Baron Pineda

Shipwrecked Identities
Shipwrecked
Identities
?
Navigating Race on
Nicaragua’s Mo squito
Coast
Baron L. Pineda
Rutg e r s U n ive r s i ty Pre s s

New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pineda, Baron L., 1967–
Shipwrecked identities : navigating race on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast/
Baron L. Pineda.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8135-3813-6 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8135-3814-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Indians of Central America—Nicaragua—Ethnic identity. 2. Indians of
Central America—Urban residence—Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras)
3. Indians of Central America—Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras)—Social
conditions. 4. Indigenous peoples—Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras)—
Ethnic identity. 5. Indigenous peoples—Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras)—
Social conditions. 6. Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras)—Race relations.
7. Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras)—Social conditions. I. Title.
F1525.3.E74P56 2006
305.897⬘882—dc22 2005019946
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copyright © 2006 by Baron L. Pineda
All rights reserved
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Manufactured in the United States of America

For Gina, Antonio, and little Pablo
Conte nts
 The Setting 
 Nicaragua’s Two Coasts 
 From Bilwi to Puerto Cabezas: Mestizo

Nationalism in the Age of Agro-Industry 
 Company Time 
 Neighborhoods and Official Ethnicity 
 Costeño Warriors and Contra Rebels:

Nature, Culture, and Ethnic Conflict 
 Conclusion 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
vii
Shipwrecked Identities
Chapte r 1
The Setting
Don Paco Mendez owns and operates a store among

the strings of general stores that line the calle commercial (commercial
street) of Puerto Cabezas—the port and capital of Nicaragua’s recently
formed North Atlantic Autonomous Region (la RAAN as it is known
locally). One afternoon I stopped by his store to do an informal inter-
view with him about his life.1 He told me that his family was one of the
founders of Puerto Cabezas during the period that is known locally as
“company time”—an idealized period from the 1920s to the 1970s in
which US and Canadian banana, lumber, and mining industries oper-
ated on a large scale in the region.2 His Costa Rican mother and
Nicaraguan father migrated from the Pacific side of Nicaragua to estab-
lish a general store in the burgeoning Caribbean port city that in the
1920s was converted from a small Indian village called Bilwi to the
Nicaraguan headquarters of the largest employer in Nicaragua, the Stan-
dard Fruit Company.
He was quick to remind me that although he had been born and
raised en la costa, on the Mosquito Coast, he was, in an existential sense,
profoundly del Pacifico, from the Pacific. Although he referred to himself
as an indígena and an indio, he explained to me, with more than a trace
of prejudice, the fundamental superiority of the Pacific Indian vis-à-vis
the Moscos de aqui (literally, flies from here), as he perjoratively referred
to the Miskito Indians.
Don Paco explained that he had spent some time in the campesino
(small-scale agriculturalist) villages of the mountainous Nicaraguan
interior that he regarded as being part of the Pacific Coast, an impor-
tant distinction in the context of Nicaragua where all Nicaraguans
regard the country as being divided into two fundamentally different
1
2 Shipwrecked Identities
halves: Atlantic (Mosquito Coast) and Pacific. In the Segovian Moun-

tains he had witnessed the vigor and skill with which the Indian
campesinos coaxed harvests from marginal and relatively dry lands. In his
opinion the land’s suitability for agriculture and the climate of the
Pacific interior were far inferior to that of the Mosquito Coast,
Nicaragua’s relatively sparsely populated and heavily forested Caribbean
lowlands. Don Paco’s perception of the absence of ideal geographical,
climatic, and social conditions for agriculture in the Pacific vis-à-vis the
Atlantic stood in sharp contrast to his perception of the disparity in pro-
ductivity between the inhabitants of each region:
If the Indians [of the Pacific] have a little piece of land, they plant
green peppers, onions, tomatoes . . . everything . . . but here the
damn Moscos are lazy. They just plant their cassava and banana and
then sit back in their hammock, real easy. They just cultivate in
order to live and as long as they are eating, they don’t worry about
getting ahead . . . no progress. In the Pacific they plant corn, beans
and bust their asses taking care of the crops . . . they will walk ten
kilometers to get water. Every day there they are cleaning and tak-
ing care of the crops, but for the Moscos from here that is too much
work to do. They don’t want to grow corn, the damn Moscos,
because they are lazy.
Unfortunately, the sort of prejudice against Costeños, people of the

Mosquito Coast, reflected in this quotation is not uncommon, even
among some natives such as Don Paco.3 Indeed, more generally, the pro-
jection of negative qualities such as laziness and ignorance on marginal-
ized out-groups, however defined, is common throughout the world.
What stands out about this particular expression of prejudice is the way
in which perceptions of land and geography—in other words, environ-
mental ideologies—intersect with ideologies of race and group differ-
ence. Don Paco’s belief that the Miskito Indians are lazy was confirmed
in his mind by the fact that the agricultural production of the region had
historically been low. But he also found this supposed laziness to be par-
ticularly disturbing in light of what he perceived to be the distinctive
natural abundance of the region. This abundance and the agricultural
opportunities he believed this abundance offered stood in contrast to the
situation of the relatively arid and more heavily populated Pacific Coast.
The Setting 3
In the minds of many Nicaraguans the region’s natural abundance serves

to explain the human poverty of its inhabitants. This luxuriant natural
world is thought to lead to a diminished industriousness among the
inhabitants of the region.
Few people in contemporary Nicaragua question the widely held
notion that the Mosquito Coast is a rich land with tremendous natural
abundance. However, the region is also popularly regarded as the
country’s poorest and least productive—its people suffering from an
acute lack of infrastructure, social services, and employment. Since the
late nineteenth century, Nicaraguan governments, while decrying the
country’s inability to harness the exploitable natural resources, have
encouraged foreign companies to operate extractive mining, fishing, and
lumbering industries in the region.
From the standpoint of Pacific Nicaraguan nationalism, the histori-
cal connection that the Mosquito Coast has had with Great Britain and
the English-speaking world provokes suspicion and serves to place
Costeño society as a suspect internal other. Throughout the Contra War
the opposition of Costeños was viewed as a problem of separatism that
was the residue of the hyper-exploitation of the region by British and
North American colonialism and neo-colonialism.
In my conversations with Pacific Nicaraguans, many disapprovingly
assert that Costeños “se creen ingleses” (believe they are English). This per-
ceived insistence on maintaining cultural, linguistic, social, economic,
and military (during the Contra War) ties with the English-speaking
world and nonintegration with Nicaraguan Mestizo nationalism is
ridiculed because it is perceived to stand in contrast to the reality of
Mosquito Coast poverty and marginalization from both the English-
speaking world and the relatively more prosperous Pacific half of the
country. In light of the perceived Blackness, poverty, isolation, and cor-
rupted languages of Costeños, Pacific Nicaraguans ridicule the idea that
they should carry the torch of the Anglo-American and Anglo-
Caribbean world.
Living and working with Costeños, I found that they are well aware
of the derision with which many Pacific Nicaraguans regard them. Not
surprisingly, they seek to contest or invert, formally and informally, the
status hierarchies in which they find themselves in a subordinate posi-
tion. In many ways Costeños see themselves as cosmopolitans whose
continuing ties to the English-speaking world place them above Pacific

Nicaraguans. With regard to their presumed over-identification with
their British and North American oppressors, they remind themselves
and Pacific Nicaraguans, when they have a chance, that the Pacific Coast
has a long history of subservience and humiliation at the hands of these
same alleged oppressors.
They speak of their successes in finding work in the United States,
which they attribute in part to their English skills, western Caribbean
location, and social capital (i.e., contact with Protestant churches).
Costeño men frequently work on Caribbean cruise boats, and they pride
themselves for being regarded as hard workers and being paid in US dol-
lars. In that vein, they take pride in the long-standing fact of the circu-
lation of dollars in the regional economy, in contrast to the troubled
monetary history of the Nicaraguan Cordoba. Some Costeños describe
themselves as “dollar men”—an expression that refers to their positive
identification as cosmopolitans.
With regard to race, Costeños do not outright reject a pan-
hemispheric skin-color hierarchy that ranks light skin above dark skin,
but they note that Pacific Nicaraguans are themselves often quite dark
skinned. Costeños typically construct their own Caribbean Blackness as
being an integral part of their cosmopolitanism.4 In this sense they both
invert and contest the negative stereotypes that are applied to them and
their region.
Costeños typically derive optimism and hope from their unwaver-
ing belief in the richness of the region and its potential for human trans-
formation. For them the natural wealth of the region, far from sapping
the energy of the people who inhabit it, represents an underutilized asset
that under the right conditions should propel the Mosquito Coast into
a particular kind of material prosperity. They share a vision of a dollar-
driven and wage-driven prosperity that, in their minds, existed during
company time. Costeños feel that in light of their natural environment
and its role in their region’s history, they should not be materially poor.
In other words, they experience a nagging dissonance, what I call “envi-
ronmental dissonance” (Pineda 2001c), between the abundance of their
natural environment and the stagnation of their economies.
Notwithstanding the region’s history of armed conflict and cycles
of economic boom and bust, Porteños (inhabitants of Puerto Cabezas)
The Setting 5
find the current state of material poverty in the Atlantic Coast to be

particularly appalling.5 They fervently affirm their conviction that given
the natural abundance of the Mosquito Coast, they should not be so
poor. According to their cosmopolitan framework of viewing the world,
the natural resources of the region should translate into their own mate-
rial well-being. They shouldn’t be so poor because their land is so rich.
This environmental dissonance that Costeños experience stands in con-
trast to the way that the inhabitants of the Pacific view their relationship
to the environment. The Pacific is a place where, to quote anthropolo-
gist Roger Lancaster’s provocative title, life is hard (Lancaster 1992).
The Cultural Politics of Blackne ss and

Indige neity in th e Mo squito Coast
Deprived of their original language, the captured and indentured
tribes create their own, accreting and secreting fragments of an old,
epic vocabulary from Asia and from Africa, but to an ancestral and
ecstatic rhythm in the blood that cannot be subdued by slavery or
indenture, while nouns are renamed and the given names of places
accepted like Felicity or Choiseul. The original language dissolves
from the exhaustion of distance like fog trying to cross an ocean, but
this process of renaming, of finding new metaphors, is the same
process that the poet faces every morning of his working day,
making his own tools like Crusoe, assembling nouns from necessity,
from Felicity, even renaming himself. The stripped man is driven
back to that self-astonishing elemental force, his mind. That is the
basis of the Antillean experience, this shipwreck of fragments, these
echoes, these shards of a huge tribal vocabulary, these partially
remembered customs, and they are not decayed but strong. (Walcott
1992, 28)
In the mid-1600s a ship carrying African slaves is said to have ship-

wrecked off the Mosquito Coast. The survivors of the shipwreck are
believed to have joined with the inhabitants of the region, eventually
leading to the emergence of two new categories of people. In the course
of what Walcott refers to above as a process of renaming, and others have
termed ethnogenesis, the indomitable Miskito Indians and later the
Creoles emerged at the western edge of the Caribbean Sea on the shores
of the Spanish Main in what is today Nicaragua and Honduras.6 Strad-
dling this boundary between land and water, Central American isthmus
and Caribbean Sea, Spanish colonies and English colonies, the inhabi-
tants of the region relatively successfully charted an independent course
that spared them much of the human devastation wrought on their
neighbors by European rule.
Over time a unique and distinctive society emerged on the Mos-
quito Coast that was composed of the many fragments that were brought
by sea to the lagoons and beaches of this tropical coastal plain. Outsiders,
such as pirates, scholars, fisherman, merchants, revolutionaries, drug
smugglers, Cuban counterrevolutionaries (briefly), American Indian
Movement activists, diplomats, and capitalists have been attracted to the
region by its natural resources and geographic and geopolitical position.
In the course of history these and other visitors, as well as the local
people, have debated and contested the African, Indian, and European
constitution of Nicaragua’s Costeños.
For example, in the colonial period the English crowned a Mos-
quito King with a sworn allegiance to Great Britain in an attempt to
strengthen their political and economic foothold on the Spanish Main.
Spain, and later Nicaragua and the United States, opposed English pres-
ence in the area and contested the legitimacy of the Mosquito monar-
chy on the grounds that its people were Black Africans and therefore
lacked grounds for a claim to self rule (Olien 1985). More recently, dur-
ing the Contra War when Ronald Reagan famously declared himself a
Miskito Indian, Costeño leaders and their US allies invoked Miskito
indigeneity, in specific and distinct ways, as justification for their
opposition to the revolutionary nationalist programs of the Sandinista
government.7
As illustrated in the case of Pacific-Atlantic rivalry articulated by my
informant Don Paco Mendez, Costeños in their everyday affairs form
and contest ideas about Indianness and Blackness in regionally specific
ways that are rooted in Nicaragua’s geography, history, and political
economy. These instances are among many moments in the history of
the Mosquito Coast in which racial and ethnic identification has been
navigated in fascinating, complex, and changing ways. This book tells
the story of these voyages.
The Setting 7
From an early date Europeans identified many of the inhabitants of

the Mosquito Coast as being the product of the biological mixture of
Africans, Amerindians, and Europeans. The Spanish and English consis-
tently used terms such as Zambo (a Spanish term often used for a person
of mixed African and Indian descent that was also used in English, spelled
as Sambo), Mulatto (also used in both English and Spanish accounts), and
Mustee (primarily in English accounts) to refer to the residents of the
area. Their testimonies are full of often-contradictory reports regarding
the question of whether the inhabitants were pure Indians, African slaves
and their Negro descendants, or mixed Zambos and Mulattos.
In contrast, on the islands of the Caribbean indigenous populations
were quickly decimated and subsequently replaced by the uprooted
shards of African, Asian, and European peoples whom over time were
integrated through the archetypal Caribbean process of creolization—a
process that has generated order from radical displacement and disartic-
ulation. Anthropologist Sidney Mintz described the plantation societies
of the Caribbean as landmark experiments in modernity, which were
populated, often forcibly, by people from other places (Mintz 1994,
295). Precociously multicultural and globalized, the Caribbean islands,
when conceived of this way, have been cast as non-indigenous by
definition. In contrast, post-conquest Mosquito Coast society has been
typified by the persistence of systems of group identification that include
both African and Amerindian categories—the use and associations of
which have varied widely over time.
In the modern Mosquito Coast the official system of socio-racial
categorization recognizes five groups. This system recognizes four
groups that are regarded as distinctive to the region. Three of these are
officially recognized as indigenous peoples (Miskito, Sumu, and Rama)
and one (Creole) is defined as an Afro-Caribbean ethnic group (or etnia
in Spanish). Mestizo, the fifth category, refers to the population of the
dominant Pacific part of the country who reside in the Mosquito Coast.
In the popular usage in the region, Mestizos are referred to, anachronis-
tically, as Spaniards. This modern classificatory system took shape in the
nineteenth century as inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast, who had for-
merly been identified by a variety of quasi-tribal terms in addition to the
dominant Miskito, came to be identified by a reduced set of terms that
included a putatively racially Black category. As opposed to the Miskito
Indian category, the term “Creole” has come to be used to refer to

an Afro-Caribbean group whose ancestral ties and contemporary affilia-
tions were with Afro-Caribbean populations of Belize, Jamaica, and the
Cayman Islands rather than the Indian populations of the lower Central
American coast.
The Mosquito Coast represents a fascinating case of the deployment
and change of discourses of being Indian, African, and “mixed” in a
politically charged Caribbean context. In the Latin American context
scholars have typically studied race and mestizaje (miscegenation) on an
Amerindian-European axis, whereas in Brazil and the Caribbean they
have studied race on African-European axis. Anthropologist Peter Wade
notes that this has resulted in a general separation of studies of blacks
from those of Indians such that the Black-Indian axis is rarely studied
explicitly (Wade 1997, 36). This study builds on the work of anthropol-
ogists who have focused ethnographically on the constructions of race
in Afro-Indian contexts in the Americas, such as Norman Whitten in
Ecuador, Nancy Solien in Guatemala and Honduras, Laura Lewis in
Mexico, Peter Wade and Michael Taussig in Colombia, and Karen Blu
in the United States (Whitten 1974; Gonzalez 1988; Lewis 2000, 2001;
Wade 1993; Taussig 1980, 1987; Blu 2001).
In the aftermath of the destructive Contra War of the 1980s, I con-
ducted fieldwork in the port city of Puerto Cabezas, or Bilwi, as it is
known in Miskitu, among people who call themselves, among other
things, Porteños (Port People). What had initially brought my attention
to the region was the conflict between the Pacific-based revolutionary
Sandinista government and the Costeños of the Mosquito Coast. The
region received a great deal of international attention in the 1980s as a
result of the persistent opposition that many Costeños offered to the
programs and policies of the Sandinista government. The most serious
manifestation of this opposition took the form of armed Costeño groups
incorporating themselves into the ranks of the US-trained and US-
supported Contras.
In their international pronouncements during this period, Costeño
leaders increasingly couched their aspirations and goals in the language of
ethnicity and cultural difference as they appealed to their rights as
minorities and indigenous peoples to self-determination. Also, in the
deadlocked process of regional autonomy, which started in the mid 1980s
The Setting 9
and remains at an impasse today, appeals to cultural and ethnic differences

have continued to be the very substance of the political discourse in
the region. Social scientists and journalists universally interpreted the
Costeño-Sandinista confrontation as a prototypical example of ethnic
conflict and cultural clash between marginalized minorities and a domi-
nant and ethnically distinct national population. In contrast, the conflict
between the Sandinistas and main Contra forces was interpreted as a stan-
dard case of the Central America cycle of revolution and counter-
revolution that pitted the Right and its allies against the Left.
A standard analysis of the causes of the Costeño-Sandinista crisis
emerged. This standard analysis emphasized the deeply rooted cultural
differences between inhabitants of the Atlantic and Pacific regions of the
country. The idiosyncrasies of Atlantic Coast history and social structure,
particularly with regard to the British role in the region until 1894, as
well as the so-called enclave economy in which US companies exercised
a de facto governmental role until well into the twentieth century,
immediately were brought into focus in order to explain the nature of
the ethnic and national problems that the revolution faced. Although a
great deal of scholarly effort, both academic and otherwise, was dedi-
cated to this problem, not enough attention was given to ways that these
cultural differences manifested themselves in everyday practice or how
they constituted part of specific regional and national ideological
systems. The majority of interpretive energy was directed at positing
a direct link between the ethnic particularities formed in the past and
the modern predisposition to resist Pacific Nicaraguan governmental
expansion.
This standard analysis placed undo emphasis on those differences
that could be said to correspond to ethnic categories, while overlooking
other kinds of group difference that crosscut these categories, such as
those rooted in gender, class, and spatial dynamics. Analysts tended to
ignore the historically forged pan-regional features that characterize
Costeños as a whole regardless of their situational identification as
Miskito, Creole, or Spaniard. This, of course, was understandable in a
politically charged context in which Costeños themselves were for
geopolitical reasons predisposed to construct and fortify the boundaries
between ethnic categories. The trick for me as an ethnographer was
to structure a research project that would devote attention to the
complexity of Costeño social life while recognizing the undeniable

trend of ethnic reification.
I chose to do fieldwork in Puerto Cabezas precisely because it was,
according to conventional thinking, the worst place to study one of the
region’s so-called ethnic groups. Indianness within the Mosquito Coast
is associated, on an ideological level, with rural origins and small village
life. For this reason I found that when Costeños discovered that I was a
cultural anthropologist who planned to conduct fieldwork in the region,
they invariably told me that I should choose the smallest and most
remote village in order to find the real Indians. Indeed, many people,
assuming that as an anthropologist I should be interested in Indians, told
me that I should not interest myself at all with the Miskito Indians. They
suggested that I study the Sumu Indians (Mayangna) because these
Indians were perceived to have most accurately retained their traditions.
These suggestions speak to the extremely pervasive idea in the Americas
that attributes cultural stagnation and conservatism as essential traits of
Indians (Frye 1996).
While I was in Puerto Cabezas, I spent a great deal of my time
learning to speak Miskitu. I found that even Miskitu-speakers in Puerto
Cabezas encouraged me to go the communities of the Coco River sec-
tion of the region in order to learn good Miskitu. They regarded the
variety of Miskitu that they spoke as inferior because it was too mixed.
These reactions that I observed illustrated that in the minds of Costeños,
the communities of the Coco River represented the ideological center
of Miskito culture.8 In the same way that the ideological center of the
Miskito people was the Coco River, the ideological center of the Afro-
Nicaraguan Creoles was the city of Bluefields. Each of the region’s
indigenous or ethnic groups was conceived of as if it had its own respec-
tive center in which each group manifested its own culture in its most
pure form. The western half of Nicaragua was commonly regarded as the
proper home of the Spaniards, the multi-valent term used by Costeños
to refer to Pacific Nicaraguans. In the race-conscious landscape of the
Mosquito Coast in which ideologies of group difference are inscribed
in complicated ways on the regional geography, Puerto Cabezas is a
thoroughly mixed city.
In this book I illustrate the ways in which the Mosquito Coast rep-
resents a single, albeit highly diverse, society with a regionally specific
The Setting 11
social structure that has been shaped historically by unique political and
economic forces. Following a chronological framework that begins with
the pre-Columbian period and ends in the aftermath of the Contra War,
each chapter chronicles the construction of group identity (particularly
as it relates to Blackness and Indianness) in the Mosquito Coast. The
scholarship of the region relies on an analytical framework that invests
socio-racial categories with a degree of fixity and cultural content that
in my opinion obscures the pan-regional culture that I describe. I
employ a Barthian approach to ethnic identity that heeds his call to ana-
lytically separate the boundaries of social groups from their presumed
content (Barth 1969). The analysis developed here provides an alter-
native to other approaches that have tended to reify the socio-racial
categories of the region.
I interrogate some of the main assumptions of the dominant per-
spective by providing an ethnographically grounded case study of the
way in which ideologies of race work in Puerto Cabezas after the Rev-
olution. Whereas other analysts have focused on so-called cultural and
ethnic factors in explaining the conflict in the region and the rise of the
Miskito Indian movement, the analysis developed in this book focuses
on the interplay between the practice of racial self-identification and key
regionally grounded political-economic shifts that occurred in the
1980s. Although this book lays a foundation for a more accurate general
understanding of the nature of the recent crisis, the conclusions given
here are grounded in ethnographic examples taken from a specific time
and place: Puerto Cabezas in the 1990s, a city that had a unique revolu-
tionary history.
This understanding, in turn, provides insight into the historical and
modern conflicts that have arisen and which have been attributed to the
racial heterogeneity of the region. The case that I make here relies on
the assumption that an intensive ethnographic study of Puerto Cabezas
that focuses on the racial ideologies and vocabularies of difference
employed by ordinary Costeños and Spaniards can provide insight into
the causes and meanings of political turmoil and social movements in the
region. In the chapters that follow, I reveal the intersection of regional
culture (one that exists in explicit contradistinction to the Pacific half of
Nicaragua) with ideologies of racial, cultural, and linguistic difference in
Puerto Cabezas.
Pacific Nicaraguans and others have conflated the region’s geogra-

phy (perceived as forested, underexploited, and impenetrable) with its
people, who are regarded as wild, savage, and unrefined. These associa-
tions stand in direct opposition to Costeños’s perception of themselves
as cosmopolitan and worldly. I label the former the primitivist view
of Costeño identity and the latter the cosmopolitan view of Costeño
identity.9 My use of cosmopolitan and primitivist views as sets of Weber-
ian ideal types avoids the pitfall of linking particular ideological positions
to identifiable groups. While the primitivist view is far more prevalent
among Pacific Nicaraguans than it is among Costeños, Don Paco’s case
and others that I present in this book clearly demonstrate that this view
is not confined to Atlantic Coast outsiders. To varying degrees Costeños
themselves have internalized some of the premises of the primitivist view
of their own nature. The competing cosmopolitan view provides an ide-
ological counterbalance, however, against primitivist self-exoticization.
In their ideal state of affairs Costeños do not envision themselves as Don
Paco’s noble Pacific Indian peasants that extract subsistence crops from
an unforgiving soil; rather they hark back to a time in Mosquito Coast
history where wage-labor jobs and imported goods were available in
abundance. The Sandinista Revolution, with its well-publicized hostility
to the United States and its policy of nationalization of industries, was a
large step in the wrong direction away from achieving this ideal.
The flight of capital in the 1980s and the isolation caused by the
Contra War only heightened the sense of environmental dissonance
experienced by the inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast. Indeed, the oppo-
sition of Costeños to the revolutionary program in the first place should
be understood not simply as a product of ethnic conflict (however
defined) but also as the product of the perception that the revolutionary
government would isolate the region and push it farther away from its
people’s cosmopolitan ideal. This, also, is a kind of cultural clash but not
the sort posited in the literature on the region, which traced the conflict
to so-called misunderstandings between Sandinistas and Miskitos.
Making Frie nds and Making Enemie s

This book contributes to the anthropological understanding of cul-
tural politics—an emerging theme in anthropological inquiry. Cultural
anthropologists have recently begun to take a greater interest in what is
The Setting 13
often regarded as a relatively new phenomenon: the centrality of strate-

gic appeals to culture, tradition, and identity in social life. Whereas in the
past anthropologists enjoyed greater confidence in the separation of their
own concepts and those of the people whom they studied, anthropolo-
gists in the present have had to confront the fact that in many cases their
analytic categories have become native categories.10 Anthropologists
have increasingly placed the study of this entanglement at the center of
their research projects as they specifically address what has come to be
known as cultural politics, identity politics, and the cultural politics of
difference.11
Scholars who have taken up these issues have often identified and
struggled with two sources of tension that arise in conceptualizing and
studying identity politics, one interpretive and the other ethical. The
interpretive tension has given rise to an academic “polarity” (Hale 1999,
492) or “debate” between essentialism and constructivism (Hale 1997,
578; Wade 1999, 453), as well as a similar set of issues regarding ques-
tions of strategy and questions of identity (Escobar 1992, 82), and ques-
tions of expressive and instrumental culture (Foweracker 1995, 13).12
Anti-essentialist anthropologists deploy the term essentialism, conceived
as an approach that regards social groups (however defined) as bounded
and internally homogenous entities, as a “dirty word” (Fischer 1999,
473) that stands in contrast to more processual and dynamic approaches
to group identity and culture.13 As a result of these positions, anthro-
pologists have increasingly called into question the value of their most
traditional concepts and perspectives, to the extent that some have advo-
cated “writing against culture” (Abu-Lughod 1991).
The tensions provoked by this shift towards anti-essentialism and
writing against culture have led social scientists directly to an ethical
hornet’s nest because they find themselves in the uncomfortable position
of feeling obligated to render a critique of essentialism and its organic
metaphors of culture (Abu-Lughod 1991, 144) in the very moment that
many subordinate minority and indigenous movements are laying
claims, at times using essentialist language, to culture and bounded
group identity in the context of their political struggles (Friedman 1999,
1). This tension is particularly troubling for anthropologists of an activist
bent who desire to serve as advocates to the communities in which
they conduct fieldwork (Field 1999, 195). Gerald Sider identifies this
problem as the activist’s dilemma (Sider 1993, xxiii). The activist’s

dilemma becomes increasingly pressing in light of the fact that across the
globe dominant groups increasingly adopt anti-essentialist theoretical
armature from North American and European academe in order to
launch post-modern salvos at subaltern movements.14
James Fernandez places the main voices who are “writing against cul-
ture” into two camps: making friends and making enemies (Fernandez
1994, 15).15 The most striking difference between these camps, given that
both foreground the conflict between epistemology and politics (Handler
1999, 492), lies in their respective posture vis-à-vis all or some of the
groups and movements that they identify. These can be labeled: (1) the
invention-of-tradition approach, and (2) the revitalization approach.
The invention-of-tradition approach takes the critical bait and
moves forward with an anti-essentialist critique that brings attention to
the penetration of misleading and potentially dangerous Euro-American
elite notions of culture, race, tradition, and ethnicity (Handler 1999,
492). Within this approach, two kinds of analyses generally emerge, each
focusing on one of the following issues: (1) the conscious, rhetorical or
manipulative use of appeals to culture and group difference made by
groups in their political wars of position within national or international
contexts; and (2) the acceptance by subordinate groups of hegemonic
ideologies of racial and ethnic difference that reinforce, often unwit-
tingly, their subordinate position within the larger society, region, or
world-system.16 Both of these analyses, however—by emphasizing the
potentially negative effects of the contagious spread of essentialist
ideologies from the world’s cores to its peripheries—find themselves
debunking, in one way or another, the appeals to cultural distinctiveness
and group difference in the context of social life of their subjects of
study, hence potentially making enemies.17
On the other hand, the revitalization approach, while not denying
the essentialized nature of identity politics, brings attention to the pos-
sibilities for the creation of anti-hegemonic identities that can serve
subaltern groups in their resistance against more powerful actors.18
The self-conscious appeal to cultural distinctiveness, according to
this approach, represents a powerful tool that subordinate groups can
manufacture and refine with the aid of anthropological theory, if not
anthropologists themselves; hence anthropology is making friends.
The Setting 15
Each of these approaches responds in a different way to a common

uneasiness that many anthropologists quite justifiably experience regard-
ing the implications of the conclusions of their research vis-à-vis
the aspirations or organized political movements of all or some of their
subjects.
In this book, I offer two responses, one theoretical and one method-
ological, to the problems outlined above. I follow Abu-Lughod’s lead in
her call for writing against culture and, in this case, the intimately related
concept of ethnicity (Abu-Lughod 1991). Specifically, I take up her
strategy for addressing the fallacy of false coherence based on organic
metaphors of wholeness by adopting an analytic framework that relies on
discourse and practice, as outlined by Bourdieu (1977), in a manner that
favors strategies, interests, and improvisations over the more static and
homogenizing cultural tropes of rules, models, and texts (Abu-Lughod
1991, 147). Bringing attention to the ways that discourses of essential-
ism and constructivism are often both deployed in practice by actors in
the course of social life serves to address the theoretical problem of the
relationship between culture and politics (Field 1999, 199). From
a methodological point of view, this book provides an illustration of
the advantages of conducting multiethnic field research, particularly
in situations where culture and identity are highly politicized or ethni-
cized, such as the contemporary Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (Diskin
1989, 24).19
Organi zat i on of th e Book

The chapters that follow proceed from a wider geographic scope to
a narrower one as the narrative sharpens its focus, both in time and
space, on Bilwi/Puerto Cabezas. Chapter 2 establishes the salience of
the regional distinction between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of what
is now Nicaragua. In this chapter I compare and contrast the pre-
Columbian and early colonial histories of the Mosquito Coast region
and the Pacific Coast region. I focus on the impact of English and Span-
ish colonialism in the Mosquito Coast, particularly regarding slavery and
mestizaje.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5 I link these themes with an ethnographic
description of Puerto Cabezas. These chapters tell the story of the trans-
formation of the small village of Bilwi at the turn of the century into a
US company town at mid-century, and finally into the capital of the

North Atlantic Autonomous Region in the present.
In chapter 6 I critically review the literature on the Costeño-Sandinista
confrontation of the 1980s and demonstrate the role and influence of social
scientists and their theoretical approaches in the events of the time.
The ethnographic chapters (3, 4, and 5) consist of oral histories and
participant observation among the modern inhabitants of the city of
Puerto Cabezas. With the exception of chapter 6, all of the evidence that
I use to make my case comes from historical and ethnographic informa-
tion firmly grounded in my field site.
Although the narrative unfolds chronologically, each chapter has a
distinct thematic emphasis. In chapter 2 I demonstrate the antiquity of the
perception of inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast as uncivilized and prim-
itive. Social scientists and historians have to some degree inherited this
bias from the Spanish, who were frustrated by their inability to conquer
the populations of the Atlantic Coast. This inability to conquer Atlantic
Coast groups also resulted in a situation of socio-racial classificatory dis-
cord. The fact that the Spanish failed to colonize the region was reflected
in their frustrated and contested attempts to classify and label the social
groups of the region. I argue that a similar and historically related process
actually preceded European colonization of the Americas, occurring
between the stratified pre-Columbian chiefdoms of the Pacific Coast and
the smaller and more mobile groups of the Atlantic Coast.
In chapter 3 I discuss in detail the ambivalence with which histori-
ans and social scientists have viewed the racial composition of the
region, specifically with reference to the status of Costeños as Indians or
Blacks. A form of racial determinism exists in the scholarship on the
region such that miscegenation has been regarded as a primary agent
of social change. In this chapter I offer an alternative explanation of
the process of miscegenation in the colonial history of the Mosquito
Coast. In modern Nicaragua the Mosquito Coast is commonly regarded
as being populated by Indians and Africans, and the Pacific by
Amerindian-European Mestizos. My interpretation focuses on the pri-
macy of changes in the categorical systems of socio-racial difference
versus the common-sense notion that the difference between the
two regions can be taken at face value as the product of different levels
of African and Indian miscegenation. Addressing the paradox of the
The Setting 17
disappearance of an African term in the Pacific system of racial

classification (as well as the lack of recognition of an African role in the
history of Pacific Nicaragua) reveals interesting conclusions about the
nature of racial ideologies in Nicaragua.
In chapter 3 I address two related issues: (1) the attitudes of Pacific
Nicaraguans with regard to the Atlantic Coast as it pertains to the ideo-
logical work involved in promoting Nicaraguan Mestizo nationalism in
the Mosquito Coast during the first half of the twentieth century; and
(2) the struggle over land that was precipitated by the transformation of
Bilwi into a US company town. I describe the ways in which both
Pacific Nicaraguans and North Americans invoked stereotypical notions
of Indians as nomads and savages in order to discredit land claims made
by the inhabitants of Bilwi. I employ an essentially biographical method
to analyze the racial, cultural, and gender ideologies of two Pacific
Nicaraguans, Frutos Ruiz y Ruiz and Augusto Cesar Sandino, both of
whom played an important role in the development of Puerto Cabezas
during the 1920s and 1930s. I simultaneously outline the impact of US
company labor policies on the process of socio-racial identification in
the burgeoning port city.
Chapter 4 deals with the period in the history of Bilwi that is
known as company time. I assess the social and cultural impact of the
boom-and-bust cycles of North American extractive industries in the
region. I recognize that the presence of the US companies, particularly
the so-called class/ethnic hierarchy that they promoted, served to insti-
tutionalize racial boundaries. The presence of these companies undoubt-
edly exercised a centrifugal effect on the socio-racial structure of the
region. However, I argue that the presence of these companies also had
a centripetal effect, as a single regionally specific consumer culture was
created. I argue that during this time, Porteños (Port People) became
even more dependent on wage labor and North American manufactured
goods. They in turn internalized their dependence on wage labor and
foreign goods as a positive collective trait that distinguished them from
Spanish Nicaraguans. Change in the political economy of the region
also provided the material basis for increased Porteño socio-racial
identification as Black people.
In chapter 5 I focus on another tumultuous series of events that pro-
foundly impacted Puerto Cabezas—the Sandinista revolution. Continuing
with the theme of the interpenetration of racial ideologies and political

economy, I highlight the process in which Puerto Cabezas came to be
regarded as an Indian city as a result of the drastic economic changes in
the region. I also analyze the role of mythically encapsulated beliefs in
the use and contestation of racial categories in Puerto Cabezas. I provide
ethnographic examples of the cognitive effects on Porteños of the rapid
decapitalization of the region. I argue that Costeño opposition to the
Sandinista revolution must be viewed within the preexisting context of
regionally based status distinctions that crosscut socio-racial categories.
My interpretation stands in opposition to much of the work by social
scientists and journalists who contended that the Costeño-Sandinista
crisis was caused by a cultural clash. I complicate and refute this standard
position by providing clear ethnographic examples of how cultural and
racial ideologies intersect with regional and class-based distinctions in
the social life of Puerto Cabezas.
In Chapter 6 I specifically address the issue of the Contra War and
the Costeño-Sandinista confrontation of the 1980s. I review in detail the
social science literature on the conflict. I argue that this literature
manifested a deep polarization along cold-war lines. I distinguish two
theoretical camps that corresponded closely to the pro-Sandinista or
anti-Sandinista sympathies of the theorists involved. The first theoretical
camp, which I label deconstructionist, was championed by pro-
Sandinistas who established as their main interpretive problem the expla-
nation of Costeño false consciousness. Their task was to explain the
paradox of the Costeño insistence on viewing their reality through a
false ethnic lens that obscured the true class-based root of their troubles.
On the other hand, anti-Sandinistas employed an essentialist framework
that relied on stereotypical notions of an ahistorical and unchanging
Indian identity. I demonstrate some of the theoretical and conceptual
limitations of this polarized literature. I argue that despite their differ-
ences, both perspectives were united in their common tendency to reify
ethnic boundaries.
In the course of the Costeño-Sandinista conflict of the 1980s (as
well as the disputes between the national government and the people
of the Mosquito Coast that continue today over natural resource man-
agement), social scientists and social science concepts were employed by
all parties involved. This fact is particularly compelling reason to place
The Setting 19
our interventions and our approaches as anthropologists under scrutiny

in our writings.
The Fi e l d Si te
Puerto Cabezas rose to regional importance in the early twentieth
century when it became the regional headquarters for the Standard Fruit
Company and a series of US lumber companies. These companies con-
structed railroads and a large pier, transforming the small village into the
most important port north of Bluefields on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast.
The size and importance of the city has waxed and waned in tune with
the boom-and-bust cycles in coastal industries such as banana, rubber,
lumber, and mining.
The population of the Atlantic Coast in general, however, has
increased at a very rapid pace since the 1950s, when both spontaneous
and governmentally planned migration from the Pacific region caused
the eastward spread of what the government in Managua viewed as the
agricultural frontier. From 1963 to 1973 the population of the Depart-
ment of Zelaya, which constituted what is now the Northern and
Southern Autonomous Regions (known locally as la RAAN and la
RAAS), almost doubled, growing from 87,823 to 157,484 (Ministerio
de Economía 1963, 1973). By 1985 the population of the Atlantic Coast
region had doubled again, reaching 325,454 (Instituto Nacional de
Estadisticas y Censos 1985). Census projections by the Nicaraguan gov-
ernment estimate that the 2005 population of the Atlantic Coast region
was 630,000. The population increase was compounded in Puerto
Cabezas in the 1980s by the Contra War, which caused the evacuation
of almost the entire eastern border region between Nicaragua and
Honduras. Many Costeño refugees, displaced from their homes along
the Rio Coco, relocated to Puerto Cabezas. The population of the city,
according to some estimates, quadrupled after 1980 (Norwood 1987,
210), reaching 25,000 inhabitants by 1985.
Census projections for 2005 estimate that Puerto Cabezas now has
about 34,000 inhabitants. According to Norwood the ethnic composi-
tion of the city in 1985 was as follows: Miskitu, 50 percent; Mestizo, 30
percent; and Creole, 10 percent. The remaining 10 percent was divided
between Sumus, foreigners, and Chinese-Nicaraguans (Norwood 1987,
211). Although the Nicaraguan census does not include data on race and
ethnicity, it appears that this general distribution has persisted over the
last twenty years.
A remarkable amount of bi- and tri-lingualism exists in the region.
In a linguistic survey conducted by Norwood in Puerto Cabezas in
1985, she found that 70 percent of Miskito identified themselves as
either bi- or tri-lingual, a figure surpassed by the Creoles, 95 percent of
whom spoke, in addition to English, either Spanish, Miskitu, or both.
Zero percent of recently immigrated Mestizos spoke another language,
while only a quarter of Costeño Mestizos were multilingual (Norwood
1987, 217).
Although residential racial segregation in Puerto Cabezas is not
stark, there do exist neighborhoods that are generally perceived to have
an ethnic character, such as the Creole neighborhood of El Muelle, the
Miskitu neighborhood of El Cocal, and the Spaniard neighborhood
of La Revolución. Rapidly constructed neighborhoods, built by Coco
River refugees, sprung up in the late 1980s. The infrastructure of the city
has not been able to keep pace with this growth, leaving many houses
without running water or electricity. Mired in extreme poverty despite
the abundant human and natural resources of the region, Porteños
continue to wait anxiously for their fortunes to change.
Chapte r 2
Nicaragua’s Two Coasts
In the pre-Columbian period human populations in

what is now the country of Nicaragua occupied three distinct ecological
zones: (1) the Pacific Lowlands, (2) the Central Highlands, and (3) the
Caribbean Coastal Plain (Newson 1987, 42, 88). The Pacific Lowlands,
made fertile by the volcanic deposits left by the chain of thirty volcanoes
that split the lowlands from north to south, contained a climate that was
ideal for maize agriculture. It received plentiful rainfall, although the
long dry season between November and May necessitated the use of irri-
gation (ibid., 43). Although in the present these lands are heavily defor-
ested, evergreen and deciduous forests formerly flourished in the Pacific
Lowlands.1
The Central Highlands contain peaks that rise as high as 2,000
meters, making the climate more temperate. The highlands, composed
of a number of east-west cordilleras divided by valleys that drained to the
Caribbean coast, received limited and inconsistent rainfall, and had rel-
atively poor soils and an uneven topography. These conditions discour-
aged large-scale agriculture. In contrast to other highland areas of
Mesoamerica at the time of the Conquest (such as Guatemala and cen-
tral Mexico), the Nicaraguan highlands did not sustain very large human
populations. Newson estimates that the pre-Conquest population den-
sity of the highlands was only one-fourth that of the Pacific lowlands.2
The Caribbean Coastal Plain, an extensive lowland strip that at its
widest point stretches for 150 kilometers, contained (in the 1500s) the
largest tropical rain forest in Central America. In this region, one of the
wettest in the Americas and which experiences only brief (and not very
dry) dry seasons, the boundary between land and water is often quite
porous (Nietschmann 1973, 64). Chronically flooded, the region has a
21
large number of large, slow rivers that, before flowing into brackish
lagoons, swamps and deltas, commonly spill over into vast floodplains.
Beyond the coast, the shallow marine shelf (also the largest forma-
tion of its kind in Central America) extends as far as 100 kilometers into
the western Caribbean, providing ideal feeding conditions (in the form
of underwater marine pastures known as turtle banks) for marine life—
particularly sea turtles (Nietschmann 1973, 92). Along the marine shelf
lie a veritable swarm of thousands of small banks, cays, and reefs (a geo-
graphical feature that was immediately taken note of by the seafaring
English, who called them the Mosquito keys).
A great diversity of flora and fauna abound in the region, but, as is
common to most tropical rain forests, the underlying soils are leached by
heavy rainfalls and are of very poor quality (P. Sanchez 1976; Newson
1987, 47).3 With the exception of riverbanks, which are made fertile by
yearly deposits of silt, the region’s soils are more apt for swidden agri-
culture than extensive agriculture.
Primarily as a result of these marked geographical differences, the
inhabitants of these different regions practiced different productive
strategies. Natives of the Pacific Lowlands engaged in extensive maize
agriculture that was supplemented by hunting, fishing, and gathering.
This agriculture sustained upward of one million people in a relatively
small area (Newson 1987, 88). Cacao was used as a medium of exchange
in the busy markets (tianguez) of the region in which a wide variety of
manufactured goods were traded, including cotton textiles, rope, pot-
tery, basketry, and gold and silver ornaments, as well as tools and
weapons of stone, wood, and obsidian (Moscoso 1991, 80; Newson
1987, 49–56). Pacific societies manifested a significant degree of social
stratification in which caciques sat at the top of a hierarchical system of
nobles, commoners, and slaves.4 A powerful and educated clergy prac-
ticed an elaborate ritual calendar (which included human sacrifice and
self-mutilation—practices associated with their Central Mexican ances-
tors and neighbors) at large manmade temples.
In contrast to the Pacific regions, the Caribbean Coastal Plain was
peopled by native groups that used less-elaborate technology, had a lesser
degree of social stratification, cultivated different major crops, and lived
in settlements that were often seasonal and were absent of elaborate per-
manent structures. Inhabitants of the Caribbean Coastal Plain mixed
Nicaragua’s Two Coasts 23
hunting and gathering with shifting cultivation of plantain and roots

crops of South American origin, such as manioc, a crop that was favored
over maize. The groups that resided closer to the coast took advantage
of coastal protein resources such as manatee, fish, and turtle (Newson
1987, 65–78). Archaeologist Richard Magnus, one of the few researchers
to take up the challenge of conducting excavations and surveys in this
region where the heat, humidity, and rain are hostile to archaeological
research, argues that Caribbean Indians relied more on riverine swidden
agriculture and hunting and gathering than on fishing and coastal
agriculture.5
In contrast to the colonial period, which witnessed the proliferation
of coastal villages in response to intensified market demands for forest
and coastal products, natives in the immediate pre-Columbian period
constructed permanent settlements primarily in inland areas, building
temporary settlements near the coast (Stone 1964, 214; Magnus 1978).
Permanent markets seem to have been absent from the region, as well as
money (Newson 1987, 77).
Caribbean natives did produce pottery, stone tools, and cotton
goods, although they used clothes made of bark. Interestingly, many
native groups, particularly those on the coast, abandoned and lost these
skills during the colonial period as they became more dependent upon
Caribbean networks of trade.6 This is ironic because Pacific and High-
land groups, which during the colonial period came to be known as
non-Indian Ladinos, Mestizos, and campesinos, retained and elaborated
many of the skilled crafts that had been associated with Indian commu-
nities. Their Caribbean counterparts, in contrast, continued to be
known as Indians in many contexts but left their crafts behind in favor
of manufactured goods acquired through an expanding system of global
trade.
E thnonyms and Top onyms

