Research Blog
Trinity’s Center for Caribbean Studies supports research projects by students, faculty, and staff related to / based in the Caribbean region through grants and fellowships. Starting in AY 2023-2024, such grants will be followed by a blog.
Anthropology major Kathy Miranda (Class of 2024) offers our inaugural blog submission on her spring break fieldwork in Honduras.
All photos were taken by the author.
Hello everyone! My name is Kathy Miranda. I’m currently a senior studying anthropology on a pre-medical track with interests in health education and public health policy.
As I was thinking about possible topics of research for my honors thesis in spring 2023, I reflected on my experiences as a Honduran and a college student that had led to my personal commitments in how health, illness, and disease are understood, experienced, and informed by cultural, socioeconomic, sociopolitical, religious, and historical influences.
The global pandemic, COVID-19, immediately came to my mind as I observed the ways in which my Honduran family—both extended and immediate—behaved and responded to vaccine mandates, medical information, and restrictions. I noticed a general pattern of distrust, hesitancy, or complete negation. I began to consider the possible sources of their medical knowledge and the range of factors that might impact their medical decision-making. This led me to a larger curiosity of how power and gender manifests within Latino homes, specifically in Honduran homes where religion and patriarchy can historically be major players.
To offer some context, during the height of the pandemic, it was most often my female family members conducting and maintaining contact with family as well as, obtaining and disseminating medical information and remedies to other female family members whereas my male family members were virtually left out of these exchanges. Such interactions reminded me of a saying commonly used to explain the gender performance and the distribution of social roles within Latino culture which states, “Las mujeres son de la casa y los hombre son de la calle” meaning, “Women are from the home (belong to the home) and men are from the street (belong to the street). In other words, women traditionally are thought to govern the realm of domesticity and private spaces: the home and those living within the home while men govern public spaces. In context of medical anthropology, the mother then emerges as a major source of influence in the home extending so much so over even the medical decision-making of her adult children.
With this, I explored the infrastructures of honor, faith, and tradition that upholds and sustains Honduran culture and society.
Mothers might direct not only the decision-making but also the bodily autonomy, and identities of their children. Such intergenerational ritualized behavior is often explained through phrases like “that’s the way it’s always been”. This sacrifice of self can be understood as an exchange of reciprocity, I argue—the mother is expected to sacrifice herself for her children with her children as her life and they in turn recognize this sacrifice and exchange the devotion that they saw modeled to them as children.
A phrase that stuck with me from one of my interviews was, “Siempre, cuando considero y tomo una decisión, pienso en cómo se reflejará en mis padres; nunca escuchas que fulano hizo tal y tal; no, siempre es, ‘escuchastes que hizo el hijo de fulano’” meaning, “Always, when considering and making a decision I think about how it will reflect on my parents—it’s never, did you hear so and so did this—no, it’s always so and so’s kid did this.” Family connections are inescapable.
Faith could also be a powerful influence. While, in Honduras for fieldwork, I visited a public hospital in which I conducted interviews with medical personnel who described situations in which a patient—usually female—would deny any medical intervention—interpreted as a fear-informed decision by medical staff—out of belief that God would intervene and provide divine healing. Here, one’s agency could be displaced by faith in the process of a patient understanding a medical diagnosis and accepting recommended medical intervention and treatment.
Women, as both patients and caregivers often relied on faith and folk healing in lieu of Western biomedicine. This was often the case when there were gaps in their knowledge and understanding of a prognosis, diagnosis, treatment, or prescription— especially when women felt disregarded by their medical team.
My ethnographic informants evidenced the ways in which Honduran women might act from a standpoint of suspicion as a protective measure of survival in moments of crisis. Many of my female participants believed their well-being and safety could only be ensured by hypervigilance and alternative practice. Their beliefs permeated in both their own medical decision and their influence on those closest to them in the home.
Though beyond the scope of this blog, individual suspicion of Western biomedical practices arises in response to broader forces of political instability, corruption, impunity, and structural violence in Honduras. Health is often weaponized as a political tool. As one informant commented, “An uneducated population and a sick population is easier to control.”
To conclude, in Honduras, female power exists as a dominant influence in the home over generations and over the bodies and minds of their children. Influence is upheld by tradition, honor, and faith and materialized beyond the home during medical decision-making.
