Why did the British choose Roatan?

It was no coincident that the English choose to banish the Garifuna on the Island of Roatan Honduras. This was in an effort to rectify the failed plan to banish, the Garifuna, on the small, partially barren island: Balliceaux. Just a few years before the Banishment of the Garifuna on the Island of Roatan, Roatan was a colony of England, however the Spanish who controlled Hundruas, just fifty miles north of Roatan, defeated the English in 1782 and took control of the island. By the year 1788 the English were totally booted off of the island by the Spanish, who took full control of the small island.

As a result the British decision to abandon the Garifuna on Roatan was a strategic yet a spiteful act. The English hoped the Garifuna would become a terror to the Spanish, who took away the island form them (the English) and send them packing some nine years earlier. The English hoped, that the Garifuna would have done to the Spanish, what they did to the French and the English for more than a century. The English were hoping to use the Garifuna to weaken their adversary the Spanish, thus opening the way for them to regain control of Roatan.

There were two difference in the way in which the Garifuna, approached the Spanish settlers. The Garifuna did not have a problem with the Spanish and Roatan was not Garifuna land. The Garifuna did not have any reason to fight with the Spanish settlers who occupied Roatan, as they did with the British and the French colonist. The St. Vincent indigenous people (SIP) which were made up of the Garifuna and the Kalinago, constantly fought with the French and the English in defense of their home (the island of St. Vincent) and their people; which the English and the French had no right to.

The Garifuna found common grounds with their Spanish neighbors; however, the Garifuna waited for the day, when they will return to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to recapture their island from those who stole their home land from them using trickery and violence and to be reunited with their lighter skinned brothers the Kalinago and the remnant of the Garifuna community who went uncaptured.

Their dream of returning to St. Vincent was never to be realized. The new generation of Garifunas that was born outside of St. Vincent still hoped to return to their father’s land even if it was to pay a visit, and reconnect with the lost people of their father’s land. This have been a dream of each Garifuna who was banished and the dreams of ever Garifunas after them.