The association of the peoples of the Mosquito Coast with primi-
tivism on the part of dominant groups predated the Spanish conquest of
the Americas. In lower Central America, dominant groups lived on the
Pacific and claimed central Mexican descent. These groups in almost all
cases represented large, relatively sedentary populations that engaged in
intensive maize agriculture. In contrast to the South American-derived
Chibchan languages spoken by central and eastern Nicaraguan Indians,

the predominant languages of the Pacific came from two separate cen-
tral Mexican language families: Uto-Aztecan and Otomanguean (Stone
1964, 210).
In the six centuries prior to 1492, the Nicaraguan Pacific region had
received a series of large-scale migrations from central Mexico and
Chiapas, resulting in the displacement or incorporation of previously
autochthonous groups, some of which receded to the east (Guerrero and
Guerrero 1982, 15).7 The establishment of Aztec trading colonies repre-
sented the most recent revival of central Mexican influence in lower
Central America—a resurgence that was primarily, but not completely,
cut short by the Spanish conquest. In light of Nicaragua’s history of
contact with the central Mexican Nahua languages, in conjunction with
the fact that the Spanish conquerors used many Nahua-speaking troops
(followed by Nahuatl-speaking Spanish missionaries) to overpower the
peoples of both central Mexico and Central America, it is not surpris-
ing to find that the Spanish incorporated central Mexican and central
Mexican-derived biases into their colonial practice. This is particularly
true with regard to naming practices.8
Based on both archeological evidence, as well as the testimonies col-
lected by the earliest Spanish chroniclers in Central America, it is com-
monly held that the first wave of northern immigrants arrived in Pacific
Nicaragua from Soconusco (Chiapas) around the ninth century AD,
establishing themselves in western Nicaragua and the Nicoya Peninsula.
They spoke a variety of related Otomanguean languages that, although
possessing a number of names, were generally referred to as Mangue by
the Spanish. The Spanish generally referred to groups that spoke these
languages as Chorotega, although some of these groups were mutually
hostile and were divided into competing factions (Newson 1987, 28).
The first wave of Uto-Aztecan migration occurred slightly after the
Otomanguean migration. The first Nahau-speaking people arrived
in the ninth and tenth centuries, and settled in what is now El Salvador
and northwestern Nicaragua (Fowler 1985). The second wave, whose
descendants eventually came to be known by the Spanish as the Nicarao,
arrived in the twelfth century and settled on the western shore of Lake
Nicaragua (Arellano 1993, 12). They, like all other Nahua-speaking
peoples in Central American, were at times referred to as Pipil (meaning
rulers in Nahuatl) (Wolf 1959, 40). Mexican Nahuatl speakers who

accompanied the Spanish on their expeditions into Central America
held the Nahuat languages of Nicaragua in contempt, labeling them
Mexicana Corrupta or Pipil Corrupta.9 Hence, Francisco Vázquez, a Spanish
chronicler, referred to the Pipil language “. . . as we would say the lan-
guage of children or that spoken by those of little intelligence” (quoted
in Newson 1987, 30).
Just as Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans who accompanied the Spanish
conquistadores denigrated the Nahuat dialects of Nicaragua spoken by
the Nicarao as base and inferior, so did these Nahuat-speaking groups
denigrate the language and culture of non-Nahua groups. Given that
Nahua-speaking groups (both Mexican and Nicarao) had been domi-
nant groups in their respective areas, the names and concepts that they
used to apply to other groups often were adopted by the Spanish.
The Spanish early colonial modus operandi, which they successfully
implemented in both central Mexico and Pacific Nicaragua, was to sub-
jugate the most populous, dominant, and hierarchically organized native
societies. As a result, the Spanish often adopted the ethnonyms and
toponyms that the dominant native groups used to refer to subordinate
groups. These names often reflected a lack of understanding and even
contempt on the part of the dominant groups. In the case of central
Mexico, the homeland of Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans, Eric Wolf con-
cisely described this process:
To groups who could not speak Nahua, the Nahua applied con-
temptuous epithets that have remained to serve as their official des-
ignations to this day—epithets such as chontal (“foreigner”), popoluca
or popoloca (“unintelligible”), totonac (“rustic”). Thus we find today
linguistically quite unrelated groups like Chontal (in Tabasco and
Oaxaca), Popoluca (in Puebla, Veracruz, and Guatemala), Totonac
(in Veracruz, but also in sixteenth-century Spanish reports from
Jalisco and Oaxaca), to the confusion of the investigator. Nahua
names have also become the standard designations of other popula-
tions, such as the Mixtec (from mixtlán, “cloud land”), the Zapotec
(after the zapote tree, Achras Zapota), and the Otomí (apparently
from Nahuatl totomitl, “man who wings birds with arrows”). The
Mixtec call themselves ñusabi; the Zapotec, di’z^, with a suffix
designating the territory they inhabit; the Otomí, nhyû. (Wolf

1959, 41)
In the case of Nicaragua, the Nicarao used the blanket term Chon-
tal (foreigner) to refer to those groups that did not speak a related
language and lived to the east in the area now known as the Central
Highlands and the Mosquito Coast.10 Just as the Mixtec, Zapotec, and
Otomi had a variety of names to refer to themselves, undoubtedly so did
the indigenous inhabitants of these regions have their own vocabularies
of self-reference. However, the Spanish did not generally recognize these
terms during the early colonial period.
Not only did Nahua-speaking Pacific groups use value-laden terms
in their labeling of their eastern Nicaraguan indigenous neighbors, but
they also seem to have looked down at these groups as inferior. This
posture was noticed by the Spanish, who in turn adopted both the ref-
erential terms used as well as a similar attitude with regard to eastern
Nicaraguan native groups. Ironically, these were precisely the Indians
whom the Spanish found themselves unable or unwilling to subdue,
notwithstanding their alleged inferiority (Newson 1987, 37). Antonio
Vázquez de Espinosa, a sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler, noted that
Pacific coastal Indians manifested this perspective towards the Indians of
the eastern provinces when he wrote, “The Indians of those provinces
are particularly rustic to the degree that when others [Indians] want
to insult someone, they call that person a Chontal—which is a way of
calling someone an idiot” (Incer 1990, 250). The Spanish chronicler
Fernandez de Oviedo, writing in 1528, described the “chondales” as
“villainous people who live in the mountains or in the foothills”
(Guerrero and Guerrero 1982, 18). Another Spanish historian, Father
Franciso López de Gómara, described the Chontal language as “grocero y
serrano” (coarse and boorish) (18). In addition to Chontal, the Spanish
also adopted the Nahua terms Popoluca (unintelligible or stuttering),
Xicaque (wild), Lenca, and Caribe as generic terms to refer to the natives
that plagued the eastern and northern fringes of their Nahua-speaking
strongholds (Incer 1990, 258).11
On his fourth voyage to the New World in 1502, many years before
the Spanish invaded and occupied the Pacific Coast, Columbus visited
what is now the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. The name
that he gave to the region, Costa de Orejas (Coast of Ears—from the ear
elongation practiced by the region’s inhabitants), did not enter into
widespread use (Conzemius 1932, 29; Potthast 1988, 15). Rather, the
Spanish borrowed two terms used by the Aztecs to refer to this region:
Taguzgalpa (place of gold) and Tologalpa (place of tule). Although
Taguzgalpa was often used to refer to both of these unconquered
“provinces” (to use the ambitious term of the Spanish), it specifically
referred to the area delineated by the Coco River, which emptied at
Cape Gracias a Dios, and the Aguán river east of the modern Honduran
city of Trujillo (Incer 1990, 255). Tologalpa referred to the area between
the Coco River and the San Juan River that, not coincidentally,
corresponds with the modern limits of the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast.
According to Vázquez de Espinosa, the Aztecs manifested a sustained
interest in Taguzgalpa, “. . . where many mexican indians live . . . who
owing to the richness of the place were sent every year by Montezuma
to collect tribute in the form of gold and other precious items” (Incer
1990, 248). The Aztecs referred to the Indians of Taguzgalpa (the tribute-
paying regions actually seem to have been located primarily in what is
now southeastern Honduras) as Jicaques. Later the Spanish adopted this
term to refer to the “unfaithful Indians” (indios infieles) of Taguzgalpa
and used the term Chontal to refer to the equally unfaithful Indians of
Tologalpa, although the distinction, inconsistently applied, was most
definitely one of a geographical rather than sociological nature (ibid.,
265). Twentieth-century ethnology continues to use the terms Jicaque
and Lenca to distinguish Indians of eastern Honduras from their
Nicaraguan counterparts across the border (see Kirchoff 1948, 219).
Although the Aztecs began to draw Taguzgalpa into the far reaches
of their empire, they did not exercise colonial control over the indige-
nous groups of the region. However, they left tribute-collecting and trad-
ing colonies in Taguzgalpa. Although the Spanish area of control slowly
intruded eastward into the Pacific slope of the Central Highlands, the
sixteenth-century Spanish attempts to conquer Taguzgalpa, which took
the form of three separate armed expeditions, all failed as so-called
Jicaques and Caribes attacked and destroyed the Spanish garrisons and
mining camps established in remote Atlantic Coast areas (Incer 1990, 252).
In the seventeenth century the Spanish then turned to the Franciscan
order to subjugate the indomitable Indians of the region. Nahuatl was
often the language of early Christian proselytization in early colonial

Mesoamerica, and therefore the Franciscan friars hoped to first Chris-
tianize and settle the Nahuatl-speaking groups in reducciones (permanent
settlements used by Europeans to settle and convert natives as well as
harness their labor). The Franciscans, however, were frustrated by the
tremendous social diversity they encountered in the region—a diversity
that stood in contrast to the more familiar sedentary and hierarchically
organized societies of central Mexico and the Nicaraguan Pacific. None
of these groups spoke Nahuatl, they lacked large permanent settlements,
and, most importantly, they were often hostile to the Spanish.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century Francisco Vázquez
wrote about the century-long Franciscan attempts to pacify the region’s
inhabitants:
The names of the known nations, many of which are mutually hos-
tile from one family [“agnación”] or tribe to another, are these: lencas,
tahuas, alhatuinas, xicaques, mexicanos, payas, jaras, taupanes, taos, fan-
tasmas, gualas, alaucas, aguncualcas, yguyales, cujes, bocayes, tomayes,
bucataguacas, quimacas, panamakas, itziles, guayaes, motucas, barucas, apz-
inas, nanaicas and many others; and it is known among these as well
as others there are many whites and blonds, others more or less black
according to the mixtures of nations and foreign peoples [referring
to pirates and merchants] that come to this land to mate and trade
trinkets and machetes for provisions and very good gold nuggets that
are taken from the rivers. (Incer 1990, 256)
The segmentary nature of Atlantic Coast social groupings, com-
bined with the remoteness of the region and the hostility of its inhabi-
tants, made the Franciscans’ task extremely difficult. Unlike supposedly
more advanced areas where Europeans used the institutional authority of
high-level indigenous leaders, the Franciscans found no accurate way to
identify Indian groups, let alone their leaders. “Without law nor king
they roam around in herds like wild beasts,” lamented Francisco Vázquez
(ibid., 258).
Although the Franciscans achieved considerable success in setting up
reducciones among the Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans in Taguzgalpa, these
settlements were subject to constant attack by other groups (Stone 1964,
214). When they did succeed in attracting Taguzgalpan people to their
settlements, the Indians frequently abandoned the settlement or vio-

lently mutinied, killing a series of Franciscan missionaries (Incer 1990,
259–266). As further proof of the barbarousness of the region’s occu-
pants, the Franciscans were unable to locate permanent native settle-
ments, concluding, to their dismay, that they practiced a tropical forest
version of nomadism.12 Vázquez wrote that the Indians of Taguzgalpa
were ungovernable because “their lands are naturally impenetrable and
the Indians have becomes untamed, living in free villages [behetrías],
camping today in one place and then tomorrow in another, without
holding lands as their own, and at any moment fleeing and retreating to
the most difficult of bush and god-forsaken [incultos] mountain plains”
(Incer 1990, 258).
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, after more than a cen-
tury of failure, the Spanish abandoned their attempts to control Taguz-
galpa.13 However, they did manage to expand the area of Spanish control
further eastward into the Central Highlands, leaving only the Atlantic
slope of the Highlands and the Atlantic Coastal plain in the hands of the
infidel (Incer 1990, 253). In Spanish colonial documents, unconquered
eastern groups were, in addition to the above-mentioned pseudo-tribal
names, often referred to as “indios de guerra” (literally, Indians of war) and
“indios infieles” (literally, unfaithful Indians), as opposed to the subjugated
“indios cristianos” (Christian Indians) of the Pacific Coast (Romero Var-
gas 1995, 221). Throughout Latin America the Spanish, once they rec-
ognized that Americans had souls and were capable of understanding and
embracing Christianity, distinguished Christian Indians, who deserved a
greater level of consideration, from non-Christian Indians, who as ene-
mies did not deserve the so-called legal protections provided by the
Spanish Crown. During the seventeenth century, Atlantic Coast Indians
situated themselves within an expanding world market, establishing reg-
ular trading ties with English merchants and colonists such as those that
occupied the failed Providence Island colony (Parsons 1956, 11).
The names that the Spanish used to describe Atlantic Coast groups
gradually became more specific after a century and a half of frustrated
contact. The general and geographically vague names like indios de guerra
and indios infieles were replaced over time. The slightly less generic terms
Chontal, Jicaque, Lenca, and Caribe came to be more consistently applied
to specific large regions. Lenca and Jicaque were used to describe groups
north of the Coco River, and Chontal and Caribe for groups south of the
Coco River.14 At the most specific level, a large number of ethnonyms
(names of human groups) came into limited use that were often applied
to natives who inhabited specific sections of the major Atlantic-flowing
rivers of the region; hence native groups tended to be identified with
specific river valleys (Incer 1990, 255). For example, colonial sources
mention the following “nations” among the inhabitants of Taguzgalpa
(in what is now the eastern slope of the Nicaraguan Segovias): the
Bocayes of the Bocay River; the Tomayes of the Tuma River; the
Bucataguacas (or Taguacas) of the Butuk/Patuka River; the Taupanes of
the Waspuk River; the Nanaicas and Guayaes of the Pantasma River; and
the Tahuas or Taguacas of the upper Coco River, as well as the Jaras,
Quimacas, Iguyales, Cujes, and Alaucas of the Olancho River valley (Incer
1990, 257). These are a few of the wide variety of names that appear in
the Spanish colonial documents that refer to Taguzgalpan Indians.
This practice of identifying and naming indigenous groups accord-
ing to river valleys stood in contrast to the Pacific, where groups were
most frequently identified and named according to the name of a par-
ticular cacique (chief). This difference in naming practices resulted from
two related factors: (1) the lack of Spanish colonial success on the
Atlantic Coast, and (2) the differences in social organization between
Pacific and Atlantic societies that were related to different ecological
conditions in each region.
Borrowing from pre-Columbian institutional arrangements, the
Spanish organized Pacific Indian society into a system of hierarchically
named groupings. At the lowest level was the galpón (a Spanish word that
tellingly means communal slave dwelling), which consisted of an
extended group of agnatic kin. A number of galpones constituted a plaza,
which was led by a cacique or teyte. A pueblo indio, in turn, consisted of a
conglomeration of plazas. Using this institutional structure, the Spanish
were able to quite rationally extract labor and tribute from the pueblos
indios (Romero Vargas 1993a, 15). The entire system depended on the
existence of clearly defined communal ties on the part of Indians.
Nicaraguan historian Germán Romero Vargas explained:
Communal life was the main feature of Indian society in Nicaragua

under Spanish rule. The “pueblo indio” was its concrete manifestation.
Every Indian was a “natural” of a pueblo. If an Indian from another

place were to establish himself in that pueblo he would be known as
a “laborío” . . . Being a “natural” was like the proof of citizenship of
an Indian. It was on the basis of being a “natural” of a particular
place that one had a series of rights and obligations in one, and only
one, pueblo. By not being a “natural” an Indian escaped those rights
and obligations. (Romero Vargas 1993a, 11)
In the Pacific region, the Spanish colonial administration carefully

documented and promoted the group identifications of Nicaraguan
natives in order to maximize and rationalize the exploitation of these
Indians. In contrast, European colonial governments (Spanish and
English) did not institutionalize Indian group identity in the Atlantic
region in the early colonial period. That is to say, their inability to sub-
jugate Atlantic Coast Indian groups contributed to their inability to
invent or discover ethnonyms for them that corresponded to the con-
tours of their social world. Whereas in the Pacific the process of extract-
ing resources (in the form of labor and tribute) from indigenous people
necessitated the existence and perpetuation of named communal group-
ings, the Atlantic Coast successfully resisted the Spanish imposition of
this process.15 Thus in the Atlantic, identification as part of a native
group carried with it different meanings and consequences than such
identification had for the Indians of the Pacific.
The irony of this history lies in the fact many of the peoples of the
Atlantic that were labeled, in one way or another, as wild, rustic, and
uncivilized (by both the Spanish and Pacific Indians) were able to suc-
cessfully resist the cultural, social, and biological devastation brought on
by the Spanish. The so-called civilized and Christian societies of the
Pacific were shackled throughout the colonial period by oppressive
tribute taxation and outright enslavement, not to mention European
diseases. According to Newson’s estimates, which she admits are conser-
vative, the aboriginal population of Nicaragua declined a staggering
93 percent in the first fifty years of European contact, from 546,000 to
44,000. The corresponding figure for the same period in the Atlantic
zone is 33 percent, dropping to 145,000 from a pre-contact population
of 217,000 (Newson 1987, 336). Although Atlantic populations did
suffer from European diseases and enslavement, apart from the coastal
settlement at Black River in today’s Honduras, Europeans did not

directly control any portion of the Mosquito Coast in the colonial
period.
One strategy for escaping the negative consequences of being an
Indian in Pacific Nicaragua was simply not to be an Indian any more.16
By breaking ties with indigenous polities and in turn being recognized
as Mestizo, Ladino, or campesino, Pacific Indians stood to improve their
status within colonial and republican society, societies that in many ways
lived parasitically off organized indigenous communities.17 The early
Spanish colonial institutions (including the encomienda and later repar-
timiento) assigned the labor or tribute of specific native groups to
Spanish overlords, who most frequently extracted this labor and tribute
through the use of indigenous leaders, los principales (Romero Vargas
1992, 25). This practice depended upon the existence of a legitimately
constituted indigenous hierarchy and a corporatively organized indige-
nous population. With the onset of the Republican period and the
subsequent growth of a liberal export-oriented economy, the Indian
communal lands, which the laws of the Spanish colony had self-
servingly protected, came into the covetous gaze of national elites. Thus
the last advantage of Indian status (communal lands) was largely elimi-
nated in the Pacific, driving the nail into the coffin of Nicaragua’s Pacific
Indian communities.18
Mestizaje is popularly regarded primarily as a biological phenom-
enon in which Indians and Europeans, driven by the lack of white
women in the Americas, produced Mestizo offspring. In contrast to this
common-sense notion, however, the process of racial mixing must also
be understood as an institutional phenomenon in which natives broke
corporate affiliations and slowly mingled into a Mestizo mainstream that
lacked Indian corporate obligations.19 Viewed in this light, biological
mixing was not a precondition for the shift from Indian identification to
non-Indian that happened in Pacific Nicaragua. It is important to recall
that the Spanish population (Spanish-born penisulares and American-
born criollos alike) never represented more than 5% of the population of
the colony (Romero Vargas 1993b, 153). For this and other reasons it is
important to view mestizaje as a sociological and institutional phenom-
ena as well as a biological one.
In the Atlantic Coast during the colonial period, the population

remained almost entirely free from colonial institutions such as the
encomienda and other forms of tribute. Costeño communities both
maintained and developed old and new strategies of corporate unity,
strategies that were different from those encountered by the Spanish in
Pacific Nicaragua. In contrast to the Pacific region, there were few insti-
tutional pressures to sever ties with native communal groups and enter
into the non-Indian peasant class, or campesinado. Although the colonial
record, as well as twentieth-century ethnography, is full of references to
the intermixing of Atlantic Coast Indians with Europeans and Africans,
the Latin American prototypical (Indian-European) process of mestizaje
simply did not occur in Atlantic Nicaragua (Taguzgalpa and Tologalpa).
The Atlantic Coast did not witness the formation of a class of putatively
racially mixed people that lacked the social status and the institutional
rights and obligations of inclusion as either Indian or European. The
communal organization of Atlantic society into explicitly non-European
(neither White nor Mestizo) groupings in fact accelerated. According to
the common-sense view of mestizaje, which takes racial mixing at face
value as a biological process, this fact would seem a paradox, the para-
dox being that equal or comparable levels of European, Indian, and
African intermixing would lead to a Mestizo population in one area and
a predominantly Indian population in another. However, this is exactly
what happened in Nicaragua, and in order to understand and interpret
how this happened, we must discard perspectives that in anthropologist
Raymond Smith’s words, “biologize social relations” (Smith 1992, 263).
Most of the tribal terms mentioned above (tomayes, quimacas, etc.)
had disappeared by the nineteenth century. There was a major restruc-
turing of Mosquito Coast society in which a new system of group
classification began to emerge, which had two principle ethnonyms:
(1) Creole, a term used after the eighteenth century that identified
English-speakers of putative African descent; and (2) Miskito, a term used
to identify Miskitu-speakers of putative Indian and mixed (Sambo)
descent. Both terms are absent from use in the early colonial period. Con-
spicuously absent from the colonial and modern system of group classi-
fication was a Mestizo or Ladino category such as that used in the Pacific,
where the great majority of Nicaraguans are classified today as Mestizo.
The Shipwreck Theory

of M i sk i to Ori g i n s
The appearance of the Miskito as a presumably distinct socio-racial
group has been attributed to two features of Mosquito Coast history: (1)
the influx of African and Afro-Caribbean slaves and escaped slaves, and
(2) trading ties established in the seventeenth century and continued
until the end of the nineteenth century between the British and coastal
Indians. Each factor has been commonly perceived, in the historical and
ethnographic literature, to have resulted in the emergence of the
Miskito, Sumu, Rama, and Creole groups—an emergence that has been
portrayed as a process of cultural differentiation in which each of these
groups developed its own particular culture and race. In other words,
the appearance of a new set of ethnonyms is perceived to have been pre-
cipitated by the separation of a corresponding number of culture-
bearing groups whose boundaries are constituted by racial and cultural
features particular to each group. This is a misleading assumption that
does not do justice to the complexity of social relations in the Mosquito
Coast.
The first of two standard causes cited for the emergence of the
Miskito Indians as a distinguishable group was the influx of African
slaves and escapees to the region. The shipwreck of a slave ship in the
area of the Mosquito Keys in the 1640s is presumed to have begun a
long-term migratory trend in which escaped slaves of African descent
trickled into the Mosquito Coast. This trend ultimately resulted in the
rise of the Miskito as a new “raza mixta” (mixed race) (Gamez 1939, 57)
or “hybrid” (Conzemius 1932, 17) Indian group. Hereafter I refer to this
explanation as the shipwreck theory of Miskito origins.
The shipwreck theory appears in one form or another in almost all
academic and journalistic accounts of Miskito origins and history.20
According to this theory, the region was populated by related but highly
localized Indian groups (which later would come to be known under the
collective term Sumu). The intermarriage of Africans with a Sumu group
that lived around the mouth of the Coco River at Cape Gracias a Dios
is presumed to have led to the rise of a dominant group that eventually
expanded throughout the Mosquito Coast, either destroying or incor-
porating Sumu groups as it expanded.21 The shipwreck theory of
Miskito “genesis” assumes that race, particularly African race or “blood,”
becomes a self-evident feature of human bodies that inevitably precipi-

tates a transformation in social and racial categorization. This assump-
tion, relying on a model of biological determinism that does not give
sufficient attention to the social construction of race, cannot be sus-
tained in this case.22
In the historical record (in this case primarily the published accounts
of northern European traders, pirates, and colonists),23 the perception
that the inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast were the product of African
and Indian miscegenation appears more or less simultaneously as the use
of some variation of the term Mosquito to denominate a nation or
tribe.24 Before the mid-sixteenth century, Mosquito was used exclusively
as a toponym (place name) that, depending on the source, referred to the
Coco River, the island-like delta at the mouth of this river (the cape
Gracias a Dios), and the densely packed group of small islands and keys
that dot the shallow sea shelf beyond the cape Gracias a Dios. These
islands today are known as the Mosquito Keys or Cayos Miskitos
(Houwald 1990, 203; Incer 1990, 292; Romero Vargas 1995, 125). Over
the centuries both Europeans and Americans have offered countless
interpretations as to the origin of the use of the term Miskito and its vari-
ants in Central America, some of which assume that the term originated
as an ethnonym and some of which assume that the term originated as
a toponym. According to the most recent historical research by
Nicaraguan and other scholars, it appears most likely that the term was
first applied to the Mosquito Keys (Incer 1990, 292), which because of
their density and small size reminded the seafaring Europeans of a swarm
of mosquitoes. Later this term was applied to inhabitants of the adjacent
mainland (Potthast 1988, 66; Romero Vargas 1995, 125; Offen 2002).
In the earliest English accounts of the region (1630–1650) the
inhabitants were referred to generically as Indians or as “Cape Indians”—
the term “Cape” deriving from Columbus’ geographical term Cabo
Gracias a Dios (Romero Vargas 1995, 125). The English did not adopt
the term Guaba, which the Franciscans (whose last attempt to pacify the
region resulted in the execution of three Spanish missionaries by the
feared “Albatuinas” of the inland portion of the Coco River in 1623)
had in the early 1600s applied to the coastal Indians of the region
between the Cape and the Caratasca Lagoon to the North (Incer 1990,
271). English Puritan colonists who had settled on Providence Island in
1629 were the first Europeans to extensively interact on peaceful terms

with the indigenous people of the region. Under specific instructions to
ingratiate themselves with the Indians of the adjacent coast, they set up
trading posts on the Cape and the Mosquito Keys in order to acquire
provisions and items of trade for their precarious island colony (Naylor
1989, 30).25 The Spanish destroyed the Providence Island colony in
1640, sending English refugees and their Negro slaves to the shores of
the Spanish Main, primarily to the area that is today Belize but also to
the Bay Islands, the Cape Gracias a Dios and Mosquito Keys region,
and the Bluefields Bay region (Naylor 1989, 30–34; Parsons 1956, 10).
Although historians and so-called ethnohistorians of the Mosquito Coast
and the eastern Anglo-Caribbean, such as Dennis and Olien (1984),
Naylor (1989), Olien (1983) and Parsons (1956), have portrayed this
early (1630–1670) interaction as having occurred between the English
and the Miskito Indians, Romero Vargas has convincingly demonstrated
that Europeans referred to the inhabitants of the region as Zambos,
Mulattoes, and Indians before they used Mosquito as a tribal term
(Romero Vargas 1995, 125; also see Incer 1990, 360).
In later accounts (1670s) the terms Zambo (Spanish for the offspring
of a Black and an Indian), Indian, Mulatto, and Negro came to be used in
both English and Spanish sources to describe the coastal dwellers around
the Cape.26 Although these sources inconsistently applied these four
terms to inhabitants of the Cape Gracias a Dios region, they uniformly
explained the African presence as having resulted from the shipwreck of
a slave ship (Helms 1977, 158).27 In the 1670s Europeans referred to the
inhabitants of the region as Zambos, Mulattoes, Negroes, or Indians
from Mosquito (or “the Mosquitos”) (Incer 1990, 360; Romero Vargas
1995, 125). The Spanish continued to refer to the aggressive groups that
plagued the eastern border of Nicaragua as both Carives and Zambos del
Mosquito until well into the eighteenth century (Incer 1990, 378–380);
tellingly, the Spanish colonial officials also referred to the inhabitants of
the region as el enemigo zambo (the zambo enemy) (ibid., 375).
The first European reference to the Mosquito Indians as a “small
nation” (Exquemelin 1685, 93) came from English, Dutch, and French,
pirates who visited the area in the 1660s and 1670s.28 They noted the
well-established social, commercial, and military ties between European
pirates and the inhabitants of the Cape Gracias a Dios area (Dampier
1698; Lussan 1689; M.W. 1728).29 All of the seventeenth-century non-

Spanish sources regarded the Cape Gracias a Dios area of the Central
American shoreline (or Spanish Main as it was known by the covetous
English) to be typified by its friendly and resourceful natives—a feature
that attracted northern European newcomers to the Caribbean. After a
century and a half of Spanish monopoly, they started preying upon these
rich colonies from their bases in Jamaica and Tortuga Island. For
example, Alexandre Exquemelin, a Dutch pirate based in Jamaica, regu-
larly stopped at the Cape with the intention of safely acquiring provi-
sions. He wrote: “We direction our course towards the Cape of Gracias
a Dios, where we had fixed our last hopes of finding Provisions. For
thither do usually resort many Pirats [sic], who entertain a friendly Cor-
respondence and Trade with the Indians of those parts” (Exquemelin
1685, 91).
He added:
Through the frequent Converse and Familiarity these Indians have

with the Pirats, they sometimes use to go to Sea with them, and
remain among them for whole years, without returning home.
From whence it cometh, that many of them can speak English, and
French, and some of the Pirats their Indian Language. They are very
dextrous at darting with the Javelin whereby they are very useful to
the Pirats, towards the victualling their Ships, by the fishery of
Tortoises, and Manita’s [manatees]. . . . For of these Indians, is alone
sufficient to victual a Vessel of an 100 persons. We had among our
Crew, two Pirats, who could speak very well the Indian Language.
By the Help of these men, I was so curious as to enquire into their
Customs, Lives and Policy. (ibid., 92–93)
In the above quotations, it is apparent that as of the 1670s, northern

European pirates and the Indians of the Cape Gracias a Dios region dealt
with each other extensively, extensively enough to speak one another’s
languages, accompany one another on long voyages, and learn about one
another’s customs. One of the “Policies” that most encouraged these
Europeans with regard to their native allies was their unwillingness to
“entertain any Friendship, or Correspondence, with other neighbour-
ing Islands, much less with the Spaniards” (Exquemelin 1685, 93).
Exquemelin’s pirate contemporary William Dampier echoed this state-

ment:“It is very rare to find Privateers destitute of one ore more of them,
when the Commander, or most of the men are English; but they do not
love the French, and the Spaniards they hate mortally” (Dampier 1698, 8).
The seemingly benign nature of the relationship between the
English and the Cape Gracias a Dios Indians had less to do with, as the
English claimed, the affinity of Mosquito Coast peoples for the English
and more to do with the precarious legal and military position in which
the English found themselves in the western Caribbean mainland.
Indeed, throughout the 275 years of English activity in the region (start-
ing with the foundation of the short-lived Puritan Providence Island
Company in 1629 and ending with the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty
between England and Nicaragua in 1905), the precariousness and
volatility of the English presence greatly mitigated the negative impact
of their presence on certain segments of Mosquito Coast society.
These early sources depicted the Mosquito Indians as a small, sea-
oriented, highly localized, and loosely organized group with a popula-
tion from about 200 (Dampier 1698, 7) to 2,000 (Exquemelin 1685, 93).
M.W., an English trader and pirate who visited the Cape in 1699,
described the Indians he encountered in the following manner:30 “They
live peaceably together in several families, yet accounting all Indians of
one tongue, to be the same people and friends, and are in quality all
equal, neither king nor captains of families bearing any more command
that the meanest, unless it be at such times when they make any expe-
ditions against the Alboawinneys; at that time they submit to the conduct,
and obey the orders of their kings and captains” (Olien 1983, 199).
Driven by seventy years of growing opportunities for trade with the
English, the inhabitants of the Cape had extended the sweep of their
raiding activities to as far south as the Matina cacao plantation district of
Costa Rica, where, according to M.W., they “carry away many of their
Indians [Costa Rican Indians], of which they kill the men, but the
women, and boys they reserve to trade with to the Jamaica-men, who
take off their hands all their cocoa-nuts, moneloes, turtle-shell, amber-
greese, plate, slaves, and what else they get by such rapines, which with
them is a fair war” (Helms 1983, 183).31 It appears that this process
resulted in the emergence of higher levels of social stratification in
which certain “captains” assumed leadership positions with influence
above and beyond local kin groups, which in modern Miskitu are
known as taya (bi-lateral kin groups) and kiamp (uni-lateral kin groups;
the word itself probably derived from the English “camp”). In her
ethnography of Asang, a twentieth-century Rio Coco Miskito village,
Helms identified fifty of these groups, which she described as “a loose
kindred” that includes “all living relatives to a distance of third cousin
from ego” within the riverine village of approximately 700 (Helms
1971, 72). Although these terms are completely absent from the histor-
ical literature, most of the historical sources, such as M.W. above, men-
tion the importance of multiple kin groups within Mosquito Coast
settlements, Zambo and Mosquito alike.
With regard to the relationship between the Blacks and Indians of
the area, historical sources provided consistently contradictory accounts.
Exquemelin claimed that the Mosquito Indians (referring to the Indians
of the Cape whom he perceived to be typical of the “Island Caribes”)
cohabited the “Island” with “Negros,” some of whom were held as slaves
(Exquemelin 1685, 93, 98).32 According to Exquemelin the “Negros”
lived in separate settlements where they lived “according to the Customs
of their own Countrey” (ibid., 100). Other sources, such as the English
pirate M.W. and early eighteenth-century Spanish officials Luis Antonio
Muñoz and Santaella Melgarejo, claimed that the Black slaves promptly
blended into the Indian groups of the Cape (Conzemius 1932, 17;
Naylor 1989, 230). Still other sources argued that the Negroes and Indi-
ans entered into bloody warfare, with the Negroes eventually vanquish-
ing the Indians, taking Indian women as mates. Take, for example, the
following testimony of Fray Benito Garret y Arloví, Bishop of
Nicaragua, who in 1711 wrote:
In the year 1641 a ship carrying Blacks [negros] was wrecked on the
coast of the North sea . . . they took shelter in the bush of those
mountains which was occupied by Carib Indians [indios caribes]
who, threatened by their new guests, made war against them and for
many years held the upper hand. With time the Blacks defeated the
Caribs who withdrew to mountains towards the Segovias and
Chontales . . . with the women of the defeated the winners multi-
plied and, because the first people there had died, today their
descendants are called zambos because they are the children of Black
men and Indian women. This story was told to me by a Black man
called Juan Ramón who lives in this city [Granada], and whose
advanced age makes plausible his recollection of the events that he
narrates. (Incer 1990, 294)
Variations of this story have continued to be recounted, both inside

and outside of the Mosquito Coast, to the present day and, not surpris-
ingly, the specific details of these stories tend to reveal more about the
prejudices and interests of the sources than they do about the fate of the
survivors of the legendary seventeenth-century shipwreck.
For example, consider the variation in the versions of the story
found in diplomatic correspondence between the United States and
Great Britain. In 1842 US Diplomat William Murphy reported to Sec-
retary of State Daniel Webster that, according to his understanding, the
“Indian-Negro mixture” found in the Mosquito Coast had resulted
from the extermination of native men (and subsequent union with
native women) committed by shipwrecked Negro slaves. In the late
eighteenth century the British superintendent to the Mosquito Shore
provided an opposite version in which the African men were killed by
Mosquito Indians, who then procreated with African women (Naylor
1989, 231). In light of the efforts by US diplomats to discredit British
claims on the mainland of Central America by asserting the Negro (and
therefore illegitimate) origins of the “Mosquito Kingdom,” the Ameri-
can account corresponds with the goals of US foreign policy at the time.
By emphasizing the Indian racial makeup of the Mosquito Shore, the
British account supported British claims to the legitimacy of the inclu-
sion of the country of Mosquito as a protectorate.
Just as the interpretations that various actors make regarding the
details of the shipwreck reveal something about their interests and biases,
the various theories regarding the origin of the term Miskito are simi-
larly revealing about their authors and supporters. The common expla-
nation among today’s Miskito is that the term derives from the name of
a mythical leader, Miskut, who is said to have brought the Miskito from
Honduras to a place around Bismona Lagoon. This version has become
the official theory of the modern Miskito Indian movement (see
Nietschmann 1989, 16, and 1993, 29). According to Stedman Fagoth,
contemporary Miskito politician, former military leader, and historian,
this group of migrants came to be known as “Miskut Uplika Nani”

(Miskut’s People), and eventually this name was shortened to Miskito by
the Sumo, who could not pronounce the entire phrase well (Fagoth
1986, 12).
At the turn of the century, Moravian linguist George Heath col-
lected an origin myth from a Miskito informant who claimed that
Miskito was derived from the Miskitu phrase “Dis-kitwras-nani” (“they
who cannot be dislodged”) (Heath 1913, 49). Heath himself speculated
that the term came from the Spanish phrase “indios mixtos” (ibid., 51).
He wrote: “Through the importation of slaves by former British settlers
(who afterward removed to Belize), and through more recent immigra-
tion of negroes of more or less pure African blood, chiefly from Jamaica,
the Miskuto people have come to present Sambo characteristics in
nearly all of their villages. May it not be that the much-discussed name
“Miskuto” has originated in the phrase “Indios Mixtos,” used perhaps at
first of the Sambos?” (ibid., 51).
His theory lends support to the racial determinism of the time.
Along these lines, J. Dyneley Prince, an American Anthropologist editor of
Heath’s 1913 article, used a racial metaphor to describe the “mongrel
nature of the present Miskuto idiom” (ibid., 62). Another early twentieth-
century German Moravian linguist, Walter Lehmann, speculated that the
term was the product of the region’s South American cultural roots,
deriving from a Columbian Chibchan language in which “Muyska” or
“Muisca” means “men” (Lehmann 1920; also see Valle 1944, 102, and
Guerrero and Guerrero 1982, 98; see Smutko 1985, 73, for another vari-
ation of this theory).
Mary Helms favored Charles Gibson’s theory that “the term may be
derived from the idea of ‘musket’ since the population in question was
distinguished from its neighbors literally as a musket-bearing group”
(Helms 1971, 16). This was thoroughly in line with Helms’s emphasis on
the socio-economic roots of Miskito origin as a “purchase society.” Fol-
lowing with this theme of the economic and occupational roots of eth-
nic identity, linguist John Holm linked the term to the Miskitu verb
miskaia (to fish) (Holm 1978, 306). Presumably the Miskito came to be
identified as a tribe as a result of their coastal adaptation.
Nietschmann’s less polemical pre-Sandinista Revolution work sup-
ported this position (Nietschmann 1973, 26). In accordance with his
staunch primordialist position with regard to the Miskito (which he

developed even before the Miskito-Sandinista crisis), he insisted, in con-
trast to the “colonial tribe” camp, that the Miskito constituted a distinct
tribe, albeit with a different name, on the basis of their unique “coastal
orientation” before European contact (ibid., 26).
Since at least the nineteenth century, European visitors to the Coast
have speculated that the term derives from the abundance of mosquitoes
(the insect) in the region (Guerrero and Guerrero 1982, 98). Through-
out the colonial period and continuing to the present, the terms Mosco
and Mosca (fly in Spanish) are frequently used, often in a derogatory fash-
ion, to refer to the Miskito. Clearly these last usages represent after-the-
fact rationalizations that incorporate negative images of the Miskito. In
all of this speculation as to the origin of the term Miskito, each of the
theories reflects the varying perspectives and agendas of those involved.
Although the seventeenth-century sources are not unanimous with
regard to the group labels of the Cape Gracias a Dios people, they are
unanimous in regarding these people as having a distinctive relationship
with Europeans. Regardless of whether these sources referred to the
inhabitants of the coast as Zambos, Mulattoes, or Indians, they observed
that all of the inhabitants of the area were available, willing, and useful
trading and raiding partners. Herein lies a key to understanding the
transformation and consolidation of Mosquito Coast society.
Zambo s, Mo squ i to s, Zambo s

M o squi to s: Slave ry and M i xe d R ac e
In the eighteenth century, sources began to describe the Mosquito
and Zambo as subgroups or “branches” (Naylor 1989, 41) of an expand-
ing and increasingly hierarchically organized Mosquito Indian popula-
tion. At times the groups that were considered to be “pure Indians” were
referred to as Tawira (straight-haired in Miskitu) or simply as Mosquitos,
while the groups that were portrayed as mixed with Africans were
referred to as Sambos (in English) or Zambos Mosquitos (Offen 2002).
Whereas in the seventeenth century the application of the term Mos-
quito, as both a toponym and ethnonym, was confined to a very cir-
cumscribed referent, in the eighteenth century the term started to be
applied to larger and more dispersed groups. Also as a toponym it came
to be applied to a much larger area. In the seventeenth century the term
was used to describe a small population that cooperated with the

