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Description

Overview

Located midway between the Honduran mainland and the island of Jamaica, the Republic of Halcon (Halcon Creole: Ripublik Halkon, Scots Gaelic: Poblachd na Halcon, Spanish: Republica de Halcón) is an island nation that sits at the intersection of multiple overlapping layers of historical and cultural trends both within and without the Caribbean as a whole. Situated on a group of Caribbean islands, the islands as a whole are part of the larger Nicaragua Rise which extends from the mainland of Central America to the island of Jamaica. Being so positioned, the islands were among the first to be claimed and colonized by European explorers, and while initially claimed by the Spanish were later seized by the British in the early 1720s, with whom the islands remained until their independence. Much as in the rest of the Caribbean, the islands host a vibrant culture influenced by European, African, and Native cultures and customs which create a bright tapestry that has increasingly found purchase in modern global culture.

Geography / Ecology

The Republic of Halcon shares its name with the islands it sits upon, though the country as a whole also disputes ownership of the Serranilla and Bajo Nuevo Banks to the immediate southeast. The islands themselves are topologically interesting, with the largest island (Rosa Linda) being divided between two primary massifs in its northern and southern halves, while many of the other islands often rise to a maximum of only 43 m / 141 ft. Notably, Wild Island to the southwest is a geologically distinct province separated from the main body of the islands by the Gap of Providence, a deceptively deep channel that descends to more than 600 m at its deepest. The majority of the islands are part of the same physical body as Rosa Linda Island, connected by a larger bank which is generally only 10 m deep barring a region dubbed the "Blue Hole", a submerged shallow valley which descends nearly 40 m deep within a curve of Petrel Island that forms the bulk of the harbor of Porthaven.

Being wholly within the Tropic of Capricorn, the islands are a decidedly tropical climate natively dominated by dry and wet limestone forests, with a great many more forests, wetlands, and offshore ecosystems ranging from seagrass beds to coral reefs to the quasi-abyssal depths of the Gap of Providence. Even within the context of the Caribbean, the varied topography and ecological regions of the islands are recognized as unusually diverse, and in 1995 Slug Island was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. No explanation for why the island is so uniquely diverse has been sufficiently identified, though research into the island's environments remain ongoing for various fields of ecological, chemical, biotic, and pharmacological research. In particular, the hallucinogenic plant locally dubbed "swist" shows promise for applications in treating Alzheimer's Disease, while a number of other plants and insects are being studied for other possible uses in all manner of industries.

Being so diverse, it is currently estimated that only 60% of all native species are fully catalogued and known. Most large animal species are known, with no major mammalian species known in the islands which were not introduced by humans. The island is most well-known for its plethora of bird species, including the crested emperor, a species of parrot native to the islands which has intensely-colored plumage. Perhaps the most well-known species of the island is the fire slug, the second-largest terrestrial slug in the world and which is colored in bright, undulating patterns of red and yellow, giving it its name, and which is often held in captivity to be harvested for its mucus to be used as a recreational drug. Although most species of plants and animals are of little direct concern for preservation, a number of key species represent an ongoing effort to try and manage and maintain the island's remaining wildernesses, especially in the face of shifting climate and ongoing urbanization.

History

Inhabited for millennia by native peoples, the Halcon islands were inhabited natively by the Ciboney Taíno, who called the islands Ke'jicotea. Located where they were, the islands were an important center of trade for the Caribbean, with evidence of trade along major trade routes from Florida out to the Muisca. In particular, the island appears to have been a central site for the production of tumbaga, with a number of chemical analyses showing that many known tumbaga artifacts have isotopic signatures correlated to the islands. The islanders were also considered unusually developed, and while there is no evidence of more sophisticated systems of metallurgy or other examples of the typical hallmarks of civilization such as a written language or centralized leadership, Bernardino de Sahagún wrote of the islanders after the Spanish arrival to the Americas "the natives of the islands called Halcón are highly proficient in naval tactics...were they gifted with galleons of European make, they would surely have formed a hegemonic empire over the entire Caribbean."

Although the Spanish were quick to claim the entirety of the Caribbean and Mesoamerica for themselves, their actual control was limited at best, and especially scant considering the fierce resistance of the Taíno. For most of its history, the Spanish contented themselves with control of a fortified outpost on Ambergris Island, the ruins of which are a national landmark in the modern day. The strategic location of the islands in the center of the Caribbean made them a popular hideout for pirates, where Crescent Moon Cay was for a time the main base of pirate Anne Bonny. Multiple times the Spanish attempted to pacify the islands, but every time the Spanish made inroads onto the coast the Taíno would regroup in the remote interior of the islands and launch renewed attacks, forcing the Spanish to maintain a near-permanent garrison in any outpost they put in place. It was this lack of direct control that made it easy enough for the British to seize control of the islands during the War of the Spanish Succession.

