By Tara Dooley, Staff Writer
When Mimi Arriola left Honduras last May to make a life in Morrisania, she was disappointed to find a disparate community of immigrants unable, even unwilling, to help a newcomer from their native land.
"Instead of supporting someone who is coming here, it's like being on a cliff," Arriola, 36, said through a translator. "When you say `Give me a hand,~' they kick you so you fall over the cliff."
While Hondurans socialize together, the community is ethnically divided and lacks the economic foundations to provide jobs and social services for immigrants settling here.
Arriola thought things would be different after the enthusiastic response she received in 1986 while performing at Riverside Church with Ballet Folklorico Garifuna de Honduras.
Instead of dancing for a living, Arriola works in a restaurant in Morrisania, preparing food and keeping customers in line. She found a Honduran community that likes to socialize in discos and social clubs as well as gathering in parks in Tremont, Hunts Point and Melrose.
Oger Marin, who came to Morris Heights from Honduras five years ago, said a problem was that Hondurans have not become established enough to provide job opportunities for people from their home country.
Trained as a cook and a painter, Marin, 50, said he has repeatedly applied for jobs in businesses run by Dominicans or Puerto Ricans -- with little success. For example, he knows only two Honduran restaurants in the borough.
"Even the simplest kind of job when you go to look for work, you find they are taken up almost all by people of the same nationality," he said.
According to city Planning Department, nearly 3,000 Hondurans moved to the borough between 1983 and 1989, an estimate that does not account for undocumented immigrants. However, the number of new Hondurans is still small compared to the nearly 20,000 Dominican immigrants who legally settled in the borough during the same period.
Hondurans also stick to people who share their specific ethnic heritage or place of birth, said Marin.
Arriola and Marin are both Garifuna, black Caribs from towns on the Atlantic coast. The culture has its own language, a patois of English, Spanish, French and Arawak and a distinct religion, Dugu, which involves the worship of spirits of Garifuna ancestors. The majority of Hondurans are mestizo, people of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry.
Bringing Hondurans together has also been difficult for the Federation of Honduran Organizations in New York, said the group's executive director, Walter Krochmal. The federation was established in the aftermath of the Happy Land Social Club fire in March 1990, in which 87 people, mostly from Honduras, died in a blaze set by a disgruntled ex-boyfriend of a worker there.
Financed with a $210,000 settlement from a lawsuit against Happy Land's landlords, the federation moved into the NYNEX building on East 175th Street.
Support for the group's English classes and workshops on immigration and job opportunities is tenuous, said Krochmal.
"People are hard pressed," said Krochmal. "Their basic need is to make a living for their families, for their kids, and they're doing it under great strain."