English, but in the eighteenth century it was used to describe what were
perceived to be, at some level, a broader population that was divided into
geographically centered subgroups, which were united by a common
language.
The region was witnessing a transformation, not only in the system
of tribal terminology, but much more significantly in economic
orientation—a transformation that directly affected the process of group
formation and social stratification (Romero Vargas 1995, 157). Mosquito
Coast society in the pre-Columbian and early colonial period was char-
acterized by a relatively dispersed system (in comparison to the Pacific)
of socio-political organization. Although widespread groups did possess
cultural and linguistic affinities with one another, they were not organ-
ized into region-wide institutional structures. In the eighteenth century,
however, this situation changed as a coastal “trading and raiding” popu-
lation began to increase in size, strength, and political integration (Olien
1988a). These social and economic transformations have been com-
monly viewed as having directly resulted from a change in the racial
composition of the region’s Indians.
In the eighteenth century, as the inhabitants of the Cape Gracias a
Dios region began to expand, internal and external power struggles
emerged within splinter groups that, according to colonial sources, were
composed of about ten families (Incer 1990, 371). In order to consoli-
date their position within their own communities and cement their ties
with English merchants and pirates, native leaders sought recognition of
self-bestowed English titles such as admiral, governor, captain, general,
and king. Initially this process lacked the systematicness and hierarchy
that these titles imply. In the early 1700s, for example, Spanish docu-
ments refer to many different “Kings” (Olien 1983, 204). But as the cen-
tury progressed, a set of regional leaders emerged, each of whom held a
title that was officially recognized by the British authorities in Jamaica.
These authorities in Jamaica frequently issued “commissions” as well as
diplomatic gifts that helped to legitimate the authority of the titleholder
(Romero Vargas 1995, 164). The English, encouraged by Mosquito
aggression against Spanish territory, claimed that all of the Mosquito
leaders considered themselves subjects of the British king and loathed
Spaniards. Among themselves, however, they ridiculed as savage and
gullible the aspiring Mosquito Coast leaders whose authority they selec-
tively bolstered—at times even going to the lengths of “educating” them
in England and Jamaica.
Notwithstanding the historical antipathy between Spaniards and
Costeños that has so often been cited in the modern literature as lying
at the root of the modern Sandinista-Costeño conflict, the fact that at
different times Miskito leaders solicited Spanish support (from the colo-
nial governments of Costa Rica and New Granada) in order to enhance
their positions speaks to the tactical and contingent nature of the Mos-
quito alliance with the British. In her book on Anglo-Spanish politics in
the Mosquito Coast, Historian Barbara Potthast devoted a chapter to this
little-known history in which Mosquito Coast leaders attempted to
solidify Spanish support (Potthast 1988, 253–303; also see Olien 1983,
213; Helms 1986, 512; Romero Vargas 1995, 188; Offen 1999). Miskito
leaders consciously manipulated European sources of power and prestige
in local and regional political negotiations (Olien 1983, 204; Offen
1999).
In Mosquito Coast society, power came to be marked by British
symbols and goods. In the words of linguist John Holm, “The Miskito
began to think of themselves as partly European (as indeed they were
becoming, both culturally and genetically) and thus less vulnerable than
‘wild’ Indians to destruction at the hands of the Spaniards” (Holm 1978,
38). The Mosquito kings displayed their ties to the British through a sil-
ver crown and scepter given by the governor of Jamaica. Later, Mosquito
titleholders were known to dress in British naval uniforms (Dennis and
Olien 1984, 727). An Indian and African-influenced Creole English,
which Holm described as “one of the oldest varieties of English spoken
outside of England,” was used along with Miskitu as the two lingua fran-
cas in the region in the eighteenth century (Holm 1978, 95). Local and
regional leaders also legitimated their authority on the basis of their mas-
tery of English, the prestige language of the Coast. These and other sym-
bols played a central role in Mosquito political structure, where “at least
as early as 1687, the Miskito believed that in order for an individual to
legitimate his claim as king, he must first be recognized as the group’s
leader by the English” (Olien 1983, 200).
The Miskito king never ruled over a “state-type political structure”
(Dennis and Olien 1984, 718).33 The king, governor, admiral, and general
represented the highest level of their authority in their respective

regions, and at different times the latter three wielded more power than
the king. In 1740, for example, the general ruled from Cape Cameron
to Cape Gracias a Dios in what is known as the Honduran Mosquitia;
the king ruled from Cape Gracias a Dios to Sandy Bay; and the gover-
nor ruled from Sandy Bay to Pearl Lagoon (Olien 1983, 208; Potthast
1988, 174). According to Robert Hodgson, first British superintendent
of the Mosquito Shore, “Three chiefs ruled over separate Mosquito
provinces, or ‘guards’” (Olien 1983, 209). On many occasions these
leaders made treaties with foreign interests and issued land grants to
foreign investors (Romero Vargas 1995, 163–169).
At no point did the English establish a large-scale plantation econ-
omy (such as those created in Jamaica, British Honduras, and other parts
of the Caribbean) on the Mosquito Coast. From 1740 to 1786 Mosquito
Coast society started to move in that direction, but in 1787 Britain
signed a treaty with Spain in which it agreed to abandon the Mosquito
Shore. This treaty precipitated the flight of the English residents and
their slaves, who had been used primarily in the logging industry, to the
logging areas of Belize. African slaves and freemen represented three-
fourths of the 2,214 evacuees (Bolland 1977, 40). Even in the height of
African slavery in the Mosquito Coast (1740–1786), African slave num-
bers were low and export-oriented agricultural plantations were few
(Gabbert 1992, 46; Parsons 1956, 12). In the Mosquito Coast, as
opposed to Spanish Central America where Indian chattel slavery had
long been abolished, African slavery actually seems not to have been
significantly more prevalent than Indian slavery.34 Romero Vargas esti-
mated that before the end of eighteenth century, more than 20,000
Indian slaves had been captured by the Mosquito Indians and sold to
buyers, primarily in Jamaica but also Belize and the Mosquito Coast
(Romero Vargas 1995, 290).35
Although African slavery existed in comparable levels in both Pacific
Nicaragua and the Mosquito Coast, the Spanish institutions of
encomienda, repartimiento, and Indian tribute and taxation created a
form of Indian semi-slavery in the Pacific that was quite different from
the Indian and African slavery in the Mosquito Coast. These Spanish
institutions relied on the communal organization of Indian groups. In
contrast, African and Indian slavery practiced on the Mosquito Coast
was predicated upon wrenching the slave from aboriginal communal

affiliations.
The regionally specific nature of slavery in the Mosquito Coast pro-
foundly affected the construction of race in the Mosquito Coast. To be
defined as in some way African in the Mosquito Coast did not carry the
same social and legal ramifications as it did in the slave-holding strong-
holds of both English and Spanish America. Throughout Latin America,
the Spanish placed a host of restrictions on the movement, dress, mar-
riage, political aspirations, and self-defense of different categories of
African Americans (whether Negro, free “Pardo,” or Zambo) (Helms
1977, 163). In the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua such institutional disin-
centives to Black identification played a much less important role.
Indeed the capture of the Indian slaves for sale continued, although at a
much reduced pace, until the second half of the nineteenth century—
well after African slaves received their formal emancipation in the British
West Indies (1838) (Bolland 1977, 4; Naylor 1989, 93).36 Although
Mosquito leaders had been known to hold some African slaves during
the eighteenth century, the supply of African slaves was never replen-
ished after the British evacuation of the Coast in 1787 (Olien 1988b,
44). A few of the White settlers who pledged allegiance to the Spanish
Crown, rather than relocating to British Honduras, continued to hold a
limited number of slaves. However, by 1800 African slavery in the
region, no longer economically viable, was all but over (Olien 1988a).37
For this reason the distinction between Sambo and “pure Indian,”
although an important distinction within Mosquito Coast society, was
quite irrelevant with regard to the matter of slavery. As Karl Offen notes,
“The Miskitu elite thought of themselves as ‘a free and unconquered
people’ and the only comparative people who also fit this description
were elites of other powerful nations” (Offen 1999, 276). Miskito Indi-
ans of the eighteenth century knew that they were free men and women
regardless of their physical appearance or whether they belonged to a
community that was defined as Sambo or Indian. In light of their suc-
cessful raiding of Spanish settlements and their extraordinary successes in
defining the terms in their interactions with the British, their freedom
was indeed never in question.
In the Pacific region the system of racial categorization was
simultaneously taking a very different path in which an African or
mixed-African racial category disappeared entirely (Romero Vargas

1993a; 1995). This categorical shift, and the subsequent historiographi-
cal erasure, has been so complete that today in Nicaraguan popular
imagination it is not recognized that there ever was a significant African
presence in the Pacific region. It is common knowledge in Nicaragua,
despite evidence to the contrary, that African slavery characterized the
Atlantic Coast, not the Pacific. Vargas identified this process of erasure in
the following manner:
We should emphasize the importance that the African element of

colonial society acquired in the Nicaraguan province particularly in
the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, this society tried to hide and
disguise this presence—terrorized by a complex of legal transgres-
sion. At this time the myth that mestizaje occurred only between the
Spanish and the Indians was created. This myth survives in modern
Nicaraguan society. In contrast to what happens in the Atlantic
Coast, people [from the Pacific] conceal the African elements of
Nicaraguan social formation. (Romero Vargas 1993b)
As Romero Vargas’s archival investigations have revealed, the Spanish

colonial elite in the Pacific region not only imported very significant
numbers of African slaves, but also they imported far more African slaves
than their colonial counterparts on the Atlantic Coast. In the mid-
sixteenth century, after fifty years of human devastation wrought by the
Indian slave trade, Africans became the main source of forced labor in
the Spanish Colonies from Mexico to Peru.38 African slaves continued
to be imported into the province of Nicaragua throughout the colonial
period, but by the early eighteenth century they represented a very small
amount of the population. Their descendants, however, who the colo-
nial society sought to officially identify as Mullatoes and Zambos, rep-
resented as much as half of the population of the colony (Romero Vargas
1993b, 163). Ironically, these free Mulattoes and Zambos primarily
worked in the colonial militias, defending the Pacific region against
Mosquito Zambo raids. In the major colonial cities this figure was even
higher. For example, in 1790 Granada the population (12,400) possessed
the following official racial profile: 400 Spanish, 1,500 Mestizos, 8,000
Mulattoes and Zambos, 400 Negros, 100 slaves, and 2,000 Indians (ibid.,
159). After independence, however, the percentage of the population
considered African (Zambo, Mulatto, or Negro), both in official statis-

tics and popular usage, drastically declined such that by the end of the
nineteenth century the African had disappeared in name from the Pacific
Nicaraguan population. They had been categorically shifted into the
Mestizo majority. That is to say, the official as well as unofficial systems
of racial categorization in the Pacific region became transformed such
that individuals were much less frequently categorized as Zambo,
Mulatto, and Negro.
In 1740 the English, newly at war with the Spanish, began to place
the Mosquito Shore more firmly into their colonial grip.39 The Gover-
nor of Jamaica appointed an English “superintendent” to oversee and
formalize British interests in the region as well as to direct English and
Mosquito incursions against Spanish settlements (Romero Vargas 1993b,
170).40 During the period from 1740 to 1787, after which the British
withdrew from the region, the leadership hierarchy within the Mosquito
Shore became increasingly rationalized. According to Robert Hodgson,
the first British superintendent of the Mosquito Shore, the chain of
command was as follows: (1) at the top, the three major leaders—the
king, governor, and general; (2) historically established captains and
leaders of tribes and smaller districts; (3) recently elevated, either by the
Mosquito or British authorities, captains and others “with similar
influence”; (4) quartermasters, which was the lowest title of distinction;
(5) foot soldiers; and (6) individuals of “little importance” (Romero
Vargas 1995, 162).
European sources characterize the internally stratified “guards”—
districts within the territory of each king, governor, or general that were
led by a local leader—as racially distinct because they were presumed to
contain differing relative levels of Indian vs. Black “blood.” By the late
eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century, histor-
ical sources consistently claimed that the Northern guards contained
Samboes that possessed a greater amount of African “blood,” while the
Southern guards were peopled by “pure Indians” (Olien 1983, 209).
Bryan Edwards, late eighteenth-century British historian of the West
Indies, described his perception of the racial makeup of the region in the
following manner: “The general’s people are Samboes, and stretch from
Black River to near Cape Gracias-a-Dios. The king’s chief residence is
about twelve leagues south of the cape, his people are also Samboes, and
his immediate precinct reaches to the cape, and runs far up the country.
The governor’s precinct joins to the king’s, and extends between twenty
and thirty leagues to the southward, till it meets the admiral’s. The
people under these chieftains are pure Indians” (Olien 1983, 209).
Edwards explained that these separate “tribes” could be differenti-
ated as distinct “both by nature and by policy: by nature, from the gen-
eral distinction of pure Indians and Samboes; by policy, as living and
acting under several chieftains” (Helms 1977, 159). Edwards’s contem-
porary and fellow historian Edward Long stated that the “Mosquitos” (a
term that he regarded a “general name”) were composed of several
“tribes” composed of either “Samboes” or “Pure Indians” (Long 1972
[1774], 316).
Not only did the eighteenth-century sources, as well as the
nineteenth-century sources, describe the political divisions as correspon-
ding with racial differences (“nature”), but, more significantly, the
sources infused their characterizations of these sub-tribes with the racial
prejudices and stereotypes of their day. English sources typically attrib-
uted what they perceived to be the most negative features of the
Mosquito Indians to their African ancestry, and they consistently charac-
terized the Sambo wings of the Mosquito as being subject to those char-
acter traits (laziness and treachery) that they most used to describe the
Negroes of their own slave societies.
Take, for example, Edward Long’s description of the Samboes of
Mosquito: “Among them is a mixed race, called Samboes, supposed to
derive their origin from a Guiney ship; which traditions says, was
wrecked on the coast above a century ago; certain it is, that their hair,
complexion, features, and make, clearly denote an African ancestry; from
whom they have also inherited some of the true characteristics of the
African mind; for they are generally false, designing, treacherous, knav-
ish, impudent, and revengeful” (Long 1972 [1774], 316).
Contrast this statement to Edwards’s portrayal of the pure Indians
whom he differentiated from the “treacherous” Samboes: “The pure
Indians are so called, because they are free from any mixture of
negro blood; and their general conduct gives a very favourable idea of
Indian nature. They are seldom guilty of positive evil, and often rise to
positive good, when positive good does not require much exertion of
mind. Their modesty, docility, good faith, disposition to friendship and
gratitude, ought to engage equally our regard and protection” (Helms

1977, 159). Here Edwards portrays the Mosquito Indians as being cul-
turally degraded on the basis of their racial admixture with Africans in a
fashion that is typical of the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century
accounts of the Mosquito Coast.
Nineteenth-century and twentieth-century accounts of the Mos-
quito Coast continue to emphasize the degrading effects of the African
admixture in the region. Take for example the following quotation from
early twentieth-century economic historian Samuel Crowther:
The Mosquito Coast is a strip of land stretching some two hundred

miles along the shore of Nicaragua from Cape Gracias a Dios to
Bluefields Lagoon and once upon a time was the home of the Mos-
quito Indians. In the latter part of the seventeenth century a slave
ship was wrecked on the coast. The Africans intermarried with the
Indians, were joined by Jamaica negroes and escaped slaves and these
together with a few renegade whites combines to form a polyglot
race of utter worthlessness. It was a nation only in the sense that its
people were quite unlike the people of any other nation. (Crowther
1929, 113)
In an academic article, geographer Wolfgang von Hagen wrote in

1940: “In fact, the social retrogression described by Earl Hanson as
occurring in the Orinoco basin is beginning in the Mosquitia of
Honduras. There is further complication for the reason that, as times
grow worse in the Caribbean, more Jamaican Negroes come to the
Coast, intermarry with the Miskito, and add to the Negroid inheritances
of the tribe: the more or less pure-blooded Indians who live to the south
of Caratasca will be absorbed” (von Hagen 1940, 259). In these accounts
the Indian part of the Miskito Indian admixture is seen as that which is
valuable and worth preserving, while the Negro element is seen to be
corrupting.
The attempt to discredit the Mosquito government on the grounds
that their populations of Miskito Indians were actually “Negroes” was
consistent with the US foreign policy goal of discrediting the English-
allied government of the country of Mosquito. Not surprisingly in light
of racial ideologies in the United States at the time, the US government
and its agents fervently linked the perceived backwardness of the country
of Mosquito to the African influence of its people. Anthropologist

Michael Olien exposed the lengths taken by a US diplomat and ethnol-
ogist, E. G. Squier, in the mid 1800s to discredit the government of
Mosquito on explicitly racial grounds (Olien 1985).
Traces of this negative portrayal of Africaness have seeped into the
modern historiography of the region, and more importantly, Pacific
Nicaraguan views about Costeños. Take, for example, the following
quotation from contemporary Nicaraguan Historian Jaime Incer, whose
book, Nicaragua: Viajes, Rutas y Encuentros—1502–1838, represents one
of the few histories of Nicaragua to simultaneously treat the Atlantic and
Pacific coast:
When the 17th century pirates described the Misquitos they

undoubtedly were referring to the pure indians. As generations
passed and the African features began to increasingly manifest them-
selves phenotypically, the term Misquito did not just cover solely
Indians but also their Zambo descendants which had been raised as
Misquitos by Misquita mothers. The colonial documents of the 18th
century and the beginnings of the 19th century frequently mention
the “Zambos-Mosquitos” as if they were a single nation.
The Misquitos emerge as a distinct people coincidentally with
the infusion of African blood and although they conserve many of
the ancient customs that they shared with the Sumus they came to
dominate and enslave them thanks to the firearms that they acquired
from their English allies. Those friendly and scattered natives that
the pirates found living primitively and precariously in Cape Gracias
a Dios were, in the following centuries, converted into an aggressive
and expansionist nation which neighboring tribes as well as the
Spanish had to suffer. Their leaders, the Mosco Kings, exchanged
mishla (native alcohol) for Jamaican rum and in their alcoholic delir-
iums terrorized the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and
Panama in complicity with the English. (Incer 1990, 295)
This quotation reveals both a strong Hispanicist bias manifested by

Pacific Nicaraguans against Costeños, as well as the proclivity to equate
Indians with “noble savages” and Africans with brutality and unbridled
aggression. Consider the following quotation from contemporary
historian Flor Solórzano:“It is obvious that during the 17th century sur-
vivors of the shipwreck mixed with the aboriginal population of the
place [Cape Gracias a Dios]. In this remarkable miscegenation, the prod-
uct of an accident, the black race contributed physical durability and
warrior traditions while the miskito contributed cunning and natural
abilities which together was unleashed on the region in the form of the
fearful race known as the ‘zambos-mosquitos’” (Solórzano 1992, 38).
Although less openly contemptuous of the mixed Mosquitos, Solór-
zano operates under the assumption that each so-called race contributed
a distinct quality to the resulting hybrid population. Once more, she
reproduces commonly held beliefs, historically rooted in New World
slavery, that associate Africans with brute physical strength and Indians
with harmony with nature.
This approach towards the role of Africans vis-à-vis Indians in Mos-
quito Coast history, however, also resonates in North American schol-
arship. US historian Robert Naylor, for example, employs a form of
racial determinism in his explanation of the rise of ascendancy of the
Miskito Indians. For example, he wrote:
The Sambos had come a long way from their origins at Cape
Gracias a Dios some seventy-five years earlier, when the survivors of
a wrecked slave ship had taken up life among the Mosquito Indians.
Their descendants had increased in number and expanded territori-
ally. They were generally darker in color than the Indians, although
they came in all shades; they were also a little taller than their Indian
counterparts, and were noted for their frizzy hair and African
features. They had tended to become even more bellicose, arrogant
and adventurous that the pure Mosquito Indians, and before long
they had emerged as the dominant element at the cape. (Naylor
1989, 41)
US Anthropologist Charles Hale recapitulated this view in 1987

when he wrote:
Africanization of the Indian population at Cabo Gracias occurred

during the same period that the tribal name Miskitu (with various
spellings) first appears in historical documents, and that these coastal
Indians developed a reputation as outstanding warriors and traders.
Having managed to escape the arduous conditions of slavery, these

Africans must have been worldly-wise and aggressive. Intermarriage
produced Miskitu offspring, but would also have transformed the
ethnic identity, strengthening their orientation towards assertive
relations with outsiders. (Hale 1987a, 37)
Much of the scholarship on the Mosquito Coast has reproduced an

unsubstantiated correlation between Africanness and aggressiveness.
More fundamentally, statements such as these can too easily be read as
committing the fallacy of viewing race and miscegenation as being at the
root of the social transformation of the region, thereby conflating social
processes with biological processes. The emergence of a Costeño pattern
of “assertive relations with outsiders” can be explained in terms of
political and ecological factors without recourse to racial determinism.
In the seventeenth century, inhabitants of the Cabo Gracias a Dios
region of the Mosquito Coast, regardless of their biological origins,
adopted a common set of political and economic strategies that entailed
cooperation with the English and hostility to Spanish and Indians from
the interior.
The Case of the Creole s:

I de nt i ty Pol i t i c s i n th e M o s qu i to Nati on
Mosquito Coast anthropologist Michael Olien, whose work on
Afro-Caribbean populations of lower Central America precedes his his-
torical work on the Mosquito Kingdom, has written extensively on the
origins of the Creole category (1987, 1988b, 1988c). According to
Olien, inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast, all of whom were racially
“mixed” to a varying degree, decided in the nineteenth century to grav-
itate toward one of two poles: the Mosquito-Zambo or the Creole.
The Mosquito-Zambos “were beginning to emphasize their Indian
characteristics at this time and to de-emphasize their previous catego-
rization as a zambo [Afro-Indian] population” (Olien 1988b, 45). The
descendants of ex-slaves who “followed Miskito cultural traditions . . .
continued to be known as Miskito.” He added, however, that “another
mixed group” that was “emulating English customs” came to be known
as the Creoles (ibid., 44). The term Creole (borrowed from Jamaicans
who were beginning to come to the Central American coast in search
of wage labor) was used in the Mosquito Coast to distinguish Blacks

who had been born in the region from Miskitos. In Latin America and
the Caribbean as a whole during the colonial period, the term Creole dis-
tinguished native-born people of all races from European-born people.
With the evacuation of the English from the Atlantic coast at the
end of the eighteenth century, the term became, according to Olien, an
ideal “signifier” to differentiate the native-born descendants of slaves
from the “foreign”-born Jamaicans. Olien therefore argued that the term
“had essentially become a linguistic category in search of an ethnic
group” (ibid., 45). In this sense, the existence of the “signifier” Creole
brought about the existence of the “signified,” the Creole group. Olien
described this as a dialectical process in which changes in the political
dynamics on the coast precipitated this symbolic change.
Olien implied that what distinguished Creoles from Miskitos was a
set of entirely different customs, one oriented toward being Indian and
the other toward being English. Olien glossed over the fact that
identification with English symbols, be they language, commodities, or
“customs,” had long been associated with prestige among all groups on
the Mosquito Coast. The Miskito king had since the seventeenth cen-
tury used British symbols such as military uniforms, swords, and other
British naval regalia as tools with which to legitimate their power to
their subjects.41 Since the administrative structure of the Kingdom was
not rigidly formalized, many other regional Miskito leaders acted within
the same symbolic universe, adopting British titles such as admiral, gen-
eral, and commander. These regional leaders often had free reign within
their region and often negotiated with foreign governments and
investors autonomously. Hence, Helms has suggested that the British
represented an “important new political resource” that was brought to
bear on internal power struggles (Helms 1986, 510).
I argue that the Creole “ethnogenesis” did not result from Creoles
choosing to adopt English customs instead of Indian customs. Rather, I
contend that groups that later would be called Creoles increased in
prominence as they were able to form stronger alliances with the British
who began to return to the Coast in the 1820s. The importance of the
Creoles in regional power structures increased in the next years, espe-
cially after 1848 when the gold rush in California brought the Mosquito
Coast into global focus. Britain, the United States, France, and even
Spain had long hoped to build a canal that would connect the Atlantic
and the Pacific. The port of Greytown, at the mouth of the San Juan
River on the southern edge of the Mosquito Coast, was considered the
ideal entrance point for a passage across the isthmus. Britain, therefore,
moved the seat of the Miskito Kingdom south from Sandy Bay to
Bluefields, which was much closer to Greytown. Later, the Mosquito
government was moved to Greytown itself, far from the centers of
Costeño population—particularly Miskitu-speaking Costeños whose
concentration was greater in the northern Mosquito Coast. This tip in
the scale of regional importance toward the south favored the inhabitants
of Bluefields and Pearl Lagoon, where Creoles had recently become the
dominant term of racial identification.
At this time the United States, following the Monroe Doctrine,
attempted to dislodge Britain from the coast of Central America. As part
of this effort, the United States engaged in an active propaganda cam-
paign to discredit the Mosquito government. US diplomat and ethnol-
ogist E. G. Squier was a key player in the effort. He ridiculed the
Mosquito king as a drunken “Negro” puppet of British imperialist inter-
ests. Central American governments, in turn, echoed these and similar
assaults on the Mosquito king. This hostility towards the Mosquito gov-
ernment increased the pressure on the Mosquito government to present
itself as a legitimately constituted Indian government. For this reason the
Mosquito government began to officially note the racial make up of its
members, in effect institutionalizing racial categories such as Indian and
Creole. For example, the election protocol of 1865 systematically cate-
gorized the race of the electors as either “Creoles,” “Indians,” or “Half-
Indians.” This classification was introduced in the official protocol
because “every document of the Reserve was under pressure to display
a specifically Indian legitimacy” (Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich
1990, 67). The practice of socio-racial identification in the region can-
not simply be viewed as a matter of the assertion by individuals or
groups of customs or culture, however defined, without placing ade-
quate emphasis on the political (and indeed geopolitical) contexts in
which these assertions were made.
Olien’s approach to Creole ethnogenesis tends to regarded mutually
exclusive cultural difference as the substance of regional ethnic diversity.
However, it is worth noting that the Miskito Indian elite, some of whom
were educated in Jamaica or Great Britain, regarded their knowledge of

English, as well as their sustained relationships with the British and
Germans, as civilizing influences that distinguished them from the
“wild” Indians of the interior. They resisted incorporation into the
Nicaraguan state on the grounds that their government was more pro-
gressive and civilized (to use their terminology) than that of Nicaragua.
They self-consciously adopted British laws and customs, and regarded
themselves as loyal subjects of the British Crown. To regard the sub-
stance of regional diversity as consisting of separate cultures is to misun-
derstand the status variables operating in the Mosquito Coast. The
specific system of socio-racial identification in the Coast must be under-
stood in part as the product of the conflict between the increased status
afforded by English identification and the political advantages of Indian
identification. The way different groups juggled these variables in
response to the changing political situation in the Coast influenced the
nature of the identification of its residents as Creoles or Miskito Indians.
In the nineteenth century, the matter of racial identification of the
inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast consistently entered into geopolitical
struggles between Britain, the United States, and Nicaragua over the sta-
tus of the region (Bolland 1992). In 1860 the British, heavily pressured
by the United States, decided to politically and militarily reduce their
activity in the area. The trade in mahogany had declined, and London
had become very dependent on American cotton. Already at war with
Russia, Britain could not afford a war with the United States (Olien
1987, 281). In 1860 Britain signed the Treaty of Managua with the gov-
ernment of Nicaragua, in which Britain agreed to withdraw its Protec-
torate from the Mosquito territory. The Mosquito Reservation, as it
later came to be known, was thus created. The respective governments
of Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Managua without
the input of the residents of the Coast. The treaty stated:“The Mosquito
Indians . . . shall enjoy the right of governing, according to their own
customs, and according to any regulations which may from time to time
be adopted by them, not inconsistent with the sovereign rights of the
Republic of Nicaragua” (Olien 1987, 316).
The treaty provided the Indians the option to choose, if they so
desired, “absolute incorporation into the Republic of Nicaragua.” The
Miskito king was hereafter to become the Mosquito “Chief,” and
became a salaried employee of the Nicaraguan government, earning

$5,000 per year. Greytown, now Britain’s major interest in the area, was
declared a free port where no taxes could be levied on international
trading vessels. Britain hoped to withdraw active presence in the region
without losing its advantageous economic arrangements. The British
counted on being able to continue to freely exploit the natural resources
of the area under the new Mosquito government. The previous Mos-
quito governments, as we have seen, were by “custom” receptive to
British economic interests.
In 1861 Hereditary Chief George Augustus Frederick called “a Pub-
lic Convention of the Headman of the Mosquitos, and of the mixed
population” in which a government was formed and a constitution
drafted (Olien 1987, 318–326). Of the fifty-one delegates that arrived,
the majority, thirty-nine, came from the southern parts of the Mosquito
Coast: Bluefields, Rama Key, Corn Island and Pearl Lagoon. The dele-
gates that came from these places undoubtedly represented the “mixed
population.”
Since the early 1800s Jamaicans of African descent had come to the
Mosquito Coast, settling primarily in the southern communities of
Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon, and Corn Island. These areas had been the pri-
mary site of English residence and therefore had been populated by the
descendants of slaves brought by the English. These people came to refer
to themselves and be referred to as Creoles. Before 1880 the Creole
population was estimated to be around 2,000, far fewer than the Indian
population of 10,000 to 15,000. Half of these Indians were known to the
Miskito as Sumu, a general term they used to describe inland Indian
groups (Vilas 1989, 32; Laird 1972, 21).
A “General Council” of forty-four men was formed, consisting of
all of the southern delegates, excluding seven of the eleven delegates
who were presumably identified as Miskito Indians. George Augustus
Frederick was officially elected chief and president of the General
Council, and Henry Patterson was elected vice president and John H.
Hooker, secretary. Patterson was the Pearl Lagoon-born son of a Scot-
tish trader and Miskito mother who, according to Oertzen, spoke
Miskitu, “although, culturally, he undoubtedly was a Creole” (Oertzen,
Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 68). Note Oertzen’s apparent equation
of racial difference with cultural difference.
Apart from the chief, the majority of rural village leaders (who
were generally regarded at the time as Indians) were marginalized from
taking part in the administration of what was nominally an Indian gov-
ernment. In the south, English-speaking leaders, who increasingly came
to be identified as Creoles despite their extensive cultural and kin ties to
the Miskito (as Patterson’s case above illustrates), took the reigns of
the Mosquito government. They represented a local upper class who
maintained their status by monopolizing trade with the British and
North American companies in the area. However, it is crucial not
to mistake this situation (as many historians and anthropologists have
done) for a situation in which a culturally distinct racial group exercises
power over a subordinate racial group. Rather, a regional shift in
power was occurring—a regional shift that undoubtedly had racialized
implications.
According to the logic of the relevant treaties, the Miskito nation
was to be an Indian nation, which functioned according to its “own cus-
toms” and “regulations.” Inhabitants of the region created a government
based on a model of the modern liberal state, derived explicitly from the
British. The regulations that they enacted were distinctly British. This
fact, given the highly Anglicized nature of the region, does not repre-
sent a contradiction. In 1874 Hereditary Chief William Henry Clarence,
in an address to the “Chiefs and Headmen and Representatives of Mos-
quito,” stated: “In turning to domestic affairs, my residence in Jamaica,
and my acquaintance with its institutions, and trade, and people, show
me much that is necessary among us, and I am sure the best means to
consolidate and execute the laws, to educate and protect the people, to
encourage and control honourable trade, to secure and increase the rev-
enue, require speedy attention. . . . I wish to see Mosquito respected by
other States, and recognized amongst the nations” (Oertzen, Rossbach,
and Wunderich 1990, 338).
Some of the first acts of the Mosquito government were to declare
the ports and rivers as open for duty-free commerce, levy a personal
income tax, and enact legislation regulating the use of public lands.
A public land office was created that was empowered to “let and lease
the public lands, and to regulate the sale and disposition of its natural
productions.” Another law was enacted that forbid obtaining “from
any Mosquito Indian, within the Reservation Tassa [rubber], or other
property, by misrepresentation, false weight or measure, or by fraud or

violence” (Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 332).
In a significant reversal by the late nineteenth century, both insiders
in the Mosquito government, as well as English, North American, and
Nicaraguan outsiders, no longer portrayed the Miskito Indians as a fierce
and dominant people. Rather, village-oriented Miskito Indians were
often portrayed as passive, vulnerable, and economically insecure in
contrast to Creole and Miskito city dwellers. Anthropologist Nancie
Gonzalez, who conducted fieldwork among the Garifuna of Honduras,
noted that “the Miskito image changed from fierce warrior and entre-
preneurial raider and trader during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries to that of backward and harmless savage in the nineteenth cen-
tury” (Gonzalez 1988, 32). For example, Chief William Henry Clarence,
in a late nineteenth-century speech, expressed his outrage at the treat-
ment of Indians by foreigners:
I have to call your attention to the oppressions under which the

poor Indians suffer from those who trade amongst them. I am of
their blood, and feel it my duty in every way to vindicate the
wrongs committed amongst them. Regulations should be made to
free them at once from the slavery under which they labour. I can-
not understand, that men who profess to be civilized should so far
forget themselves as to dare to flog and otherwise ill-treat those poor
inoffensive people. Gentlemen of the Council, I expect that you
will assist me to protect the interests of the welfare of the people.
(Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 167)
Apart from the law mentioned above, the government passed other
laws aimed at decreasing the exploitation of Indians and “natives” (the
term used to describe all residents of the Reservation). Natives often
accrued large debts to foreign merchants. In 1883 the government abol-
ished the debtor’s prison and cancelled debts not paid by March 1884.
It put debtors on the payroll at fifty cents a day, half of which went
toward the service of their debt. A maximum interest rate was fixed, and
household goods were declared free from confiscation. All of this was
condemned by foreigners as a “fiasco” (Vilas 1989, 32).
Although the majority of Miskito Indians did not participate in the
highest levels of government, this is not to say that the government was
run only by Creoles for Creoles. The Mosquito government integrated

all villages into the government through their village headmen. The
Mosquito government constituted village headmen as local govern-
mental authorities who served as arbiters for local disputes. Under the
civil and penal laws of the Reservation, they became rural judges (Vilas
1989, 32).
Nicaragua viewed the existence of Mosquito as an affront to
national sovereignty and planned to annex its territory. Nicaragua
refused to comply with the stipulation of the Treaty of Managua
wherein they were obligated to pay the king a stipend. This was bitterly
resented by the Mosquito government. In 1877 Chief William, in a
letter to the Earl of Derby, outlined four reasons why “The Mosquito
Indians are not willing to enter into closer connection with Nicaragua”:
1. The Reserve has maintained during the above-mentioned period

a peaceful Government, whilst in Nicaragua there are continued
revolution, wars . . . 2. There are established on the coast of the
Reserve seven Mission stations, with schools, where the people are
educated, and instructed to become good members of society, but
nothing has been done by the Government of Nicaragua to improve
the places or instruct the Mosquito people given over by the Treaty.
3. The religion, customs, manners, and laws of Nicaragua are in no
way compatible. 4. The malicious conducts and disposition of tran-
sient Nicaraguan subjects in the Reserve. (Oertzen, Rossbach, and
Wunderich 1990, 349)42
These reasons are particularly interesting when viewed in contrast to

those of the modern Miskito nationalist leaders, who have emphasized
their aboriginal rights and culture in their political struggles against the
modern Nicaraguan state, which I will explore in chapter 6.
For Chief William the Nicaraguan nation was not a progressive
nation; therefore, to become part of this nation would represent a step
backward. Indeed, the Mosquito government approximated European
governments of its time more than the Nicaraguan government.
For example, the Mosquito government printed a national currency
before Nicaragua had a national currency (Vilas 1989, 31). The chief ’s
statement as to the incompatibility of cultures is particularly interesting.
For him, this incompatibility was not the product of an opposition
between Indian culture and Nicaraguan and Spanish culture. Rather, it

stemmed from the incompatibility between English and Spanish culture:
the religion of the Mosquito nation was Protestant not Catholic, and its
customs, manners, and law were based on those of the English.
In 1894, using a border dispute with Honduras as a pretext,
General Rigoberto Cabezas and a contingent of armed men occupied
Bluefields, taking charge of the government buildings. They declared
the sovereignty of the Nicaraguan state and unfurled the Nicaraguan flag.
The Nicaraguan government began to levy import and export duties and
to grant concessions for the exploitation of natural resources (US
Department of State 1894, 85). Spanish was declared the national lan-
guage, to be used in government and education (Vilas 1989, 40). Within
days, warships from Great Britain and the United States were sent to the
region to “protect the lives and property” of their respective citizens.
American corporate enterprises, which by then controlled 90 per-
cent of the capital invested in the area (Hale 1987a, 42), protested the
move by Nicaragua (Dozier 1985, 141–162). Beginning with the rub-
ber boom in the 1860s, American capital had become very active in the
Mosquito Coast region. Gold was extracted from mines in the interior,
but by far the most important product was bananas. In 1893 Bluefields
was the world’s leading banana exporter (Olien 1983, 235). American
companies had good relations with the Mosquito government and saw
no advantage to the establishment of a new government. The British
vice-consul explained the motives of this attitude well: “The whole for-
eign population has come to Bluefields simply and solely on the chance
of making money rapidly, and they care nothing for Mosquitos or
Nicaraguans as long as their trade in not interfered with” (Oertzen,
Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 402). In light of this prevailing US sen-
timent, Nicaragua acted cautiously and deliberately in order not to incur
the wrath of the American or British investors, who could in turn call
upon their governments to protect them. The Zelaya government,
which at this time was encouraging modernization through the invest-
ment of foreign capital, had no desire to scare away foreign business
interests.
The outraged inhabitants of the Coast categorically refused to
accept Nicaraguan domination, and the Mosquito government made
appeals to both the British and American governments to come to their
aid. In a petition to the queen, the reigning chief Robert Henry

Clarence pleaded:“We will be in the hands of a Government and people
who have not the slightest interest, sympathy, or good feeling for the
inhabitants of the Mosquito Reservation; and as our manners, customs,
religion, laws and language are not in accord, there can never be
unity. . . . We most respectfully beg to lay before you Majesty . . . to take
back your protection of the Mosquito nation and people, so that we may
become a people of your Majesty’s Empire” (Oertzen, Rossbach, and
Wunderich 1990, 369).
This petition was signed by 1,800 natives, Indians and Creoles
alike. Britain and the United States, however, refused to support the
re-installation of the Mosquito government. In fact, on various occa-
sions British and US forces were deployed to keep the peace between
the Nicaraguan forces and rebellious Creole and Indian factions.
In July of 1894 a rebellion succeeded in driving the occupying
Nicaraguan army from Bluefields for three weeks. The rebels reinstated
Chief Robert Henry Clarence and raised the Mosquito flag (ibid., 380).
When the Nicaraguan forces returned, the chief and many “natives” fled
aboard a British naval ship. The chief lived the rest of his life in exile in
Jamaica.
The clamor of American and British merchants and local diplomats
for intervention in favor of the Mosquito government was unheeded by
their respective governments for a variety of reasons. The first and most
important reason for the United States was that Nicaragua was a possible
site for a canal (Dozier 1985, 154). The existence of a weak British-
friendly Indian government could only complicate matters. By support-
ing Nicaragua they also achieved their long-held goal of ending all
British influence in the area. Britain did not act on the “trace of respon-
sibility for the personal safety of a feeble remnant of an inferior and
deteriorating race who were once under her protection” (ibid., 154).
Instead, it allowed the United States to dictate policy in the region, only
ensuring the safety and transport, should they desire, of Jamaicans and
Mosquitians. The inability to acquire support from foreign powers
doomed the Mosquitian insurgency.
The Nicaraguan government subsequently convened a meeting with
Costeño delegates. The agreement signed by Costeño delegates was
aimed chiefly at clarifying the status of the ex-Mosquito Reservation
and placed the region strictly under the sovereignty of Nicaragua.

Nicaragua would henceforth exercise absolute political and administra-
tive control over the Mosquito Coast. Although the armed resistance to
the Nicaraguan annexation subsided, the protests from natives about the
violation of the Treaty of Managua continued for many years to come.
They protested Nicaraguan presence on the grounds that “our political
rights have been destroyed,” “schools have been closed, because it was
impossible to teach only the Spanish language,” and taxation on imports
had increased greatly (ibid., 433–435). The Nicaraguan government,
while not declaring void Mosquito government land grants, insisted on
verifying all titles to land. Land whose ownership was not verified by the
original title would revert to the Nicaraguan state.
Despite the changing valences of Indian and Creole self-identification,
Costeños asserted political rights in an international context as members
of a single nation that had aspirations to independent status vis-à-vis the
Nicaraguan state. In the scholarship on this period, the categorical dis-
tinction between the Miskito and Creole has been emphasized unduly
to the exclusion of other kinds of social differentiation that operated at
the time. Charles Hale, for example, citing the fact self-proclaimed Cre-
oles occupied the higher levels of the Mosquito Reservation, concluded
that “Mosquitian nationalism, like the Mosquito government itself, was a
Creole-dominated political construct” (Hale 1987a, 46). Creoles, accord-
ing to Hale, affixed Miskito signatures to their post-reincorporation
protests only in order to disguise the contradiction that the Mosquito
government was legally supposed to be run by Indians. Hence, he
hypothesized that the main reason that Mosquitian nationalism never
prospered in the early twentieth century was because “Creoles must have
found it distasteful for the legitimacy of their political claim to be
dependent on ancestral links with members of a socially subordinate
ethnic group” (ibid., 45).
Contrary to the implications of this formulation, the inhabitants of
the Mosquito Coast cooperated in their attempts to protest the political
dissolution of the Mosquito Reserve well into the twentieth century. In
1926, for example, representatives of the “Miskito Indian Patriotic
League” sent a letter to the secretary of state of the United States
(Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 454–456). The delegates,
identified as both Creoles and Miskitos, protested the illegal presence of
the Nicaraguan government that had “forcibly misappropriated and mis-

used over Thirty million dollars of our Revenues and have also debarred
and denied us of every political and local right, thereby inflicting undue
universal punishment which has pauperized and crippled our race”
(ibid., 455). Their claim to nationhood was phrased in terms of their
race and of their “civilization” (what we now sometimes call “culture”),
both of which they presented as being incompatible with the Pacific
Nicaragua government. The signers of the document identified them-
selves as “Indians” and “natives of amalgamated Indian ancestry,” and
claimed their “civilization” to be mostly “Anglo-Saxon” (ibid., 454):
Having always been in constant intercourse with the nations of

Anglo-Saxon civilization training and religion and being of a differ-
ent race we cannot under existing conditions assimilate or amalga-
mate with the people of Latin civilization. . . . We beg that for the
future economic prosperity and universal welfare of our race that
the consideration solicited be duly granted to this Petition, and the
United States Government will in the name of Christian civilization,
Progress and Humanity, hearken to the pleading voice of a helpless
race, for relief from untold suffering and misery. (ibid., 455–456)
This alliance of Creoles and Miskitos, claiming unity of race and

civilization, should not be looked upon as anomalous. Costeños had
long known that if they were to enjoy any amount of control over their
affairs, it would be achieved politically only through the means of the
Mosquito government. As we have seen, Mosquito was both a racial and
tribal, and a geographical term. Regardless of whether they identified
themselves (or were identified by others) as Creoles or Miskitos,
Costeños throughout their history had participated with one another
and with the English in opposition to Spanish-speaking Spaniards and
Nicaraguans. They often worked side by side as wage laborers and prac-
ticed similar professions, such as fishing and turtling. They also inter-
married extensively and participated increasingly in the Moravian
missionary church, particularly after the “Great Awakening” of the
1880s.43 The differentiation between Creole and Miskito, although
undeniably important at some level, was not the product of mutually
exclusive racial or cultural systems. Or, to put this in the appropriate
Barthian terms, the boundaries between these ethnic groups was not
constituted by distinct cultural content (Barth 1969).
N i carag uan I ndi an Pol i c y:

Culture and Communal Land
The official status of Mosquito remained cloudy until Great Britain
and Nicaragua signed the Harrison-Altamirano treaty of 1905, abrogat-
ing the Treaty of Managua. The treaty obliged Nicaragua to make vari-
ous concessions to Great Britain in favor of the inhabitants of the region
because the Mosquito Indians were “at one time under the protection of
Great Britain.” Although the two-page text of the Harrison-Altamirano
Treaty, a document intended to resolve the status of the former Mos-
quito Reserve, primarily used the term Mosquito Indians to refer to
the region’s inhabitants, it explicitly identified Mosquito Indians and
Creoles as the inhabitants of the area whose legal status needed to be
resolved.44 In other words, as far as the Harrison-Altamirano treaty was
concerned, the distinction between Creole and Miskito was not
significant.
The treaty granted both Creoles and Miskitos (indeed as well as “the
other inhabitants of the former Reserve”) a special set of rights and obli-
gations which would smooth their transition into full Nicaraguan citi-
zenship (Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 437). As far as the
recognition of these special rights within Nicaraguan law was con-
cerned, the salient distinction was between inhabitants of the former
Reserve (whose status needed to be clarified) and Pacific Nicaraguans to
whom the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty did not apply. For example, take
the following quotation from the text of the treaty: “The [Nicaraguan]
Government will submit to the National Assembly a law exempting, for
fifty years from the date of the ratification of this Treaty, all the Mos-
quito Indians and the Creoles born before the year 1894, from military
service, and from all direct taxation of their persons, property, posses-
sions, animals, and means of subsistence” (ibid., 436). The treaty did not
grant any special rights and obligations to the Mosquito Indians that it
did not also grant to Creoles. In this sense, Nicaraguan Indian policy
applied to all natives of the Atlantic Coast—all Costeños.
In the transition from limited Nicaraguan sovereignty over the
region to full Nicaraguan sovereignty, the question of land ownership
and titles represented the most controversial issue. The terms of the
Harrison-Altamirano Treaty provided that the Nicaraguan government
should “allow the Indians to live in their villages . . . following their own
customs, in so far as they are not opposed to the laws of the country and
to public morality” (ibid.). The treaty also stipulated that “public pasture
lands will be reserved for the use of the inhabitants in the neighborhood
of each Indian village” (ibid.). Again, it is important to note that despite
the fact that the wording of the treaty referred to the residents of the
region using the blanket term Mosquito Indians, it clearly intended to
cover both Indians and Creoles.
According to the terms of the treaty, Indians and Creoles were given
two years to legalize under Nicaraguan law their claim to all the prop-
erty that they had acquired before 1894 according to the laws of Mos-
quito (pre-1860) and the Mosquito Reserve (1860–1894). If they could
not present such a legal title, they would be granted eight manzanas
(roughly 2 acres) of land per family, the location of which would be cho-
sen by the government. With regard to the lands that in the last ten years
had been stripped from Creoles and Indians and given to foreigners and
Pacific Nicaraguans, the government agreed to “indemnify them by the
grant of suitable public lands of approximate value as near as possible to
their present residence” (ibid.).
Over the next twenty years the situation of land titles was a matter
of constant confusion and conflict. The Nicaraguan government, having
achieved its goal of governing the extraction of resources from the Mos-
quito Coast, raised taxes and intensified concessions to foreign compa-
nies. Although the Atlantic coast contained only about 10 percent of the
country’s population, it contributed 40 percent of the duties collected by
the government (Dozier 1985, 161). The government, however, neg-
lected to spend these revenues on maintenance of government offices
and infrastructure, which allowed foreign companies to act as the de
facto government. Lumber and banana companies built railroads strictly
for resource extraction with no intention of creating a sustainable system
of regional transportation, and built other forms of temporary infra-
structure aimed at cost-efficient plunder. Foreign companies were
granted monopolies on resources and transportation, thus eliminating
competition and putting independent planters at the mercy of the com-
pany (ibid., 158).45
Chapte r 3
From Bilwi to Puerto Cabezas
Me stizo Nationalism in the Age of

Ag ro-Industry
It is greatly to be hoped that the scholars of Nicaragua,

who have rightly preserved in some form the native
Indian names of the Western part of the country, will
adopt the native names of Eastern Nicaragua also,
undisguised and undisfigured, as part of the national
heritage; and beyond all doubt, the unreserved
recognition of these names would help to cement the
unity of the nation. Where native Indian names exist,
they should never be superseded by either Spanish or
English nomenclature. Let us have done with Rio
Grande and Great River both alike, and say only
Awaltara, or better still Awoltara; let us abolish alike
Bragman’s Bluff and Puerto Cabezas and say only
Bilwi. Let us revive the old name of Auya for Little
Sandy Bay; of Akiwita for Wounta Haulover, and
Iniwas or Iniwaska for Wawa Saw Mill, where for 2
decades the old sawmill has ceased to exist.
—George Heath
In the above quotation, North American linguist

George Heath calls on Nicaraguan scholars to perform the ideological
work of promoting the use of Mosquito Coast indigeneity, in this case
the use of Indian place names, for the purpose of cementing Nicaraguan
nationalism on a coast-to-coast basis (Heath 1927, 88). Throughout
Latin America, national governments have historically promoted the
use of indigenous toponyms as a way of inscribing a vision of national
identity that would incorporate both Indian and Spanish imagery in the
67
construction of Euro-American Mestizo nationalism. In the case of east-

ern Nicaragua the matter was made more complicated and contentious
by virtue of the fact that the region’s natives, and its toponyms, were
deeply influenced by their interaction with the English-speaking
Caribbean world. This made their indigeneity suspect for the purposes
of the creation of Nicaraguan Mestizo nationalism. Such was the case for
tiny Bilwi, which, despite Heath’s urging, continues to be known
officially as Puerto Cabezas.
At the turn of the century, Bilwi, as Puerto Cabezas is called in
Miskitu, represented one of a long string of small fishing villages that
extended up and down the Mosquito Coast. Starting in 1921 a consor-
tium of New Orleans companies, one of which would soon become the
Standard Fruit Company, rapidly began to establish a multimillion-dollar
banana and lumber operation complete with a lumber mill, a pier, port
facilities, and a railroad. Soon the village of Bilwi, renamed Puerto
Cabezas by the Nicaraguan government, experienced a stage of momen-
tous growth and transformation that was not foreshadowed by its bucolic
past. Over the next ten years it was briefly made the provisional capital
of Nicaragua. It was militarily occupied by the US Marines—twice. It
even saw the opening of a British consular office, a US consular office,
and the regional headquarters of a missionary church. In the meantime
the Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company became the largest employer in
all of Nicaragua, and the town grew in size from a population of under
100 (mostly native Costeños) to over 5,000 (including North Americans,
West Indians, Pacific Nicaraguans, and Costeños from other parts of the
Mosquito Coast) (Karnes 1978, 115).1
The tumultuous events of the interwar years of the twentieth cen-
tury in Puerto Cabezas brought into focus, primarily for two reasons,
the profound political implications of the Blackness and Indianess of
Costeños as perceived by Pacific Nicaraguans, who for the first time
were establishing the direct control of the region by the Nicaraguan
state. The first reason was that the lumber and banana companies
brought in many Black workers from the West Indies and the US South,
who were perceived by the agents of the Nicaraguan state as a foreign
and alien threat to the Nicaraguan nation-building process, which was
predicated on Mestizo nationalism. The influx of Black workers, many
of whom possessed skills that put them at a rank above Nicaraguan and
From Bilwi To Puerto Cabezas 69
Costeño workers, served to reinforce and transform the Creole category.

