Criminal indifference to the violence on the Caribbean Coast
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
The law defining the communal property regime for the Caribbean Coast’s indigenous peoples and ethnic communities and for the Bocay, Coco, Indio and...

What does settler Catalino’s story tell us?
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
I have lived among indigenous communities and mestizo settlements during various conflicts between the two and between them and the State since the eighties,...

A chronicle of guerrilla warfare and mosaic pieces of the Mosquitia
2016 Julio Nicaragua
I’m aware of the problems the outcome of my re¬search could cause. As the statement by Pierre Vidal-Naquet that I used as an epigraph warns: “Just because...

Deceit, disappointment and anger are again accumulating in rural Nicaragua
2014 Mayo Nicaragua
The history of the Nicaraguan peasantry is one of continuous processes of expropriation and usurpation of its resources. In recent history, the multiethnic...

Will the canal help build the nation or only further fracture it?
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
The canal concession appeared virtually overnight, approved as law only three days after it was sent to the National Assembly with no serious discussion...

Notes on the elections in the North Caribbean region
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
I traveled to the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) on November 1 to see how the “civic fiesta” was developing in Bilwi, the region’s capital,...

Societal Validation for Drug Trafficking Is Growing
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
Aphenomenon has appeared on the Caribbean Coast, in Managua and different areas on the Pacific Coast that we consider extremely dangerous: societal legitimization...

The Adventure of Producing Blue Energy in the Caribbean Region
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
In 2006, energy cuts in most of Nicaragua frequently lasted up to eight hours a day, affecting production and commerce and the collective and personal...

The Ship-out Caribbeans Have Left the Coast on Cruise Ships
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
My story isn’t nice or lovely at all, but it’s not horrible either. I left when I was 17 years old. I went with my sister and without knowing I would...

How Do Coast Women Understand Poverty?
2009 Abril Nicaragua
In the conventional literature, poverty is related exclusively to the lack of material goods and is measured by calculating the capacity to satisfy basic...

Who Do the Coast Lands Belong to And Who Will Get Them?
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
What used to be called the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and is now properly recognized as the Caribbean Coast is the historical home of three indigenous...

We Have More Important Rights Pending Than Just the Vote
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
The Caribbean Coast hit the national headlines again on April 4 due to a violent confrontation in the streets of Bilwi between different factions of...

Ba’ra sma ki? The Caribbean’s Challenge
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
All witnesses of the now devastated communities in the North Caribbean, including two people who lived through the experience and write about it in these...

A Month after the Hurricane The Worst Is Yet to Come
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
Hurricane Felix slowly turned in toward the coast in the pre-dawn of Tuesday, September 4. The threat had become reality. It was only then that the...

The Hurricane Carried Away All Harmony
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
I live in Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas), and when they started saying a dangerous hurricane was advancing through the Caribbean, the first thing that went through...

“We Want Respect from the National Government”
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
I was born in Puerto Cabezas, in the coast, and am from the black culture. I studied at the Moravian high school and then studied nursing in Bilwaskarma,...

Coast Elections: Whose Temperature Was Taken?
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
On March 5, voters on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua had their fifth opportunity to elect the 45 Regional Council members in what is officially called...

Will the Elections in the Coast Be Anything to Celebrate?
2006 Enero Nicaragua
Six national and two regional groupings are running in the fifth election of autonomous governments in Nicaragua’s two Caribbean regions. The national...

Elections in the Caribbean Coast: Drugs, Abandonment and Apathy
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
Seldom has Nicaragua’s Caribbean region been so important to the country’s political class. It has nothing to do with the coast’s endemic hunger or...

“We in the Coast Have Shown that We Know How to Use Autonomy”
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
What’s the background to the autonomous regime in Nicaragua’s Caribbean region? How have the autonomous Regional Councils been performing? What problems...

Through the Looking Glass: Images of the Agricultural Frontier
2004 Abril Nicaragua
Most of us tend to understand the agricultural frontier as that none-too-thin “red line” separating forest from crops. And we understand its advance...

The Caribbean Coast’s Traditional Leaders: An Endangered Species?
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
In contemporary times, with the market replacing society and its laws supplanting values, the traditional populations of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast...

Caribbean Coast: Multiethnic, Multilingual ...and Finally Autonomous?
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s Caribbean populations are not so different from other Latin American indigenous peoples. But they are exceptional in that after eleven wars...

“We Live Alongside Drugs in Bluefields”
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
The municipality of Bluefields covers 5,000 square kilometers and has over 50,000 inhabitants. Six different ethnic groups coexist there, which enriches...

Alemán Is Losing Half the Country
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
The reports reaching us on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua are dripping with details of corruption, money laundering, hidden treasures, unpredictable...

YATAMA: Rebellion with a Cause?
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Violent street demonstrations led by the indigenous group YATAMA in the Caribbean town of Puerto Cabezas began on October 29 and lasted nearly a week,...

A Plea from Prinzapolka
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
Prinzapolka is the name of many things in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN): a major river, the municipality through which that river cuts,...

Caribbean Voices: Coast Women Share their Agenda
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
1. Promote a Code of Ethics among women covering the following points:- recognize the importance of all women participating equally. - combat...

Elections on the Atlantic Coast: Where Politics Moves on Slippery Turf
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
Before 1979, not much happened politically on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast; "the world was quiet." Rural costeños in particular lived a fairly bucolic...

Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast: New Government, Old Problems
1994 Junio Nicaragua
Exactly one century after the military occupation of Bluefields led by Gen. Rigoberto Cabezas a maneuver ordered by Liberal President Santos Zelaya...

Atlantic Coast: Another Disaster?
1994 Abril Nicaragua
No event in the Atlantic Coast has ever received such attention in the Pacific as the recent election of new governments in the North and South Atlantic...

The Walagallo: Heart of the Garifuna World
1993 Agosto Nicaragua
Religious ceremonies are one of Latin America's most visible and dramatic forms of grassroots expression. In many of these ceremonies, the various ethnic...

Second Autonomy Symposium: A Big Push Forward
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's second international autonomy symposium, held November 4-7, was not a typical conference, drowning in academic papers, with insufficient...

Cubans Still Keep Bluefields Alive
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
As Tomás Linton Barrera came up the steps of the two-story white house on Bluefields' main street, he was speaking Creole English to the pregnant woman...

One Year of Coast Autonomy: Little to Celebrate
1991 Julio Nicaragua
May 4, 1991 should have been treated as an historic milestone in Nicaragua, deserving of fanfare and celebration. It even merited a foreign journalist...

Atlantic Coast: Only a Slight Seam
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
Following the October 1988 hurricane that flattened the Atlantic Coast city of Bluefields, an emergency commission made up of Sandinista government officials...

Municipal Autonomy in Nicaragua
1990 Junio Nicaragua
With the February 25 elections, Nicaragua launched a new phase of government. Municipal Councils were elected in 131 municipalities (a unit that includes...

Yatama Takes the Cake
1990 Junio Nicaragua
Two months after the multiethnic population of the two Atlantic Coast regions elected their first autonomous governments, envío attended the inauguration...

Atlantic Coast: What Fate Autonomy?
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
While the whole world briefly turned its attention to Nicaragua’s presidential elections, an unprecedented electoral race in this country’s Caribbean...

Institutionalizing Autonomy
1989 Noviembre Nicaragua
“[This autonomy law] is not a law for all time; it will have to be improved, grow, discover new horizons.... “We must...fight the bearers of racial...

Ushering in Autonomy
1989 Octubre Nicaragua
As the rest of Nicaragua blinks in the glare of the international spotlights so shamelessly searching for flaws in its electoral process, the Atlantic...

Rebuilding the Río Coco: An Odyssey
1989 Septiembre Nicaragua
When the first truckloads of displaced Miskito Indian families pulled into Waspán, on the Río Coco, in mid-1985, they hardly paused to contemplate the...

Jinotega's Miskitos and Sumus: Little Noted Victims of the Contra War
1989 Junio Nicaragua
Cándida Cardenales, who guesses she is about 80 years old, is a Sumu Indian from Nicaragua. She grew up along the Río Coco in the northern province...

From Separatism to Autonomy—Ten Years on the Atlantic Coast
1989 Abril Nicaragua
"It has come to our attention that a gross misrepresentation has been made to you by the Spanish authorities, showing that we Indians have already...

Just the Facts: Chronology of Key Events in the Atlantic Coast, 1979-89
1989 Abril Nicaragua
1979Nov: Formation of Misurasata (Miskitos, Sumus, Ramas, Sandinistas Working Together) as a mass indigenous organization 1980:Feb:...

Atlantic Coast: Pearl Lagoon: Back from war and winds
1989 Marzo Nicaragua
Trailing up to 50 logs behind them, boats pull up daily now to the beached iron barge that acts as a dock in the Creole community of Pearl Lagoon. The...

Bluefileños Gettin’ It Together
1989 Enero Nicaragua
It is commonly said that every cloud has a silver lining. So, apparently, do hurricanes. In Bluefields, the bright side is a new and previously unknown...

The Atlantic Coast—Two Leaders’ Paths Join
1988 Septiembre Nicaragua
This article by Douglas Carcache, a Nicaraguan journalist who covered the Atlantic Coast for various national radio and print media for several years,...

Road Ends at El Rama: A Case Study of the War
1988 Junio Nicaragua
“It seems to me that with Sapoá or without it, this is going to be the corner where the last contras put up their final fight. This little place...

The Atlantic Coast—Peace Has Taken Hold
1988 Mayo Nicaragua
“At a time when the talk of peace is universal, one of the only places where it is a reality is also the most unlikely. This is where the war began…....

The Atlantic Coast Testing Ground for Peace
1987 Noviembre Nicaragua
Exactly two years ago, we wrote in these pages that the Atlantic Coast was "on the razor's edge." In December 1984, Nicaragua's newly elected government...

Miskitus on the Río Coco Whose Political Football Are They?
1986 Mayo Nicaragua
"Before, we lived well, ate fish," mourned the kuka (Miskitu for elderly woman), to journalists at an impromptu community assembly in Leimus in...

The Sumu Indians of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast—Defining Our Own Reality
1986 Marzo Nicaragua
“The rights of autonomy of the indigenous peoples and communities of the Atlantic Coast will be exercised in the geographic area that they have traditionally...

Principles and definitions of the JGRN and FSLN Regarding the coast
1981 Septiembre Nicaragua
On August 12, Comandante Daniel Ortega, on behalf of the Frente Sandinista of National Liberation (FSLN)and the Junta of the National Reconstruction...

The Atlantic Coast Area Of Nicaragua
1981 Septiembre Nicaragua
INTRODUCTION:It is very difficult for people who are not familiar with Nicaragua to comprehend the tremendous differences that exist between...