The British had somewhat more success projecting power onto the islands, though their focus had shifted first to Jamaica and its established sugar plantations. Halcon by contrast was settled much more slowly, with the British shifting the administrative center of the colony from Ambergris Island to the new fortified settlement at Port Haven (later contracted to simply Porthaven) on Petrel Island. The British would then begin a prolonged effort at "pacification" through a series of conflicts with the Taíno designated as the "Rose Wars", which despite their flowery name were often brutal conflicts that saw extensive casualties and which modern Halconan historians classify as a genocide. By the dawn of the 19th Century, the Taíno population had been reduced by nearly 75% through war and disease, at which point a new wave of migration came where Afro-Caribs from St. Vincent were displaced in the aftermath of the Second Carib War were deported en masse to the islands.

At the same time, Britain's own wave of colonial settlement left its own mark on the island. Although the island's administrators were overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon Brits, starting in the mid-1700s the Highland Clearances brought a wave of Scots Gaelic settlers leaving Scotland for British colonies, primarily Canada and Australia but with a sizeable number as a result of a specific advertisement campaign among a number of Scottish landowners with incentive from British Parliament. Hundreds of primarily Gaelic-speaking Scots left for the islands, with the primary settlement gathering on Wild Island. To the dismay of the Brits, the offer of settlement did not endear the Gaels to the colonial administration, and many of the times that Taíno forces revolted against the British the Gaels frequently lent their support through a feigned ignorance of gathering places, weapons caches, and rebel movements. More often than not, the Gaels found more common cause with the Taíno than the English, and in a number of cases actively intermarried.

This combination of English, Gaelic, Taíno, African, and Carib influences would create the primary creole population of the island, who became known as the Garífongu. The British colonial presence only consolidated power over Rosa Linda Island itself in that time, after which larger settlements began to emerge as the British slowly moved to abolish slavery and continue to operate the island as a giant plantation for export to Britain itself, initially with the production of sugar but by 1850 specializing instead in the cultivation of exotic plants for use in dyes. In particular, a local wildflower dubbed auro was soon discovered to be an excellent source of purple dye in the vein of the mallow flower, producing a richer color but being harder to cultivate commercially. This industry of dye production, combined with the famously multicolored flora and fauna of the island, gained the Halcon Islands the nickname of "The Rainbow Islands" in the popular consciousness, which also neatly described the exotic and diverse culture of the islands.

Said cultural diversity also witnessed the rise of a new religious movement in the islands in the late 1880s and fully taking shape in the 1910s. A popular spiritual leader named Áhari Dubh gained wide traction among the Garífongu with a new belief system that combined aspects of Anglicanism, African vodun faith, and Kabbalah with the use of the local hallucinogenic plant known as swist, in a religious movement dubbed Naytrál Fet (Halcon Creole for "Natural Faith"), driven by Dubh's own claim to be descended from both Abraham and Anansi. A common practice in this period was a "burning bush ritual", wherein a swist bush would be ignited and followers would inhale the fumes while dancing around it. Such an esoteric and unusual practice was declared illegal by the British authorities, but its actual practice continued unabated as the British largely turned a blind eye to such worship as a means of allowing the Garífongu to worship and blow off steam in a way that did not actively interfere with their rule as much as protests and organized movements would.

Not that they weren't present; indeed, the Naytrál Fet movement simply manifested a new form of social resistance to British colonial policy where people began to put pressure on the British business owners and colonial administration by claiming illness or disability, with so-called "blood poisoning" becoming a particularly popular complaint that took advantage of Anglo-British conceptions that non-white people carried more diseases. Another example came in 1911 when a Garífongu woman named Monday Meriribana was killed in prison, the formal cause of death being starvation but the reality of her death by assault from the prison guards becoming popular knowledge. In response, the Naytrál Fet declared her to be "Saint Monday", and in her honor declared Monday a sabbath day which they demanded required them to take the day off and extend their weekend to three days. Intentionally currying a reputation of laziness was summarized in the idiom "the tree and the reed both resist being blown down".