The second reason was that the operations of North American compa-
nies required control over large tracts of land. This increased demand in
a region where land pressure was minimal and land tenure arrangements
were poorly formalized inevitably led to land disputes between and
among communities that held title to the land as Indians.
In this chapter I analyze the contexts in which appeals to cultural
and racial difference were made by inhabitants of Puerto Cabezas in
their efforts to retain control over the city in the face of the massive
assault by US companies and the Nicaraguan state. I also analyze the
views of Pacific Nicaraguans and North Americans with regard to the
race and culture of Costeños that ultimately conditioned their responses
to the conflicts in the region.
As a result of the historical separation between eastern and western
Nicaragua, Costeños entered into the twentieth century possessing par-
ticular attitudes and loyalties towards Spain, England, Nicaragua, and the
United States; the Spanish language and the English language; and
Spanish and Nicaraguan culture, and Anglo-American culture. In gen-
eral, Costeños associated progress and civilization with English and
North American customs and institutions, and regarded Central Ameri-
can nations as unstable, antagonistic, and in many ways inferior. Con-
trarily, Pacific Nicaraguans regarded the inhabitants and institutions of
the Atlantic Coast as backward culturally, economically, and racially.
This ideological rivalry represents a key element of the context in which
the controversies that arose from the penetration of powerful North
American and Nicaraguan actors in the city must be understood.
In the first section of this chapter, I chronicle the struggle over land
that occurred between the Nicaraguan government, the Standard Fruit
Company, and the communities of Karatá and Bilwi. The leaders of
Bilwi faced a peculiar dilemma as they asserted their rights as Indians to
negotiate with foreign companies on the matter of land use and owner-
ship to a Nicaraguan government that was ideologically hostile to such
demands. Costeños as cosmopolitans were ideologically predisposed to
welcome the connection to the Anglo-Caribbean world that the com-
panies represented, but in order to deal with these companies most
effectively, they needed to do so, to some degree, as Indians. For the
Nicaraguan state, the all-powerful role of the US companies was an
affront to Nicaraguan nationalism that needed to be opposed by a strong,

sovereign, and unified Nicaraguan state—not Miskito Indians. The most
extreme manifestation of Nicaraguan nationalist opposition to the US
companies was renegade Liberal leader Augusto Sandino’s attack on
company installations and personnel in 1931.
In this chapter I pay particular attention to the issue of Pacific
Nicaraguan perceptions towards Costeños and the Mosquito Coast.
Given that at the turn of the century, Pacific Nicaraguans were for the
first time exercising governmental authority in the Atlantic Coast, cre-
ating a power differential between Costeños and Pacific Nicaraguan
authorities, the perceptions regarding each other held by Costeños and
Pacific Nicaraguans became particularly charged. I construct a critical
reading of the Nicaraguan national project in the Mosquito Coast by
analyzing the statements and decisions of an important Nicaraguan
official who played a crucial role in the establishment of Nicaraguan
governmental authority in the new port city of Puerto Cabezas. Con-
tinuing with this issue of Pacific Nicaraguan ideology vis-à-vis the
Atlantic Coast, I focus on another major player in the history of Puerto
Cabezas: the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader Augusto Cesar Sandino,
who despite his revolutionary credentials manifested a distinctly colo-
nialist approach to the Mosquito Coast’s Costeños.
Bragman’s Bluff:
A Nice ly Situate d Plac e
In Managua on January 28, 1921, Leroy T. Miles, a US citizen rep-
resenting the Salmen Brick and Lumber Company and the Vacarro Bros.
Inc. of New Orleans, signed an agreement with the Nicaraguan gov-
ernment that would dramatically change the course of history in the dis-
tant Mosquito Coast settlement of Bilwi. At the turn of the twentieth
century, Bilwi, a coastal village ten miles north of the Wawa River and
sixty miles south of the mouth of the Coco River, was even on regional
standards an unimportant village. It did not play a significant role as a
port in the coastal export-oriented economy, which at the turn of the
century was based primarily on lumber. In the northern sector, lumber
and other natural resources were extracted by way of the three major
rivers (Prinzapolka, Wawa, and Coco), each of which had ports on or
around their mouths. Cape Gracias a Dios, at the mouth of the Coco
River, had long been the major port of the northern Mosquito Coast,
while other villages sprang up along these rivers to meet the needs of the
extractive industries.2
Although the relatively poor soils around Bilwi historically had pre-
vented it from sustaining a larger indigenous population, Bilwi’s strate-
gic position on the ridge of the only significant promontory on the
northern Mosquito Coast had long attracted English traders to the place,
which they named “Bragman’s Bluff ” (De Kalb 1893, 249).3 The earli-
est mention of permanent habitation of the place appeared in the
account of M.W., an English pirate who visited the Mosquito Coast at
the end of the seventeenth century. M.W. claimed that Thomas Arkes
and John Thomas, two English buccaneers who were refugees from a
historic English raiding party that sacked Nueva Segovia in 1674,
lived a “pagan” life there among forty “savage” Indians, some of whom
served them as slaves and prostitutes (Romero Vargas 1995, 274; Naylor
1989, 40).
Before the British evacuation of 1787, Bragman’s Bluff represen-
ted one of the eight permanent English settlements in the region, along
with Black River, Cape Gracias a Dios, Sandy Bay, Walpa Sixa, Great
River, Pearl Lagoon, and Bluefields. Out of a total of fewer than five
hundred permanent English settlers in the entire region, only Sandy Bay
had fewer English residents than Bragman’s Bluff, which had six (Pot-
thast 1988, 231). Although the English settlement at Bragman’s Bluff
undoubtedly attracted native people of the region (some of whom stayed
involuntarily as one of seventy Black and Indian slaves), the largest
Costeño populations inhabited other villages, the closest and most
important of which, Twappi, was located three miles to the north and
was the home of the Mosquito governor.
After the British evacuation of the region, Bragman’s Bluff appears
to have been continuously occupied until the present. In the nineteenth
century, historical sources began to identify an Indian village at the site
called “Bilwi.”4 As previously noted, in the nineteenth century the racial
identification of Costeños began to bifurcate towards either end of
a Black-Indian ideological spectrum. Southern villages, with their
“capital” at Bluefields, increasingly came to be identified as Creole.
Northern villages, which in the past had often been identified with
mixed Black/Indian peoples known, among other things, as Zambos
Mosquitos, came to be regarded generally as Indian. Such was the case

for Bilwi, a northern village.5
In 1849 the British vice-consul mentioned Bilwi as one of the
stops that he, along with the reigning Mosquito king, George Augustus
Frederick, made on their rounds of the Mosquito Kingdom (Oertzen,
Rossbach, and Wunderich 1990, 127). Two German Moravian mission-
aries on a reconnaissance trip in May of 1859 wrote: “At 11 O’clock
we arrived at Billwi, a nicely situated place of only about 9 houses, and
disembarked. We then paid a short visit to the inhabitants and by
3 O’clock we had thrown the anchor close to the village of Twappi”
(ibid., 145). Bilwi appeared in missionary and other reports later in the
century, but it was always regarded as a middle-sized or small-sized
Indian village (ibid., 172, 176, 239). Writing in 1896, British Vice-
Consul Herbert Harrison placed Bilwi in a regional perspective: “The
Wawa River flows into the north of the Karata Lagoon, and there are
many villages and settlements in this district, including Yulu, with upwards
of 500 Indians, Klilna, Twappi, Krukira, with over 100 Indians each, and
the smaller settlements of Shoubia, Bilwi and Auyla Pini” (ibid., 425).
Despite its small size, representatives from Bilwi did appear at the
major late-nineteenth-century meetings between the government of
Nicaragua and the Atlantic Coast villages that were at this time being
affected by the gradual establishment of Nicaraguan sovereignty in the
region. This Nicaraguan encroachment intensified in 1860 with the cre-
ation of the “Mosquito Reserve” and was punctuated by the 1894 inva-
sion of the region by Nicaraguan troops. This invasion put an end to the
English-supported independence of the Mosquito Coast vis-à-vis the
Nicaraguan state and the preceding Spanish colonial government. After
1894 leaders from Bilwi consistently asserted their rights to obtain legal
titles to communal lands and signed various petitions protesting their
exploitation at the hands of the Nicaraguan government.
During the nineteenth century, as the institutions of the Mosquito
government became increasingly regularized, it commonly staged “Public
Conventions of the Headmen of the Mosquitos.” Native “headmen”
traveled from all over the coast to Bluefields to represent their commu-
nities and give legitimacy and the appearance of popular support to the
decisions of the Mosquito government. At the death of “Hereditary
Chief ” George William Albert Hendy in 1888, the Mosquito Municipal
Authority called such a convention to elect a successor.6 Headmen from

twenty-two Costeño communities attended, including a representative
from “Bilway” named “Allick” (Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich
1990, 354).7 In 1891 Bilwi sent Andrew and Alexander as representatives
to the election of Robert Henry Clarence, the last Mosquito chief (ibid.,
357). At the controversial 1894 Mosquito Convention, in which the gov-
ernment of Nicaragua officially annexed the country of Mosquito,
Andrew Wita was present as “Alcalde and Delegate,” and Pabas and Pax
also attended as “Delegates” (ibid., 393).8
After the so-called Reincorporation of 1894, leaders from Bilwi
consistently asserted their right to obtain legal titles to communal lands
and signed various petitions protesting their exploitation at the hands of
the Nicaraguan government. Before 1894 individual Costeño villages
had never been compelled to obtain legal title to lands, but the
encroachment of the Nicaraguan government spurred them to attempt
to formalize their control over the lands that they had historically occu-
pied and used. Britain, whose interests happened to coincide with those
of the people of Mosquito, exerted its influence on the behalf of
Costeños, both Indians and Creoles, who were struggling to insure that
the Nicaraguan government would respect their land rights.
The 1905 Harrison-Altamirano Treaty between Great Britain and
Nicaragua guaranteed the right of Indians and Creoles of the former
country of Mosquito to acquire and possess title to private and commu-
nal lands. Each family would have the right to obtain eight acres of land,
and each Indian “community” would acquire titles to “public pasture
lands.” The stipulations of this treaty with regard to land were not for-
mally put into practice until 1915. In that year the Nicaraguan govern-
ment created a special “Comisión Tituladora” (Land Titles Commission) to
measure Costeño communal lands ( Jenkins Molieri 1986, 288). Many
Costeño communities succeeded in receiving land titles through this
commission, although many others did not. They cited corruption and
negligence on the part of Nicaraguan officials and the prohibitive
expenses involved in surveying land. Costeño leaders repeatedly
expressed their grievances to both the British and US governments (US
Department of State Records 817.52/16, 17).
While many individual Miskito communities all over the Mosquitia
scrambled to survey and register lands, some of northern Miskito Indian
communities banded together to make a single land claim. The Wawa

River District communities of Kambla, Twappi, Krukira, Yulu Tingni,
Bum Sirpi, Auyapihni, Sisín, Kuakuil, Sangni Laya, and Bilwi (which
together for the purposes of land titles were called the “Diez Comu-
nidades,” or Ten Communities) petitioned the Land Titles Commission
for 10,000 acres of agricultural land and 10,000 acres of pasture land.
The agricultural land was to be located along both banks of the Wawa
River from Tabalaya to Walpatara and Snakie to Arrawas.
In 1916 the Land Titles Commissions granted the Ten Communities
titles to all 10,000 acres of pasture land claimed, while giving titles to
only 1,080 acres of agricultural land (US Department of State Records
817.52/35). In the years from 1915 to 1923 the Nicaraguan government
made three attempts to survey and title the remaining land. Initially a
French surveyor living in Bluefields undertook the task, but due to lack
of funds from the government, he did not continue. A North American
engineer also received the assignment with the same results. Finally,
in the early 1920s, a Nicaraguan civil engineer, George Sequeira,
attempted to complete the survey. By this time, however, the land in
question, which the Nicaraguan government valued little, came under
the covetous gaze of a party much more powerful than the Ten Com-
munities villages. This party was Leroy T. Miles and his New Orleans
backers, who, according to the US consul in Bluefields, “interposed and
Sequeira returned without doing anything” (US Department of State
Records 817.52/17; see also 817.52/35).
The contract that Miles signed with the Nicaraguan government in
1921 authorized broad tax exemptions and granted a concession of
20,000 hectares of “national lands” at $2 per hectare. While the enter-
prise initially focused on lumbering, the investors also hoped that banana
production could parallel lumber extraction and take advantage of the
same infrastructure, such as railroads and port facilities. Indeed, the
Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company, the name given to the company, was
founded with New Orleans capital from both a lumber company
(Salmen Brick and Lumber Company) and a fruit company (Vacarro
Bros. Inc.). Vacarro Bros. Inc. would later (1926) become the Standard
Fruit Company of New Orleans (Karnes 1978, 106–142).9
Due to this dual interest, Miles and his associates desired lands both
on the banks of the Wawa River, where the fertile land is ideal for
banana plantations, and the pine savannas of the interior. The contract
between Miles and the Nicaraguan government stated:“By virtue of the
Powers contained in the Agriculture law the Government will order sus-
pended any denouncement of land which may have been made or may
be made in the region that the contractor [Miles] desires which is that
region situated north of the Wawa River, five to twenty miles from the
coast and surrounded by National lands except on the east, where there
are lands belonging to the Miskitos” (US Department of State Records
817.6172/1). Thus the Nicaraguan government granted Miles almost
unlimited discretion in selecting lands, some of which the government
and Miles knew were used, inhabited, and in the process of being legally
claimed by various Miskito communities. It is not surprising to discover
that this situation soon began to generate friction between the company
and the Ten Communities.
Given that the special rights to land that Costeño communities
enjoyed had resulted from a treaty between Great Britain and Nicaragua,
Costeño leaders quite logically appealed to the British government for
their defense. In a letter signed in Twappi and dated August 20, 1923,
the “syndices” of six out of the “ten communities” (a representative from
Bilwi did not sign the letter) wrote to the British vice-consul in
Bluefields:10
Under the Harrison Altamirano Treaty, we the Indians of Twappi,

Sis Sin, Kukera, Aupenie, Boom, Licos, were granted certain lands
from Tublaya to Walpatara and from Snaki to Arrowas. Gomez and
Lyman came up and measured these lands and we were given titles
which was supposed to cover these lands.
We understand the Mr. Miles is taking these same lands that were
given to us and we would ask your good offices in protecting
our rights. At the time, also the Government was supposed to measure
these lands at their expense, though now they want us to pay for the
same measurement, or the checking up of the original measurement.
We are poor people and have not enough means to pay this addi-
tional expense and also to fight Mr. Miles from taking up our lands,
and hope that you in your official capacity will be able to give us the
protection of these lands that were given to us in the treaty signed
by the English and Nic. Government.
We thank you for the efforts, we know you will take in our
behalf. (US Department of State Records 817.52/35)
The British government eventually took action on their behalf, rec-

ommending to both the United States and Nicaragua that a special
international tribunal be formed to insure that the international agree-
ments regarding the Miskito Indians and Creoles would be respected.
The United States consul and the Nicaraguan government agreed to sit
on such a tribunal (ibid.).
The leaders of the Ten Communities, cognizant of their legal
predicament, defended their land claims within a national and interna-
tional political and legal order. They hired a lawyer, Charles Casanova,
to argue their case in Bluefields.11 Casanova, who in his own words rep-
resented “several indians and indian communities of this coast,” wrote
the following to the British consul in Bluefields in a letter dated August
17, 1923:
I am almost sure that if at least these indian communities were gov-

erned by their own chiefs who understand their dialect and who are
one with them in religion and custom, a provision which is amply
made in the Treaty, we should have a more law abiding people, and
above all, the shameful case of bloodshed and other outrages that
from time to time occur on the Wanks River especially, would be
avoided. It is simply a repetition of history to exact that the transi-
tion of people from one people to another who are different in
every respect, should be done gradually and not at rapid strides as is
our case, because the result is a degenerated and criminal hord [sic]
of lawless citizens on this Coast. Trusting that these few hints will
not pass unheeded by His Britannic Majesty’s Consul Resident, who
is the only one capable of saving the Indians and coloured people of
this Coast from utter ruin. (US Department of State Records
817.52/16)
This passage is typical of turn-of-the-century appeals that

Mosquitians made to the British and the United States in which they
emphasized how incorporation into Nicaragua would represent a step
backward from more to less civilized (Pineda 1991). Mosquitians con-
tinued to condemn the “transition” from English hands to Nicaraguans
hands as a transition from order and progress to “lawlessness” and ruin.

For the inhabitants of Bilwi and other communities in the northern
Mosquito Coast, the fact that the Nicaraguan government granted large
concessions of land to foreign companies, showing little regard for native
land claims, provided a glaring example of this lawlessness.
In June of 1924 the multi-lateral commission formed to arbitrate the
dispute recommended that “the Government of Nicaragua grant the
request of the Indians of Crukira, Twappy, Bilway and other villages
within the jurisdiction of the Wawa River” (US Department of State
Records 817.52/35). The US consulate had previously warned Miles and
his associates that the land they desired should not conflict with the land
claimed by the Indians (US Department of State Records 817.52/17).
Miles, in a letter addressed to the US chargé d’affaires on September
1, 1923, denied any wrongdoing on several grounds. First, he claimed
that the Indians of the Wawa district “had made no protest to the
denouncement when I made it and which was advertised and posted,
and notice thereof was given by the Comandante of the district accord-
ing to law, nor did they make any protest to the surveyor when he went
to make the survey.” Second, he speculated that the Indians already pos-
sessed a great deal more land than what the treaty intended them to
have. Third, he objected that “there are thousands of hectares to which
they already have title that have never been cultivated or used for any
purpose.” These arguments, with their defensive and conjectural tone,
were secondary in comparison to the irrefutable logic of his final argu-
ment in the final paragraph:
I am writing this letter for the purpose of laying before you the true
situation. I have built a wharf at Bragman Bluff 1188 ft. long with
sixteen ft. of water at low tide and nineteen ft. at high tide, a
saw mill with a capacity of forty thousand feet daily, a planing mill
operated by electricity, and I am now constructing something like
fifty miles of railroad. I have so far spent nearly four hundred thou-
sand dollars and will spend that much more within the next four
months. Respectfully, Leroy T. Miles. (US Department of State
Records 817.52/17)
It is not surprising to find that the ultimate authority in this dispute

was not the US, British, or Nicaraguan governments, and much less the
Ten Communities. Rather, it was the ever-expanding dollar. As Miles’s

Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company continued to grow and transform the
landscape of the northern Mosquitia from forgotten backwater to major
export zone, the prospect for Nicaraguan recognition of Costeño lands
greatly diminished. The lands were converted by the power of the dol-
lar into political fait accompli, reified and effectively alienated in Pacific
Coast eyes from the claims of their inhabitants.
The foreign policy of the US government in the Caribbean in the
early part of the twentieth century was characterized as “dollar diplo-
macy,” in which the expansion of US companies into the region was
actively defended and propagated by the State Department and the mil-
itary. This undoubtedly was true for Nicaragua—a country that was
occupied by the Marines on a regular basis from 1907 to 1933. Never-
theless, the US government and US companies did not always act as a
single actor with a clearly defined project. The mild State Department
support of Costeño land claims, claims that conflicted with those of the
Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company, provided an example of this dispar-
ity of interest between the US government and US companies. In fact,
the State Department in 1928 objected to the terms of the renewed con-
tract between Nicaragua and Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company on the
grounds that the tax exemptions and land concessions were too broad
and could lead to unrest. The State Department, however, never fol-
lowed through on its threat to withdraw its support and protection of
the company (US Department of State Records 817.52/4, 5, 6). On the
contrary it would in the next decade repeatedly intervene militarily in
Puerto Cabezas “to protect American lives and property.”
Undaunted by the land controversy, and the protests and admoni-
tions it generated, Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company rapidly grew. In
1923 the company, which since 1921 had been exporting lumber, began
to harvest and export bananas and built many miles of railroad (US
Department of State Records 817.6172/5). It controlled 33,000 hectares
of land and would soon control 50,000 more hectares. The employment
opportunities in the company also attracted laborers from throughout
Nicaragua. The company contracted White skilled laborers from the
United States and Italy, while Black skilled and “unskilled” laborers
arrived from the United States and the West Indies.12 West Indians pri-
marily arrived directly or indirectly by way of the canal zone (Karnes
1978, 113). Race-related disturbances immediately arose as Nicaraguans

protested the use of foreign labor.
Within a few years of its creation, Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Com-
pany became the largest employer and investor in all of Nicaragua.
William Heard, the US consul in Bluefields, summarized the extent of
the company’s growth in March of 1924:
The developments so far at Bragman Bluff consists of a railway

wharf 1200 feet long, the erection of a sawmill capable of sawing
25 M. feet of lumber daily and a planing mill with two planers
which when equipped with electric motors will plane 45 M. feet of
lumber daily. The company has erected two large hotels, each hav-
ing 20 rooms, for the use of their employees. They have also built a
large two story office building, a commissary, a material store house,
residences for a doctor and assistant manager, about ten buildings for
laborers as well as other small buildings. A steel water tank with a
capacity of 50,000 gallons has recently been completed, and work is
now progressing on a well which is to furnish 500 gallons of water
per minute. About ten days ago this well had been drilled 300 feet. . . .
In addition to the saw mill above described, there are three portable
mills located along the line of the railway and in the heaviest tim-
bered tracts. Each of these mills is capable of sawing 10 M feet daily.
It has been estimated that the timber land at present under lease
contains 17,000,000 feet of excellent pine. (US Department of State
Records 817.6172/6)
Much of this so-called timberland, of course, was used and inhab-

ited by Costeños, who argued that their claim to these lands devolved
from their status as Indian villages protected under the Harrison-
Altamirano Treaty of 1905. The subsequent US consul in Bluefields,
A. J. McConnico, who was less sympathetic to Miskito land claims than
his predecessor, supported the lumber company’s position, referring to
the Wawa District villagers as “Indian squatters” (US Department of
State Records 817.504/22). Thus, the once unconquerable inhabitants
of Mosquito, the native kings of the colonial Central American Coast
and the scourge of the Spanish Empire, found themselves pitted against
an enemy that they could not defeat—an enemy that regarded them as
“squatters” on lands that they had for generations occupied.
In light of the explosion of investment and agro-industrial develop-

ment in the region, the Nicaraguan government chose to reevaluate its
policy of legally recognizing Indian community lands. On an ideologi-
cal level this policy had, since its inception, clashed with the widespread
conviction in Nicaragua, and indeed throughout the Americas, that the
Indian populations were socially and culturally backward and therefore
represented an obstacle to the progress of the modern nation state.
Throughout the colonial period in Latin America, the Spanish colonial
government recognized (and often actively organized) communal land
and labor arrangements as a strategy to harness and control Indian pop-
ulations. Spanish colonial governments quite consciously provided legal
and administrative structures (known in Mexico, for example, as la
república de los indios) that fostered the formation of corporate Indian
communities that possessed a special, albeit decidedly disadvantageous,
relationship with the Spanish authorities.
With the onset of independent republican governments and the
growth of an export-oriented national economy based on wage labor
and private property, the modernizing liberal elite often came to view
these colonial arrangements as obsolete and detrimental to national
growth. Latin American governments therefore attempted to dismantle
Indian communities in order to release their land and labor into grow-
ing national and international markets. In the Pacific region at the turn
of the century, Nicaraguan Liberals and the burgeoning coffee-growing
elite had finally won the long battle against the Indian communities and
their Conservative party patrons to dispossess the last highland Indian
groups that still retained communal landholdings (Gould 1993a, 428).
Within this context the Nicaraguan government attempted to discredit
Indian land claims in the Atlantic Coast because it perceived these as an
obstacle both to economic progress and the development of Nicaraguan
nationalism.
Spani sh I de olog i e s of R ac e, Lang uag e,

Culture, and Prog re s s
In 1925 the national government sent a commission to resolve the
land and labor disputes in the region. The chief of the commission, Doc-
tor Frutos Ruiz y Ruiz, arrived in August and heard the complaints of
the síndicos of Bilwi, Krukira, and Sisín. Ruiz’s general attitude toward
the Atlantic Coast and its inhabitants, as manifested in his report to the
national government (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927), is particularly instructive in
understanding his ultimate decision in the conflict. His writings lucidly
portray the deeply rooted primitivism manifested by Pacific Nicaraguans
with regard to the Atlantic Coast and its Costeño inhabitants.
In contrast to the Costeños, who regarded their historical connec-
tion with the Anglo-Caribbean as positive and “civilizing,” and took
pride in their ability to remain outside of the sphere of Spanish (and later
Nicaraguan) control, Ruiz considered that the backwardness and
poverty of the region resulted directly from, insofar as history was con-
cerned, the English interference in the colonial project of the Spanish.13
He wrote nostalgically:
One still regards with distaste the small Costeño villages, where
there is nothing more than signs of death. The english protection
and the moravian propaganda have not left the smallest trace of cul-
ture in the Mosquito Coast. This is why that when one passes the
“Fortress”, the old spanish fort that defended the hispanic-
nicaraguan civilization against piracy which had its hideaway in the
bay of Bluefields, one’s spirit jumps to life and exultant one cries in
admiration of this glorious monument, a legacy from Spain to the
nicaraguan colony.14 (ibid., 154)
Ruiz regarded the Atlantic Coast as an underpopulated region

where “piracy impeded the development of Spanish culture” (ibid.,
182).15 The absence of this Spanish culture, according to Ruiz, repre-
sented a threat to Nicaraguan unity and an obstacle to the progress of
the region. Ruiz therefore called for the national government to “attract
settlers to these deserted lands where the spirit of nicaraguan patriot-
ism barely clings to life” (ibid., 181). He explicitly conceived of the
incorporation of the region into national life as a colonial project. He
wrote: “Assuming that we do not want barbarity to triumph, we should
agree that hispanic-nicaraguan civilization should provide an example
and fulfill the legacy of the Spanish Empire, colonizing the Coast, invad-
ing the Coast, populating the Coast with hispanic-nicaraguan blood,
language, customs and culture” (ibid., 115).
For Ruiz, not only did the Atlantic Coast with its English culture
and indigenous languages suffer from the absence of the appropriate
Spanish language and culture, but it also lacked suitable levels of

“Hispanic-Nicaraguan” blood. For Ruiz, the importance of such blood
resided not only in its capacity to lighten the skin of Costeños, but also
in its ability to uplift the level of “civilization” in the region.16
It is interesting to note that while Ruiz decried the presence of Eng-
lish “customs” and “culture,” he did not retroactively extol the contri-
bution of the white English “blood” that presumably accompanied this
dispersal of English customs. His appeal to the whitening influence of
Hispanic-Nicaraguan blood is particularly interesting in light of the fact
that from a purely demographic standpoint the biological impact of the
Spaniards in the Pacific Coast was not significantly greater than that of
the English in the Atlantic Coast; in other words, the Spanish migration
to Pacific Nicaragua was not proportionally much greater than the Eng-
lish migration to the Mosquito Coast.
At the end of the colonial period the racial system of Pacific
Nicaragua, although recognizing small white (blanco) and Indian minori-
ties, was dominated by the category of the Mestizo, a White-Indian
mixed category. On the other hand, the Atlantic Coast system recog-
nized Indians and Creoles (both explicitly non-white terms) but did not
possess a category that was defined as even partially white. Once more,
in the absence of Englishmen in the Mosquito Coast (and a declining
presence in the English colonies such as Belize and Jamaica), Afro-
Caribbean peoples had become the bearers, in the minds of Pacific
Nicaraguans and indeed West Indians themselves, of English culture.
This created an ideological environment in which Nicaraguan national-
ization of the area was favorable because “English culture” traveled with
“Black blood” but “Spanish culture” traveled with Mestizo blood, which
after all was, by definition, part white.
Ruiz and his superiors in the Nicaraguan government were deeply
troubled by two features of Mosquito Coast society: (1) the influx of
Black workers from the West Indies and the United States, and (2) the
preexisting abundance of Indians. The fact that a US company was trans-
forming Bilwi into a major export zone and a regular stop along
Caribbean trade routes made the completion of this civilizing project
urgent. Ruiz and Nicaraguans like him viewed the presence of Blacks
and Indians on the Atlantic Coast as a blemish on the national racial
landscape and an obstacle to national progress, in much the same way
that they viewed the role of the dark-skinned Spanish monoglot

campesinos and Mestizos that formed the great majority of the
Nicaraguan population in the Pacific. Pacific Nicaragua at the time was,
and continues to be, a skin-color-conscious society in which light skin
and European features are favored over dark skin and indigenous fea-
tures. The fact that the Pacific Indians had supposedly abandoned their
indigenous languages and customs and allowed themselves to be incor-
porated into a Hispanic national culture represented a great step forward
from the perspective of the Nicaraguan State.17
According to the national project of the Nicaraguan state, progress
was to be achieved through the attainment of greater civilization. This
civilizing project, however, was conceived of in racial terms: to become
more civilized was to become more like the whites, who inherited their
civilization from the Spanish. Therefore the incorporation of other races
into the polity represented a step backwards. Ruiz wrote:
The real Coast, the Mosquitia today is only interesting as an ethno-

logical curiosity; the different races of pure indians should be stud-
ied before their impending disappearance. These indians have not
made the slightest contribution to civilization, and given that there
are so few of them, only a few thousand, they are utterly without
value. The few blacks, which seem greater in number because it is an
under populated country, do not even provide this curiosity because
they don’t even have their own language and they are only valued as
beasts of burden for foreign companies, which prefer them over the
rest of nicaraguans. (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, v)
Here Ruiz added the concept of “value” to the equation between

blood and level of civilization. Ruiz’s distinction between Indians and
Blacks with regard to their respective possession of culture revealed a
great deal regarding his underlying assumptions about the relationship
between race and culture. Namely, Indians have culture, albeit primitive,
and Blacks (in the Americas) do not; rather, they are the imperfect bear-
ers of English tradition.
In the colonial period a similar assumption on the part of the
Spanish and Nicaraguan governments provided incentive for Zambo res-
idents of the Mosquito Coast, as well as their British patrons, to define
themselves as Indians rather than Blacks in order to legitimize their right
to local rule. Ruiz granted that Indians had a culture (an “ethnological
curiosity”); however, he refused to bestow the same dubious recognition
on Blacks. From Ruiz’s perspective, neither of the two races contributed
to the national civilization, but Blacks were considered to have less to
offer because they could not claim to have their own culture. This fact
made them quintessential outsiders, in contrast to the Nicaraguan Indian
insiders—albeit primitive ones. For this reason Blacks did not have a
legitimate claim to a share of the Nicaraguan polity. Blacks, who from
the perspective of Pacific Nicaraguans were regarded as English-speaking
migrant sojourners from the English Caribbean, were considered too
English (albeit in a degraded way) and therefore, unlike the Miskito,
could not be considered primitive culture-bearing subjects.
In the context of Ruiz’s formulation, consider the fact that although
today Pacific Nicaraguans show a great demand for learning English,
they do not often regard the Creole English spoken by Costeños as a
resource for them in that endeavor. Foreigners such North Americans
and British are sought-after English teachers, but in my experience, hir-
ing Costeños as English teachers is not common. English is not viewed
as a national resource. In other words, they do not commonly view Cre-
ole English as part of the cultural and linguistic patrimony of the
Nicaraguan nation. This is because the English spoken by Costeños is
considered to be at best only of regional value.
From the perspective of Ruiz and his Nicaraguan contemporaries,
Blacks, even more than Indians, threatened the Nicaraguan nationalist
project because they were perceived as a potentially limitless source of
immigrants rather than a finite population living within national borders,
and because they were favored as workers by the foreign companies
investing in the Caribbean coast of Central America. The Nicaraguan
government favored foreign investment because it promised to make the
Coast economically productive, a task at the time unattainable for the
Nicaraguan government. Yet the government feared the Caribbeanization
of the region that accompanied this economic development.
This Caribbeanization was perceived as an invasion of African-
Americans and the English language. The city of Colon in Panama, the
Caribbean gateway to the Panama Canal, provided for Ruiz the most
horrifying example of this phenomenon. The Atlantic Coast of
Nicaragua was in grave danger of becoming another Colon, which he
described as a “museum of races, without patriotism, without tradition,

without common ideals, a confusion of languages, of colors, of bloods,
of vice.” He wrote: “Nicaraguans should prepare themselves so that the
coast doesn’t become a second Panama Canal. There must not be cities
like Colon where patriotism is abolished and where reigns only confu-
sion of languages, dissolution of customs and agglomeration of the most
degraded races of the world” (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 116).
Ruiz here defined intra-Caribbean migration as inherently destruc-
tive to the social fabric of the countries in which it took place. For Ruiz
the influx of Africans was not just a racial problem, but their presence
also foretold a cultural and linguistic problem (and therefore a national
problem) of disunity and cultural chaos. From this perspective, the
Nicaraguan government found itself in a quandary in which economic
growth and development would be won at the sacrifice of what they
perceived to be an already-compromised racial and cultural homogene-
ity. Contrast this formulation to the value placed on cosmopolitanism
displayed by Costeños.
Ruiz proposed that the government should oblige Bragman’s Bluff
Lumber Company to hire only gentes del interior (literally “people from
the interior”) to the exclusion of negros and chinos (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, iv).
In the Pacific region, where presumably Nicaraguan culture was irre-
versibly ingrained, immigrants could be assimilated to national life. For
Ruiz, however, this was not the case in the Atlantic Coast. He wrote:
“Nicaragua is a nation in formation without homogeneity of races and
for this reason it isn’t prepared to imprint its national seal on populations
of such diversity in a region as under populated and un-nicaraguan as the
atlantic littoral. Therefore immigrants should be carefully chosen to pop-
ulate the Coast and un-assimilable races should be repudiated” (ibid., 7).
Lacking power and resources, the Nicaraguan government did not
find itself in a position to dictate labor recruitment policies to the US
company. It also lacked the resources to assimilate and Hispanicize
immigrants, not to mention native Costeños. Education was perceived
as a vital strategy in counteracting the divisive effect of unwanted immi-
gration. Ruiz demanded that the Nicaraguan law requiring instruction
in the Spanish language be enforced. Given that the US company
funded the earliest schools in the city, however, this became difficult to
carry out in practice.
In 1925 the Nicaraguan government created an official municipal-

ity in Bilwi that was given a Spanish name, Puerto Cabezas.18 The dom-
inance of the English language in the city disquieted Nicaraguan
officials, often stirring up a great deal of nationalistic indignation. The
perceived threat of the English language did not simply result from the
perception that its dominance indicated foreign domination. This fact
alone perhaps could have been stomached by Nicaraguan national lead-
ers, who generally looked to the United States as a possible benefactor
in the development and modernization of the country. English, how-
ever, was also the language of many Costeños as well as Black West
Indian and Black US workers, the latter group being regarded by the
Nicaraguan government as the least desirable candidates for citizenry.
Ruiz expressed anti-English-language indignation after having visited
the company hospital—the only hospital in the city: “The Commission
visited the Hospital that the Company has in Puerto Cabezas. The first
impression that your humble informant had was disagreeable—the doc-
tor from the Hospital greeted me in english. What a surprise to learn
that all the patients only spoke spanish—I wonder if their ailments spoke
english? This anomaly must disappear. The doctors should know spanish
and every sign in a foreign language should be considered a permanent
insult to nicaraguan patriotism” (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 56).
English, although it was the language of the dominant country of
the Americas, came to represent a national threat in the Atlantic Coast—
a threat that was explicitly perceived in racial terms. The numbers of
White American workers were low, their stays relatively brief, and
their likelihood of settling in the region was also low. US agro-industrial
penetration, the increased use of English, and the influx of Black West
Indians and North Americans went hand in hand. This created a highly
paradoxical and conflictive social and ideological context in which, on
the one hand, the industrializing US presence represented a step away
from Nicaraguan economic and societal backwardness (atraso), while on
the other hand this presence inspired fear of cultural decline and racial
degeneration.
The above analysis of Pacific Nicaraguan attitudes toward the Coast
and its inhabitants helps us to understand the decisions that Ruiz would
ultimately make with regard to the complaints of the Miskito commu-
nities. The principal complaint that the síndico of Bilwi, who at the time
was Noah Columbus, made to the Ruiz commission was that Bragman’s
Bluff Lumber Company had illegally encroached on lands belonging to
the Ten Communities. In addition, he complained that the company had
erected a fence that separated the company buildings, including barracks
and housing for employees, from the community of Bilwi. The company
maintained a closed gate on the road between the company section of
town and the dwellings of the “native” section of town.
This native section accommodated many small stores, restaurants,
and, according to Ruiz, “nineteen cantinas.” Craftsmen who performed
periodic work for the company and its employees, such as shoe repair-
men, bricklayers, carpenters, and even a doctor, also lived there (Ruiz y
Ruiz 1927, 4). Ruiz described the “national” profile of Bilwi in the fol-
lowing manner:“With the development of the Bragman Bluff Company
during the last 3 years the village of Bilue has been erected. Its inhabi-
tants have come from a wide variety of places: there are 3 houses owned
by english, 4 by germans, 3 by chinese, 5 by Jamaicans, 26 by Hispanic-
nicaraguans and 12 by mosquito indians.19 The majority of the 350 total
inhabitants are spanish—the term used in these parts to refer to
Nicaraguans from the interior of the Republic” (ibid., 7). Ruiz added
that about 1,000 workers lived within the company section. The com-
pany forbade inhabitants of Bilwi to erect constructions of any kind
within those sections of Bilwi where it foresaw expansion. The police,
whose salaries were paid by the company, enforced this policy.
The most serious grievance expressed by Columbus, the síndico of
Bilwi, was that the company had illegally leased lands in and around
Bilwi from the community of Karatá. Karatá claimed that the pasture
lands to which it received title in 1918 included lands claimed and
inhabited by the Miskito people of Bilwi. In 1924 the síndico of Karatá
leased the entirety of its pasture lands to the US company for the price
of six hundred córdobas annually. Bilwi presented a 1917 title granted
to the Ten Communities that contradicted Karatá’s claim. Thus two
Miskito communities found themselves on opposite sides of a legal
conflict regarding Indian land. Unfortunately for Bilwi, the US com-
pany had already provided a de facto solution to the conflict.
Residents of Bilwi, Miskito Indians and “Spanish” alike, had previ-
ously brought this conflict in land titles to the attention of the British Con-
sul E. Owen Rees in the hope that he would arbitrate the dispute. Rees
recommended to the Ruiz commission that the claim to the portion of

Karatá’s land that conflicted with Bilwi’s claim be annulled. He concluded
that Karatá’s surveyor had incorrectly measured Karata’s pasture lands,
resulting in an absurd situation in which residents of Bilwi, whose land title
predated that of Karatá, should be required to lease land from Karatá
within the confines of their own community (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 13).
Ruiz rejected Rees’s recommendations. Emboldened by the possi-
bility of taking advantage of the conflict and confusion, he claimed all
of the land in and around Bilwi, whose value increased daily, as national
land: “Upon considering the arguments of all the parties in the conflict
between the Bragman Bluff Company, the indians of Bilué, Caratá, and
residents of Bilué it is clear that none is correct—neither those who con-
structed [houses], nor those who prohibited this construction. Only the
state is the legitimate owner of the lands in question” (ibid., 12).
Ruiz asserted that Bilwi land claims could not be protected by the
Harrison-Altamirano Treaty because at the time of the signing of this
treaty (1905) and at the time of the granting of the Bilwi land title (1917),
no Miskito village in fact existed. He further argued that Bilwi was not a
Miskito village because the Miskito, as “nomadic” Indians, had not con-
tinuously occupied the site. He claimed that as a result of their nomadic
nature, all of the Miskito Indians who lived in Puerto Cabezas during his
visit, with the exception of Noah Columbus, had arrived within the last
three years from other communities. What is particularly revealing about
this approach taken by Ruiz was the way in which he discredited Costeño
land claims by invoking primitivist conceptions of Indian culture.
According to Ruiz, the Miskito abandoned Bilwi in 1897 and
scattered throughout the region, leaving Noah Columbus as the only
inhabitant of Bilwi until 1922. For Ruiz, the fact that Bilwi did not con-
test the Karatá land title in 1918 supported his claim that the village had
been essentially uninhabited during that period. In the following quota-
tion, notice the way that Ruiz invoked the idea of primitive Indian cul-
ture to discredit Bilwi Indian land claims: “When the Bragman Bluff
Company established itself there was nothing in this place, so it can be
said that today Bilué indians do not exist. Therefore, to speak of the indi-
ans of Bilué, of their secular rights, of the land of their forefathers, of
their sepulchers, of their homes, etc. etc. is pure imaginary fiction. They
abandoned their lairs and their cemeteries and returned to their nomadic
life, living only from hunting and fishing” (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 12).
For Ruiz, the land claims of the Bilwi Indians were necessarily
linked to the degree to which they conformed to a stereotyped vision of
being Indian. In this vision, steeped in exoticism, Indians were held to
be part of the natural world rather than the man-made social and civi-
lized world, and hence their claims to the land were of a cultural and
spiritual, rather than legal, nature. Their alleged nomadic subsistence
practice of hunting and fishing, which for Ruiz stood in contrast to “civ-
ilized” agriculture, weakened their claim to legal land ownership. For
example, Ruiz explicitly placed the Miskito on par with the animal
world by characterizing their past residences as “lairs.” As part of the
flora and fauna of the natural world, they had only a transitory connec-
tion to their places of residence and therefore should not enjoy any legal
rights with regard to these. Once more, the Atlantic Coast land, like its
indigenous inhabitants, was portrayed as wild, uncivilized, and without
intrinsic value in its undeveloped state.
In this hostile context, in which development was pitted against
Indian communal identity, the inhabitants of Bilwi found themselves in
a peculiar bind. Not only did they have to assert their Miskito Indian
identity in order to protect themselves, and where possible profit,
from the encroachment of the US companies and the Nicaraguan
government, they also were obliged to prove that they were Bilwi Indi-
ans. In the process of asserting land rights as Indians, however, they
simultaneously invited the scorn of the Nicaraguan government, which
viewed Miskito land claims as a threat to its project of Hispanic-
Nicaraguan expansion. Given that the government regarded the Miskito
as an uncivilized people, their attempt to achieve recognition of their
land through civilized channels represented for the Nicaraguan govern-
ment a contradiction that Ruiz resolved by questioning the motives of
the litigants for claiming the land. Take, for example, the following quo-
tation: “Only after a large agro-industrial Enterprise was created, and a
new port was opened, and big business appeared in the old Bilwi could
greed possibly have any reason to exist in such a inhospitable region. . . .
In reality these lands did not have the slightest worth before the creation
of Puerto Cabezas and for this reason the mosquito indians, neither
those from Karatá nor those from the aforementioned communities,
never bothered to claim them” (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 16).
This statement reveals the deeply ingrained exoticism with which
the Miskito and the Mosquito Coast were perceived. The Nicaraguan
government could consider the Miskito Indians capable of the very

