Teofilo Colon Jr. (born 1974) is a

Garifuna The Garifuna people ( or ; pl. Garínagu in Garifuna) are a people of mixed free African and indigenous American ancestry that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language, and Vincentian ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

photographer, filmmaker, writer and journalist. Colon has created an online archive of information about the Garifuna culture, an

Afro-Caribbean Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...

population made up of formerly African,

Island Caribs The Kalinago, also known as the Island Caribs or simply Caribs, are an indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. They may have been related to the Mainland Caribs (Kalina) of South America, but they spoke an unrelated languag ...

Arawak The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greater ...

people exiled by the British from Saint Vincent Island to Roatán, an island off the coast of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

, who eventually emigrated to the Caribbean coasts of the Central American countries of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua - with its biggest concentration outside that area in New York City, found most intensively in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

Early life

Colon was born and grew up in the East New York neighborhood of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Although his parents, mother Raymunda "Reina Gringa" Colon (née Alvarez Casildo) and father Teofilo Colon Sr. were both from

and spoke Spanish and Garifuna at home, Colon only spoke English. Colon's parents were from the Tocamacho (known as Dugamachu in Garifuna) on his paternal side and Plaplaya (known as Bülagüriba in Garifuna) on his maternal side—two small villages of Garifuna territories off the northern coast of Honduras. Colon began to learn the Garifuna language as an adult.

Career

In addition to his freelance work in film and video and as a photographer for Friends of

Crotona Park Crotona Park is a public park in the South Bronx in New York City, covering . The park is bounded by streets of the same name on its northern, eastern, southern, and western borders, and is adjacent to the Crotona Park East and Morrisania neigh ...

, Inc. in 2008, Colon began a

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

group called "You Know You Are Garifuna/Garinagu When..." as an experiment to try and see how many Garifuna people he could find on Facebook. After connecting with thousands of Garinagu (plural for Garifuna), in an effort to understand more about his culture and provide a centralized resource of information, Colon created the ''Being Garifuna'' website to document stories and news about Garifuna people, history, and culture. The website is an online resource for people of Garifuna background to learn more about their culture and find news on current Garifuna cultural activities. Among the work he has compiled about art and music of Garifuna people, Colon did extensive research on victims of the Happyland Fire, a fire that killed many people who were thought to be of Garifuna background. One of the victims of the tragedy was Colon's cousin. In November 2010, Colon was recognized for his contribution to Garifuna culture by the Garifuna Coalition with a Garifuna Coalition Recognition award. In 2013, Colon was also Honorary Grand Marshal of the 2013 New Jersey Folk Festival.

References

External links

Being Garifuna
1974 births Garifuna people Living people Writers from Brooklyn American people of Honduran descent 21st-century American photographers 21st-century American journalists American filmmakers 21st-century American writers {{US-journalist-1970s-stub