In the aftermath of World War II, this long-running history of passive resistance was starting to grow increasingly more agitated. When India gained independence, the world knew that the age of colonial empires was coming to an end, and the whole of the British Empire began to come apart. The British attempted to resist this wave, but before long they conceded to reality and began attempting to organize a favorable post-colonial situation, which in the Caribbean meant an attempt to propose the creation of the West Indies Federation. Despite the proposal having some sway, within a year of its creation the effort fell apart as both Jamaica and Halcon grew dissonant and unwilling to remain part of the Federation if it meant subsidizing the other islands gaining independence. As the Federation fell apart, Halcon instead became a Commonwealth Realm in the vein of many of Britain's other Caribbean holdings, though by 1977 moods fully shifted and Halcon officially ended its relationship with the British Monarchy to establish a fully-fledged republic.

Since then, the island has become a tourist mecca, being an almost mandatory stop for cruise ships passing through the Caribbean. The island leaned heavily into the burgeoning field of ecotourism early on, with large parts of the island being sanctioned as nature reserves for the purpose of inviting global tourism. Primarily drawing from the Anglosphere and neighboring Caribbean nations, the island has also recently seen a wave of migration from Latin America, in particular from Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providencia. At the same time, though, the islands have been experiencing increasing levels of political uncertainty, with incumbent president Alastair Wairigu having won four consecutive terms as President since 2010 and received criticism for increasingly authoritarian governance. None of Halcon's troubles are particularly unique, but at the same time the kind of agitated passiveness is often characterized as a uniquely Halconan way of addressing the troubles.

Culture

Halconan culture sits at the overlap of multiple vectors ranging from Latin America to Afro-Caribbean to Gaelic to English. As a consequence the culture of the island is excessively diverse, both through the foundations of the Garífongu culture and through recent immigration that only further serves to further add to the island's already eccentric culture. Dance mixes Gaelic folk traditions with African group dance, music forms out of a milieu of African percussion, Latin rhythms, and British folk music, and food sees haggis-inspired sausages spiced by the Caribbean palate. The more florid descriptions of Halconan culture will sometimes use the metaphor of the "Weave", describing the country as a rich tapestry sewn out of threads taken from all over. A fitting description on its own, but the metaphor also describes a Garífongu tradition of a traditional wedding sash being woven from threads donated from the bride's village, making it even more apt for Halcon in particular.

Language likewise plays a major role in displaying the country's history, with the primary language being Halcon Creole, which overlays African, Carib, Taíno, Gaelic, and Spanish influences onto English to create one of the many types of creole languages heard around the Caribbean. Each language individually also sees usage in the country, with communities of Scots Gaelic speakers still persisting to this day (some have suggested that Halcon might actually have wider Scots Gaelic fluency than Scotland). Most Spanish speakers, however, are much more recent transplants who have migrated from the Central American mainland in recent decades, and even then many of them are either primarily English-speaking or proficient in English when considering that the regions of Honduras and Nicaragua which migration comes from is largely from the "Miskito Coast", whose own history of British influence has left a lasting impression on local languages, along with the primarily English-speaking islands of San Andrés and Providencia which are nonetheless part of Colombia.

What many people know first and foremost, though, is the presence of recreational drugs in Garífongu culture. Although the swist plant's role in the Naytrál Fet is well-known, more recently a new drug has emerged as a local effort to combat heroin usage of all things. The drug is produced by harvesting mucus from the native fire slug, then drying and powdering it. The resultant substance is described as "dream dust", and has a strong sedative effect combined with vivid dreams. The recreational use of the drug rapidly became widespread and effectively replaced heroin usage in the country, although abuse of the drug results in insomnia or extreme nightmares, both of which on their own can have severe effects either from lack of sleep or extreme fear responses during sleep. Although the drug is widely tolerated at a social level, its use has been heavily restricted at the national level and active cultivation of fire slug mucus is only formally sanctioned for pharmaceutical research, not that it stops people.

Social attitudes are often compared to Jamaica and the widespread presence of marijuana as part of the Rastafarian religion, though in comparison to marijuana's increasingly global presence drugs like swist and dream dust are shockingly localized in Halcon. They do see use outside of the country, but no other country is as closely associated with them as Halcon, whereas for better or worse drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl have a widespread and global distribution and use. Some advocates for drug reform will idealistically point to Halcon as a model for "responsible" drug use, while others will point out the fact that abuse of both drugs is in fact a well-documented social phenomenon in the country. And yet, the way that dream dust so rapidly displaced heroin usage in the country is still studied by sociologists as a means of potentially addressing the psychology of addiction and the ways that larger social attitudes towards drugs as a whole could be changed, though to what extent remains unknown.

