauty of a Garifuna conversation.

“[Garifuna Flava] has been the way of our continued support and transmission of the culture to the younger even though they’re born here becomes a challenge to us because they’re out there assimilating into other cultures, and then our challenges to kind of keep maintaining who we are, what we are.”

Through musical and casual storytelling, Castillo preserves Garifuna heritage. The Garifuna language is a reminder of its multicultural idigenous and even colonial origins as a combination of Spanish, Arawak, Carib, French and English.

“The preservation of the language is a challenge to us. And even though we may speak, the adults or the elders, the mothers and fathers we speak the language with, the children of the younger generation tend to understand some of it, but not be able to speak it.” 

Cayetano says that as a young Garifuna, language is something that she wishes she had held on to more closely, but because she had been ashamed of her heritage for so long.

“Language is a very, very significant part of our culture,” Castillo says. “If the language goes away then you can rest assured that the culture is about to die or is dead.”