Hartford & Beyond: Hip Hop’s Caribbean Roots/Routes
In this blog post, Cole Alleyne reflects on his personal motivations and experiences connected to his CCS grant-supported project, “Rapping, Roots, and Reggae: Celebrating Culture Through Community.” His research interests find their origins in his upbringing in a West Indian household and the Trinity course, “Global Hip Hop Cultures” with Professor Seth Markle. Cole conducted ethnographic fieldwork as part of his work organizing Hip Hop salon gatherings in Hartford.
The crisp summer air brushes my face as I prepare for a transition. Grinning with excitement as, unbeknownst to the crowd, the sweet, sun kissed vocals of the Jamaican artist Sean Paul are about to get a warm American welcome from the hardcore drums of rapper Busta Rhymes. The acapella cues. I have to time it right. 3, 2, 1. Boom. The crowd starts to clap and move to this unexpected musical combination they have probably never experienced before. It’s at this moment, under the dimly lit streetlights, where the trials and tribulations of people’s everyday lives are temporarily tucked away that we get to see the city anew in, to me, its most ethereal glow.
Hartford is a city that without a doubt, lives and breathes hip-hop. A nearly 2-hour drive from the Bronx housing project that was the birthplace of this storied art form, Hartford, along with other Connecticut cities like Bridgeport and New Haven, were among the first urban areas, outside of New York, to catch the “Hip Hop fever.” Pre-internet, the name of the game was by word of mouth with people pooling whatever they had to come together in the productive community space of the block party. A congregation of Caribbean diasporic energy, artistic invention and community commitment, the block party is a cherished “third space” that served as the launching pad for many emerging creators who simply showed up with their best mix and kicks to show that their skills reigned supreme. Whether it was MCs on the mic or breakers on the cardboard, the block party became a cultural dojo in which there was no need for a sensei, only a mutual understanding of the importance of pushing the game forward.
When I first considered how I might contribute to this historical convention of shared wisdom and passion for an ever-evolving artform in Hartford, I was motivated by the level of community interest in and desire for the space of the block party. My research in Urban Studies brought me to not only establish new connections with the Hartford Hip Hop community but to expand my personal definitions of Hip Hop and its relationship to the Caribbean community.
What was initially envisioned as a series of four educational events has now evolved into a larger, sustained project that is working to bring educators, local entrepreneurs, creatives, and most importantly, the youth of the Greater Hartford region together to engage with Hip Hop as a practice of space-building and knowledge production.
As a local kid who always had a love for the art of the DJ, I grew up listening to the likes of Jamaican artist, Ragashanti and others on local West Indian radio stations. I always knew that there was a deeper connection between my cultural heritage and America’s number one cultural export: hip-hop. Yet, as I matured into my college years, I observed that there seemed to be a popular disconnection from the traditional and holistic approach to hip-hop that inspired many original Caribbean pioneers to fall in love with the genre. I became interested in recreating the space where Hip Hop culture was born by rejoining its elements: breaking, rapping, the DJ, beatboxing, and graffiti in contemporary urban practice.
Initially, it was challenging to get college-aged young adults to share in my enthusiasm as the salon spaces that I was proposing were the opposite of the typical strobe-light scenes more commonly associated with commercial rap that dominates the airwaves today. However, through my own grunt work and regular conversations, as well as utilizing my small but mighty following as a DJ, I began to see people pop out to the parties with a desire to obtain arguably the most crucial element of hip-hop: knowledge. Through the connections predicated on my ethnographic research, I was able to connect these individuals with Hip Hop professionals, who have channeled their love of the art form into becoming Hip Hop educators. Of these people, I found that almost all of them were of Caribbean descent, highlighting how this now very Americanized medium can be acknowledged as a mode to reconnect the second and third generations of Caribbean Americans to some of the genre’s pioneers. By the time September hit, community members old and young were eager to see a continuation of this work, and with the help of Trinity professors as well as a variety of local leaders, I am excited to say that these Hip Hop salons will be continuing in downtown Hartford, furthering the opportunity for me to do more ethnographic research and continue creating spaces for Hip Hop to positively impact future generations. 