Euro-American emotion of greed only after these Indians were con-
fronted by modern Western agro-industry. The land itself, in its wild
state, could not possibly be the object of civilized avarice.
While in Puerto Cabezas, Ruiz discovered that many non-Indian
residents of Bilwi agreed with and even advocated the positive resolution
of many Miskito complaints and demands. He expressed great conster-
nation and disbelief upon finding that a Spanish Nicaraguan or any non-
Indian would ally himself with what he considered to be a retrograde and
savage cause. To his dismay, however, the Indian cause appealed to people
whom he considered non-Indians. Many Costeño inhabitants of Bilwi
resented the exclusionary policies and extremely broad quasi-govern-
mental powers of Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company. A successful reso-
lution of the Miskito Indian dispute could have strengthened their
position vis-à-vis the Nicaraguan government and the company.
Shop owners and tradesmen, who strongly opposed the company
policy of paying wages in company script redeemable at the company
commissary, stood to benefit most from a weakening of the com-
pany’s powers. This sector, among others, was sympathetic to the Miskito
cause. Ruiz lambasted this position as self-interested duplicity:
One often hears talk of the abuses committed by foreign Companies

against the mosquito indians and the newspapers turn around
and spew this to the four winds. This in turn establishes an
incontrovertible public image of an infinite number of martyred sons
of the fatherland. However if one objectively examines the situation
one will find that the entire situation can be reduced to the clamor
of a tobacco trader or merchant whose least concern is the rights of
the mosquito indians, with whom he does not share blood nor lan-
guage. These men view everything through a bottle of liquor or a
colombian cloth. (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 21)
Ruiz refused to accept the possibility that Costeños of all kinds

(Indian and non-Indian alike) could, in certain circumstances, perceive
and act upon a shared interest vis-à-vis the Nicaraguan government and
the US company. This supra-ethnic regional unity was, for Ruiz and
others, counterintuitive in light of the co-presence of disparate races,
languages, and bloods that he and others believed engendered a muddled

and volatile racial and linguistic context.
Labor Policie s and Racial Conflict

Notwithstanding the potential for inter-group solidarity, the labor
policies of the US companies created structural contradictions between
different sectors of the society that to varying degrees frustrated the for-
mation and exercise of Costeño solidarity. Nicaraguan laborers from the
Pacific and the Atlantic found themselves excluded from higher-paying
skilled and semiskilled jobs that the company filled with Black laborers
from the West Indies and the United States. These workers, particularly
the West Indians, who in many cases arrived primarily via the Canal
Zone, had already mastered specialized lumber and banana industry
tasks. Because the company brought them from outside the country,
they often provided them housing in the form of barracks and bunga-
lows. Nicaraguan nationals, who had to make their own transportation
and housing arrangements, resented this policy (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 61).
The flip side to this policy was that when their services were no longer
wanted, the company shipped West Indian and US workers to other
parts of the Caribbean. Company officials also favored English-speaking
Costeños over monoglot Spanish-speaking or monoglot Miskitu-speaking
Costeños for low-level administrative work. White North Americans
occupied all the highest-paying administrative and technical jobs.
Those native Nicaraguans with little or no fluency in English, pri-
marily campesinos from the interior but also some Costeños, experienced
this preference for English-speaking workers in racial terms. That is to
say, Pacific Nicaraguans perceived their low status in the workplace as
being the result of the influx of Black workers from the Caribbean and
the United States. Given the nature of this situation, it is not surprising
to find that the first labor disturbances in Puerto Cabezas centered on
racial differences among workers, rather than national or class differences
between workers and management. This tension speaks to the impor-
tance of structural features of the local political economy in shaping race
relations.
On August 30, 1925, resentment between Nicaraguan and foreign
workers manifested itself in the form of riots and personal violence
committed against West Indian and US Blacks. In the words of the
commander of the USS Tulsa, which later arrived at the request of com-
pany officials, “trouble broke out between the native laborers and foreign
negro workmen, composed of Americans and Jamaican negroes” (US
Department of State Records 817.504/24). Nicaraguan employees of
Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company threatened to kill Black workers.
Three US Blacks and two Jamaicans were injured. Thirty-seven
Nicaraguans were arrested and, according to H. D. Scott, company man-
ager, forty to fifty “British colored subjects” left the city on account of
the riots (US Department of State Records 817.504/23). Scott explained:
For some time the native laborers here have been complaining about
the introduction of negro laborers, and we have refrained from
introducing any of these when the work could be done by people
of the country. However it has been impossible to get people here
who understand the business of making turpentine, also there are
none who know how to make crossties. We have introduced some
nineteen negroes for the turpentine business, and on the SS Algeria
which arrived here on August 27th we introduced fourteen Ameri-
can negroes to make crossties. On the night these negroes arrived
here there was a demonstration made against them by the local
people, and this kept up and came to a head Sunday the 30th of
August, at about 12 o’clock. (ibid.)
Nicaraguan discontentment toward company labor policies mani-

fested itself in the form of acts of violence against individual Black labor-
ers rather than in the form of protest directed to the North American
leadership of the company. Whereas Nicaraguan workers did not find
unbearable their subordination to white North American managers,
their subordination to Black foreigners represented an intolerable inver-
sion of a Pacific Nicaraguan ideological hierarchy of racial value, in
which Blacks occupied the lowest position.
Two weeks prior to the disturbances mentioned above, the local
labor union El Avance, anticipating the arrival of the Ruiz commission,
addressed a letter to the Nicaraguan government in which it detailed the
grievances of national workers against the US company. First on the list
was a complaint that the company was trying to “colonize” the town of
Bilwi. In response to this perceived colonization, workers felt obligated
to “defend our race” (defender nuestra raza) against encroachment and to
demand the protection of the Nicaraguan government as Nicaraguan

citizens (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 60). The letter stated:
We ask the Government to absolutely prohibit the entrance of

blacks into the country because they cause the degeneration of our
race and above all represent a detriment to our fellow workers. The
Company in question is trying to colonize our town and undoubt-
edly is trying to do what it did in “la Ceiba” Honduras—introduce
no less than 14,000 blacks. We think the amount that we have now
in the country is sufficient. The government should in the name of
justice imitate other governments which have repudiated that race
in favor of the national race. (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 60)
Although the Spanish term “raza” is not necessarily equivalent to

“race” as it is defined in the US context, here the Nicaraguan laborers
clearly expressed their objection to the imported workers in racial terms.
It is important to note that these workers, whose chief complaint was
essentially the unfair preference for foreign workers in the labor market,
did not protest the introduction of foreign white company employees,
who enjoyed far greater advantages than foreign Blacks. At this con-
juncture in the history of Puerto Cabezas, political economy and anti-
Black racism fed off one another.
The position of Nicaraguan workers cannot be explained simply by
the fact they were less likely to regard foreign white workers as com-
petitors in the workplace. Undoubtedly, many Nicaraguans internalized
an international labor hierarchy that assessed the value of North American
labor as far greater than that of Nicaraguan labor. That is to say, many
Nicaraguans did not consider themselves qualified for the kinds of jobs
(management, engineering, clerical, etc.) that were occupied primarily
by foreign Whites and therefore did not regard their exclusion from
these positions as illegitimate. These same workers, however, deeply
resented their exclusion from the sorts of tasks that Blacks were brought
in to perform. The belief of Nicaraguan workers in their ability to per-
form the jobs performed by Blacks does not represent the only factor
that helps to explain the resentment and violence by nationals against
foreign Blacks. An ideological factor, a deeply ingrained hierarchy
of relative human worth which valued light skin over dark skin, played
a significant role in: (1) legitimizing Nicaraguan subordination to
light-skinned North Americans, and (2) provoking discord between

native Nicaraguans and imported Black laborers.
Although the main thrust of Nicaraguan opposition to the company
was channeled into protest against the introduction of Black West Indi-
ans and North Americans, Nicaraguan workers also expressed other
kinds of grievances. For example, they complained of high rents in the
company-owned barracks and houses. They also objected to the high
prices at the company commissary, which held workers as a captive mar-
ket in Bilwi due to the practice of paying workers in company script and
coupons. Workers bitterly joked that the money they earned only left the
company office long enough “to take in some sun” (coger sol ) before it
returned to the company’s coffers. Also nationalistic appeals were made
against the ten-hour workday exacted by the company: “This Company
has adopted a 10 hour work day. Let’s not follow the lead of the civi-
lized nations, rather let’s follow the national customs—in all parts of this
country the work day is nine hours” (Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 61). This appeal
conceded the exclusion of Nicaragua from consideration as a “civilized
nation,” yet it simultaneously opposed the unreasonably long workday,
imposed by the civilized US company, on nationalistic grounds.
Similar ambivalence with regard to the legitimacy of North American
dominance, both cultural and economic, manifested itself among all
classes of Nicaraguans. For example, Commissioner Ruiz, although a
supporter of the US companies and foreign investment in general,
opposed certain company practices that he regarded as disrespectful of
Nicaraguan patriotism. In addition to his aforementioned opposition
to the dominance of the English language over Spanish in the city, Ruiz
also condemned the fenced separation between the company-owned
and operated section of the town and the so-called native section of
Bilwi.20 He wrote: “It should not be allowed that the village that gives
homes to the workers of Puerto Cabezas, in numbers large enough to
give it the appearance of a city, be separated from the population by any
kind of fence. This dividing line is extremely humiliating, not only for
the inconvenience it creates but more importantly for the significance
that it carries. An honorable nation should not permit such divisions”
(Ruiz y Ruiz 1927, 25). From Ruiz’s perspective, the fenced division
between US company and Nicaraguan town sections represented an
unlicensed overstepping of foreign authority on Nicaraguan soil. The
fence communicated a message that violated even his pro-US sensibili-

ties. Ruiz objected not to the fact that the company should take extraor-
dinary measures (beyond those taken by the Nicaraguan government) to
protect its people and property. Rather, the company’s effrontery in
regarding this property and people as its own, in defiance of Nicaraguan
authority and sovereignty, offended his sense of patriotism.
In general, Nicaraguans, particularly Costeños, welcomed the eco-
nomic opportunities brought by US companies and accepted their sub-
ordination to the white North American bosses. Widespread racial
ideologies that associated light skin with intelligence, industry, and lead-
ership reinforced the acceptance of this subordination. Nicaraguans also
no doubt recognized their subordinate position in a hemispheric order
in which the United States exercised unchecked military and economic
control. In opposition to these factors that served to naturalize and jus-
tify subordination, Nicaraguans simultaneously possessed and developed
other ideologies that permitted dissent and opposed capitulation to
North American supremacy.
The Nicaraguan civil war and the concurrent US Marine occupa-
tion (which lasted from 1926 to 1933) superseded this type of protest
against company practices. The Atlantic Coast, and particularly the bur-
geoning new city of Puerto Cabezas, assumed the national spotlight on
many occasions during this period. Both the US Marines and Pacific
Nicaraguan revolutionaries used the Atlantic Coast and Puerto Cabezas
as a staging ground from which to launch military expeditions. This
political instability supplanted incipient social unrest within Puerto
Cabezas. During this period, Puerto Cabezas witnessed by far the great-
est expression of Nicaraguan opposition to North American military and
economic occupation. This came in the form of a Pacific-born Liberal
army officer, Augusto Cesar Sandino, who led a peasant army into an
against-the-odds civil war against the National Guard and US Marines.
Sandi no and the M o s qu i to C oast:

Race War and Revolutionary
I ndi g e ni sm
The war fought by the US Marines against the peasant army of
Augusto Sandino from 1927 to 1933 represented the most extreme
example of Nicaraguan resistance to United States military and
economic domination. Sandino explicitly conceived of this war as a

racial battle between Anglo-Saxon and what he called “Indo-Hispanic”
cultures and peoples. He implored Nicaraguans to value national indige-
nous symbols that were not derived from Europe or the United States.
He contributed to, and was a product of, a larger movement in Latin
America that sought to define a Latin American character that was inde-
pendent of Europe and Spain, going beyond the Creole nationalism of
the nineteenth century. For Sandino, the Mosquito Coast region of
Nicaragua suffered most acutely from the evils of US imperialism. This
region, in which Sandino would conduct many of his operations and in
which he would settle after the war, accommodated the largest US cul-
tural, economic, and military presence.
Sandino and others also recognized that the Atlantic Coast contained
the densest indigenous population and was the least populated and
poorest region of the country. Sandino saw great economic potential in
the rich and seemingly underutilized expanses of land of the Atlantic
Coast. He also saw great symbolic potential for construction a home-
grown version of Nicaraguan nationalism using the symbols of indige-
nous persistence that Costeños manifested. Furthermore, he believed that
the intense exploitation and proletarianization of Costeños at the hands
of foreign industries contributed to their potential as anticapitalist revo-
lutionaries. In this section, I explore Sandino’s prominent role in the his-
tory of the Mosquito Coast and Puerto Cabezas. Despite his glorification
of native Nicaraguan peoples and cultures that stood in contrast to Ruiz’s
glorification of all things Spanish, ultimately Sandino shared many of the
prejudices of his contemporaries with regard to the Atlantic Coast.
The main theater of operations for Sandino’s armies was the Segov-
ian Mountains and the northern Atlantic Coast, as well as adjacent
districts along the Honduran border. These regions were the least pop-
ulated and most impoverished (by conventional standards) regions of the
country. Not coincidentally, they both were the areas with the highest
level of export-oriented production, all of which was controlled by the
United States. Sandino looted mines in both regions in order to raise
money for his army, which was now being actively pursued by the
Marines (Macaulay 1967, 73). In only the first year of military occupa-
tion, the Marine force in Nicaragua numbered over 5,000 and the US
military spent over $3.5 million (Dozier 1985, 207). During 1927 and
1928, Sandinista and US troops met in several violent confrontations

that caused significant casualties on both sides. The Marines were aided
by the bombing and strafing runs of US warplanes. As Sandino’s guer-
rilla tactics continued to have limited success, the undeclared war
became increasingly unpopular in the United States.
In the presidential elections of 1928, a much-reduced Nicaraguan
electorate elected Jose María Moncada, the Minister of War under
whom Sandino served in the Constitutionalist War. When the Marines
refused to fulfill their promise to withdraw from Nicaragua, Sandino
resolved to continue the war against the United States, despite the fact
that a Liberal was now in power. At this time the Marines started
to form the infamous National Guard, which was supposedly intended
to be a neutral force composed of Liberals and Conservatives. This
National Guard and the family of dictators it propped up would not be
overthrown until the 1979 Sandinista Revolution. Sandino and his
armies, whose chief demand was the withdrawal of all US troops, con-
tinued to fight until 1933, when the Marines withdrew without having
defeated the Sandinista troops.
Sandino explicitly conceived of his battle against the US Marines as a
race war between what he called the Indo-Hispanic race and the Anglo-
Saxon race. He repeatedly referred to the invading troops as “blond
beasts,” “blond beasts of the North,” “blond pirates,” and a “Nordic puni-
tive army” (S. Ramirez 1988, 159; Conrad 1990, 140, 203–205). Sandino
was an ardent advocate of Latin American unification, a unification that
would be based on the links of a common “cosmic” Mestizo race. He
wrote:“The spiritual vibration of the Indo-Hispanic race now depends on
the Autonomist Army of Central America to save our racial dignity by
throwing out of our territory, militarily, politically and economically, the
withering Wall Street bankers” (S. Ramirez 1988, 536).
Sandino attempted to invert the self-deprecating Latin American
attitude that accepted the notion that the sources of true high culture
and civilization came from the United States and Europe. He character-
ized the United States as a land of barbarians who, despite all their claims
to civilization and democracy, actually were reprehensible land-grabbing
pirates with an imperialist fixation.
Sandino interpreted the US penetration into Nicaraguan territory
through a gendered metaphor of rape and sexual penetration. Sandino
often referred to the Yankees as “machos” or “macho bandits” (Conrad

1990, 68, 92, 146). “Macho” is a Spanish term used to refer to the male
of an animal species, but in a Mexican context, with which Sandino was
familiar, macho can refer to “any agent or implement that overpowers or
invades another” (Hodges 1986, 114). The theme of rape in Sandino’s
writing, of course, was not always simply metaphorical. He frequently
condemned the rape of Nicaraguan women by US troops: “With their
brutal acts the Yankees sow terror among the peaceful inhabitants. In
their punitive expedition [in Ocotal, July 1927] they violated 16
women, nine virgins among them, two of these unfortunate girls dying
as a result of the brutal outrage of the northern barbarians” (Conrad
1990, 89; also see S. Ramirez 1988, 203).
However, beyond the cases of actual rape, the image of the blond
Yankee invader raping the pure and defenseless Nicaraguan woman rep-
resented a trope through which Sandino understood Nicaragua’s rela-
tionship with the United States. The following anecdote, written by
Sandino in Mexico in 1929, two years after the events described, is very
enlightening in this regard:
Those regions [the Segovian Mountains] where our column oper-

ated are very rich places, and our forces enjoyed an unusual sym-
pathy, because all the inhabitants are revolutionaries and make
common cause with us. There is one of those villages that is a true
garden of humanity. The women there are uncommonly beautiful
and generous. Our cavalry was made up of young men, furthermore
for the most part romantic, and so that village was visited constantly
by the several units that made up our column.
Colonel Bosque, who distinguished himself as a brave man and as
one of our cavalry’s boldest horsemen, won the heart of one of our
beautiful young Segovian girls. The girl was of the peasant class, but
pretty and educated. The wedding was to take place at the end of
the war.
Our struggle constantly grew in intensity. . . . We left those
regions to move on to others farther away. . . . The Yankee invaders
of our territory and their allies, the Conservative sell-outs and the
cowardly Moncadista Liberals attacked us furiously. That awful pres-
sure from the enemies of the national sovereignty of Nicaragua
forced me to take refuge in the Segovian jungles, where we have

upheld our country’s honor and perhaps that of our race with
strength and inflexibility. . . .
For more than a year I did not know the names of the unfortu-
nate young girls who were violated by murderous Yankee invaders
during their movements through those inoffensive and undefended
towns, and so the impression I felt was a terrible one . . . when I
came to know that that virgin bride of the late Colonel Bosque of
my cavalry had been cruelly violated by miserable Yankee invaders
and as a result of that savage and humiliating act the young girl
was wasting away, pale, shocked, and the mother of a son with blue
eyes and a ruddy skin, and nobody even knew who the father might
be . . .
How terrible! Do my readers not see that that child is the fruit of
indifference of the governments of our Latin America, before the
sorrow of my beloved and many times blessed Nicaragua? (Conrad
1990, 279–281)
This passage is revelatory in a variety of ways. Here, as well as in

other writings, Sandino, who was not from the mountainous Segovian
regions and much less the Atlantic Coast, associated these isolated rural
areas with an idealized male vision of purity and virginity. He portrayed
the women of these regions, like the land that they inhabited, as being
untouched and unspoiled. He boasted that many “Yankee pirates are
buried in our virgin mountains” (ibid., 238, 386). For Sandino, the
women of the Segovian Mountains, and the Atlantic Coast by extension,
manifested a closeness to nature that, within his modified “indigenista”
ideological framework, meant that they contained particular symbolic
value as the vessel of authentic Nicaraguan blood—the essential “Indo”
half of the Indo-Hispanic dyad. Through their isolation they personified
an authentic Nicaraguan culture and race that Sandino was trying so
hard to glorify in opposition to the “blond beasts.”
Patriarchy and ideologies of femininity and masculinity played an
integral role within this formulation. The Sandinista soldier represented
the strong-willed and virulent man whose duty it was to protect the
honor of the vulnerable women, thereby preserving his own honor.
Only the Sandinistas could still claim to possess honor in Nicaragua
because they refused to stand by and watch as the invaders raped their
women. These were the women who should rightfully bear them the
next generation of Indo-Hispanos. Indeed, Sandino disparaged Nicaraguan
apologists of US occupation as “eunuchs.” This metaphor perfectly
suited Sandino’s understanding of the Nicaraguan reality: the castrated
Nicaraguan man sat in compliance as the invaders sexually exploited the
women of the fatherland.
Sandino conceived of his war against the marines as a desperate
attempt to prevent the emasculation of the Nicaraguan man by the
North American man. They were locked in a struggle in which only the
victor could retain his masculinity. Within a conceptual framework that
associated femininity with submission and accommodation, the loser
would therefore be relegated to the status of a woman. Sandino wrote:
There is nothing that justifies their [the United States] meddling

in our internal politics, nor do I believe that the greatness of the
“colossus” is sufficient cause to employ that greatness to murder
Nicaraguans. Because even if this should be their intention, it would
in no way benefit them, because even if they annihilate us, they
would find in our bloody remains only the treasure that envelops the
hearts of Nicaraguan patriots. This would serve only to humiliate
the “hen” [“gallina”] that is displayed on their coat of arms in the
form of an eagle. (S. Ramirez 1988, 68)
Here Sandino attempted to invert the symbolism of domination by

denying the masculinity of the American symbol, the eagle. Instead he
equated it with a female chicken (gallina). Sandino sought to impose his
own vision of the rightful pecking order in Nicaragua on the North
American “macho” that arrogantly paraded about with impunity in what
it presumed to be its’ own “backyard.”
Sandino’s patriarchal thinking, however, differed from other forms of
elite Latin American patriarchal thought in that the idealized and exoti-
cized vision of the national woman was not a white woman, nor was she
wealthy. Rather, she was embodied by the image of a dark-skinned
peasant woman. This synechdochical relationship between woman and
country emerges clearly in the following passage: “Our young country,
this dark beauty of the tropics [esa morena tropical], should wear on her
head the Phrygian cap of liberty bearing the magnificent slogan symbol-
ized by our red and black flag. She should not be a victim raped [violada] by
the Yankee adventurers who were invited here by the four horrid individ-
uals who still claim to have been born in this land” (S. Ramirez 1988, 76).
In a country in which to this day light skin, and the European
ancestry which it signals, is generally considered more attractive than
dark skin (in both men and women), Sandino’s valorization of the dark-
skinned women and the Indian past represented a shift away from the
dominant ideologies of racial worth and beauty. Despite his appeals to
the worthiness of the Mestizo and the Indo-Hispanic race, Sandino
manifested many contradictory attitudes and stances with regard to both
halves of the Indo-Hispanic formulation.
Sandino regarded the Nicaraguan Indian as the most exploited and
most vulnerable segment of society. As victims they deserved the help of
some future Nicaraguan state to bring them out of their miserable situ-
ation. Sandino remembered the visit of a poor campesino adolescent to
his camp: “Like so many children of our America, this child of pure
Indian race, in whose eyes glowed the indomitable pride of our ances-
tors, was wearing something that looked like an undershirt . . . along
with underpants, also in a tattered condition, hanging from his waist.
Everything about the boy cried out in protest against the present
civilization” (S. Ramirez 1988, 208).
For Sandino there was nothing particularly admirable or inspira-
tional about the contemporary “Indian race.” In their present pitiable
condition they were to be uplifted and brought into the ranks of civi-
lization. Although Sandino praised the Indian societies of the past as well
as their subsequent contribution of “blood” in the formation of the
Indo-Hispanic race, he regarded their present state as lamentable. In his
writings he did not question the commonly held assumption that Indi-
ans were ignorant and therefore represented an obstacle to national
progress. His attitude towards the “Indian problem” was similar in many
respects to the patriarchal and condescending attitude he held towards
women. The Indian must be protected because he represented what was
distinctive about Nicaragua and Latin America, but these Indians lacked
value in their own right and lacked the ability to protect their own inter-
ests. This represented basically a slight reworking of the “white man’s
burden” thesis. Sandino suggested that “what our Indians need is
instruction and culture so that they can know themselves, respect them-
selves and love themselves” (S. Ramirez 1988, 485).
As a result of the war, Sandino came into intimate contact with the
inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast, many of whom actively identified
themselves as Indian. Whereas in the Pacific region of the 1920s, the last
of the corporately organized Indian communities were being abolished
and Pacific Nicaraguans rarely positively self-identified as Indians, in the
Atlantic Coast, Costeño communities often consciously adopted the
Indian or Creole label.21 Sandino incorporated Costeños into his troops,
some of them rising to the highest ranks of his army. He boasted in a
“Manifesto” addressed to “The Oppressed Men of our Atlantic Littoral”:
“Our Army, which is composed of blacks, Indians, whites etc. etc. with-
out racial nor class prejudice has determined to implant the principles of
human fraternity in Nicaragua. And to do this it asks the Nicaraguan
People for its unequivocal moral and material support of the Supreme
Leadership [of the Sandinista Army]” (US Department of State Records,
June 20, 1931. Consular Records from Puerto Cabezas).
Despite his willingness to court Costeño leaders, Sandino was gen-
erally unpopular among Costeños. Many of them resented his attacks
against the US-owned mines and fruit companies (Brooks 1998). These
companies represented their only source of wages and US and British
products for which they had acquired a centuries-old taste. Costeños,
who had been recently evangelized by the Moravian Church, also
resented the killing of a German-North American priest by Sandinista
forces, as well as their brutal executions of company workers (see Brooks
1998, Wünderich 1989, 67–85, and A. Adams 1995 for an ample dis-
cussion of this case). During my fieldwork in Puerto Cabezas, I spoke to
a number of Costeños who were Sandino’s contemporaries and who
claim that Sandino was known in the Atlantic Coast as a “bandit” in the
1930s. In the present, Costeños generally continue to refer to Sandino
as a bandit.
Although Sandino dreamed of improving the Atlantic Coast and
integrating it into the national life, his plans betrayed an essentially colo-
nialist mentality. Sandino viewed the extensive forests and savannas of
the region as empty lands (“tierras baldías”) that were ripe for settlement
and development by the “New Nicaraguan Man” (Belausteguigoitia
1981 [1934], 183). Referring to the inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast,
Sandino stated: “They have been completely abandoned. There are

about 100,000 of them without communication, without schools, with-
out any kind of government. This is where I want to colonize—in order
to raise them up and make them real men” (S. Ramirez 1988, 193).
Sandino regarded the Atlantic Coast as the most fertile and potentially
productive region of the country. If exploited correctly, the region
could end Nicaraguan dependence on imported goods. As the war
against the Marines began to wind down, Sandino focused all his ener-
gies on creating a utopian cooperative society on the Atlantic coast.
After the elections of 1932 the Marines finally retired from
Nicaragua, leaving their nemesis alive and well. With the United States
gone, Sandino, still distrusting the Liberals and especially the National
Guard, began the difficult process of demilitarization. He proposed the
creation of an enormous new district that would be named “Light and
Truth.” The new district, located in the Segovian Mountains and the
Atlantic Coast, would be governed by Sandino’s army. Under his direc-
tion this army would establish agricultural cooperatives: “I will take
advantage of this time to organize agricultural cooperatives in these
beautiful regions which for centuries have remained abandoned by
men of Government . . . the abandoned lands . . . represent 36,000
square kilometers . . . people from the Central American proletariat
and from any other part of the world should come to the region”
(Wünderich 1989, 147). He added:
We are going to go chop down the forests and make agricultural

cooperatives where we all will be brothers. Those campesinos are great
workers. We are going to make schools and construct cities. We will
bring carpenters, mechanics, belt-makers, tailors etc. so that we will
have everything. Everything will be in cooperatives. There is gold in
abundance and with it we will buy whatever we need from other
countries. . . . The wood here is magnificent for making houses and
furniture. Now the campesinos don’t have anything, but they soon will
have everything . . . I already have a deal with a mexican company for
the cultivation of banana in the Atlantic Coast and we will throw out
United Fruit. We are also going to throw the Yankee companies out
of the mines. We should keep fighting, this time peacefully, so that we
can have a fatherland that is just for us Nicaraguans. (ibid., 148)
Sandino even proposed that this district could one day become the
“Federal District” of a united Central America. It was fitting that
Sandino should propose the most sparsely populated region in all of
Central America as the site of the future Central American capital city.
For Sandino the Atlantic Coast represented a fresh start, a geographic
tabula rasa, in which the Indo-Hispanic race could fulfill its cosmic des-
tiny. It represented an unspoiled virgin who was waiting to be impreg-
nated by the “New Nicaraguan Man.”
Which half of the Indo-Hispanic man would carry out this task?
Clearly the Miskito, whose lands were offered to the Central American
proletariat, were not intended to colonize the region. Although to
Sandino’s credit it should be mentioned he stated that after being edu-
cated “the sumus, mosquitos and zambos would have the opportunity to
be managers and bankers of their cooperatives” (Wünderich 1989, 153).
Rather, it was the Mestizo descendants of the Spanish colonizers, for
whom Sandino did not hide his admiration, who would have to colo-
nize the savage Atlantic Coast as their Spanish predecessors had colo-
nized an untamed America. The “Manifesto to the Men of the
Department of León,” written by Sandino in 1931 before the US with-
drawal from Nicaragua, sheds some light on the above question:
Do you know, people of Leon, what your name symbolizes? . . .

The symbol of Spain is the lion, spiritual leader of the entire globe,
the reason no other nation on earth before or after can imitate
Spain’s great deed, which is that of discovering the continent where
we live, the promised land for all free men on earth. . . . The people,
symbol of the spirit of the Nicaraguan people, are also being
infected with servility and a spirit of betrayal toward the fatherland.
For this reason, with more than adequate justification, the spirit of
the Nicaraguan people has withdrawn from your department to the
virgin Segovian forests, where all of you, men of the department of
Leon, may be found, so that all good sons of Nicaragua, always
standing together, may continue carrying our flag from peak to
peak, the untarnished symbol of Nicaraguan Leon, of which you,
the men of Leon, are the true guardians, before you old Spanish
Leon, the spiritual symbol of this earth in the presence of the Father
Creator of the Universe. (Conrad 1990, 386)
Sandino harbored deep sympathies for the “civilizing project” of

colonial Spain. In a comment strikingly reminiscent of those of his
enemy and countrymen Frutos Ruiz y Ruiz, Sandino recognized that
Spain had given Latin America three unifying elements:“its language, its
civilization and its blood” (Belausteguigotia 1981 [1934], 200). The
Indian, like the continents he inhabited, contributed little more than a
wild and exotic vessel in which Spanish blood and culture was to be
poured. In this sense, Sandino, despite his revolutionary “Indigenismo”
cultivated during his stay in Mexico, did not transcend the deeply-
rooted ideological presuppositions of his time and place. On the one
hand Sandino associated Spanish blood and language with the concept
of civilization, and on the other hand he looked down on the peoples of
the Atlantic Coast on the basis of their perceived exoticism and close-
ness to the natural world.
In 1933 Sandino was assassinated at the orders of Anastasio Somoza,
the leader of the Nicaraguan National Guard that had been formed by
the US Marines. Somoza’s family and the National Guard, enjoying the
unwavering complicity of the United States, dictatorially ruled
Nicaraguan until 1979, when, to complete the full circle, the Somoza
regime was toppled by Sandinista rebels. After his assassination in 1933,
Sandino’s dreams of anarcho-socialist paradise on the Atlantic Coast of
Nicaragua died out along with the agricultural cooperative he had
founded in Wiwilí. The day after his assassination, the National Guard,
under the orders of Anastasio Somoza, surrounded this community of
unarmed ex-Sandinista soldiers and proceeded to carry out an indis-
criminate massacre in which as many as three hundred men and women
lost their lives (Keller 1986, 66).
In sum, Sandino’s attitudes and behaviors towards the Mosquito
Coast reflected profound ambivalence and contradiction. With regard to
his behavior, Sandino incorporated Costeños to an unprecedented
degree into the leadership, as well as the rank and file, of his militias. He
also included the Mosquito Coast territory as a central part of his politi-
cal and economic plans and dreams for the future. These plans stood in
stark contrast to those of the Nicaraguan governments of his time, which
neglected the Mosquito Coast and used it as a fiscal windfall. These gov-
ernments took taxes from the US extractive companies in the region and
spent them disproportionately on governmental expenses in the Pacific
region.22 In the cycle of coup d’etat in Nicaraguan politics at the time,

the Atlantic Coast (particularly Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas) was used
as a temporary military safe haven and staging ground for assaults on the
Pacific Coast. Few resources were allocated to equitably incorporating
the region into national plans. Despite these contrasts, however, Sandino
shared with his Pacific contemporaries an essentially colonialist approach
to the region in which the preexisting interests of the inhabitants of the
region (e.g., land claims as well as the willingness of Costeños to work
as wage laborers for US extractive industries) were disregarded.
On a more symbolic level, Sandino’s indigenist (or Indo-Hispanicist)
valorization of Nicaraguan national imagery predisposed him to value
the Mosquito Coast as a reservoir of cultural ammunition. This cultural
ammunition could be employed in the symbolic war against what he and
others of his political conviction regarded to be a debilitating Eurocen-
trism that plagued Latin America. This was the same Eurocentric mal-
ady that José Martí, Cuban poet and intellectual father of the nationalist
Latin American left, eloquently identified at the turn of the century.
While the Mosquito Coast represented the extant “Indo” half of the
Indo-Hispanic formulation for Sandino, it also represented in a gendered
and racialized fashion an unrefined, uncultivated, and uncivilized natu-
ral world, a perspective that invited a paternalistic and essentially colo-
nialist approach to the region. After Sandino’s assassination in 1933, the
US companies in the region, which had been terrorized by Sandino’s
forces and which for this and other reasons had ceased large-scale lum-
ber operations in 1931, enjoyed a period of uninterrupted domestic
tranquillity that would last until 1979. This period had a profound
impact on the development of ideologies of race and culture in the
region.
Summary and Conc lusion

The intensification of tensions brought about by the expanding role
of US agro-industry, the US Marines, and the Nicaraguan government
in the new port city of Puerto Cabezas took place in a cultural backdrop
of deeply rooted Pacific/Atlantic and Spanish/English divisions. These
divisions influenced the way in which capitalist penetration was received
by the diverse actors who found themselves in the maelstrom that was
Puerto Cabezas in the 1920s and 1930s. Costeño and Spanish ideologies
regarding race, culture, modernity, progress, and the relationship

between these factors played an important role in the upheaval of this
period in Puerto Cabezas.
Costeño inhabitants of Puerto Cabezas invoked their Indian race
and the rights that they argued went along with their status as Miskito
Indians under the 1905 Harrison-Altamirano treaty in their efforts to
resist the alienation of their lands at the hands of Bragman’s Bluff
Lumber Company and the Nicaraguan state. However, as their lands and
labor increased in value on an international market, they found them-
selves increasingly unable to maintain authority over them. Once more,
their strategies of resistance conflicted with the modernizing project of
the Nicaraguan state that regarded the Indian, as well as the Afro-
Caribbean worker, as an obstacle to national progress. Black West Indi-
ans found themselves in a hostile situation in which for ideological and
structural reasons (i.e., their superior place in the job market) they were
victimized both by the Nicaraguan government as well as Nicaraguan
workers. This discrimination is one factor that helps explain the adop-
tion by West Indians of the Creole, as well as the Miskito, racial label in
subsequent generations.
Racial ideologies, phrased in the language of blood and civilization,
played a major role in the politics of Puerto Cabezas in the 1920s and
1930s. Frutos Ruiz y Ruiz and Augusto Sandino engaged in a distinctively
Spanish exoticization of the Atlantic Coast that invited a paternalistic and
discriminatory approach to the conflicts in the region. Pacific Nicaraguans
today continue to conflate the region’s geography ( perceived as forested
and impenetrable) with its people, who are regarded as wild, savage and
unrefined. These associations stand in direct opposition to Costeño self-
perception as cosmopolitan and worldly. Understanding the specific
nature of this exocitization is essential in understanding the ideological
underpinnings of the historic and modern conflict in the region.
Chapte r 4
Company Time
Puerto Cabezas is even more American than

Bluefields. It is an industrial village of some 1,200
people, situated on a broad, flat plain overlooking the
Caribbean. It looks and is precisely like a lumber mill
village in some southern US state. It is operated like a
tiny principality by the Standard Fruit Company and
its subsidiary, the Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company,
which possess vast banana and lumber lands in the
interior, tapped by a small privately owned railroad.
—Harold Denny 1929, 2631
From the time of the establishment of Bragman’s

Bluff Lumber Company until the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, which
effectively drove away North American enterprises, the port city of
Puerto Cabezas served as a base to a series of US and Canadian lumber,
mining, rubber, and fishing companies that operated in the “boom and
bust” (Helms 1971) economy of the region. The operation of these
resource-extracting industries radically transformed the natural environ-
ment of the Mosquito Coast within a short period of time. Lumber
companies left behind extensive grass-covered savannas littered with tree
stumps where extensive subtropical forest had once flourished. Mining
companies contaminated long stretches of Atlantic Coast rivers with
pollutants (T. Adams 1981). While the activities of these companies have
left at times irreversible reminders of their devastating impact, it is
perhaps more difficult to assess their social and cultural impact.
The companies’ residential and labor practices served to institution-
alize racial and ethnic categories and helped to channel collective action
within Costeño society into a racialized idiom. These practices and
the resulting “class-ethnic hierarchy” have been well documented by
researchers (Bourgois 1985, 209). But in addition to this centrifugal
108
Company Time 109
effect that caused the entrenchment of racial categories, the activities of

the companies also had a centripetal effect on the process of socio-racial
group formation.2 While contributing to the institutionalization of racial
categories, the companies also transformed consumption patterns of all
Porteños (inhabitants of Puerto Cabezas) regardless of their racial
identification, thus creating a single overriding “consumer culture” that
should play a key role in understanding the role of racial distinctions in
the social life and conflicts in Puerto Cabezas, and the Mosquito Coast
region as a whole, today.
From its inception, Puerto Cabezas fit the classic pattern of a US
company town.3 The company planned, built, owned, and managed
every aspect of the city. Far beyond simply providing employment to its
workers, the company provided government, transportation, entertain-
ment, health care, recreation, infrastructure, police, and stores. Given
that the company was so deeply involved in every aspect of social life in
the city, it in many ways represented a so-called total institution not
unlike the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. However, the economic
system of Puerto Cabezas (unlike sugar plantation areas) relied both on
the production of its work force and the work force’s consumption of
US products. This stage in Mosquito Coast history is now remembered
as “company time”—a term commonly used by Costeños (in English
and Miskitu alike) that refers to the period in which US companies were
active in the city (1920–1979).
Labor, Mac hete Me n,

and Municipal Se lf-Imag e
After having persuaded the Nicaraguan government to issue a grant of
over 50,000 hectares of land, much of which had been claimed as “pasture
land” by a number of Miskito Indian villages, Bragman’s Bluff Lumber
Company’s next challenge was to bring laborers to the region and insure
that they would continue to work in the region as long as the company
needed them. At the level of management, the company used White
American workers almost exclusively. At the height of company opera-
tions, White Americans never numbered more than two hundred workers
and their families. The companies also sought “skilled” laborers in con-
struction, railroads, sawmills, and creosote plants. They filled these positions
primarily with Black West Indian workers, many of whom were recruited
directly from the Panama Canal Zone and Jamaica at the company’s
expense. It also recruited a significant number of Black American workers
who had experience in lumber and railroad companies. Nicaraguans per-
formed the most physically demanding and poorly paid labor.
In the period between the mid-1930s and World War II, the banana
industry dominated the economic life of the port. According to the US
consulate that operated in Puerto Cabezas from 1931 to 1940, White
workers (other than top managers and “superintendents”) were divided
into six occupations: overseers, timekeepers, foremen, stockmen, yard-
men, and cooks. These workers were paid monthly in US dollars and
worked on yearly contracts. The lowest and most poorly paid tasks,
called “farm work,” were carried out by about 1,500 laborers, almost all
of whom were Nicaraguans (Costeños and “Spaniards”) who were paid
on a daily or weekly basis in cash or company script. The company did
not recruit or house this reserve labor force, and the demand for these
laborers fluctuated drastically. For example, in 1935, US Consul Eli
Taylor in Puerto Cabezas noted that Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company
reduced its labor force by 60 percent, “most of whom have returned
to places of origin in the interior” (US Department of State Records,
Correspondence of US Consulate—Puerto Cabezas, 1937).
“Farm work” was divided into six branches: (1) cutting and carry-
ing fruit to the railroad, (2) cleaning the banana lands of weeds and
brush, (3) making bridges over drains, (4) constructing “fruitroads” for
mules, (5) constructing “corduroy roads” (used for access to the interior
of plantations), and (6) digging drains (US Department of State Records,
Correspondence of US Consulate—Puerto Cabezas, 1931) Not surpris-
ingly, workers strove to acquire less grueling and more “skilled” jobs
such as lower-level clerical and supervisory positions, as well as railroad
and construction jobs. These mid-level jobs were often held by
West Indian and Costeño workers who spoke English and had experi-
ence in the banana, railroad, and lumber industries—a fact that inspired
resentment.
According to many of my older Porteño informants, “farm” work-
ers were disparagingly referred to, in English, as “machete men.”4 They
described “machete men” as illiterate agriculturalists from the interior of
the country who, attracted by wage-labor opportunities, found their
way to Puerto Cabezas. One of my informants, who worked as a
Company Time 111
carpenter and later a lumber-mill operator, described the “machete

men” in the following way: “The company give job to bitcha [a lot of ]
machete men. Them boys work hard man . . . all day long in the plan-
tation them swing machete and carry load like mule. I worked here in
Port man, tranquilo, sin problema. Them boys no like Port . . . want to go
back to their own place cosechar [to harvest] corn and all them things.”
Although the skill of the “machete men” was legendary, Porteños
did not envy the backbreaking and low-paid work that they performed.
Porteños took pride in their ability to avoid this work and often
attempted to involve themselves in the auxiliary industries that prolifer-
ated in the port to serve the companies’ diverse needs. Also, many
entered into commerce, opening stores that filled economic niches (such
as providing loans and credit) that the company commissaries did not
monopolize.
As the term indicates, “farm work” occurred not in the city but
rather in banana plantations, owned and operated by the Standard Fruit
Company, that lined the banks of the Wawa River. In the Wawa River
area, the Standard Fruit Company attempted to control much of the
productive process, from planting to weeding to transportation (O’Brien
1996, 71). This practice stood in contrast to the Coco River to the
north, where smaller banana companies functioned primarily as buyers
that purchased bananas from local villagers-cum-small-scale independent
growers (Helms 1971, 113). To control the productive process, the com-
pany built a hundred-kilometer-long railroad line that connected Puerto
Cabezas with inland “camps” located along the rail line that followed the
Wawa River. Each camp had its own commissary and office. The camps
were completely dependent on provisions sent from Puerto Cabezas by
rail, and they were staffed by two kinds of workers: overseers who were
based in Puerto Cabezas (Whites and mid-level Jamaicans and English-
speaking Costeños), and a large and highly transitory body of “machete
men” who stayed for long periods at a time in makeshift structures.
Porteños who worked in the camps took pride in their ability to main-
tain a permanent residence in Port and looked down at “farm work.”
I found in my interviews that Porteños (regardless of any self-
identification as Black, Creole, Miskito, or Spanish—or any combina-
tion thereof ) sharply distinguished themselves (and by extension their
work) from “machete men” whom they viewed as rural peasants who
were not suited or prepared for city life. As I will describe in greater
detail in the next chapter, Porteños strongly valued their own
identification with the jobs and lifestyle of city life in Puerto Cabezas.
They have long perceived of themselves as a cosmopolitan people who
enjoy the advantages of urban life, such as access to items of foreign
manufacture and a consistent contact and exchange with the United
States and the Caribbean. In their recollections of “company time,” they
contrasted their own cosmopolitanism (“good living”) with the scarcity
and self-reliance of peasant life.
According to the popular perception, Puerto Cabezas was a place
where, as long as one had the money, any product could be acquired. In
the countryside, on the other hand, peasants were viewed to be in the
unenviable position of having to manufacture locally many of the goods
that they consumed in their daily lives, such as soap, rope, baskets,
brooms, and cheese. In the words of one Porteño informant, “Cuando
Puerto realmente era Puerto, aqui se econtraba del todo” (“When Port
was Port, you could find anything here.”). I found that in the 1990s, the
great majority of my informants, even young ones, agreed that “Port was
no longer Port,” by which they meant that after years of a war-imposed
isolation, Puerto Cabezas no longer possessed an essential quality that
had historically defined it: extensive commercial and cultural ties with
the rest of the world, particularly the Caribbean and the United States.
In Puerto Cabezas the salaried work force was overwhelmingly
male. As Cynthia Enloe has convincingly argued, banana plantation
work, because it involved machete work and transportation to often-
isolated camps, was regarded as “men’s work” by US corporations (Enloe
1989, 133).5 In her discussion of the role of gender in the banana plan-
tation complex, Enloe wrote:
One of the conditions that has pushed women off the banana repub-
lic stage has been the masculinization of the banana plantation.
Banana-company executives imagined that most of the jobs on their
large plantations could be done only by men. Banana plantations
were carved out of wooded acres. Clearing the bush required work-
ers who could use a machete, live in rude barracks, and who, once
the plantation’s trees were bearing fruit, could chop down the heavy
bunches and carry them to central loading areas and from there to
Company Time 113
the docks, to be loaded by the ton on to refrigerator ships. This was

