Since first arriving to Central America in 1797, the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna communities have played an important role in the region’s cultural and socioeconomic development. However, the Garifuna have long suffered high rates of extreme poverty — as well as vicious cycles of human rights abuses, forced displacement, and violence from political and organized crime. In recent years, these threats have only accelerated amid a competition to control the Garifuna’s traditional lands in Honduras for the sake of tourist development and resource extraction. With few economic opportunities, a lack of policies to protect their rights, and increasingly impacted by climate change, Garifuna people are migrating in large numbers both within Central America and to the United States.