Description

Overview

Located midway between the Honduran mainland and the island of Jamaica, the Republic of Halcon (Halcon Creole: Ripublik Halkon, Scots Gaelic: Poblachd na Halcon, Spanish: Republica de Halcón) is an island nation that sits at the intersection of multiple overlapping layers of historical and cultural trends both within and without the Caribbean as a whole. Situated on a group of Caribbean islands, the islands as a whole are part of the larger Nicaragua Rise which extends from the mainland of Central America to the island of Jamaica. Being so positioned, the islands were among the first to be claimed and colonized by European explorers, and while initially claimed by the Spanish were later seized by the British in the early 1720s, with whom the islands remained until their independence. Much as in the rest of the Caribbean, the islands host a vibrant culture influenced by European, African, and Native cultures and customs which create a bright tapestry that has increasingly found purchase in modern global culture.

Geography / Ecology

The Republic of Halcon shares its name with the islands it sits upon, though the country as a whole also disputes ownership of the Serranilla and Bajo Nuevo Banks to the immediate southeast. The islands themselves are topologically interesting, with the largest island (Rosa Linda) being divided between two primary massifs in its northern and southern halves, while many of the other islands often rise to a maximum of only 43 m / 141 ft. Notably, Wild Island to the southwest is a geologically distinct province separated from the main body of the islands by the Gap of Providence, a deceptively deep channel that descends to more than 600 m at its deepest. The majority of the islands are part of the same physical body as Rosa Linda Island, connected by a larger bank which is generally only 10 m deep barring a region dubbed the "Blue Hole", a submerged shallow valley which descends nearly 40 m deep within a curve of Petrel Island that forms the bulk of the harbor of Porthaven.

Being wholly within the Tropic of Capricorn, the islands are a decidedly tropical climate natively dominated by dry and wet limestone forests, with a great many more forests, wetlands, and offshore ecosystems ranging from seagrass beds to coral reefs to the quasi-abyssal depths of the Gap of Providence. Even within the context of the Caribbean, the varied topography and ecological regions of the islands are recognized as unusually diverse, and in 1995 Slug Island was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. No explanation for why the island is so uniquely diverse has been sufficiently identified, though research into the island's environments remain ongoing for various fields of ecological, chemical, biotic, and pharmacological research. In particular, the hallucinogenic plant locally dubbed "swist" shows promise for applications in treating Alzheimer's Disease, while a number of other plants and insects are being studied for other possible uses in all manner of industries.

Being so diverse, it is currently estimated that only 60% of all native species are fully catalogued and known. Most large animal species are known, with no major mammalian species known in the islands which were not introduced by humans. The island is most well-known for its plethora of bird species, including the crested emperor, a species of parrot native to the islands which has intensely-colored plumage. Perhaps the most well-known species of the island is the fire slug, the second-largest terrestrial slug in the world and which is colored in bright, undulating patterns of red and yellow, giving it its name, and which is often held in captivity to be harvested for its mucus to be used as a recreational drug. Although most species of plants and animals are of little direct concern for preservation, a number of key species represent an ongoing effort to try and manage and maintain the island's remaining wildernesses, especially in the face of shifting climate and ongoing urbanization.

History

Inhabited for millennia by native peoples, the Halcon islands were inhabited natively by the Ciboney Taíno, who called the islands Ke'jicotea. Located where they were, the islands were an important center of trade for the Caribbean, with evidence of trade along major trade routes from Florida out to the Muisca. In particular, the island appears to have been a central site for the production of tumbaga, with a number of chemical analyses showing that many known tumbaga artifacts have isotopic signatures correlated to the islands. The islanders were also considered unusually developed, and while there is no evidence of more sophisticated systems of metallurgy or other examples of the typical hallmarks of civilization such as a written language or centralized leadership, Bernardino de Sahagún wrote of the islanders after the Spanish arrival to the Americas "the natives of the islands called Halcón are highly proficient in naval tactics...were they gifted with galleons of European make, they would surely have formed a hegemonic empire over the entire Caribbean."

Although the Spanish were quick to claim the entirety of the Caribbean and Mesoamerica for themselves, their actual control was limited at best, and especially scant considering the fierce resistance of the Taíno. For most of its history, the Spanish contented themselves with control of a fortified outpost on Ambergris Island, the ruins of which are a national landmark in the modern day. The strategic location of the islands in the center of the Caribbean made them a popular hideout for pirates, where Crescent Moon Cay was for a time the main base of pirate Anne Bonny. Multiple times the Spanish attempted to pacify the islands, but every time the Spanish made inroads onto the coast the Taíno would regroup in the remote interior of the islands and launch renewed attacks, forcing the Spanish to maintain a near-permanent garrison in any outpost they put in place. It was this lack of direct control that made it easy enough for the British to seize control of the islands during the War of the Spanish Succession.