men’s work. (ibid., 134)
Enloe emphasized that despite the absence of women’s plantation labor

in the first stages of development of banana regions, women’s work
played a key role in the overall banana plantation complex. This work,
however, did not occur directly on the plantations.
There is an interesting paradox with regard to racial identification of
“machete men” that arose during my interviews with Porteños about
“company time.” I found that, in what on the surface appeared to be con-
tradictory statements, my informants identified “machete men” as both
“Indians” and “Spaniards.” Although they recognized that many
“machete men” were Miskito Indians “from the communities,” they also
recognized that others of them were monoglot Spanish speakers “from
the Pacific.”6 Because these non-Miskito “machete men” were from the
Pacific and, for that reason, taken to be non-native to the region,
Costeños described them as “Spaniards.” But because they were also dark-
skinned campesinos with rural skills and orientations, traits that Costeños
associate with Indians, they also regarded them, somewhat disparagingly,
as Indians. Thus Porteños described this contingent of “machete men”
as being simultaneously “Indians” and “Spaniards,” the term “Spaniard”
serving primarily as a geographical referent to distinguish the Atlantic
coast from the Pacific coast, and “Indian” being used as a term that in a
complex way (particular to Costeños) indexed both race and class.
In the present, the term “Indian” connotes rurality—a rurality that
contrasts with Porteño cosmopolitanism. Even Porteño informants who
described themselves as Miskito or recognized their “Miskito blood” dis-
tinguished themselves from Indian “machete men” because they did not
perform that sort of labor and because they did not have a rural
orientation. In this sense, to be Porteño represented, and continues to
represent in the present, a social identification that crosscuts ethnic
identification. Within Costeño society it is perfectly reasonable for a
campesino from the Pacific to be both a Spaniard and an Indian, and it
is reasonable on the other hand for a Porteño to proudly “be” an Indian
and disparage, in certain contexts, being Indian.
Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company and the companies that replaced
it in the 1940s practiced a policy of strict residential segregation (Karnes
1978, 111). White American workers and their families lived inside a
fenced area in well-constructed family housing with running water and
electricity. (In the present, most residents of Puerto Cabezas do not have
access to these amenities). The American area, known as the “zone,” rep-
resented a distinguishing feature of the city that, in often very complex
and controversial ways, stands out in the memory of present-day
Porteños. The zone included both the industrial installations of the com-
pany and the residences and much of the “human resource” infrastruc-
ture (to use a term from modern-day corporate America) for US
company employees. In my interviews with Porteños, they manifested a
profound ambivalence with regard to the zone and, by extension, the
role of US companies.
On the one hand, the massive installations of the zone embodied US
wealth, progress, and technological prowess. When asked to describe
Puerto Cabezas during “company time,” Porteño informants universally
mentioned the massive engineering and architectural projects initiated
by US companies in and around Puerto Cabezas. They contrasted this
technological and infrastructural advancement to the present atraso
(backwardness). Informants explained how during “company time,” the
pier extended twice as far into the ocean as it does now and it accom-
modated large tankers. One informant nostalgically described these ships
as the “biggest in the Caribbean” and contrasted them to the lamentable
present situation in which “only lobster boats and Moskeeta velas [sail-
boats]” dock at the pier. For this informant, the small sailboats that
Miskito fishermen use to catch and bring their haul of turtles, fish, and
shrimp to market represented the polar opposite of the oceangoing
tankers that during “company time” stopped at Puerto Cabezas: one was
Indian, small, backward, and local (concepts that in the minds of
Porteños, including self-proclaimed Miskitos, are in certain contexts
closely associated); and the other was American, large, advanced, and
international (also tightly associated concepts).
In the context of explaining to me the past importance of Puerto
Cabezas, even young Porteños recalled nostalgically when the railroad
tracks extended from the zone (situated on the bluff ) down to the end
of the pier. The rail line no longer functions in Puerto Cabezas and the
rails were long ago removed from the pier. Today the pier continues to
deteriorate to the point that it has become hazardous for its users. The
Company Time 115
government is unable to finance the maintenance of the pier. Now the

government, in line with a long precedent of turning to foreign extrac-
tive industries for basic infrastructure, finds itself in a dispute with a US
company that balked on its commitment repair the pier (López 2004;
López and Urbina 2004).
In the present, severely rusted buildings and heavy machinery litter
the area that used to be occupied by the zone. On walking tours of the
area, Porteño informants brought my attention to these ruins in the con-
text of illustrating to me the former grandeur of Puerto Cabezas and
its present backwardness. In their presentations to me, planned and
impromptu, my informants invariably referred to the irony of the pres-
ent situation in which the great majority of the people of Puerto
Cabezas lack the most basic infrastructure and services—infrastructure
and services that were available (for some) thirty years ago. In a city that
in the present can only be approached by two deteriorating dirt roads
that accommodate only the most intrepid of vehicles, my informants
showed me the gutted locomotives that once carried people and provi-
sions a hundred kilometers into the interior. In a city in which only a
small percentage of the population has access to running water, Porteños
showed me the rusted and dangerously wobbly water tank that domi-
nated the horizon of Puerto Cabezas and that once provided the water
that poured out of chrome faucets in all the buildings of the zone.
Coincidentally, during my stay in Puerto Cabezas, this abandoned
water tank finally fell to the ground in a windstorm, narrowly missing a
family of squatters who had built a house in its shadow. The incident
produced three principal responses in the city, the variations revealing
the ambivalence of Porteños with regard to “company time.” Some
Porteños viewed the falling of the tank, which had not been functional
for decades, as a symbolic marking of the end of US industrial influence
in the city. This ending of US influence, in turn, signified the decline in
the importance of Puerto Cabezas as a port city and a bustling hub of
economic activity. The event signified for others the indifference of the
present government that, in defiance of previous protests by concerned
citizens, neglected to demolish the decaying structure in spite of the
tank’s threat to the public. The third reaction that I recorded was indig-
nation on the part of Porteños who viewed the event as the most recent
of a long line of negative consequences (such as the pollution from
mining and the massive silting resulting from years of deforestation)

that followed years of reckless exploitation at the hands of US compa-
nies. In a comment infused with bitter irony, one Porteño remarked to
me that “the gringos aren’t even here anymore but they continue to shit
on us.”7
Roberto Flores, the unabashedly Sandinista journalist of the leftist
FM radio station in Puerto Cabezas, summed up the anti-US sentiment
in a passionate radio broadcast in which he blamed the US companies
for the near tragedy. In the broadcast Flores noted that US and
Canadian mining companies whose Atlantic Coast properties had been
nationalized by the Sandinista government were now petitioning the
Nicaraguan government for indemnity. Flores regarded North American
claims for indemnity shocking and absurd in light of the environmental
and social destruction brought about by these companies. He vigorously
protested that “the North American companies should pay the Costeños
and the Nicaraguan people for all the damage that they did and not the
other way around.”8 Flores insisted that the near tragedy of the fallen
water tank was a product of the exploitation of Nicaraguans during
“company time.”
The large artificial ponds that are situated on the eastern edge of
what was once the zone represent another distinguishing feature of
Puerto Cabezas that was left by the companies and that continues to
spark polemics.9 In the 1990s, after fifteen years of rapid population
growth caused by the influx of civil war refugees, the ponds lay at the
center of densely populated neighborhoods. Porteños recall that during
the heyday of the lumber industry in the region (in the 1950s and
1960s), the ponds were created and used by the US lumber company
NIPCO (Nicaraguan Long Leaf Pine Company) to treat pine logs.
NIPCO applied powerful chemicals to the logs to kill pests and prepare
them for transportation.
One of my informants who had worked for NIPCO described the
appearance of the ponds in the 1950s: “In those times those ponds were
full of wood. You could have walked from one side to the other without
getting wet walking only on pine logs. Later they brought mahogany and
cedar. And right there to the side were the sawmills which in the high
season for wood were working all day long making all that noise. In
those times there was noise everywhere, with those big gringo trucks,
Company Time 117
not like the Soviet ones now which are worthless. Puerto Cabezas was
like a beehive.”10
In the present the rusted out metal frames of the old sawmills and
newly-built one-room houses surround the ponds, which eerily lacks
vegetation. Women can be seen in the morning and afternoons washing
their clothes in their waters, disregarding warnings issued by institutions
of public health. Like the water tanks, the ponds stand for both the best
and the worst of “company time.” They epitomize for Porteños the past
importance of Puerto Cabezas and the technological defiance of the US
companies against an unforgiving natural environment. At the other
extreme they provide yet another example of the hazards callously left
behind by US companies.
The examples of the water tank and the lumber treatment ponds
illustrate the ambivalence of Porteños with regard to the historical role of
US companies. Their accounts of “company time” were full of both
approval and contempt. Porteños recall with awe and admiration the
exploits of the companies, but they also recall, at times with acrimony,
their second-class-citizen status vis-à-vis North Americans—a status that
was most apparent in the zone. Some Porteños remember that
Nicaraguans (Costeños and “Spaniards” alike) were not allowed in the
zone unless they could demonstrate a good reason to be there. This was
particularly true in the residential area of the zone, which overlooked the
ocean to the north of the pier. Here, the “gringo bosses” lived in well-
painted two-story wooden structures with screened-in second-story
verandas. Mister Adams, one of my chief informants, a Belize-born
“Hindu” man who had lived in Puerto Cabezas since the late 1940s,
recalled:11 “You know where the CIDCA house is? Well that was where
the big boss man lived. Them people sit up there and drink gin and
whiskey . . . they no like rum. They make big parties only for gringos . . .
if you Nicaragua . . . no way, and if you black man . . . never. You can
never go. They no like mix with no black man. You go to the zone only
to work and when you finish you gone.”12 Other Porteños, aware of the
common charge of racism leveled (in retrospect) against the companies,
denied the severity of the segregation in Port during “company time.”
Down the road a few hundred yards north of the American zone,
the village of Bilwi swelled as Costeños, “Spaniards,” and West Indians
flooded the region. Workers, attracted by relatively high salaries, erected
shacks. The companies housed many of the foreign workers in large

company-owned barracks. On the opposite side of the zone lived a
colony of American Blacks who had been brought in by the company
to manage the mule trains and make railroad ties. As the years passed,
these different areas of the nascent city acquired names, which have sur-
vived to the present as neighborhood names. However, after 1979 the
Sandinista administration replaced many of the earlier neighborhood
names with “revolutionary” neighborhood names. Some of my older
informants recalled when American Blacks, or “American darkies,” as
they were called in Puerto Cabezas, lived close to the beach in “Mule
Town.” (While I was in Puerto Cabezas, Joe Taylor, a man that many
reputed to be the last surviving American Black, died.) West Indian
workers and other experienced workers stayed in a series of barracks on
the opposite edge of the sawmill. Mid-level Pacific Nicaraguan workers
were also housed in separate barracks and ate at segregated dining halls
(Karnes 1978, 112).
“Mule Town” was bordered by “Spanish Town,” another Black set-
tlement populated originally by West Indian workers. “Spanish Town”
apparently got its name from the Jamaican city and not from having
“Spanish” inhabitants. As the city continued to grow, other neighbor-
hoods, such as “Silver City” and “The Beach,” emerged. In general, as
the city grew in size, the company was no longer able or willing to pay
to house workers, and so the strict residential segregation created in the
company zone started to disintegrate.
Nevertheless, the rigid labor hierarchy in which Black Caribbean
workers, some of whom were Nicaraguan citizens from Bluefields
(headquarters of the United Fruit Company’s Nicaraguan division),
occupied a higher position than “Spaniard” workers became institution-
alized and entrenched in other areas of port life. The institutions of the
Standard Fruit Company contributed to the increase in the social
salience and political ramifications of socio-racial identifications (Black,
Indian, and Spaniard) in the daily lives of Costeños. This does not mean,
however, that the company successfully erased competing categories of
social differentiation, such as those based on regional, occupational, and
linguistic differences.
One of the legacies of the company-dominated social configuration
of the city of Puerto Cabezas was the persistence of separate leisure,
Company Time 119
recreational, and religious institutions for the different “races.” For

example, my informants recall that each “nation” in the city, with the
exception of Miskito Indians, had its own social club. The White North
Americans were members of the “Standard Club,” which operated a bar,
dance hall, and ice cream parlor, and which also hosted the “wives”
bridge club (US Department of State Records, Consular Records,
Puerto Cabezas, 1935). “Spaniards” participated in the “Social Club,”
which later became the “Club de Leones” (Lion’s Club). West Indians
founded the “Literary Society,” which later became the “Atlantic Club.”
Interestingly, the club came to be known as a “Black man’s” or Creole
club, and not a West Indian or Jamaican club.
Indeed, by the 1950s the Afro-Caribbean population of Puerto
Cabezas, the majority of whom had arrived within the last generation,
increasingly identified itself as Creole, a category that was understood in
the popular imagination to refer to the descendants of slaves brought to
the Mosquito Coast by English colonists. Nevertheless, I almost never
came across a “Creole” who did not trace at least one side of his or her
family to twentieth-century immigrants from the West Indies. The same
was true for many self-proclaimed Miskitos in Puerto Cabezas.
Even on those occasions when White women chose to live in
Puerto Cabezas with their husbands, they rarely worked for wages in the
zone. Very few other women accompanied their male family members
to Puerto Cabezas. In addition to women’s own productive work in
their respective countries, they frequently received remittances from
their distant husbands and brothers, who in most cases were contracted
on a yearly basis and fully intended to return to their homes in Colón
(Panama), Limón (Costa Rica), Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the
Virgin Islands. The same was often the case with Nicaraguan workers
from distant parts of the Atlantic and Pacific regions, who most fre-
quently did not intend to place permanent roots in Puerto Cabezas.
These workers, almost always men, used wage labor in Puerto Cabezas
and the company “farms” as just one part of a larger, cyclical economic
strategy that included subsistence farming and, in some cases, hunting
and gathering in or near their respective homes.
Puerto Cabezas during “company time” was notorious for its abun-
dance of brothels. The abundance of women employed as “sex workers”
in a plantation and company-town setting is entirely consistent with
other characterizations of similar social situations (Enloe 1989; Bourgois

1989).13
Company Commissarie s and th e

Cultural Impact of Economic
De pe nde nc e
Especially interesting is the use of script payment and company stores
as means of inculcating consumer values, thus a desire to work for a
wage, among laborers. The company consistently noted the tendency
of the work force to develop a subsistence alternative and become
unavailable as wage labor. It used movies, sports, advertising, and
company newspapers as more subtle means of encouraging a worker
consciousness suitable to its purposes. (Aviva Chomsky 1996, 11)
The Standard Fruit Company in Puerto Cabezas, like the more well-
known United Fruit Company, consciously engaged in the creation of
“consumer values” among its workforce as a way of shaping them, ide-
ologically and physically, to most effectively suit the company’s needs. In
many ways the internalization of this “consumer culture” crosscut
the different racial categories used by Porteños. By establishing a system
in which workers were paid in company script redeemable at the com-
pany-owned commissary and discouraging the formation of an agricul-
tural sector that might have served the food needs of the port, the
company created a profound dependence among Porteños on goods
imported from the United States and, later, the Coco River region. This
dependence, in turn, became naturalized, resulting in Porteños actively
valuing the cosmopolitan nature of the region and their own cos-
mopolitanism. This self-perception of cosmopolitanism stood in stark
opposition to the Pacific Nicaraguan perception of the region as isolated
and underdeveloped.
As many social scientists have observed, Costeños nostalgically
recall the “golden age” (Helms 1971, 113) of the banana boom and the
subsequent rubber, lumber, mining, and tuno booms (between the mid-
1930s and the early 1960s) when cash and goods were relatively easily
attainable from US companies and their commissaries operating
throughout the Mosquito Coast (Helms 1971; Nietschmann 1973;
Dennis 1981; Bourgois 1981; Jenkins Molieri 1986;Vilas 1989). Puerto
Company Time 121
Cabezas was the international transportation hub of the northern Mos-

quito Coast region through which foreign goods entered and raw
materials departed. In the twentieth century Puerto Cabezas eclipsed
Bluefields, the historical cultural and political capital of the region, as
the most important port of the region. Because of the lower availability
of lumber and minerals in the southern region, as well as the shallow-
ness of the Bluefields harbor, only US banana and fishing companies
(industries that did not require a modern deep-water port) used the
Bluefields port extensively.14 Puerto Cabezas provided the deep-water
port that was required by the North American mining and large-scale
lumber companies that established themselves in the northern Mosquito
Coast in the twentieth century. Puerto Cabezas became the most impor-
tant and active port of the entire Mosquito Coast and one of the major
ports of the Caribbean coastline of Central America. Given that Puerto
Cabezas’ raison d’ être was to serve as an international port, it is not
surprising that Porteños also regarded the agro-industrial boom periods
of the twentieth century as “good times” in which life in the port city
was best.
One of the defining features of US company towns in the Americas
was the company commissary. From the perspective of the American
bosses, the company store was a necessity in sparsely populated regions
where local food and artisanal production was insufficient and no
significant merchant class existed. It also made financial sense (in light of
the high costs of transportation) to load bananas, lumber, and rubber for
transport to the United States and to unload US products for sale.15 In
order to assure a market for its goods, the Standard Fruit Company fol-
lowed the lead of many other banana companies of its day and paid
workers in company script. Weekly steamships, only two days out of
New Orleans, docked at the pier in Puerto Cabezas laden with provi-
sions and food. Informants remember that during “company time,” they
ate bread made from American wheat, ate meat slaughtered in New
Orleans, and enjoyed fresh vegetables from the farms of Louisiana.
Country music, another import from the US South, continues to be the
music of choice in Port.
The companies paid part of the earnings of their employees with a
company script (known as “coupons”) redeemable in the commissaries
of the zone and the inland “camps” (Karnes 1978, 116). The remainders
of the salaries were usually paid in US dollars. In some cases the com-
pany would advance merchandise to its workers and then subtract this
amount from their weekly salaries (Vilas 1989, 48). Although at the time
workers frequently opposed the “coupon” policy and protested the high
prices and lack of variety in the company stores (ibid., 112), my mod-
ern Porteño informants generally regarded the stores as having played a
positive role in the life of the city. One Porteño, who had worked as a
mechanic during “company time,” recalled: “Here in Port a person had
everything. If the gringos didn’t have it then the Chinos would have it
on the commercial strip. Every week ships full of products came straight
from the United States and they were good products . . . the same ones
that the gringos used—rubber boots, soaps, shirts, you name it. And
parts for motors? All kinds.”16
German and Chinese immigrants established stores along the “Calle
Commercial,” which extended northward for a half-mile from the outer
edge of the zone to the residential area of Bilwi.17 Although these com-
mercial outlets competed to some extent with the company commis-
saries, this competition was mitigated by the fact that they relied heavily
on shipping lines controlled by the companies. The merchants of the
Calle Commercial, in contrast to the itinerant North Americans, con-
sidered themselves “natives” of the city, and with the profits of their
businesses came to represent a local bourgeoisie whose wealth is now
legendary.
Porteños greatly valued the ease of communication with the United
States, particularly in light of the difficulty of communication with the
Pacific Coast. Until recently, no telephone, telegraph, radio, or all-
weather road service existed between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the primary mode of
intra-regional communication took the form of a network of radio
transmitters set up by US companies.18 Porteños recall nostalgically the
days in which letters to and from the United States would arrive at their
destination in less then two weeks. A number of my older Porteño
informants had taken advantage of the fast and easy contact with the
United States to take mail-order courses that trained them to be electri-
cians, mechanics, carpenters, and so on, all trades that qualified them for
jobs in a semi-industrial port city. Porteños subscribed to US magazines
and received reasonably current US newspapers. The loss of such ties to
Company Time 123
the United States and the Caribbean precipitated by the departure of

US companies (punctuated by the foreign evacuations in response the
Sandinista Revolution) has created, to modify Helms’s term, an “ethic of
isolation” among Porteños.19
At mid-century, regular steamship service existed between Puerto
Cabezas and Bluefields on a vessel known as the Bluefields Express. This
vessel has been immortalized by the song of the same name performed
by the Costeño musical group Dimensión Costeña. The song, infused
with an unmistakable Caribbean beat, has become part of the canon of
Nicaraguan folkloric music (música folklórica). However, in contrast to
Pacific Nicaraguan folkoric music, which has backward-looking rural
themes and is played on the marimba by musicians dressed in peasant’s
clothing, the nationally-recognized “typical” music of the Atlantic
Coast, sung in English and Miskitu by jazzily dressed Costeños, is per-
formed on electric instruments and lyrically addresses themes that
emphasize modernity and connection to the Caribbean.20 The lyrics of
“Bluefields Express” are as follows:
Come take a ride on the Bluefields Express

Check inside on the Bluefields Express
She’s coming down here quick
She have a hot smoke coming out of the chimney
She is throwing back smoke
Come take a ride on the Bluefields Express.
During “company time” a rivalry developed between Puerto

Cabezas and Bluefields. These cities were the two main ports of the
Mosquito Coast and also were the base of operation of rival US fruit
companies: Standard Fruit in Puerto Cabezas and United Fruit in
Bluefields. The waxing and waning of the company labor rolls promoted
a constant exchange of people between Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields.
This resulted in the establishment of kin ties between the two port cities
in which the “big families” of Bluefields (Hodgson, Downs, Cuthbert,
Sujo, and Wilson among others) established themselves in Puerto
Cabezas.
This lively rivalry manifested itself in the form of massively attended
sporting tournaments (baseball and basketball) that were sponsored by
the US companies, such as the “Serie del Atlántico” (Atlantic Series).
The trip aboard the Bluefields Express lasted less than five hours and
people remembered that it was comfortable and safe. As one athlete
recalled:
Before Sandino time [the Sandinista Revolution of 1979] Port was

alegre, man. The Bluefields boys them come up here to play, boy.
They play good . . . Lagoon boys too. They come up here with all
the fanatico them. And musicians come too. We play all day and
dance all night, boy. All we want was to beat the Bluefields boys
them. Nothing else matter. When we go to Bluefields they see about
Port people. Next boys them bring their whole family on the boat,
man. They bring food and rum and every damn thing. We all stay
with our people in Bluefields—all the Port People have family in
Bluefields.
The availability of fast, safe, and relatively inexpensive transportation

between Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields (and to a lesser extent smaller
villages such as Cape Gracias a Dios, Prinzapolka, Pearl Lagoon, and
Greytown) made these cultural and athletic exchanges possible. The
above quoted informant jokingly contrasted his memories of “company
time” to the present, in which “you can’t even go to Lamlaya [a small
but important river port two kilometers from Puerto Cabezas] because
the road so bad.” The overland route to Managua, described by a jour-
nalist as a grueling odisea (odyssey), is an infamously difficult route
(Treminio Urbina 2002).
Porteños recalled that Puerto Cabezas was an international city in
which people of diverse nationalities mingled on a daily basis.21 In the
testimonies of my informants, the constant flux of people between
Puerto Cabezas and distant ports of call was highly valued and was con-
trasted to the provincialism of the Pacific Coast, including Managua.
Porteños described Puerto Cabezas as a strikingly multinational city
that, in the idiom of Atlantic Coast, contained every kind of “race” and
“nation.” One Porteño stated:“During company time many people lived
here . . . from the States, from Jamaica, from Germany, from Grand
Cayman, from Panama, everything. Every nation came to Bilwi in order
to work. Bilwi was a big city [tawan tara].”22
In both the English and Miskitu of the Mosquito Coast, the word
“nation” does not correspond to its use in North American English. In
Company Time 125
the popular usage of the Mosquito Coast, “nation” is a term that can
best be described as a fusion of the North American terms “nationality”
and “ethnic group.” Costeños generally recognize foreigners as members
of their respective “nations” (in this case nationalities), but within
Nicaragua they also recognize Indians, Blacks, and Spaniards as “nations.”23
In sum, the distinctive feature of Puerto Cabezas, which Porteños
most referred to in their narratives of “company time,” was the level of
“action” (in English) or movimiento (in Spanish) in the city. Although
they recognized that work opportunities were unstable and that pay in
the US companies was low, they valued the dynamism of the coastal
economy. In their narrative of “company time,” Porteños consistently
emphasized the past “action” of Puerto Cabezas that contrasted with its
present stagnation or “sadness” (tristeza). My informants constantly
lamented that “el puerto esta palmado,” or “the port is busted,” and “No
hay movimiento”—“there is no action.” “Action” for Porteños signified
the presence of a wide variety of international industrial and commer-
cial interests that directly and indirectly resulted in economic opportu-
nities for Porteños. The perception of action promoted in Porteños a
highly valued sense of connection to the wider world.
North American ethnographers have noted that Costeños, particu-
larly Miskito Indians, value their present and historical ties to the
English-speaking Atlantic world and overestimate the importance and
the centrality of their position within that world. Charles Hale and
Edmund Gordon, for example, recognized what they respectively call
“Anglo affinity” and “Anglo ideology” as central elements of Miskito
and Creole worldviews (Hale 1994, 15; Gordon 1995, 6; 1998, 198).
Based on observations made during her fieldwork in the 1960s,
Mary Helms claimed that the Miskito rejected the Hispanic “sphere of
influence” and “imitated” the Anglo-American “sphere of influence”
(Helms 1971, 221). She argued that the Miskito attempted “to feel psy-
chologically a part of modern times,” but that this created anxieties
because “the Miskito do not fully understand the nature of the modern
world” (Helms 1971, 220). She wrote:
For example, at the time of this study the news was heavy with the
increasing military involvement of the United States in Vietnam.
However, reports of fighting in the Far East were interpreted by the
people of Asang to mean that the war would very likely soon affect
them, because once they too experienced conflict on their river in
which the United States was involved (the Sandino Affair), and if it
happened once it could happen again. People talked incessantly
about keeping an eye out for airplanes and awaiting an attack. Yet
beneath the tension was a feeling that it was a mark of importance
and recognition to have war on the river, or, in other words, if war-
fare were part of the modern world, the Miskito should be involved
also. (Helms 1971, 221)
This phenomenon (a certain geopolitical self-importance that leads

to an overestimation of their significance in world affairs) is related to
the inevitable cultural impact of a regionally specific political economy
in which exchange between Costeños and Anglo-Americans has created
a profound dependency on interaction with more powerful external
actors. This dependency and the ideologies that correspond with it need
to be viewed as regionally specific, not ethnically specific.
The US-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in the 1960s was
launched from Puerto Cabezas (A. Adams 1992, 145). As a result of the
close cold-war-era ties between the US government and the Somoza
dictatorship, which was supported by the US-armed and US-trained
Nicaraguan National Guard, the US military provided “aid” and “tech-
nical assistance” in the construction and maintenance of a paved airstrip
on the outskirts of Puerto Cabezas.24 The airstrip, which was long
enough to support civilian and military cargo planes as well as fighter
planes, was of strategic importance for the US and Nicaraguan mili-
taries. For residents of Puerto Cabezas, whose precarious economic
existence relied on the availability of transportation, the airstrip repre-
sented an important and valued link to national and international mar-
kets. Indeed, during my fieldwork the rumor that a major airline was
going to make a stop in Puerto Cabezas on the main Miami-Managua
route spread widely among excited but skeptical residents.
Porteños recalled the brief period before the Bay of Pigs invasion
when Puerto Cabezas was filled with “action” as Cuban exiles and their
US advisors prepared for the invasion of Cuba. The army provisions and
supplies that were left behind at their departure (such as mattresses, tents,
and weapons) filled the formal and informal markets of the city. In
Company Time 127
general, Porteños welcomed the infusion of goods and capital into the
local economy that was caused by the buildup in Puerto Cabezas prior
to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
What was remarkable about my informants’ recollection of the Bay
of Pigs invasion was the matter-of-factness with which they regarded
their city’s brush with first-order geopolitical intrigue. It did not strike
my informants as anomalous or fanciful that Puerto Cabezas should play
a major role in an invasion that eventually led to a nuclear standoff
between the United States and the Soviet Union. In this sense Porteños
conformed to Helms’s characterization (of the Miskito) in which she
identified the exaggerated need “to feel psychologically a part of mod-
ern times” (Helms 1971, 220). Like the Miskito villagers with whom
Helms worked on the Rio Coco in the 1960s, modern Porteños mani-
fest what I prefer to call geopolitical self-importance that is absent from
the Pacific region.
The Mosquito Coast region has in fact been drawn into the center
of US foreign policy on many occasions in the twentieth century. From
the US Marine occupation of region in the 1920s and 1930s, to the Bay
of Pigs invasion of the 1960s, to the US sponsorship of Mosquito Coast
Contras, to the current targeting of the Miskito Coast by the DEA
(Drug Enforcement Administration) in the US “War on Drugs,”
Porteños have many compelling reasons to recognize their role in hemi-
spheric politics.
Booms and Busts: Race and Political

E conomy in the M o s qu ito Coast
In contrast to the traditional sugar and tobacco regions of the
Caribbean, where after emancipation ex-slaves and their descendants
resisted working for wages on plantations and, whenever possible,
attempted to engage in subsistence farming (becoming Sidney Mintz’s
“reconstituted peasantry”), a large-scale plantation or slave economy
never operated on the Mosquito Coast. Porteños to this day devalue
subsistence agriculture and take pride in the fact that they have urban-
oriented jobs and lifestyles. Unlike other banana-growing areas like
Costa Rica and Colombia, where the US companies occupied lands
immediately adjacent to their corporate headquarters, the Standard Fruit
and NIPCO banana and lumber lands, as well as the gold, silver, zinc,
and lead mines of the interior, were relatively distant from Puerto
Cabezas—a fact that discouraged workers from abandoning wage labor
and reconstituting themselves as a peasantry.25
In the twentieth century, rural Costeños significantly increased their
production of agricultural products for sale in local and regional markets.
This change is particularly noteworthy because the region had histori-
cally lacked a significant peasantry.26 The inhabitants of the Mosquito
Coast, regardless of their putative ethnic or racial label, had for hundreds
of years traded naturally occurring forest and marine products with
Anglo-Americans for manufactured goods (including foods such as flour,
cooking oil, and rum). In the trading ports of the region, the demand
for food was filled by both regional and international trade; regionally
traded products obtained from small-scale swidden agriculture (as well as
hunting and gathering) were supplemented by imported international
foodstuffs (Helms 1971, 4). In rural areas, Costeños satisfied their food
needs by practicing a combination of swidden agriculture, fishing, hunt-
ing, and gathering. They regularly obtained manufactured items by par-
ticipating in intermittent wage labor, barter, and the sale of forest and
marine products such as turtle meat (Nietschmann 1973).
In the twentieth century, however, as large-scale lumber, banana,
mining, rubber, tuno, and other companies established themselves in
the Mosquito Coast, the demand for foodstuffs increased as the non-
subsistence sector of the region’s population rapidly grew. Consequently,
the agricultural production increased as rural Costeños began to
increase their production of “cash crops” destined for regional markets.
These cash crops, primarily rice and beans, had not historically been
incorporated into the diet of Costeños, who regarded rice and beans as
“Spanish food.”27
Helms, noting that this shift towards agricultural production for
regional markets was relatively new, argued that despite this recent turn
to peasant-like production, the Miskito Indians did not represent a
classic Mesoamerican peasantry because the region had never been drawn
into the surplus-extracting mechanisms of a nation-state. She wrote:
From the point of view of the Miskito, the motivation to participate

in such activities was not based on inescapable demands by state
officials for a share in their energies and production, as is the case
Company Time 129
with peasant-agrarian state relations. Instead it centered on a grow-

ing desire for the foreign material goods which quickly became cul-
tural necessities for them over the years, a situation that Kroeber has
termed “voluntary acculturation.” Although the introduction of
these goods came originally from the outside world, it was the
increasing dependence on such items as manufactured cloth, iron
tools, sewing machines, and rum that provided the impetus for con-
tinued Miskito involvement with the West. (Helms 1971, 6)
Helms observed that rural Costeños, particularly those living along

the fertile banks of the Coco River, increasingly met their entrenched
demand for foreign goods through the agricultural production of food-
stuffs for sale in regional markets. In the decade from 1960 to 1970 this
process accelerated as increasing number of Pacific campesinos immi-
grated to the region.28
Starting in the late 1940s, the populous Coco River region became
the breadbasket of the Mosquito Coast, establishing itself as the major
supplier of food to Puerto Cabezas (Vilas 1989, 48).29 Waspám, a river-
side city one hundred kilometers from Cape Gracias a Dios, became the
tawan tara (big city) of the Coco River with a bustling panga (small
motorboat) traffic that linked it the approximately seventy villages below
and above it (Gomez 1991, 43).30 Major US companies established
offices at Waspám and made a major investment in the improvement and
maintenance of the Puerto Cabezas-Waspám road. This road became the
best and longest intra-regional road in the entire Mosquito Coast.
In the 1940s the US-based Rubber Reserve Corporation, based in
Waspám, established more than forty commissaries on and around the
Coco River. These commissaries supplied goods to as many as five thou-
sand Costeño rubber collectors in addition to two hundred plant work-
ers in Waspám (Vilas 1989, 48). By the 1960s the World War II-inspired
rubber boom had expired as Southeast Asian rubber production
returned to prewar levels. In the meantime, NIPCO had established a
lumber-processing facility across the river from Waspám in the now-
Honduran city of Leimus.31 Pine extraction peaked in the mid-1950s,
and by 1963 NIPCO abandoned Nicaragua.
In 1955 Wrigley’s Gum Company of Chicago established a tuno
processing plant in Waspám (Vilas 1989, 77).32 The Wrigley company
functioned primarily as a buyer and technical adviser to Coco River

tuno collectors, who bled tuno trees throughout the region and brought
their crudely treated blocks to Waspám for sale. Wrigley closed opera-
tions in 1979 due to the Sandinista revolution.
The final major company that opened in or around Waspám was
ATCHEMCO of the United States. In the mid-1960s, ATCHEMCO
(Atlantic Chemical Company) acquired and expanded a large resin and
turpentine plant in a virtually uninhabited place twenty kilometers out
of Waspám on the Puerto Cabezas-Waspám road (Rivera and Vernooy
1991, 22). ATCHEMCO used as its raw material the resin-rich tree
stumps that NIPCO had left behind when it abandoned the region after
twenty years of devastating logging of Nicaraguan pine stands (Jenkins
Molieri 1986, 203).33 The industrial complex at La Tronquera, which
directly employed as many as five hundred Nicaraguan workers housed
in company barracones, represented a “miniature social universe” (micro
universo social) (Gomez 1991, 53) that in many ways conformed to the
company-town pattern of Puerto Cabezas in the prewar era.34 In the
memories of Porteños, the “action” of Waspám in the early 1960s and
1970s rivaled the then-dwindling “action” of Puerto Cabezas. This turn
of events was particularly galling for Porteños because they had long
regarded the Coco River as an underdeveloped Indian backwater.
After the bust of the banana industry in the early 1940s, the second-
most prominent extractive industry (behind logging) on the coast was
mining. Three Canadian- and US-owned mines operated a hundred and
fifty kilometers west of Puerto Cabezas in the jungle mining cities of
Siuna, Rosita, and Bonanza. The economic void in Puerto Cabezas
caused by the closing of NIPCO in 1963 was for the most part filled by
mine-related commerce as Puerto Cabezas played an important role in
the transfer of products and raw materials to and from “the mines” (the
term used by Costeños).35
Like the Standard Fruit Company in Puerto Cabezas before World
War II, the North American mining companies of the postwar period
practiced a policy of residential segregation, dividing workers into
neighborhoods based on their place in the labor hierarchy.36 Given the
undeniable correlation between the socio-racial identifications (as grin-
gos, Creoles, Miskitos, and Mestizos) of workers and their place in the
labor hierarchy, these neighborhoods were perceived to have a particular
Company Time 131
“ethnic” constitution (Jenkins Molieri 1986, 204). In the mining town

of Siuna, for example, an area called “Jamaica Town” was known as a
Creole neighborhood. Rural Costeños, most of whom went to the
mines in search of seasonal wage labor, lived in the lowest-quality hous-
ing. American technicians lived in air conditioned homes on hillside
compounds, complete with tennis courts and swimming pools.
Nicaraguans were excluded from these “American zones.”
The Costeño villagers of the region in effect formed a “reserve
army” of laborers that could be hired and fired at will according to the
vagaries of production (T. Adams 1981, 59). The lowest-level workers,
who most frequently came from isolated rural Costeño villages that
were considered Indian (Miskito and Sumu), seasonally migrated to the
mines in search of wage labor. In the mines these workers suffered an
alarmingly high rate of silicosis, a lethal lung disease (T. Adams 1981,
69–71).
North American management often favored English-speaking
Costeños, many of whom already had work experience with North
American companies, over monolingual (Miskitu-, Sumu-, and Spanish-
speaking) Nicaraguans.37 Costeños who possessed skills, experience, and
sufficient fluency in English were often given higher-level positions such
as office work or overseer. Given that proficiency in English as well as
formal education were, in the racial ideology of the region, associated
with the term Creole, Creoles were perceived to enjoy a privileged posi-
tion vis-à-vis Indians and Spaniards. This division of labor, consciously
promoted by foreign companies, undoubtedly contributed to the con-
textual hardening of the porous division between Creoles and Miskitos.
This, of course, is not to say that people who primarily identified them-
selves as Miskito or Spaniard did not hold some of these positions.
Indeed, my Porteño informants, some of whom identified themselves
as Spaniards and Miskitos, worked at higher-level jobs in the mines.
Although they did not use the term “Creole,” they in effect passed as
Creoles because by speaking English, coming from Puerto Cabezas,
and having a trade or clerical skills, they could occupy the role that
corresponded to Creoles. Clearly, ethnic identification in this context
was not an inherent quality of an individual; rather, it intersected in
complex and mutually constitutive ways with one’s position within the
larger political economy.
With regard to the relationship between education and socio-racial

identifications, it is important to note that the official evangelizing
strategies of the Moravian Church in the twentieth century recognized
and incorporated the distinction between Creoles and Indians into their
education policy. This is particularly significant given the fact that until
the 1950s the Moravian Church and other missionary churches ran
almost every school in the Mosquito Coast region.38 In some cases the
educational policies of the churches helped reinforce the so-called eth-
nic hierarchy in the North American industries of the region. Take, for
example, the following North American Moravian missionary’s descrip-
tion of the Moravian school at Wasla, a small Indian village: “The mis-
sion had begun an industrial school [in Wasla] as an experiment. A
school which taught reading, writing and perhaps simple arithmetic was
all right, but this seldom helped an Indian boy or girl get a job when he
was older” (Borhek 1949, 27). The Moravian school taught shoe mak-
ing to the children of Wasla because “shoes were important for work on
plantations” (ibid.). Until the 1960s, the urban schools of Bluefields and
Puerto Cabezas were “Creole schools” that used English and Spanish as
the languages of instruction, and were superior to rural schools that
generally used Miskitu as the language of instruction.39 The above
example represents a classic self-fulfilling prophecy in which rural
Miskito children were educated to assume a subordinate position in the
labor hierarchy.
What few government positions that did exist were almost exclu-
sively occupied by Hispanic Nicaraguans, leaving Costeños politically
disenfranchised. The highest-level political office normally held by
Costeños was that of the village “headmen” or “síndico” who served as a
link between the state and the local community. Under Nicaraguan rule
each village acted as an autonomous unit within the state. The síndico
was responsible for collecting relevant taxes and registering civil events
such as marriage, divorce, births, and deaths (Helms 1971, 166).
Motivated by the postwar cotton boom and increasing concern
about rapid resource depletion, the Nicaraguan government began to
make greater efforts to integrate the region into the national govern-
mental and economic structures. Viewed as a vast and underpopulated
frontier, the region began to be used as an outlet for campesino migra-
tion from the Pacific. In the 1950s many Pacific campesinos, who had
Company Time 133
historically engaged in peasant agriculture, were forced from their lands

by aggressive cotton producers. These cotton producers, driven by the
favorable price of cotton on the world market, rapidly displaced
campesinos from Pacific farmland (Vilas 1989, 60–97).
Pacific campesino migration was not a new phenomenon in the
Atlantic Coast. Before 1950 many campesinos were attracted to the
region by the opportunities for wage labor. However, never had migra-
tion occurred on such a large scale. From 1963 to 1971 the population
of the Atlantic Coast increased 63 percent (from 88,963 to 145,508),
while the overall population of Nicaragua increased only 22 percent
(Vilas 1989, 72). The abundance of land and low population, which tra-
ditionally had allowed rural Costeños to retain their subsistence base in
spite of the presence of capitalist enterprises, became challenged by the
influx of the dispossessed peasantry of the Pacific region. This process of
Pacific campesino penetration continues to this day, but after the Con-
tra War, Miskito communities have fiercely guarded community lands, as
the February 2004 forced eviction of forty campesino families by two
hundred armed Miskito residents of Layasiksa (in the mining district)
attests (Martinez 2004).
The developmentalist climate of the era deeply influenced the
Nicaraguan government during the Somoza dictatorship. With the help
of the World Bank, the Nicaraguan government created two organiza-
tions aimed at regulating the “colonization” of the region: INFONAC
(Institute for National Development) and IAN (Nicaraguan Agrarian
Institute). INFONAC initiated a reforestation project in which it cre-
ated and took charge of immense forest reserves. INFONAC did not
consult with the Costeño villagers of the region despite the fact that 12
percent of the reserve land overlapped with lands claimed (both collec-
tively and individually) by Costeños living in villages that had received
title to communal lands as a result of the land-titling process initiated
by the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty of 1905 ( Jenkins Molieri 1986,
290–292). INFONAC placed restrictions and taxes on the use of natu-
ral resources in these areas. This practice embittered Costeño villagers
who had never experienced a comparable level of government interfer-
ence with regard to these lands. The affected villagers, threatened by the
new measures, set forest fires in protest. A remedy to this conflict was
not attempted until the mid 1970s, when IAN gave land titles to sixteen
villages that had been affected by INFONAC’s reforestation projects

