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Arriving in Baliceaux, it is hard to imagine that this private island in St Vincent and the Grenadines was once the site of one of history’s worst genocides perpetrated by the British government.
Shrouded in mystery, folklore and historical intrigue, with fishermen reporting sightings of skeletons in the surrounding ocean as coastal erosion drags old burial grounds into the sea, the island, which is barely a mile long, remains undeveloped and uninhabited. It is now the focus of a campaign to honour the thousands who died and were buried there more than 200 years ago.
After decades of resistance to British colonial rule, nearly 5,000 Garifuna people – descendants of Africans and Indigenous Kalinagos – were ejected from their homes on mainland St Vincent in 1796, and then interned here with no shelter and little food or water.
A rocky shoreline littered with seaweed and foul-smelling sea sponge gives way to untamed hilly terrain dotted with toxic plants such as the manchineel tree, known as the apple of death.
The same harsh conditions would have greeted the stranded Garifuna – a stark contrast to the biodiverse haven they had been accustomed to, said René Baptiste, a lawyer and a former minister of culture in SVG who worked closely with the Garifuna community.
“Could you imagine what landing on Baliceaux in the 1700s would have been like? These people would have been totally terrified, more than terrified. First, you had to fight for your homes, your land and your freedom with bows and arrows against British colonisers with muskets and rifles. Now you are being taken to this unknown land, where not even a lizard would survive,” she said.
The expulsion was a last-ditch attempt to quell decades of defiance that culminated in over a year of open, bloody warfare. On Baliceaux deadly disease swept through a population of men, women and children already weakened by starvation. In early 1797 the survivors were shipped 1,700 miles away to the island of Roatán off the coast of Honduras. Only 2,026 remained of a population that two years earlier had been estimated at between 8,000 and 9,000.
Today, 600,000 of their descendants are spread across the globe. Many are fiercely proud of the Garifuna language, music and dance, recognised by Unesco on its register of intangible cultural heritage. SVG, known to the Garifuna as Yurumein, is seen as their spiritual homeland, while Baliceaux is revered as a sacred space representing the death and rebirth of their culture.
Every on 14 March , members of the Garifuna community make a pilgrimage to Baliceaux to honour and celebrate their ancestors. They are campaigning for the victims of Baliceaux to be memorialised – and for the island to be acquired from its private owners and designated a sacred heritage site.
At the heart of their advocacy is a strong belief in their connection with both ancestral spirits and the land itself. Stories abound of visitors to Baliceaux – particularly those of Garifuna descent – coming under spiritual enchantment, shaking and sobbing as their ancestors reach out from beyond the grave.
“The Garifuna view St Vincent as their ancestral homeland. That is something that they literally live for: the hope that when they die, their spirit will pass through St Vincent to wherever eternity is going to be spent,” said David Williams, president of the SVG Garifuna Heritage Foundation.
Ubafu Topsey, an activist from Belize, which has a large Garifuna community, feels that connection. “Yurumein is our homeland. It’s like Mecca. People do not need to physically go there; we are already there. It is a part of our being. All of us grew up knowing about Yurumein and knowing that’s where we come from,” she said.
Princess Eulogia Gordon, 34, a Californian publicist who strongly identifies with her Garifuna heritage, said she saw Baliceaux in her dreams before she made her first pilgrimage.
“I started to describe my dreams to some of those who had gone already. They told me that my dreams described exactly what I was going to see when I got there. When I did arrive there, there was an overwhelming sensation just knowing that that’s where a lot of the bones of the ancestors still are,” she said.
Today, Garifuna people still practice rituals and ceremonies, which are defined by drumming, dancing and singing and are often linked to occasions such as mourning a death or giving thanks for good fortune. They are thought to be a blend of west African and Caribbean Kalinago spiritual beliefs and cultural norms.
On a recent visit to Baliceaux, community leader Herman Belmar argued that such rites continued even during the ordeal on the island. Pointing at a grassy plateau winding around the top of a hill, he said: “You can see that circle. It continues right around the top of the hill. Under the grass is paved with rocks, which we believe are remnants of structures they built and where they conducted their ceremonial rites.”
From that spot on the mountain peak, they would have been able to get a panoramic view of the neighbouring islands of Battowia and Mustique and see their home in the far distance.
This mountaintop view is treasured by those who come every year to be with their ancestors. Their “clarion call for Baliceaux to become a sacred site to the memory of Garifuna”, Williams said, is becoming louder, particularly after the current owners put the land up for sale in 2023.
The SVG prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, one of the founding members of the Caribbean Reparations Committee, has pledged to acquire the island for the nation, promising to go through the courts if necessary. Gonsalves has instructed the government’s chief surveyor to begin a valuation to determine whether the owner’s latest asking price of $30m is fair.
Garrey Dennie, an associate professor of history at St Mary’s College of Maryland, said the government’s move to address the issue put a spotlight on a relatively unknown history of collective pain and trauma. “The thousands of bones buried at Baliceaux transform the island into sacred land, an eternal home for the men, women and children who gave their lives to prevent the destruction of an Indigenous people and the imposition of slavery,” he said.
The Guardian contacted Baliceaux’s private owners for a comment.
For the Garifuna people, there is no question of ownership. The island is already theirs, said Topsey. “I told the [SVG] prime minister very nicely but firmly that Baliceaux is ours. So, in my mind, there is no question or discussion about who has what paper,” Topsey said.