The British had somewhat more success projecting power onto the islands, though their focus had shifted first to Jamaica and its established sugar plantations. Halcon by contrast was settled much more slowly, with the British shifting the administrative center of the colony from Ambergris Island to the new fortified settlement at Port Haven (later contracted to simply Porthaven) on Petrel Island. The British would then begin a prolonged effort at "pacification" through a series of conflicts with the Taíno designated as the "Rose Wars", which despite their flowery name were often brutal conflicts that saw extensive casualties and which modern Halconan historians classify as a genocide. By the dawn of the 19th Century, the Taíno population had been reduced by nearly 75% through war and disease, at which point a new wave of migration came where Afro-Caribs from St. Vincent were displaced in the aftermath of the Second Carib War were deported en masse to the islands.

At the same time, Britain's own wave of colonial settlement left its own mark on the island. Although the island's administrators were overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon Brits, starting in the mid-1700s the Highland Clearances brought a wave of Scots Gaelic settlers leaving Scotland for British colonies, primarily Canada and Australia but with a sizeable number as a result of a specific advertisement campaign among a number of Scottish landowners with incentive from British Parliament. Hundreds of primarily Gaelic-speaking Scots left for the islands, with the primary settlement gathering on Wild Island. To the dismay of the Brits, the offer of settlement did not endear the Gaels to the colonial administration, and many of the times that Taíno forces revolted against the British the Gaels frequently lent their support through a feigned ignorance of gathering places, weapons caches, and rebel movements. More often than not, the Gaels found more common cause with the Taíno than the English, and in a number of cases actively intermarried.

This combination of English, Gaelic, Taíno, African, and Carib influences would create the primary creole population of the island, who became known as the Garífongu. The British colonial presence only consolidated power over Rosa Linda Island itself in that time, after which larger settlements began to emerge as the British slowly moved to abolish slavery and continue to operate the island as a giant plantation for export to Britain itself, initially with the production of sugar but by 1850 specializing instead in the cultivation of exotic plants for use in dyes. In particular, a local wildflower dubbed auro was soon discovered to be an excellent source of purple dye in the vein of the mallow flower, producing a richer color but being harder to cultivate commercially. This industry of dye production, combined with the famously multicolored flora and fauna of the island, gained the Halcon Islands the nickname of "The Rainbow Islands" in the popular consciousness, which also neatly described the exotic and diverse culture of the islands.

Said cultural diversity also witnessed the rise of a new religious movement in the islands in the late 1880s and fully taking shape in the 1910s. A popular spiritual leader named Áhari Dubh gained wide traction among the Garífongu with a new belief system that combined aspects of Anglicanism, African vodun faith, and Kabbalah with the use of the local hallucinogenic plant known as swist, in a religious movement dubbed Naytrál Fet (Halcon Creole for "Natural Faith"), driven by Dubh's own claim to be descended from both Abraham and Anansi. A common practice in this period was a "burning bush ritual", wherein a swist bush would be ignited and followers would inhale the fumes while dancing around it. Such an esoteric and unusual practice was declared illegal by the British authorities, but its actual practice continued unabated as the British largely turned a blind eye to such worship as a means of allowing the Garífongu to worship and blow off steam in a way that did not actively interfere with their rule as much as protests and organized movements would.

Not that they weren't present; indeed, the Naytrál Fet movement simply manifested a new form of social resistance to British colonial policy where people began to put pressure on the British business owners and colonial administration by claiming illness or disability, with so-called "blood poisoning" becoming a particularly popular complaint that took advantage of Anglo-British conceptions that non-white people carried more diseases. Another example came in 1911 when a Garífongu woman named Monday Meriribana was killed in prison, the formal cause of death being starvation but the reality of her death by assault from the prison guards becoming popular knowledge. In response, the Naytrál Fet declared her to be "Saint Monday", and in her honor declared Monday a sabbath day which they demanded required them to take the day off and extend their weekend to three days. Intentionally currying a reputation of laziness was summarized in the idiom "the tree and the reed both resist being blown down".

