Cultural Celebration as a Counterweight to the Garifuna Diaspora in Community Theater: Loubavagu, o el otro lado lejano and La danza con las almas by Rafael Murillo Selva

The Honduran playwright Rafael Murillo Selva conceived his most renowned work, Loubavagu, o el otro lado lejano (1980), as well as La danza con las almas (1996), following an extended period of coexistence with the Garifuna—an Afro-Indigenous ethnic group—in their coastal villages. Confronting the condition of statelessness to which neocolonia-lism seeks to relegate them, Murillo Selva’s community theater affirms the extraordinary sensuality and the significance of Garifuna cosmovision, rhythms, and rites. The chan-neling of these prodigious traditions in Loubavagu… and La danza con las almas serves as a counterweight to the marginalization and dispersal of the Garifuna through a dias-pora precipitated by hegemonic powers, while simultaneously foregrounding their history, resilience, and potential contributions to global culture.