( Jenkins Molieri 1986, 299–305).
Apart from the reforestation projects, the government attempted to
carry out what it called an agrarian reform. However, it is clear that this
agrarian reform represented mostly a mechanical transfer of population
from west to east, as well as the increased regulation and taxation by
the Nicaraguan government of foreign and national lumber companies
operating in the region. In 1974 the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio
Somoza declared: “Once again I repeat to the young people of the coun-
tryside who are suffering because all the land is occupied, that here are
the Atlantic Coast and the Coast people waiting for them to come to
make it part of our country and to make the most progressive and the
greatest agrarian reform in Latin America” (Vilas 1989, 78).
At first the government put campesino migrants to work primarily on
transforming the western part of the region into a cattle-exporting zone.
Later, campesino migrants continued to advance eastward, clearing land for
farming. Inland Costeños, mainly Sumu Indians, were often driven from
their lands. It has been approximated that during this period, about
300,000 acres of tropical forest were lost per year (ibid., 75). Between 1964
and 1973, IAN gave titles to 2,594,550 acres of land located in the Mos-
quito Coast to 16,000 families. Half of these grants were given to recent
Pacific Nicaraguan campesinos migrants (ibid., 67). The majority of these
campesinos cultivated crops for sale in the regional and national markets.
This increase in migration and agriculture was accompanied by a
decrease in exports from the region. The 1960s were marked by a rapid
decline in the production of wood and minerals as a result of the exhaus-
tion of these natural resources. At the end of the 1960s copper mining
virtually ended. This occurred only a few years after copper mining had
been the Coast’s most lucrative enterprise. Between 1963 and 1971, 60
percent of mining jobs were lost (approximately 1,800 workers) (ibid.,
77). In the period from 1966 to 1975, copper, which in 1966 had rep-
resented 59 percent of the region’s exports, declined to only 2 percent.
Seafood production (mostly for export to the United States) (ibid.,
76) and resins (derived by ATCHEMCO from the tree stumps left by
NIPCO) replaced minerals and wood as the major exports of the region.
According to Vilas, in 1975 “shellfish and resin accounted for 75 percent
of the exports of the region” (ibid., 83).
Company Time 135
Major international oil companies, which previously manifested

little interest in Nicaragua, received massive exploration concessions
from the Nicaraguan government in the 1970s. More than 90 percent of
these concessions were on the lands and waters of the Mosquito Coast
(ibid., 77).
The wage labor opportunities offered by these new industries did
not replace those lost by the “bust” of the previous industries. As I men-
tioned above, the unavailability of wage labor, and the associated lack of
ability to purchase foreign goods, created an ethic of deprivation in cities
and villages all over the region, not simply Miskito villages as the ethno-
graphic literature seems to suggest.
The Rise of Indian Institutions

and I ndi an Col le c tive Ac ti on
In the 1960s and 1970s the issue of communal land titles, which had
been originally guaranteed for “Mosquito Indians” and “Creoles” by the
Harrison-Altamirano Treaty of 1905, became a highly charged point of
contention between Costeño communities, North American compa-
nies, and the national government. The land tenure situation became
more contentious as a result of the following two factors: (1) many
Nicaraguan Miskito Indian villagers were relocated within national ter-
ritory when Nicaragua lost a large portion of territory (all in the
Atlantic Coast region) to Honduras in a 1960 World Court ruling; and
(2) in 1974 the IAN (Nicaraguan Agrarian Institute) granted titles to vil-
lages that lay on or near the huge “forest reserves,” which, in the face of
opposition by Costeños, were being demarcated in areas claimed by
Costeño cities and villages ( Jenkins Molieri 1986, 290–306).40
Despite the continued controversy surrounding the issue of land
titles, political mobilization around this issue was limited, in almost all
cases occurring on a village-by-village basis. That is to say, the ongoing
struggles by Costeños to acquire and protect land titles did not rely
on (1) a collective mobilization of villages claiming distinctiveness as
Miskitos, Creoles, or any other “ethnic” category; or (2) any formal legal
separation between Indian villages, Creole or for that matter campesino
(Pacific Nicaraguan). Villages primarily made claims to land on the basis
of having been established villages at the time of the Harrison-Altamirano
Treaty or, as in the case of many Rio Coco communities in the early
1970s, on the basis of using land that fell within the forest reserves cre-
ated by the Nicaraguan government at that time. Thus the individual vil-
lage or “community” represented the key classification around which
collective mobilization was exercised. Interestingly, as far as collective
political mobilization was concerned, the racial identification of these
villages, although in many contexts recognized, was not a particularly
salient characteristic.
However, starting in the late 1960s, after at least forty years in which
Costeños remained relatively apolitical, mobilization in the Atlantic
Coast region increasingly came to be carried out along self-consciously
ethnic and racial lines. During this period a number of organizations
emerged that attempted to organize Miskito and Sumo Indians as
Indians who shared a common collective interest above and beyond
their local communities. Although North American missionary churches
promoted these organizations, they represented a departure from the
missionary church-dominated civil society characteristic of the twentieth-
century post-reincorporation history.
Ironically, the Moravian Church during this period had been instru-
mental in inculcating both a pan-Costeño identification and providing
the main institutional support for the salience of the division between
Miskitos and Creoles. On the one hand, the very fact that the Moravian
Church represented a Protestant missionary church that almost exclu-
sively operated in the Atlantic Coast (in contrast to the Catholic
Church, which had been firmly entrenched in the Pacific since the time
of the conquest) helped to provide an institutional basis for Costeño self-
identification as Costeños.41 To be Moravian was to be Costeño, and
profoundly not español. The Moravian Church held “provincial synod”
meetings every three years in which pastors and religious representatives
from villages with churches throughout the region would meet to deal
with church matters.42 Throughout the twentieth century these regional
church meetings represented the primary event that, in addition to labor
migration, allowed Costeños to tangibly experience their regional unity
as a series of communities connected by a common faith and a common
religious institution—an institution that was not shared by “Spaniards”
from the Pacific.
On the other hand, the Moravian missionaries (whose skill and
enthusiasm in learning “native” languages served them in the missionary
Company Time 137
activities throughout the Americas) quite consciously divided their mis-

sionary activities in two branches: the first aimed at Creoles and con-
ducted in English; the second conducted in Miskitu and Sumu and
aimed at Indians.43
The role of Miskito and Sumu organizations starting in the late
1960s differed from role of the Moravian Church in that they were
explicitly Indian organizations that did not attempt to create a separate
parallel organization among Creoles. ALPROMISU (Alianza para el
Progreso de Sumus y Miskitos, Alliance for the Progress of the Miskito
and Sumu) was formed in 1974 with the encouragement and guidance
of North American Capuchin missionary priests, Moravian Church
members (both North American and Costeño), and members of the
Peace Corps.44 Like ACARIC (Association of Agricultural Clubs of the
Río Coco)45 before it, a principal goal of ALPROMISU was to orga-
nize Coco River growers and collectors of foodstuffs and tuno46 into
marketing cooperatives that could demand better prices from regional
merchants (mostly “españoles” and Chinese) who operated primarily out
of Waspám, the capital city of the Coco River. The difficulty of navi-
gating this river, in many ways a social and economic world to itself,
often put cultivators (regardless of their ethnic identification) at the
mercy of these merchants. In some cases villages that did not have stor-
age facilities found themselves compelled to sell the majority of their
rice and beans at harvest time at a low price, only to have to buy them
back later at a much higher price. The folding of ACARIC (which in
two years of existence had organized fifty-three Coco River communi-
ties) in 1972 provided the incentive to create ALPROMISU to continue
to combat this process (CAPRI 1992, 58). In addition to this goal,
ALPROMISU also aimed to advocate for the Indian villages whose
lands were being engulfed by the new forestry projects of the national
government.
The impulse to form such organizations was heightened by the eco-
nomic crisis in the region. By this time the northern Atlantic Coast
region was enduring a sustained economic “bust” in which foreign
goods and wage opportunities were scarce as a result of the closing and
curtailing of major foreign industries. Costeños tended to view their
quality of life as having been much higher during the earlier “company
time” and bemoaned their current situation in which they found
themselves forced to find viable alternatives to the economic supplement

previously provided by wage labor. Mary Helms, who conducted field-
work at this time in an upriver village on the Coco River, described this
Miskito reaction to the economic bust as an “ethic of poverty” (Helms
1971, 156). Given that Costeño representation in Nicaraguan govern-
mental and nongovernmental organizations was almost nonexistent,
Costeños turned to regional networks to attempt to address the
economic and social problems faced by their communities.
Organizations such as ALPROMISU and ACARIC, although not
run directly by churches, were promoted by the social service-oriented
wings of religious organizations, many of which were heavily influenced
by the Vatican II and “liberation theology” calls to address material
poverty as well as spiritual and moral poverty (Hawley 1997, 120). In
many ways the Vatican II calls for “social action” represented just one
example of a larger shift towards greater economic engagement by both
Catholic and Protestant denominations. In the case of ALPROMISU,
the organization received funding from CEPAD (Comité Ecuménico para
el Desarollo), an ecumenical organization devoted to economic develop-
ment in the Atlantic Coast (Sanders 1985, 81).47
In May of 1974 ALPROMISU held its first annual meeting, in
which five hundred participants from eighty-four Miskito and Sumu
communities attended (Hale 1994, 127).48 The meeting was held in Sisín,
an inland village about twenty kilometers northwest of Puerto Cabezas.49
Many of the leaders who participated in the first meeting were pastors in
the Moravian Church, which after the 1974 Synod meeting held in
Bluefields abruptly became an independently funded and locally run
“associated province” of the international Moravian Church (C. García
1996, 100; A. Adams 1992, 174). Church facilities in Sisín, a community
that at the time had no more than five hundred inhabitants, were used by
the organization with full cooperation of the church authorities.
According to my informants, the meeting was very similar to the
periodic pan-regional church meetings that occurred regularly in the
region. Collective kitchens were set up at different homes in the region,
and community members were asked to lodge delegates, many of whom
had traveled for as long as two days by foot and by river. Christian
prayers were offered at the beginning and end of each session, and at the
conclusion of the meeting the delegates returned to their respective
Company Time 139
villages in order to provide a report to villagers during masses and serv-

ices at the local village churches (Hawley 1997, 121; Hale 1994, 128).
The main feature that distinguished this meeting from the regular
pan-regional church meetings was that it took place outside of the
main cities of the region (Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon, Puerto Cabezas,
Bilwaskarma, and Waspám) and delegates from southern English-
speaking (Creole) villages were conspicuously absent. The location of this
meeting was significant because on an ideological level Costeños identify
Creoles with urban areas and Miskitos with rural areas. Within the
Moravian Church, Miskitu-speaking pastors had long complained that
their congregations were considered second class and that Miskito lacked
representation in the church hierarchy (Hale 1994, 126, CAPRI 1992,
60). This complaint was grounded in the historical policy of the church
to use English-speaking Creole pastors, often trained in the theological
seminary in Costa Rica, to evangelize in Miskito regions (Wilson 1975).
It is interesting to note that many of these Creole pastors, most of
who were from Bluefields, viewed themselves as superior to the Miskito
and perceived their work in the northern (Miskito) regions as “mission-
ary” work in a manner similar to that of North American Moravians
performing missionary work among Costeños. To follow Susan Gal’s use
of the concept of recursivity, it could be said that from the Creole per-
spective, the Creole-Miskito relationship recursively mirrored the larger
North American-Costeño relationship. This posture taken by English-
speaking Creoles on one level would seem to represent an example of
the alleged Creole over-identification with North Americans—what
Gordon has labeled “Anglo ideology” (Gordon 1995, 6). However, there
is an important geographic factor that must be considered.
In the course of my fieldwork I found that a number of Moravian
pastors who were raised in Puerto Cabezas but primarily identified
themselves as Miskitos also conceived of their service over the years in
inland and riverine Miskito communities as “missionary” work: Mis-
sionary work among people not only less exposed to God’s teaching but
also less “prepared” and less “civilized” than themselves.50 These Porteño
Moravian pastors had been sent by the church to work in small and
relatively remote Miskito villages in the 1950s and 1960s.
Their recollections of service in the “communities” were marked by
a combination of nostalgia and a kind of ethnographic sensibility, both
of which were infused with a deeply ingrained sense of superiority and

paternalism. They recalled the “communities” as idyllic places of great
natural beauty where life was easier and more tranquil. In contrast to the
city, many vices such as thievery, drunkenness, and violence were absent.
Also people were more friendly and approachable. In addition, they
described the villagers as highly superstitious and unreflective in their
Christianity. They viewed their experiences in the “communities” as an
opportunity to learn about the “ways” of the rural villagers. Given that
they considered themselves distanced from their Miskito “raíces” [roots],
they welcomed the chance to have exposure to a village setting, the ide-
ological center of Miskito life. However, while they and their families
were in the field, they made sure that their children did not “mix” very
much with the villagers, and they insisted that their children be educated
in Puerto Cabezas and Managua so that they could become “prepared.”
An inherent part of their ethnological curiosity was a feeling of superi-
ority as Moravian-educated Porteños, Porteños who also identified at
some level as Miskitos.
How then are we to interpret this case? Clearly it suggests that some
sort of identification with the civilizing project of the Anglo-American
and Christian world has occurred among both Creoles and Miskitos,
validating the Hale and Gordon notion of Creole “Anglo ideology” and
Miskito “Anglo affinity.” On the other hand, this case challenges the
analytical value of positing a radical separation between the ideological
world of Miskitos and Creoles. In addition to racial and ethnic ideolo-
gies, this case must also be understood in the context of regional status
hierarchies—namely a rural-urban dynamic in which urbanism is asso-
ciated with civilization, modernity, and cultural and racial hybridity,
while ruralism is associated with a lack of refinement and Miskito cul-
tural purity. It also provides an example of the importance Costeños give
to formal education (“preparation”). The Miskito category is crosscut by
regionally specific, status-based distinctions. It is precisely such an atten-
tion to status differentiation that has been so lacking in the writings on
the region—writings that often have ignored these factors in favor of the
reification of so-called ethnic distinctions.
The development of ALPROMISU’s institutional philosophies and
practices were deeply influenced by trends in both Catholic and Protestant
Company Time 141
missionary evangelization that took hold in the late 1960s. In

addition to the renewed commitment to social action referred to above,
missionaries in the region, influenced by Vatican II, the Episcopal Con-
ference of Medellín, liberation theology, and Paolo Freire’s “liberating
education,” devoted themselves to new kinds of culturally responsive
methods of evangelization (Hawley 1997, 119). Responding to oppo-
nents who criticized missionary work as arrogant and paternalistic, mis-
sionaries began to adopt a rhetoric of cultural tolerance, an early version
of today’s multiculturalism. Catholic and Protestant missionaries, who
in the Atlantic Coast region worked together to a surprising degree,
attempted to heed Pope Paul VI’s call to “evangelize cultures.”51
Gregorio Smutko, a Capuchin Franciscan friar who worked for
twenty-two years (starting in 1967) as a missionary in the region and
who served as an adviser to ACARIC, ALPROMISU, and later
MISURASATA, was a strong proponent of the need for such an
approach that would integrate a group’s culture and history into their
evangelization. As an anthropologist with a master’s degree from the
University of Wisconsin, he represented an ideal candidate for enacting
this approach in eastern Nicaragua among the Miskito Indians. As Indi-
ans and therefore as culture-bearing subjects, they fell under the juris-
diction of both missionaries and anthropologists. Smutko was both. He
defined “inculturation,” the term used by missiologists to describe this
approach to evangelization, in the following manner: “Inculturation . . .
is the incarnation of the message of Christ and the Christian life into a
culture in such a way that the members of the culture do not consider
Christian faith as an imposition from another culture, but rather com-
patible with the values of their own culture. . . . Gradually Christian val-
ues purify the counter values of the culture and a mutual enrichment
takes place between cultures (Smutko 1992, 64).
For Smutko this approach was particularly “important in dealing
with indigenous groups . . . where many are tempted to consider their
culture inferior . . . [and] are tired of being told by outsiders what is
wrong with their culture” (ibid., 65). In the name of the battle against
intolerance and Euroamerican pretensions of superiority, Smutko
strove to merge Christianity and anthropology into what he called
“anthropological catechism” (Smutko 1983, 42). Consciously analyzing,
describing and, in a word, objectifying Miskito culture and history as

Miskito culture and history then became an integral part of the mis-
sionary evangelical project.52
In 1970 Smutko and other Catholic missionaries brought twenty-
four “Miskito lay evangelists” from various Coco River villages for an
interactive workshop (cursillo) titled the “Salvation History of the
Miskito.”53 During the ten-day workshop the Miskito lay ministers were
asked to identify the main features of their history and customs as a
nation and then compare these to history and customs of the Hebrew
nation as they appeared in the Old Testament. The objective of this exer-
cise was to help the Miskito discover “the seeds of God’s word in their
own history” (Smutko 1983, 43). In turn, the Miskito lay ministers, by
discovering the parallels between their own history and Biblical scrip-
tures, would more “easily receive God’s word and be seriously commit-
ted to better love and serve their communities” (ibid., 45). Smutko
wrote: “We are convinced psychologically, anthropologically, theologi-
cally and pedagogically it is good to help the miskitos to discover the
word of God written in the heart of their people and their ancestors and
to discover the salvation history of the miskito nation and then reinforce
it with reference to the Biblical similarities between the salvation history
of the miskitos and that of the jews” (ibid.).
Clearly, this method took for granted the existence of a discrete
Miskito culture and history that was separate from both biblical and mod-
ern Christian culture and history. So, for example, the Miskito belief in
a single supreme deity called Wan Aisa or Dawan (a Miskito word proba-
bly derived from the English “The One God”) was regarded by the
missionaries as an independently derived parallel between indigenous
Miskito religion and Christian monotheism (Smutko 1983, 47; also see
Conzemius 1932, 129; and Sandoval 1957, 61 for a description of these
concepts). The missionaries relied upon a definition of the Rio Coco vil-
lagers as an indigenous group (indeed an Indian nation) that possessed a
discreet pre-Hispanic culture whose features could be readily discerned
from European and Christian contaminants, thereby helping to inculcate
in the Miskito a rhetoric of cultural difference and a sense of otherness.
The Miskito lay ministers in conjunction with the Capuchin mis-
sionaries constructed a fascinating two-column table, a version of which
Smutko partially reprinted in his 1983 article, which visually represented
Company Time 143
the parallels between Hebrew history and Miskito history. In the

Hebrew column, participants listed elements of Old Testament history,
while in the Miskito column they listed the corresponding elements of
Miskito culture. Just as the Hebrews “were unaware of their exact ori-
gin,” the Miskitos were also said to be unaware of their exact origin
(Smutko 1983, 46). Like the Hebrews who regarded Adam and Eve as
the first man and woman, the Miskito regarded “Moris Davis” and
“Awas Tara” as the first man and woman (ibid.).54 Like Moses who led
the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land, Miskut “came from
Honduras with all his tribe to Sita Awala (Cabo Viejo)” (ibid.).55 The
Miskito multiracial heritage in which “the inhabitants of Sandy Bay
(Tawira) mixed their blood with that of blacks, englishmen, etc.” was
compared to the biblical facts that “many Hebrews married canaanites”
and “mixed with other nations [ pueblos]” (ibid.). In general, Miskito lays
ministers were, through participation in these exercises, being asked to
both learn about their history from the missionaries and identify ele-
ments of the oral tradition of the region that they, in turn, presented as
their own national history.
However, with regard to the issue of the increasing radicalization of
Miskito consciousness, by far the most important history lesson that the
Miskito lay ministers were supposed to take away from these sessions was
that the Miskito not only represented a nation, but that also they had his-
torically been an aggressive and expansive nation that had never been con-
quered by their Spanish Nicaraguan oppressors. Smutko, in addition to his
anthropological and theological interests, was also a historian of the Mos-
quito Coast. In the 1980s he published a relatively secular history of the
region titled La Mosquitia: Historia y Cultura de la Costa Atlántica. At the
request of Miskito lay ministers who had participated in his 1987 work-
shop, the volume was re-published in Miskitu in 1989 (Smutko 1992, 64).
During my fieldwork periods in Nicaragua, I noticed that a number of my
informants proudly possessed a copy of this bright yellow book.56
The title of the Miskitu edition of the book is revealing: Miskitu
Nani Aiklabanka, Blasi Piua Wina 1850 Kat, which can be translated as
“The Battles of the Miskitos from the Beginning to the Year 1850.”
The participants in the 1970 workshops learned the dates and sites of
eighteenth-century Miskito confrontations against “the Spanish invaders”
that occurred in Pacific Nicaragua and other Spanish-controlled areas of
Central America (Smutko 1983, 46). They noted that just as King David
and King Solomon had defeated enemy nations, the Miskitos “con-
quered more than 20 neighboring tribes” and bested Spanish armies.
Eventually, the Miskito nation, of their own volition, “peacefully sub-
mitted to Nicaragua but no nation was ever able to conquer the miski-
tos” (ibid., 47). The 1970 workshop concluded with the following
thought:“Nations that do not fight for progress and improvement are the
slaves of others. The Miskito must continue fighting for their own
progress” (ibid., 48). Although ultimately the goals of these workshops
were to aid the missionaries in the lasting Christian conversion of the
inhabitants of the region, their methods contributed to the increasing
self-perception of Rio Coco villagers as an Indian nation, as well as their
increasing self-presentation as culture-bearing subjects.
The Moravian Church (which along with the Catholic Capuchin
missionaries in the Mosquito Coast was deeply influence by the current
trends in what was called progressive pastoralism) immediately took an
interest in the courses and methods developed by Smutko and his asso-
ciates. These courses later became very popular among Moravian pastors
and were offered throughout the 1970s (Hawley 1997, 120). This shar-
ing of materials and strategies between long-time rivals was not surpris-
ing in this region where Catholic and Protestant missionaries had been
cooperating closely for at least seventy years (Wilson 1983, 55). Based
on the analysis of the accounts of ALPROMISU leaders with regard to
the self-proclaimed “cultural revival” campaign that they initiated in the
1970s, it seems clear that the methods and ideas they used in their
so-called (so-called by outside analysts) “ethnic” mobilization was almost
indistinguishable from those used simultaneously in the religious mobi-
lization of the region carried out by Catholic and Protestant churches,
most importantly the Moravian church. The religious nature of modern
Miskito resurgence is almost completely absent from the anti-Sandinista
“essentialist” accounts, which I document in the next chapter, because
these are perceived to be incongruous with “indigenous identity.”
Cultural Ide ntity, Ge nde r,

and Pol i t i cal Economy
The extreme volatility of the regional economy prevented rural
Costeños from completely abandoning subsistence and “cash crop”
Company Time 145
agriculture, thereby creating a contentious dual economy in Costeño

villages in which, to quote geographer Bernard Nietschmann, a capital-
istic mode of production deeply threatened the preexisting “domestic
mode of production” (Nietschmann 1973, 193).57 Male rural villagers of
the region supplemented wage labor stints that were aimed at earning
cash for the purchase of manufactured goods with agriculture on local
village lands. The agricultural sector of rural village economies had “tra-
ditionally” relied on kin-based reciprocal exchange. However, in the
twentieth century reciprocal exchange-based interactions were upset, as
rural men became more deeply involved in an international capitalist
economy as wage laborers and collectors and hunters of forest and
marine products for sale to international buyers.
Although Nietschmann recognized the antiquity of Miskito trading
ties with foreigners, he believed the “traditional subsistence system” was
in danger of finally being entirely replaced by the “market economy”
(ibid., 237). He wrote: “The relationship between subsistence primacy
and subsidiary market sales is changing. Through the long history of
economic contact between the Miskito and foreigners, the subsistence
system was never replaced by a monetary system, yet this seems to be
happening today” (ibid., 61).
In the case of Tasbapauni, a coastal fishing village closer to
Bluefields than Puerto Cabezas that was Nietschmann’s field site, the
final blow to the subsistence system came in 1970 with the establishment
in Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas of foreign-owned sea turtle-exporting
companies that created an unlimited market for sea turtles in coastal vil-
lages (ibid., 199). As a consequence of this change, Miskito and Creole
“turtle men,” particularly the younger generation (“de younger race”)
(ibid., 201), overfished turtle stocks and reneged on their traditional
(non-capitalistic) obligations to distribute turtle meat to kin and villagers.
In Between Land and Water, Nietschmann identified both Creoles and
the “younger race” of Miskito men as the capitalistic sector of village
society that rejected the domestic mode of production and so-called tra-
ditional reciprocal exchange. Although Nietschmann presented his work
as a description of “Miskito culture,” he recognized that the village in
which he worked (Tasbapauni) had “four major ethnic groupings”:
Indian, mixed, Creole, and foreigner (ibid., 59). According to
Nietschmann, a significant element of the distinction between Creoles
and Indians was their economic orientation, particularly their respective

level of adherence to “traditional social patterns.” He wrote: “In many
respects to the Miskito, Creoles personify the outside world with its dif-
ferent economic systems and social responses. The Indians consider the
Creoles to be stingy, abrasive and mean, who sell rather than give, who
hire people for agricultural work rather than exchange labor commu-
nally. If an Indian or a mixed does not honor traditional rules and
expected behavior patterns, he or she is thought to have a ‘Creole Way’
in them” (ibid., 59).
By associating Miskito identity with tradition, he defined the Indian
as a non-capitalistic group that stood in contrast to the presumably non-
traditional Creoles. Nietschmann defined a Miskito villager as a person
who “follows traditional customs” and a Creole as a person who “does
not conform too rigidly to traditional cultural patterns” (ibid.).
Interestingly, Tasbapauni has come to be generally regarded as a
Creole village (Hale 1994, 124). This shift in identification from Miskito
to Creole would imply, if we were to accept the given ethnic character-
izations at face value, that the economic orientations of the village
should have radically changed from “traditional” reciprocity to “stingy”
market principles. This does not appear to be the case. Tasbapauni is still
a small fishing village that combines subsistence fishing and agriculture
with “cash” fishing and turtling, an activity that did not lead to the
extinction of the green turtle species and the breaking of all communal
ties in the village.58
Charles Hale, who conducted fieldwork in the southern Atlantic
Coast region in the 1980s, attributed this shift in self-identification of
Tasbapauni villagers to the tendency of Costeños to shift their socio-
racial identification from Indian to “one of the more privileged ethnic
groups” (Creoles in the south and Mestizos in the north) as part of a
“strategy of upward mobility” (Hale 1994, 123). He argued that the suc-
cess in the late 1970s of Tasbapuani villagers in the regional lobster and
turtle trade (some of them “acquired their own boats and developed
direct relationships with companies in Bluefields and Corn Island”)
(ibid., 122) induced them to identify as Creole, a higher-status group.
Citing Bourgois and Grunberg’s 1980 study (CIERA 1981) of the Coco
River villages, Hale made note of a similar phenomena in the northern
region in which “upwardly mobile” Miskito villagers increasingly
Company Time 147
identify as Mestizo and “scorned Miskitu culture as backward and took

every opportunity to emphasize their affinities with Spanish-speakers”
(Hale 1994, 125).
In light of these shifts in socio-racial identification in response
to socioeconomic success, Hale, with the benefit of twenty years of
hindsight, critiqued Nietschmann’s approach to race and ethnicity in
Tasbapauni. He wrote: “By presenting ethnic categories as static, how-
ever, he misses the relationship between economic and ethnic change.
As people ‘made it’ economically in southern Zelaya, they often came to
increasingly to identify as Creole” (ibid., 124).
According to Hale, the ethnic switch of economically successful ex-
Miskitos “deprived Miskitu people of middle-class allies and accentuated
their sense of political-economic deprivation” (ibid.). In the Mosquito
Coast village of Tasbapauni, upwardly mobile villagers, according
to Hale, changed their race. This phenomenon speaks to the deep
interpenetration of racial ideologies and political economic change in
Tasbapauni and the Mosquito Coast in general. This case serves
to demonstrate the porous nature of ethnic boundaries in the region—
indeed the disutility of viewing ethnic and racial categories as corre-
sponding neatly to culturally bounded social groups.
Whereas Nietschmann portrayed an entire “ethnic grouping,” the
Creoles, as the market-oriented sector of coastal society, Helms viewed
a particular gender within Miskito society, Miskito men, as the market-
oriented group. Working along the Coco River, Helms argued that
women represented the last bulwark against the total erosion of the tra-
ditional economic system. Specifically, she argued that the agricultural
work of women maintained the subsistence base of rural Costeño
villages and allowed men to engage in “commercial ventures” such as
seasonal wage labor, “cash crop” farming, and rubber, tuno, animal hide,
or turtle hunting and collection (Helms 1971, 231). The continuous
agricultural production of women mitigated, according to Helms, the
disruptive negative effects of the boom and bust cycles of the region and
allowed a gendered dual economy (which she labeled a “basic familial
division of labor”) to persist (ibid.). She wrote:
The very recurrence of economic cycles, what has at times led to

insecurity, restricted sociability, and economic depression is perhaps
also responsible for the maintenance of the Miskito subsistence

economy. . . . The periodic return to depression conditions after
more or less short-lived booms has meant that the Miskito have had
to continue to fall back on their traditional economic practices to
tide them over depression periods. The relative frequency with
which boom-and-bust have followed each in the last sixty or seventy
years has meant that there has not been an extended period of time
such that an entire generation would be divorced from subsistence
activities long enough to begin to forget relevant techniques. The
division of labor between men and women makes this even more
unlikely. As long as women remain relatively village-bound and are
concerned primarily with agriculture, the subsistence cushion will
in all likelihood remain. (ibid., 233)
Thus Helms associated the women-dominated agricultural sector

with traditional non-capitalistic relations. This traditional sector allowed
the Miskito to withstand the boom and bust cycles of the capitalist
export-oriented sector, in effect subsidizing the US companies in the
region by allowing them to have a standing reserve army of laborers.
Helms described women as the “conservative core” of Miskito soci-
ety. Miskito women were able to retain “traditional Miskito culture”
because they historically “did not come into contact with foreigners as
much as men did” (ibid., 230).59 She wrote:
Women’s conservativism seems to have played an important role in

maintaining a stable, definitely Miskito, cultural core, that is, in
maintaining Miskito cultural identity. In addition to relative lack of
direct contact, villages approximated a matrilocal settlement pattern,
so that a nucleus of related women, mothers and daughters, formed
the permanent element. Regardless of their husbands’ wanderings,
these women formed a stable consanguineal core in and of them-
selves. Therefore, all children born to Miskito women . . . grew up
in a village where the Miskito language was spoken, and where tra-
ditional Miskito customs, many of them based on the duties and
obligations of kinship, were taught and practiced by a close knit and
cooperative group of related women. Whatever the nature of later
contact with agents of change, and this applies especially to boys,
Company Time 149
there was a solid background of “Miskitoness” already firmly estab-

lished. This organization pattern is an important reason why Miskito
culture still remains viable today. (ibid.)
Although Helms recognized that the intensification of “cash crop”

agriculture and wage labor during “company time” disrupted Miskito
society, the fact that women remained in the villages practicing subsis-
tence agriculture provided a “cultural cushion to balance the vagaries of
Western demands” (ibid., 231). For Helms the role of women’s labor
within a regional economic system that relied on their surplus agricul-
tural production caused them to serve as the “cultural cushion” of
Miskito communities (ibid., 233).
In essence, both Nietschmann and Helms defined the Miskito as a
traditional rigidly bounded social group that operated on non-capitalistic
economic principles. They regarded Creole and Mestizo social life
as operating under very different market-driven modern principles in
which kinship was structurally less important. In light of the history of
the region in which the group identification of Costeños as Africans and
Indians has been highly politicized, contentious, and fluid, there exists a
danger of mistaking discourses of African and Indian ethnic difference
with the everyday practice of social life.

Costeños have developed a wide variety of economic and cultural
adaptations to changing political and economic conditions over time—
some more capitalistic than others. In the ethnographic record of the
twentieth century, it is clear that Costeños in part understood and inter-
preted their world through a racial model in which there were parallel
economies: an Indian one based on reciprocity and a Creole one based
on market exchange. However, after hundreds of years of shared history
(fostered, in part, by the geographic and ecological unity of the region
as well as its distinctive colonial history vis-à-vis the Pacific Coast),
inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua forged themselves into
a single society where, contrary to the prevailing social scientific
approaches to the region, social “fault lines” did not occur solely on
racial terrain (Smith 1996, 175).60 Within this regional culture, racial
ideologies (Costeño ideas about race) are inextricably linked to political
economic conditions. These racial ideologies, at different moments in

Mosquito Coast history, have become intensely politicized.
In the case of the Mosquito Coast, it is more productive to view
racial categories as, to quote Lee Drummond, “symbols rather than
signs.” These categories do not function simply as labels that are attached
to a concrete and uncontestable referent. Rather, these symbols (ideas
about race and human difference) are integrated into larger ideological
systems and “become ideas that men [and women] use to create a social
world around them” (Drummond quoted in Brackette Williams 1991,
127). As I will continue to illustrate in subsequent chapters, individual
actors, in turn, manipulate and contest ethnic stereotypes and symbols in
their everyday status struggles. In the Mosquito Coast, ideologies of eth-
nic difference are used as after-the-fact rationalizations of class position
and mobility, as the above analysis of Helms’s and Nietschmann’s work
demonstrates.
It is important to note that the racial ideology that has developed in
the Mosquito Coast associates urbanity (the consumption and work
patterns of “city life”) with the Creole ethnic category. The Indian
category is generally associated with rurality, understood as subsistence
production combined with low-level seasonal wage labor and trade.
Throughout the history of the region, all Costeños have adopted a
common, but regionally varied, economic and cultural adaptation in
which they have actively engaged in trade and labor exchanged with the
Anglo-Caribbean world. The agro-industrial penetration in the region
(in the form of capital-intensive and foreign-owned logging, banana,
rubber, and mining industries) that started in the nineteenth century and
greatly intensified in the twentieth century promoted the formation of
a large segment of Costeño society that became dedicated to and
dependent on their involvement with these extractive industries—most
starkly in the port cities of Greytown, Bluefields, and Puerto Cabezas.
As a result of the particularities of Mosquito Coast history, this segment
of society came to be associated with the Creole category—a putatively
Black racial category. To put it bluntly, to be Creole is to be a city
dweller. In this sense the meanings of the racial categories in the region
are and continue to be inextricably linked to the political economy of
the region—a political economy profoundly shaped by the boom-and-
bust cycles of North American extractive industries.
Company Time 151
What then are the implications of the above conclusions for an

understanding of the social life of Puerto Cabezas during “company
time”? The most important feature of Puerto Cabezas that is relevant at
this point in my analysis is undoubtedly the port city’s extreme depen-
dence on distant regional and international production and trade. Puerto
Cabezas has from its inception been a consumer city created and
propped up by its international resource-extracting industries. Porteños
have in turn internalized their dependence on foreign capital as a
positive collective trait that distinguishes them from both Pacific
Nicaraguans and Indians. Unlike the iconic Indian of the Miskito
woman in Helms’s analysis or the traditional Miskito in Nietschmann’s
analysis, Porteños completely lack a “subsistence cushion” of any kind
on which to fall back. Therefore, to live and work in Puerto Cabezas is
at one level to live, consume, and work like a Creole (at least as Creole
is defined in the popular imagination). In this sense, Puerto Cabezas had
a strong ideological predisposition to identification as a Creole city, or
“Black man city” as some Porteños call it.61 For this and other reasons
Puerto Cabezas has been known in the twentieth century as a center of
Creole population.
In the next chapter I will explore the consequences of the tumul-
tuous events of the 1980s, when the political economic underpinnings
of Creole identification were rapidly withdrawn as a result of the
Sandinista Revolution, in which all North American companies evacu-
ated the Atlantic Coast, leaving Puerto Cabezas in its present “busted”
state.
Chapte r 5
Neighborhoods and Official

Ethnicity
When I first started fieldwork in puerto cabezas, I

had hoped to focus my attention on the regional councils of the new
autonomous regions and the ways in which race and culture were
invoked within them. However, to my dismay I discovered that this
forum was, for my purposes, remarkably ethnographically sterile as well
as logistically frustrating. With regard to the logistical frustrations, I dis-
covered that the national government, led by the UNO party, neglected
to fund the regional councils. It also neglected to invest the regional
councils with anything but the most limited governmental authority. For
this reason the councils rarely met. When they did meet, the sessions
were mired in protocol and factional posturing that I found to be
anthropologically uninteresting.
After a great many frustrating interviews in which I found next to
impossible to get more than the standard factional “party line,” I decided
to stop interviewing Costeño politicians. For this and other reason, I
started to focus my attention on the behaviors and testimonies of a wider
variety of Porteños rather than their regional representatives.
In my research I did not focus on the most obvious examples of
cultural politics in the region, such as the Contra War itself and the sub-
sequent formation of regional councils that were composed of represen-
tatives with an official ethnic label. Rather, I chose to focus on a series
of more mundane expressions of the role of racial and cultural ideolo-
gies in the life of Puerto Cabezas. My findings are significant because
they complicate our understanding of role of racial categories in Puerto
Cabezas by demonstrating the complicated ways in which these cate-
gories intersect with regional and class-based distinctions that have
specific meanings in Puerto Cabezas.
152
Neighborhoods and Official Ethnicity 153
From Company Time to Sandino Time

The 1979 overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and the subsequent
ascension to power of the FSLN abruptly marked the end of “company
time” in Puerto Cabezas. Not coincidentally, the events of 1979 led to
the emergence of Puerto Cabezas as a Miskito Indian city in the dis-
course of Costeños. Whereas during “company time” the political and
economic environment of the city promoted Creole self-identification,
“Sandino time” (as Costeños commonly refer to the period from 1979
to 1990) witnessed the rise of Indian self-identification. The upheavals
of “Sandino time” also resulted in a political power shift away from
Porteños and towards recent migrants from “the communities” who had
been displaced by the Contra War. Given the nature of racial ideologies
in the region, specifically with regard to extant rural-urban dynamics,
the influx of war refugees into the city was perceived through a racial
lens such that the influx of rural Costeños was experienced as a Miski-
toization of the city. This perception was greatly sharpened by the fact
that this influx of rural Costeños went hand in hand with the rapid
decapitalization of resource-extracting industries, which had provided
the material underpinning to the Creole identification.
The political and economic changes of “Sandino time” had an acute
impact on the construction, transformation, and mobilization of racial
ideologies in Puerto Cabezas. In the 1980s Puerto Cabezas became the
political center of a self-proclaimed Miskito Indian resurgence-cum-
insurgency that was understood internationally as quintessential cases of
“ethnic conflict,” “cultural clash,” and the “national question.” This
conflict was presumed to have taken place as a result of the narrowly
defined cultural differences between the Miskito Indians of the Atlantic
Coast and the ethnically Latin American revolutionaries of the Pacific
Coast. I argue that the opposition of Costeños to the revolutionary pro-
gram should be understood as a product of cultural differences (when
these are defined as language, religion, and customs), and also as the
product of the perception that the revolutionary government would iso-
late the region and push it further away from its people’s cosmopolitan
ideal. This also can be seen as a kind of cultural clash, but not the sort
posited in the literature on the period, which traced the conflict to cul-
turally based, culturally rooted “misunderstandings” between Sandinistas
and Miskitos.
A great deal of academic attention has been devoted to providing a

more refined explanation for the causes of this conflict by incorporating
so-called historical, ethnic, and cultural factors into the analysis. This
effort suffers from the problem of diminishing return. Bluntly stated, the
Mosquito Coast crisis of the 1980s resulted directly from the cold war
geopolitical maneuvering of the US State Department and the Soviet
Union. In this sense the causes of the crisis are not mysterious. There-
fore, to set the analysis of culture and history to the interpretive task of
revealing the underlying causes of the Mosquito Coast crisis represents,
in the end, a misguided effort (unless, of course, it was the case that the
gaze of this analysis was directed at the makers of the cold war in the
Pentagon and the Kremlin). It is, however, a productive endeavor to
shed light on the impact of the political and economic convulsions of
the 1980s (only one of which was the Contra War) on the ways in which
racial and cultural discourses were mobilized in Puerto Cabezas in the
period from 1979 to the present.
Decapi tali zat i on and Abandonme nt