In the aftermath of World War II, this long-running history of passive resistance was starting to grow increasingly more agitated. When India gained independence, the world knew that the age of colonial empires was coming to an end, and the whole of the British Empire began to come apart. The British attempted to resist this wave, but before long they conceded to reality and began attempting to organize a favorable post-colonial situation, which in the Caribbean meant an attempt to propose the creation of the West Indies Federation. Despite the proposal having some sway, within a year of its creation the effort fell apart as both Jamaica and Halcon grew dissonant and unwilling to remain part of the Federation if it meant subsidizing the other islands gaining independence. As the Federation fell apart, Halcon instead became a Commonwealth Realm in the vein of many of Britain's other Caribbean holdings, though by 1977 moods fully shifted and Halcon officially ended its relationship with the British Monarchy to establish a fully-fledged republic.

Since then, the island has become a tourist mecca, being an almost mandatory stop for cruise ships passing through the Caribbean. The island leaned heavily into the burgeoning field of ecotourism early on, with large parts of the island being sanctioned as nature reserves for the purpose of inviting global tourism. Primarily drawing from the Anglosphere and neighboring Caribbean nations, the island has also recently seen a wave of migration from Latin America, in particular from Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providencia. At the same time, though, the islands have been experiencing increasing levels of political uncertainty, with incumbent president Alastair Wairigu having won four consecutive terms as President since 2010 and received criticism for increasingly authoritarian governance. None of Halcon's troubles are particularly unique, but at the same time the kind of agitated passiveness is often characterized as a uniquely Halconan way of addressing the troubles.

Culture

Halconan culture sits at the overlap of multiple vectors ranging from Latin America to Afro-Caribbean to Gaelic to English. As a consequence the culture of the island is excessively diverse, both through the foundations of the Garífongu culture and through recent immigration that only further serves to further add to the island's already eccentric culture. Dance mixes Gaelic folk traditions with African group dance, music forms out of a milieu of African percussion, Latin rhythms, and British folk music, and food sees haggis-inspired sausages spiced by the Caribbean palate. The more florid descriptions of Halconan culture will sometimes use the metaphor of the "Weave", describing the country as a rich tapestry sewn out of threads taken from all over. A fitting description on its own, but the metaphor also describes a Garífongu tradition of a traditional wedding sash being woven from threads donated from the bride's village, making it even more apt for Halcon in particular.

Language likewise plays a major role in displaying the country's history, with the primary language being Halcon Creole, which overlays African, Carib, Taíno, Gaelic, and Spanish influences onto English to create one of the many types of creole languages heard around the Caribbean. Each language individually also sees usage in the country, with communities of Scots Gaelic speakers still persisting to this day (some have suggested that Halcon might actually have wider Scots Gaelic fluency than Scotland). Most Spanish speakers, however, are much more recent transplants who have migrated from the Central American mainland in recent decades, and even then many of them are either primarily English-speaking or proficient in English when considering that the regions of Honduras and Nicaragua which migration comes from is largely from the "Miskito Coast", whose own history of British influence has left a lasting impression on local languages, along with the primarily English-speaking islands of San Andrés and Providencia which are nonetheless part of Colombia.

What many people know first and foremost, though, is the presence of recreational drugs in Garífongu culture. Although the swist plant's role in the Naytrál Fet is well-known, more recently a new drug has emerged as a local effort to combat heroin usage of all things. The drug is produced by harvesting mucus from the native fire slug, then drying and powdering it. The resultant substance is described as "dream dust", and has a strong sedative effect combined with vivid dreams. The recreational use of the drug rapidly became widespread and effectively replaced heroin usage in the country, although abuse of the drug results in insomnia or extreme nightmares, both of which on their own can have severe effects either from lack of sleep or extreme fear responses during sleep. Although the drug is widely tolerated at a social level, its use has been heavily restricted at the national level and active cultivation of fire slug mucus is only formally sanctioned for pharmaceutical research, not that it stops people.

Social attitudes are often compared to Jamaica and the widespread presence of marijuana as part of the Rastafarian religion, though in comparison to marijuana's increasingly global presence drugs like swist and dream dust are shockingly localized in Halcon. They do see use outside of the country, but no other country is as closely associated with them as Halcon, whereas for better or worse drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl have a widespread and global distribution and use. Some advocates for drug reform will idealistically point to Halcon as a model for "responsible" drug use, while others will point out the fact that abuse of both drugs is in fact a well-documented social phenomenon in the country. And yet, the way that dream dust so rapidly displaced heroin usage in the country is still studied by sociologists as a means of potentially addressing the psychology of addiction and the ways that larger social attitudes towards drugs as a whole could be changed, though to what extent remains unknown.