It is generally held, both inside and outside of Nicaragua, that the
single most important factor in the ethnic conflict of the 1980s was the
attempt by the national government in the Pacific to control and govern
the Mosquito Coast region, which, through Pacific Nicaraguan neglect
and self-interest, had never been fully integrated into Nicaraguan
national life. This historical feature of Nicaraguan politics generated
deeply rooted cultural differences between the inhabitants of the Pacific
Coast and the inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast. These differences, in
turn, were presumed to lie at the heart of Costeño resistance to
Nicaraguan rule in the 1980s, as Costeños were presumed to have been
intolerant of subordination at the hands of cultural and ethnic “others.”
However, in the testimonies of my informants in 1992 and 1993, I
found that the issues that Costeños found most intolerable were the eco-
nomic deprivations and changes that had occurred after the Sandinista
Revolution. They blamed most of these deprivations on the Revolution.
The lack of wage labor opportunities, particularly in the agro-industrial
sector, caused by the flight of North American companies stood out in
the minds of my informants as the most prominent of these deprivations.
Given the importance for Porteños of their collective self-image as a
cosmopolitan people, the decapitalization in the region had significant

social and cultural ramifications beyond the purely economic hardships
that it produced.
In my interviews with Porteños about “Sandino time” in Puerto
Cabezas, my informants consistently returned to, in one form or
another, the theme of “abandonment.” Whereas in their testimonies
about Puerto Cabezas before the Revolution, they nostalgically empha-
sized the connection of the city to the wider world, as well as its
“action” (movimiento), their post-revolutionary descriptions emphasized
the feeling of isolation and stagnation that set in during the economic
and political upheaval of the 1980s. In the minds of Porteños, Puerto
Cabezas had become a forsaken place that despite its increasing popula-
tion and nominal political and administrative importance no longer
offered its residents the kind of life that they once enjoyed (and were
perceived to have enjoyed) in the past. Porteños did not simply lament
the high levels of unemployment that resulted from the flight of the
resource-extracting foreign companies that had once pumped jobs and
dollars into the regional economy. Equally prominent in their testi-
monies was the sense of being isolated and disconnected from the wider
world. This isolation was evidenced by, among other things, their refer-
ence to the lack of activity on the pier, the disrepair of the city’s houses,
the immigration of the so-called “original Port People” to the United
States, the unwillingness of these immigrants to return to Puerto
Cabezas to visit, the absence of working foreigners in the city (as
opposed to the leftist political tourists who visited the city throughout
the 80s and 90s and almost always disappointed Porteños by their casual
dress and their frugal spending habits), and also the chronic shortage of
goods, particularly those goods that had been associated with company
time. These goods included items such as clothes, appliances, flour, and
small North American goods, from playing cards to flashlights.
Porteños unwaveringly described the situations in Puerto Cabezas
as lamentable. In Spanish, one of the adjectives that my informants
most frequently used to describe Puerto Cabezas was “palmado,” which
is a slang term that denotes destitution and poverty. In our endless
conversations about the extreme levels of poverty and violence in the
city, one of my key informants constantly used the refrain “pobre Bilwí”
to describe the present state of affairs. In Miskitu, my informants
described Puerto Cabezas during “Sandino time” as “sari” (sad) because

there was no work and no money (wark apu, lalah apu). This sentiment
did not change with the electoral defeat of the Sandinista administration
in 1990. Puerto Cabezas continues to be abandonado (abandoned).
The fact that the hardships of the postrevolutionary period in Puerto
Cabezas should have been experienced as abandonment speaks to the
importance for Porteños of maintaining cultural, social, and economic
ties with the rest of the world. This outward-looking orientation is a
defining characteristic of Costeños that North American ethnographers
have noted throughout the century, although they generally have recog-
nized this as a Miskito trait (Conzemius 1932; Helms 1971; Dennis
and Olien 1984). Costeños generally expect the events and actors of
the international arena to affect their lives, and at times this clearly leads
them to overestimate the degree to which these events are likely to
impinge on their world.
Costeño receptiveness towards high-status outsiders has also been
noted throughout the ethnographic literature, and nothing I observed in
Puerto Cabezas contradicted this observation. Indeed, this trait proved
to be enormously helpful during my research, as Porteños eagerly
volunteered to speak with me (a Miskitu-speaking Latino gringo of
“Spanish” Nicaraguan and Costa Rican parentage) without hesitation
about topics that I expected to invite greater reticence. I also observed
that despite the city’s early history of racial violence and also despite
Porteños near obsession with racial banter (particularly pertaining to
skin color), the people of Puerto Cabezas and the Atlantic Coast are sur-
prisingly racially tolerant. Porteños recognize that Puerto Cabezas had
always been a place inhabited by many different “razas” and “naciones”
(races and nations). Indeed, during “company time” the presence of
people from near and far parts of world (Chinese, Turks, Italians, Japan-
ese, Jamaicans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Germans, gringos and others)
served as welcome indication to Porteños of the economic vitality of the
port and of the region.1
As a consequence of the Revolution, the demography of the
population of Puerto Cabezas radically changed as refugees from the
Miskitu-speaking Coco River region entered the city by the thousands.
Simultaneously, the Creole elite and Chinese merchants fled the city.
Government administrators and soldiers from Managua (whose numbers
had previously been far fewer) flooded the region, particularly Puerto
Cabezas. The upshot of these changes was that Puerto Cabezas became
far less international and racially diverse. My Porteño informants
regarded this fact as symptomatic of the “abandonment” of the city.
Porteños distinguish themselves from other Costeños on the basis of
their ability to speak Spanish and relate well with “Spaniards.” They take
pride in their own multilingualism (English, Spanish, and Miskitu),
which they contrast to the monolingualism of English-speaking areas to
the south and Miskitu-speaking areas to the west and north. Porteños
universally recognize the importance of multilingualism and they regard
this trait as being an integral part of being “prepared” (preparada), an
important and commonly used term that can be translated as educated or
sophisticated. To be “prepared” means to have the necessary education
and formally acquired skills to succeed in a profession (carrera). Prepara-
tion, apart from being a mark of personal refinement, also places one in
a position to attain a job of high prestige, which in Puerto Cabezas is
defined as those jobs that spare one from routine manual labor. Hence,
in Nicaragua, no matter how much folk knowledge a campesino may
have with regard to agricultural techniques, he or she would never be
described as preparada. Porteños view themselves as being more highly
prepared than other Costeños on the basis of their multilingualism and
their greater access to formal education and training given by foreign
companies, missionary churches, and the Nicaraguan state.
Notwithstanding the abandonment of the region, Porteños view the
relatively more advanced infrastructure (running water, electricity, roads,
etc.) of the city in comparison to other regions of the Mosquito Coast
as another indication of the privilege and, indeed, superiority, of
Porteños. During my fieldwork in Puerto Cabezas, Porteños manifested
this self-perception in a multitude of ways, including (as I illustrate in
this chapter) popular jokes. The following case provides a clear illustra-
tion of this attitude, particularly as it relates to multilingualism.
The At lant i c Se ri e s
During my stay in Puerto Cabezas I participated as a player in a
number of sports leagues, and I came to establish good rapport with
many of the athletes and athletic boosters of the city. For that reason,
when the city organized its all-star baseball team to send to the annual
intra-regional championship, popularly known as the Serie del Atlán-

tico, or Atlantic Series, I was allowed to tag along with the team as an
anthropologist/mascot.2 That year the series was held in Pearl Lagoon,
a predominantly English-speaking commercial fishing-oriented city in
the southern region that is accessible only by canal and river.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the city of Pearl
Lagoon was an important political center in Mosquito and the Mosquito
Reserve, and today is considered, next to Bluefields, which lies twenty
kilometers to the south, the second-most important city of the RAAS,
the South Atlantic Autonomous Region.3 Pearl Lagoon has, since the
nineteenth century, generally been recognized as a distinctly Creole
town. The opportunity to travel with a large group of Porteños to Pearl
Lagoon provided an excellent opportunity to study regional ideologies
at work in a traditional and relatively depoliticized setting.
Since the late 1940s, the major cities of the Atlantic Coast region
organized and sent delegations to the Serie del Atlántico. The much-
celebrated tournament represented by far the most important sporting
event of the region and, indeed, was one of the few occasions in which
Costeños from all over the region gathered together in a social context.
In the expansive Atlantic Coast region, where north-south roads of any
kind do not exist and where the smallest overland journey can become a
swampy ordeal, the logistics of moving people and cargo in large volumes
has been historically only within the reach of large industrial and com-
mercial interests. The “Synod” meetings of the Moravian Church, held
every three years and attended by delegates from Moravian congregations
throughout the Mosquito Coast, represented the only other civic event
of comparable scope and magnitude. In the 1980s the emergence of
meetings of the “Indigenous Assembly” has provided an example of a
pan-regional meeting that, significantly, is officially mono-ethnic in con-
trast to the ethnically unmarked Church meetings and sporting events.
In 1993, eight twenty-man baseball teams from Waspám, Rosita,
Puerto Cabezas, Karawala, Corn Island, Bluefields, Kukra Hill, and Pearl
Lagoon descended on Pearl Lagoon for a week of competition in the
Serie del Atlántico. In the months leading up to the tournament, rumors
had circulated in Puerto Cabezas that none of the northern delegations
would be able to attend the tournament because of the lack of “eco-
nomic resources.” The baseball “Federation,” the committee composed
of leading citizens of the city who are known popularly as “gente gruesa”
(literally, thick people), “gente de billete” (monied people), or “upla tara”
(literally, big people in Miskitu), announced that it did not have the
money to provide adequate uniforms, equipment, and, most impor-
tantly, transportation to Pearl Lagoon.
Porteños regarded this crisis as yet another example of the lamenta-
ble state of affairs of the port and of Nicaragua in general. They most
commonly referred to this state of affairs simply as “the situation” or “la
situación.” They recalled that in the past, sports in the city had been
financed largely by the foreign companies operating in the region. Also,
commercial activity of the port during “company time” had allowed
greater access to sporting equipment such as bats, balls, and uniforms.
My older Porteño informants boasted that during “company time” their
uniforms were as attractive as those used in the “Big Leagues” (US
Major League Baseball) and they only used top-quality equipment.4
They also recalled traveling to Bluefields and the south on comfortable
transport ships at the expense of the companies.
However, in contrast to the general perception in the city that
“Sandino time” brought hardship, Porteño athletes recalled that the con-
ditions for them actually improved during the 1980s. On a number of
occasions the Puerto Cabezas team was flown to the tournament on
Soviet-donated transport planes flown by the Sandinista Air Force. Many
Porteño athletes also reported fondly the experience of competing
and receiving athletic and professional training in Cuba and Managua.
In many ways, athletics during the Sandinista period was the one of the
few areas in which Porteños did not feel “abandoned.” In fact, apart
from the much-despised military service, athletics represented one of
the few avenues for young men and women from Puerto Cabezas to
acquire “preparation” through scholarships and national and interna-
tional travel.
In 1993, after last-second appeals by the Federation to citizens and
institutions of the city, a foreign fishing company agreed to contribute
the use of a shrimp-fishing boat on the condition that the Federation
would provide fuel and crew. Despite the vociferous protests from the
players, the players from the northern delegations (Waspám, Rosita, and
Puerto Cabezas) and I piled into a small, diesel-powered boat that reeked
of dead fish for a sixteen-hour trip, unprotected from the tropical sun
and rains. In the meantime, government officials and wealthy merchants

chartered planes for the thirty-minute plane flight to Pearl Lagoon.
Players and fans expressed to me at great length throughout the
weeklong tournament the pathetic state of affairs in the region and the
deprivations that they had to suffer as a result of the “situation.” In their
testimonies this current situation stood in sharp contrast to “company
time” and “Sandino time,” when, according to these athletes (many of
whom were in their twenties or younger), sufficient resources were
available to support athletes.
It became apparent immediately upon arriving in Bluefields and
then Pearl Lagoon that English was the prestige language of the region’s
cities. My informants explained to me that the major cities of the region
had few “Indians” and were populated mostly by English-speaking
“Black people” (“Negros”). In the testimonies of the players and fans, the
appeal to the distinction between “Indians” and “Blacks” was common.
For example, it was common knowledge that the “Black man” teams
were consistently the strongest and were not supposed to lose to “Indian
teams.” Two teams were generally referred to as Indian teams, Waspám
from the North and Karawala, a southern community at the mouth of
the Rio Grande. The fact that these teams possessed old and deteriorat-
ing uniforms and equipment was entirely consistent with the association,
in the minds of Costeños, between material poverty and being Indian.
The players from Waspám and Karawala primarily spoke Miskitu to one
another but they were generally conversant in English. The team from
Rosita (one of three interior mine cities that along with Siuna and
Bonanza are known collectively as “the mines”) was regarded as a
Spaniard team, a perception that is also consistent with the official status
of the mines as a Mestizo area of the RAAN.
On the other hand, the four remaining southern teams (Corn
Island, Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon, and Kukra Hill) were regarded as “Black
man” teams—a label that, in light of the regional association of relative
material wealth and being Creole, was also consistent with their supe-
rior uniforms and equipment. The Black players and fans from Bluefields
and Corn Island particularly distinguished themselves on the basis
of possessing the latest Nike shoes, gold chains, and portable stereos
with latest funk and rap music from the United States. My Porteño
informants explained to me, somewhat enviously, that the “Bluefields
boy them” have close ties to the big cities of the United States, such as
Miami, Houston, and New York. For that reason, in the words of one
of my informants, they “think they are in Miami.”
Interestingly, Porteños regarded their own team, their own city, and
ultimately their own self as being fundamentally mixed. Among the
players on the team it was generally accepted that all of the pitchers were
“Indians from the communities” and that all the rest of the players were
“Port boys.” In fact the pitchers did come from nearby villages such as
Kambla, Lamlaya, Sisín, and Twappi, communities that lie within the
municipality of Puerto Cabezas. These pitchers told me that, although
they received almost no money for playing baseball, they lived in Puerto
Cabezas in order to play baseball at a more competitive level and to “pass
time.” Also they explained to me that there was little work or diversion
in the communities, so they did not mind staying with their family
members in Puerto Cabezas.5 They all spoke Miskitu, some Spanish and
English as well. Many of the self-proclaimed “Port boys” who distin-
guished themselves from the players “from the communities” also spoke
fluent Miskitu and had kin ties throughout the region.
In formal and informal team meetings and conversations in which I
participated, I noticed that the “Port boys” complained that the Indian
pitchers lacked guile and sophistication in their pitching style. Many of
them attributed the team’s lack of success in the tournament to the infe-
rior pitching of the pitching staff. They recognized that the pitchers had
plenty of throwing velocity. Velocity is an essential talent that, like stature
in basketball, is regarded to be innate. It was precisely on the basis of
their demonstrated pitching velocity that they were chosen over the
pitchers from Puerto Cabezas.
The criticisms that were made against the Indian pitchers corre-
sponded to the racial stereotypes predominant in Puerto Cabezas.
Namely, these criticisms corresponded with the historically rooted per-
ception of the Indian as an unskilled laborer who, like a pack animal,
makes a living from his or her brute force. In contrast, Porteños have
throughout the century highly valued the ability to enter into more
“skilled” positions within the regional economy. Consequently, Porteños
perceive themselves as being more intelligent, worldly, and sophisticated
in comparison to “simple” Indians. As I described in previous chapters,
“from the communities” is a description that heavily implies Indianess,
while being Porteño implies certain characteristics and lifestyles such as
“preparation,” intelligence, year-round skilled or semi-skilled work, and
urbanity, which are more associated with being Black than with being
Indian. Hence, when players appealed to stereotypes about the distinc-
tion between “Port boys” and pitchers “from the communities,” they
were simultaneously, yet not exclusively, invoking both race (Indian vs.
Black and Spaniard) and culture (urban vs. rural, skilled vs. unskilled,
civilized vs. uncivilized).
What is important to note about this case is that the same individ-
uals who referred to the Indian pitchers as “brutos” (stupid) in a racial-
ized way were themselves people who at some level proudly considered
themselves Indians. Clearly, the ostensibly geographical categories of
Porteño vs. “from the communities” were crosscut in complicated ways
by racial and cultural categories that were deeply imbedded in the
dynamic regional political economy.
I also observed that among Porteños the division of the Indian cat-
egory along racial and cultural fault lines was paralleled by the division
of the Black category as well. This phenomenon was most clearly illus-
trated by a series of jokes about the allegedly primitive people of Pearl
Lagoon that were told by a self-proclaimed Black man of the Puerto
Cabezas baseball team. Upon our return to Puerto Cabezas, I joined a
group of young men who had gathered around Ted, a charismatic vet-
eran baseball player, as he was describing in English his impressions of
Pearl Lagoon. Ted remarked to the group how “primitive” life in Pearl
Lagoon was in comparison to Puerto Cabezas. He noted that only a few
cars existed in the entire city and he drew laughter from the crowd when
he noted that all the streets were paved with grass. He also made fun of
the sporadic and limited electrical service in the city that every evening
left people from Pearl Lagoon talking on their porches in the darkness.
The crowd received with much merriment his mimicry of a toothless
elderly blind man swatting mosquitos in the darkness.
Continuing with the theme of the backwardness of Pearl Lagoon
and its people, Ted went on to note that, in contrast to “Port people,”
the “Black men” of Pearl Lagoon spoke Spanish very poorly. He told the
following two jokes, among others, as humorous illustrations of this
phenomenon:6
A Spaniard went to Lagoon to visit one friend. When the Spaniard

reached the woman house she said, “Que tal amiga?” [How are you,
friend?]. The woman got vexed [angry] and said, “You come to my
house and call me tall and meager!”
Later, another Spaniard gone to the house and said, “Como está?” And
the old man on the porch turned round and said, “Eh, Esther some-
one looking you.”
In both of these jokes the buffoon is the monolingual English

speaker from Pearl Lagoon whose inability to understand basic Spanish
causes an embarrassing misunderstanding. In the first joke, the person
mistakes the Spanish words tal amiga for the English words “tall” and
“meager” and therefore wrongly takes offense.7 In the second, the old
man mistakes Como está? for the English command, “Come Esther.”
These jokes illustrate a series of widespread attitudes on the part of
Porteños, the relevance of which has often been ignored in the accounts
the region. First, Porteños highly value their own ability to speak Span-
ish, as well as English and Miskitu. This simple observation, trivial as it
may seem, stands in contrast to the oversimplified view present in much
of the social science and journalism about the region that contended that
the crisis of the 1980s was caused by a cultural and linguistic clash in
which the Pacific Nicaraguan government was rejected on the basis of
the Costeño rejection of alien culture and language. Second, this case
demonstrates the role of regionally based distinctions (in this case
Porteño vs. non-Porteño) that crosscut racial categories (e.g., Creoles,
Miskitos, and Spaniards). In much of the literature on the region, ana-
lysts have neglected the former and insisted on a reified and essentialist
interpretation of the latter.
Race and Myth in Indian Bilwi

When Porteños invoke ideas about the neighborhoods of the city of
Puerto Cabezas in their quotidian dealings with one another and with
powerful institutions, they reveal class distinctions and spatially based
distinctions that intersect in complicated ways with racial and cultural
ideologies. Neighborhoods in Puerto Cabezas are spatial divisions in the
city that are frequently discussed. Porteños perceive certain neighbor-
hoods as having particular racial compositions, and these racial compo-
sitions are believed to help determine the behaviors of its residents, as
well as justify the historical and contemporary relationships between
different groups in the city. In turn, Porteño ideologies of race are con-
tested and transformed in the practice of daily life in Puerto Cabezas.
Although in the minds of present day Porteños, the founding of
Puerto Cabezas is synonymous with the foundation of Bragman’s Bluff
Lumber Company, all recognize that the history of Puerto Cabezas pre-
dates the arrival of the company. Far from a matter of mere historical
curiosity, the fact of Bilwi’s Miskito Indian past impinges on the present
of Puerto Cabezas on a daily basis. Although many deny it, others
lament it, and still others glorify it, Bilwi was, and therefore is, “indian
tasbaika”—a very charged Miskitu concept that means Indian land.
The city’s Indian origin serves as a point of contention in a number
of contexts. Most importantly, many residents of Puerto Cabezas,
regardless of any ethnic affiliation that they may assert, must pay the
community of Karatá, a Miskito Indian village fifteen kilometers to the
south, a form of yearly rent. Karatá has since the 1920s successfully
claimed that the land on which Puerto Cabezas now lies represents “pas-
ture land” guaranteed to Karatá under the terms of the Harrison-
Altamirano Treaty of 1905. The obligation to pay rent to Karatá creates
a great deal of confusion and controversy in the city and is frequently the
subject of debate. Specifically, the terms of this debate center on the
issue of the validity of indigenous land claims. However, on a more gen-
eral level this debate represents a matter of everyday relevance to
Porteños through which they develop and contest ideologies of racial
and ethnic worth.
Although Porteños take a wide variety of stances with regard to the
legitimacy of Miskito, and especially Karatá Miskito, land claims in
Puerto Cabezas, it remains a matter of uncontested collective memory
that a Miskito man named Noah Columbus was the original inhabitant
of Bilwi. During fieldwork in Puerto Cabezas, I collected many stories
dealing with the first inhabitants of Bilwi, which I will refer to as
“founding myths.”8 The content of some of these myths varied a great
deal, while others contained a remarkable degree of consistency relative
to one another regardless of any ethnic or geographic (Atlantic/Pacific)
affiliation of the speaker.
A Costeño born in the Pacific who had resided for the majority of
his fifty years in Puerto Cabezas explained to me the origins of the city
of Puerto Cabezas: “Before the US company came there lived a family
here. There was a Miskito named Noah Columbus. He lived out there
by those tanks by the Moravian Hospital. Now that place is called El
Cocal. But in those days they were the only people who lived in Bilwi.
You know that this place is called Bilwi in Miskito? All this around
where we are was bush. Over there in El Cocal is where Bilwi began.”9
This quote expresses a number of common themes in the “founding
myths” that I heard and collected in Puerto Cabezas. These founding
myths all emphasize that Bilwi is the original name of the area, and that
pre-company Bilwi had a small population, all of which was Miskito.
Informants consistently portrayed Bilwi as having been an unimportant
settlement with regard to both size and commerce. In fact, it is significant
that many versions include the detail that Noah Columbus and his family
members were the only inhabitants of Bilwi. It is also generally recognized
that Noah Columbus lived in a place that has come to be known as a
neighborhood of Puerto Cabezas called El Cocal.
Porteños regard El Cocal as a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly
populated by Miskito Indians. Official surveys and census reflect this
perception.10 The neighborhood witnessed a dramatic rise of population
in the early 1980s as communities along the Coco River were uprooted
as a result of the Contra War and the forced evacuation of the region.
Thus, Porteños, although recognizing that El Cocal has always possessed
a high concentration of Miskito residents, view the majority of current
residents of the neighborhood as being recent immigrants from rural and
riverine communities. Given that Porteños, regardless of any and all
ethnic identifications they may adopt, associate Indianness with rurality
and with backwardness, it is not surprising to find that El Cocal
carries the reputation of being an impoverished, unsanitary, and unsafe
neighborhood.
During my stay in Puerto Cabezas, radio reports frequently decried
the increase of crime in the city that began at the end of the Contra War,
presumably as a result of the demobilization of Contra and Sandinista
troops. These reports often singled out El Cocal as the most crime-
ridden of neighborhoods. I was frequently warned to avoid El Cocal at
night because “los Miskitos de allá” (those Miskitos) assault and rob
people indiscriminately. A frequent explanation given to me for this per-
ceived peril was that El Cocal contained a lot of “bush people” or “gente
de las comunidades” (from the communities) or “upla sinskas” (ignorant
people in Miskitu) who had fought in the civil war and had retained
their weapons.
The concept of the “community” [Costeño settlement or village] is
a salient native category that carries many highly charged associations,
both negative and positive, for Costeños. Spanish speakers use the term
comunidad and this term is also sometimes used in Miskitu but with the
distinctive Miskitu pronunciation that stresses the first syllable of every
word, thus cómunidad. However, the most common equivalent term used
by Miskitu speakers is tawan, a word that is probably based on the Eng-
lish word “town.” In the Atlantic Coast this term refers specifically to
Costeño villages, not Spanish-speaking campesino villages. Both of these
terms distinguish small, relatively isolated settlements from larger cities
that have had more ties with Pacific Nicaragua and the Caribbean, such
as Puerto Cabezas, Bluefields, Waspám, Rosita, and Siuna.
The fear of Miskitos from the communities represents a new popu-
lar perception of Miskitos that undoubtedly resulted from the Contra
War, in which community residents, especially those along the Coco
River, were recruited and trained (at times forcibly) by the Contras and
the CIA in Honduras to attack Nicaraguan targets. Those Costeños who
fought for the Contras came predominantly from inland rural villages
close to the Honduran border and not from coastal areas farther to the
south, such as Puerto Cabezas. The process of demilitarization and dis-
armament posed serious problems for the UNO (Unión Nacional
Opositora, National Opposition Union) government in the Atlantic
Coast, and indeed all of the country. The fact that many civilians in the
RAAN (the North Atlantic Autonomous Region) have remained armed
creates an environment of uncertainty and unease among Porteños. This
unease is heightened by the frequent reports of supply trucks from the
Pacific being hijacked by roving bands of Miskito ex-combatants on the
remote dirt roads that lead to Puerto Cabezas.
This general feeling of insecurity, whose root lies in the foreign-
sponsored Contra War of the 1980s, manifests itself in the form of eth-
nic, racial, and rural-urban stereotypes and epithets that have proliferated
in the city. Porteños, including Miskitu-speakers, reminisce about the
days before the people from “the communities” arrived, allegedly bring-
ing with them violent behaviors. Other individuals find fodder for argu-
ments about the innate savagery and brutality of Indians in general. José,
a Puerto Cabezas-born self-proclaimed Miskito, told me:“Before people

would fight with their fists . . . sometimes with knives if it was serious.
But now with these Miskitos if you fight with one of them they go
home and return to kill you in the street with an AKA [automatic
rifle].”11
I commonly received warnings such as the following from longtime
residents of the city: “Miskito man them BAD! You better watch your
ass, Barón.” Many Porteños harkened back to the days when there were
fewer “bush people” and Miskito people knew their place. Residents
created for themselves an idealized past in which Miskito were docile
and respectful, which contrasts with the present where they are per-
ceived to be violent and uppity. The end result has been that in Puerto
Cabezas, rural and Miskito has in some contexts come to be ideologi-
cally associated with armed and dangerous. Although levels of violent
crime have no doubt risen in the aftermath of the Contra War, in many
ways this proliferation of negative stereotypes of community-born
Miskitos reflect more a resentment of the increased political power and
aspirations of Miskito organizations by Porteños rather than an actual
rise in violent crimes perpetuated by Miskitos of rural origins living in
El Cocal.
Apart from attributing criminal traits to residents of El Cocal, many
Porteños also characterize them as ignorant and uncivilized. In direct
response to my questions, informants portrayed the neighborhood
extremely negatively. In addition, I found that in social-group contexts,
El Cocal had the unfortunate distinction of being the target of jokes and
teasing related to supposed ignorance and barbarity. Statements like
“What a stupid thing to do, he must be from El Cocal” abounded. The
widespread and closely related prejudices against both Indian and rural
origins found specific expression in negative characterizations of El
Cocal residents. That is to say, in Puerto Cabezas (including among
people who either shun or embrace identification as Miskito) those neg-
ative images of what it means to be Miskito and to be from a commu-
nity cohere around these negative characterizations of El Cocal. As a
neighborhood within a larger city, El Cocal has come to stand for, to
embody, those negative characteristics that are at times attributed to
rural people and Miskito people respectively, thereby ideologically
inscribing prejudice on the urban landscape.
Returning to the founding myths, it is interesting to note that the

folklore of the city locates the founder of Bilwi in El Cocal, a neigh-
borhood that since the Contra War has come to evoke otherness
for Porteños. The most crucial, and undisputed, detail of the Puerto
Cabezas founding myth is that Noah Columbus was a Miskito man. The
myth functions to unequivocally establish Bilwi in pre-company time as
an Indian place. Yet ironically, as a result of the influx of rural, particu-
larly Wangki (Coco River) Miskito, El Cocal, which before had stood
for and reinforced Miskito nativist claims, now has come to be associ-
ated with the unfamiliar and uncultivated Miskito. Within this new
ideological landscape, the efficacy of El Cocal and Noah Columbus as
symbols continues to be transformed and challenged.
However, by far the most controversial issue that relates to the foun-
dation of Puerto Cabezas deals not with the relationship between the
gringos, Miskitos, and Spaniards; rather, it deals with relationship
between Bilwi and Karatá, two villages that have historically be regarded
as Indian. As I mentioned above, all Porteños cannot help but be aware,
given that many must pay rent to Karatá, that the community of Karatá
exercises special land rights in Puerto Cabezas. Most are unaware of the
obscure juridical base of this relationship. However, many of the found-
ing myths provide an explanation for this state of affairs—a state of affairs
that many Porteños regard as particularly unjust. The following narrative
related to me in Miskitu by a middle-aged Porteño approximates the
most common version of such a myth that I encountered.
This is how it was. In the first time Noah Columbus lived here with
his family. He was the leader of Bilwi . . . he had the title. Every-
thing was good, lots of food, lots of turtle, no Spaniards. But he
liked to drink rum. One day the boss of Karatá came and as they
started to play cards he brought out some bottles of rum. Noah
Columbus got really drunk—blocked up, man. He kept on losing, he
lost a lot of money. That’s how he lost the title to Bilwi. The boss
from Karatá went home happy. The next morning when Noah woke
up he said, “Oh, shit!”12
The key feature of this story, one that is repeated in many others, is
that Noah Columbus had possessed a legal title that documented his
personal ownership of Bilwi, and this was lost to people from Karatá as
a result of drunken folly. In other versions, informants emphasized that
the title had come from the Miskito King or the British. In still other
versions, Noah Columbus is said to have gotten drunk off American
whiskey, implying Karatá’s complicity with US companies. In other ver-
sions he is said to have lost the title to Bilwi either after or before the
arrival of Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company.
For those Porteños who are hostile to Karatá land rights, the story
of Noah Columbus losing the land title exemplifies the arbitrariness of
Indian land claims, because ownership of the land was so frivolously
alienated. For these people, the story also exemplifies the child-like vul-
nerability that they attribute to Indian people. For anti-Indian Porteños
in general, the story serves to confirm the commonly held position that
Indians are savage, uncivilized, and unable to care for themselves in an
urban setting. Specifically, the story confirms another commonly held
prejudice against Miskito men that claims they are unable to “control
their liquor” (tienen mal guaro in Spanish).
On the other hand, for those who support Indian land claims, the
story reinforces the conviction that the region is rightfully Indian tasbaika
regardless of which community holds title to the land. Similarly, the
story serves to reinforce the notion that each Miskito community has at
one time possessed a legal document that guarantees possession of the
land that it occupies from encroachment by the Nicaraguan govern-
ment. Those versions that mention that Noah Columbus received the
title from the British government serve to legitimize Miskito land claims
by appealing to the authority of a country regarded as more important
than Nicaragua. Many Porteños recognize that at some point in the past,
the Miskito King and the British government exercised an alliance in
opposition to the Nicaraguan and Spanish governments.
Nevertheless, I found the issue of the role of the British was not
viewed as particularly important or controversial. For most, King taim
(Miskitu for the period in which the Miskito King, in collaboration
with the British, ruled the region) is viewed as a distant age whose
legacy does not impinge on modern times. The US banana and lumber
companies, rather than the governments of Nicaragua, Great Britain, the
United States, or Mosquito, represent by far the most important actors
in the historical imagination of Porteños.
The Beach: Creole Neighborhood

or Indige nous Community?
Reference to the Noah Columbus local folklore plays a significant
role in current land disputes. Viewing these ongoing local disputes as a
form of social practice allows us to see the ways in which ideologies of
race and culture are formed and transformed in the context of everyday
life. During my fieldwork, a land dispute arose between a group of
so-called squatter families and a government institution in Puerto
Cabezas.13 I conducted interviews with many of the parties involved,
attended community meetings, and observed the activities taking place
on the land in question. What immediately drew my attention to the
case was that although it ostensibly concerned land tenure, it also simul-
taneously exposed with great clarity a broad range of crosscutting con-
tradictions and cleavages within Porteño society—particularly those
based on race (Miskito vs. Creole), class, and political affiliation (Con-
tras vs. Sandinistas).
The dispute pitted the Port Authority (ENAP—Empresa Nacionál
de Puertos) of Puerto Cabezas, a public institution created by the
Sandinista administration and directed as an agency of the national gov-
ernment in Managua, against residents of the neighborhood known as
The Beach. Tensions began to simmer in late 1991 when the Port
Authority permitted a small fishing company to build a fish-processing
facility directly in front of The Beach in a largely vacant area of land
directly between the city pier on the east and the Port Authority head-
quarters that lies on high ground to the west. Residents, who for many
years had disputed the Port Authority’s claim to the vacant strip of land
to the west of the pier, protested that they were never consulted about
the building of the plant on the disputed land. They also lodged the gen-
eral complaint that the Port Authority did not take their interests into
account.
In October of 1992 certain residents of The Beach started to dig the
postholes for houses that they planned to build in the disputed area. The
news of the defiant groundbreaking on the disputed site spread rapidly
throughout Puerto Cabezas, provoking a great deal of speculation and a
general mood of tense anticipation. Both parties issued threats and both
parties looked for allies to fortify their respective claim. On a number of
occasions armed standoffs and vandalism occurred, but during my stay
the contest remained in stalemate.
The Beach, a particularly large and impoverished neighborhood of

Puerto Cabezas, occupies a low-lying coastal strip extending approxi-
mately one kilometer along the beach south of the city. During the
1980s the Sandinista government imposed Spanish names, El Muelle
(The Pier) in the case of The Beach, on the neighborhoods of Puerto
Cabezas as part of its revolutionary restructuring of government—a
restructuring that in Puerto Cabezas, in contrast to the Pacific Coast,
represented an unapologetic Hispanicization program. The pier, built in
the 1920s by Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company, and the main road that
connects it to the interior marked the northern boundary of The Beach.
The majority of the city of Puerto Cabezas occupies a bluff to the north
of the pier that rises five to twenty meters above sea level and protects
the majority of the city against hurricanes and flooding. The Beach lies
on the lowlands to the south of the bluff and is thus geographically sep-
arated from the rest of the city. Large portions of The Beach neighbor-
hood lie directly on swampland and are flooded almost year round, a
situation that aggravates health problems related to mosquitoes and the
lack of a clean water supply.
For this and other reasons, city planners during the Sandinista
administration of the 1980s recommended relocating the entire neigh-
borhood to higher ground in the city. This heavy-handed plan, reminis-
cent of the massive evacuation of the Coco River during the same
period, greatly embittered relations between so-called Beach People
and the Sandinistas. After fierce opposition, the Sandinistas abandoned
the plan.
The racial composition of The Beach defies categorization within
the official system of ethnic categorization that identifies three main
ethnic groups (étnias in Spanish) in the region: Creole, Miskito, and
Mestizo. More than any other neighborhood in Puerto Cabezas, trilin-
gualism is the norm in Beach households.14 I found that in my conver-
sations with Beach People, only few would positively identify themselves
as a “member” of any ethnic group. It was never my intention to try to
categorize my informants within a system of categorization that they did
not accept, but on those occasions when I did bluntly ask a person if he
or she was Miskito, Creole, or Mestizo, the most common response was
“mix” (a word used in both English and Miskitu).15 Porteños who did
not live in The Beach often referred to the residents of The Beach as
Blacks, Negros, and Nikru (in Miskitu), and recognized that English was
the most commonly spoken language. However, there existed no uni-

formly accepted convention for labeling the race or ethnicity of the res-
idents of the neighborhood.
Beach People derive the majority of their income and subsistence
from the sea. The main wage-earning activity for young Beach men is
lobster diving, a profession in which they are disproportionately repre-
sented in comparison to other neighborhoods of Puerto Cabezas. Lob-
ster diving on foreign-owned (Honduran and Colombian) lobster boats,
which sell to a recently opened US-owned lobster exporting company,
is by far the highest-paying form of manual labor in the city. Unfortu-
nately, the work is also extremely dangerous and physically demanding.
Busos (lobster divers) rarely are able to endure the rigors of diving full
time for more than a few years. After a few years, if shark attack or
decompression sickness has not injured them, they invariably suffer from
dizziness and loss of hearing. Nevertheless, divers are able to earn as
much as $500 (paid in US dollars) in a two-week voyage—a salary that
very favorably compares to the $100 that a schoolteacher earns monthly.
Beach People, particularly men, also engage in artisanal fishing and
turtling (turtle hunting) for money and food. Women rarely engage in
wage-labor activities. When they do earn money, it is usually through
small front-yard stores (ventas in Spanish).
The dispute between the Beach People and the Port Authority
resulted from the desire of a group of young men and women to estab-
lish households of their own. The majority of the men worked as divers,
and had children with women who either lived with their mothers or
lived with the young men in the men’s mothers’ houses. These couples
longed for the privacy and comfort of their own house, while also desir-
ing the communal and familial support offered by locating their prospec-
tive house within the neighborhood. For most young people in Puerto
Cabezas, the goal of marrying and living in a separate residence (“inde-
pendizarse”) is a valued luxury that few can afford. Although the ideal of
conjugal neolocality exists in the minds of young Porteños, the harsh
realities of a severely depressed economy and residential overcrowding
usually prevent the attainment of this goal in practice. In the case of the
young divers in question, they had through hard labor saved enough
money to buy building materials but could find no adequate site to build
within the traditional residential areas of the neighborhood. They
therefore turned to the vacant lot between the pier and the Port Author-
ity headquarters as a place in which they should rightfully be allowed to
erect a house.
Immediately upon their digging the first postholes, Port Authority
officials informed them that they were trespassing on Port Authority
land.16 Officials threatened to use the police to stop construction and
ordered the men to remove all building materials from the site. The men
flatly refused, arguing that the land was not being used by the Port
Authority and ironically (given that they shared the pro-Contra tenden-
cies of their neighbors) borrowed a Sandinista agrarian reform slogan
stating that the “land belonged to those who would work it.” They also
organized themselves into an ad hoc commission, called the Comisión
del Barrio El Muelle, which was composed of seventeen families.17 The
Port Authority, hoping for a quick and unequivocal resolution to the
matter, beseeched the police to evict the families, but for a number of
reasons, which I will now outline, this strategic appeal to police author-
ity did not work.
After the election of 1990, which was won by the anti-Sandinista
UNO party, the issue of the partisan nature of the army and police rep-
resented one of the most serious challenges to peace in Nicaragua.18 This
issue was particularly explosive in the northern Atlantic region, adjacent
to Honduras, where Contra activity had been strongest and where the
civil war had been most bitter. Contra leadership agreed to demobilize
and return to Nicaragua only on the condition that they be allowed to
join and at times lead the police forces in the areas in which they
planned to return to. Some factions of the UNO party even demanded
that President Chamorro dissolve the EPS (Sandinista Popular Army)
and replace it with an entirely new army and police force consisting of
ex-Contras and new recruits. Many feared at this time that if Chamorro
were to take such an extreme measure, the EPS would rebel and choose
to not serve the new administration—in effect launching another civil
war. Nicaraguans also feared that the opposing forces would carry out
bloody vendettas against one another once they were united as
civilians within Nicaraguan territory. Chamorro adopted a conciliatory
tactic, reducing the EPS from about 80,000 to 20,000 soldiers and
reappointing Humberto Ortega, brother of former President Daniel
Ortega, as its leader on the condition that he resign from the Sandinista
Directorate and swear to obey the authority of the popularly elected

UNO government.
In Puerto Cabezas, the capital of the North Atlantic Autonomous
Region (RAAN), ex-Contra leaders took top positions within the
police force, and many ex-Contra soldiers joined a special new armed
force formed with the help of the UN and the OAS (Organization of
American States) called the Disarmament Brigade. The UNO govern-
ment drastically reduced the size of the EPS in the region but did not
significantly change its leadership or attempt to incorporate Contra ele-
ments within it. Thus, the police force, which contained high-ranking
officers from the ranks of the EPS as well as ex-Contra combatants, rep-
resented the only government-sanctioned armed body in the region that
incorporated both Sandinista and Contra elements, although Contras
held the highest positions. Men and women, who months before had
stood on opposite sides of a ten-year civil war, now intermingled in the
police station of Puerto Cabezas. Fortunately, in this case, this polariza-
tion within the police force greatly hampered the ability of the institu-
tion to make decisions and act uniformly.
The two political affiliations contributed to the police force’s
unwillingness to use force or other types of influence to resolve the mat-
ter. In general, the UNO party favored returning to the original owner
land that had been expropriated by the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas
had confiscated and nationalized the Port Authority in 1980, and
the institution continued to be associated with and controlled by indi-
viduals with Sandinista affiliations. In addition, many of the Beach
People in question had Contra leanings or indeed had at one point
either served in the Contra forces or lived as refugees in Honduras. Thus
the Contra-led mixed police force was hesitant to act to protect Sandin-
ista-tainted interests against the pro-Contra residents of the neighbor-
hood. Members of the Comisión del Barrio El Muelle explained to me
that they made every attempt in their dealings with the police to bring
this contradiction to the fore as they appealed to other shared Contra
loyalties. This initial strategy proved successful, as the Port Authority
ceased to threaten police action and agreed to form a special commis-
sion that would investigate the matter. Such an appeal to political
affiliation was related to, but not wholly dependent upon, ethnic or
racial affiliation.
In the meantime, residents approached the local YATAMA office for

assistance. (YATAMA is Yapti Tasba Masraka Nani Alsatakanka in
Miskitu, translated as “Descendants of Mother Earth.”) YATAMA, com-
posed mainly of ex-combatants within the Miskito wing of the Contra
armies, emerged after the war as an aggressively indigenous Miskito
political organization. A number of officials from YATAMA agreed to
advocate for the residents and immediately sent a letter to the police in
which they urged restraint and emphasized that the land dispute was not
a simple squatter problem, but rather it was a problem related to indige-
nous rights. At a meeting called by the Port Authority and attended by
local and national civil and military leaders, Rigoberto Carpentier, a
YATAMA official representing the “17 families,” proclaimed that “The
Beach is not a neighborhood [barrio] rather it is an indigenous commu-
nity.” He explained that the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty guaranteed that
Miskito communities would have legal title to their traditional lands.
The Standard Fruit Company, according to him, recognized these rights
and rented lands from the indigenous community. Later, when the com-
pany ceased operation, the Nicaraguan government took possession of
the lands around the pier, but neither the government nor the Standard
Fruit Company ever owned this land. It was “Indian tasbaika” (Indian
land) and therefore belonged to the residents of The Beach, which he
now redefined as an indigenous community.
Pedro Martinez, a high-ranking official from the national office of
the Port Authority who had been sent from Managua to take charge of
the situation, followed Carpentier’s speech with a speech defending the
position of the Port Authority. He argued somewhat contradictorily that
any arguments based on turn-of-the-century treaties were legally irrele-
vant, while simultaneously delegitimizing The Beach’s land claims on the
grounds that the majority of Beach residents leased or bought their land
from the community of Karatá and therefore did not represent an
indigenous community which possessed special land rights. The contra-
diction here rested in the fact that the rights of the community of Karatá
were based on the very Harrison-Altamirano Treaty that he flatly
rejected as inapplicable. He stated:
This is a difficult problem . . . very difficult because many years and

many governments have gone by and an adequate solution has never
been given to this problem. We hope that with our presence [the
national directorate of the Port Authority] . . . we are sure that we
are not going to solve the whole problem but we hope our presence
will at least begin a regional dialogue so that the central govern-
ment, the local authorities, as well as the very Autonomy Law and
the communities can arrive on an integral solution to this prob-
lem—the problem of land ownership. We already were aware of the
majority of the information that our friend Carpentier indicated
with respect to the history of these lands. We even studied the
Harrison-Altamirano Treaty and we looked up the history in order
to better understand this problem. We made a series of interviews
and we collected documentation etc. in order to solve this problem.
It is not necessary to look at the land history nor even at the Har-
rison-Altamirano Treaty, rather more contemporaneously we as a
corporation claim to be the owners of these lands. What I have with
me is a map, a groundplot . . . where it indicates in accordance with
the land documents which are duly registered in Bluefields, which
is where this kind of property is registered, that this is a polygon
here [pointing to the map] that clearly belongs to the Port Author-
ity. . . . According to the people we have interviewed, all say that
they have negotiated with the community of Karawala [sic] partic-
ularly with Mr. Chico Francis. . . . So then what is the reality as such
of these lands? More than 90 percent of them have been taken.
Some [residents] argue that the lands have been given to them by
City Hall, others claim that they have been given by the Port
Authority, but the great majority indicate that they have bought or
leased the land by the community of Karatá. So in this sense I would
correct a bit of what Carpentier said about Karatá . . . only until
recently has a conflict emerged in the Beach. The people with
which at different moments we [the Port Authority] have had a rela-
tionship has been the community of Karatá. . . . But if you speak
with the people around the Cayuco [a bar located in The Beach]
they show you documents given by the community of Karatá.19
This speech revealed a number of telling contradictions and ambiva-

lent attitudes with regard to Indian land claims expressed by a Pacific
Nicaraguan government official. Martinez indicated that appeals to
turn-of-the-century history were not legally valid in this case because

the Port Authority possessed relatively recent legally binding documents,
all of which had been generated after 1980 as a result of the confusion
brought about by the rapid flight of foreign companies and Somocista
government officials. Yet he admitted that the Port Authority had con-
tinued to honor Karatá land claims. He recognized this policy without
mentioning the fact that Karatá land claims were originally based on
the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty, whose relevance he had just denied.
Martinez refused to accept the argument that The Beach constituted an
indigenous community because he felt that their status as Indians was
contradicted by their traditional role as paying tenants on lands claimed
by Karatá Indians. Here Martinez mistakenly presumed that Miskito
Indian land rights were held by Miskito Indians as a general class of
people rather than as inhabitants of specific communities that had for-
mally acquired title to their land at the turn of the century, as was actu-
ally the case. This perspective betrayed his unawareness or indifference
with regard to the established indigenous land tenure system in the city
in which all persons, including non-Karatá Miskito, whose houses lie on
land claimed by Karatá must make lease payments to the community of
Karatá. He also refused to accept The Beach’s bid, which he acknowl-
edged had only recently emerged, to be able to act as both a communal
and indigenous collective entity.
In an interview that I conducted with Carpentier later that week, he
explained in greater detail the arguments that he and the community
were asserting. He recounted to me an interesting variant of the Puerto
Cabezas founding myth. According to him, what is now Puerto Cabezas
used to be called “Bilwi—Mosquitia.” Originally Bilwi comprised three,
not one, Miskito communities. The one that was led by Noah Columbus
occupied the area where El Cocal now finds itself. The other was called
Mule Town and occupied the area that is now known as Barrio San Luis.
The Beach was the third community and a man called Casanova led it.
He claimed that he had formerly possessed documentation that proved
this, but that the Sandinistas had confiscated and destroyed these docu-
ments during the civil war.
In general, residents of The Beach appreciated and realized the
necessity of the efforts made on their behalf by YATAMA, but mani-
fested rather different arguments as to the legitimacy of their claim to
the disputed land. Many confirmed the claim that the original inhabi-
tant of the neighborhood was named Casanova but acknowledged that
they were not accustomed to referring to the neighborhood as an
“indigenous community.”
In an interview that I conducted with Ronald Villarreal, one of the
leaders of the seventeen families, he denied the centrality the arguments
made by YATAMA. He regarded these as obscure and trivial historical
arguments. This is not to say that he denied their validity; rather, he
simply did not accept the current relevance of an old and, most impor-
tantly, complicated history. For him, there existed two principal reasons
that he and his neighbors should have access to the land. First, the Port
Authority did not currently use the land in question; and second, the
land belonged to the neighborhood by virtue of its proximity—only a
dirt road leading down to the pier separated The Beach from the dis-
puted land.
Villarreal resented what he perceived as the Port Authority’s indif-
ference with regard to the welfare and rights of the neighborhood. Here
he cited among other grievances the Port Authority’s refusal to consult
the residents of The Beach before making decisions about the disputed
land. This refusal had most recently manifested itself in the case of the
fish-processing plant. He also complained that the Port Authority rarely
hired Beach People on the docks and made no attempt to improve
the infrastructure of the neighborhood. For him, this indifference was
typical of the relationship between the “poor people” of The Beach and
the “rich people” that run the “companies” and “governments.” In this
relationship, Beach People find themselves powerless and easily victim-
ized. He stated, clearly with the current struggle in mind, that rich
people “can always pay someone to draw up a map but poor people
can’t.” The majority of the members of the seventeen families with
whom I spoke shared Villarreal’s disappointment and indignation, and
also expressed a great deal of pessimism with regard to their ability as
poor Beach People to openly confront the authorities in the city. They
did, however, take heart in the fact that they were united, armed, and
willing to fight.
Ultimately, what lay at the core of Villarreal and his neighbors’
claim to the land was the notion that they as poor inhabitants of The
Beach had been neglected by the government and the Port Authority,
and therefore had no obligation to respect the authority of these institu-

tions. The land history of Bilwi was in this context only important in the
sense that it was complicated and obscure enough to question the
validity of the claims of any party. Throughout the confrontation
between the police and the seventeen families, it became very apparent
that the neighborhood came to represent the most important communal
identification around which collective action was mobilized. The fami-
lies asserted their right to build homes as Beach families. They did not
assert their rights as Nicaraguan families or as Porteño families. Their
defense of their rights was thus clearly phrased and conceived in terms
of communal rights as a neighborhood within a city. From this point,
claiming indigenous communal identity was a step that could easily
follow.
This case illustrates the complex ways in which ideologies of race
and culture intersect with regional and class-based divisions. Contrary to
many of the accounts of the region by journalists and social scientists,
the so-called ethnic groups of the region are not monolithic entities, nor
do they reflect fixed and unalterable identities. In this sense, it is impor-
tant to heed Charles Hale’s call to problematize the increasingly popular
concept of identity (Hale 1997, 571). The categorical distinction
between Creole and Miskito is part of a wider vocabulary through
which Porteños understand and act upon their social world. In the prac-
tice of acting upon that world, Porteños in turn rework and transform
these categories.
The case of the land conflict in The Beach also speaks to the disu-
tility of interpreting the self-conscious assertion of identity as a phe-
nomenon that can only be understood from the perspective of the
so-called ethnic group (Smith 1996). If viewed in isolation, the fact that
residents of The Beach, a neighborhood mainly composed of English-
speakers who trace at least part of their origin to the West Indies (par-
ticularly Jamaica and the Cayman Islands), should claim indigenous
identity in the context of a land dispute might lead one to question the
authenticity of such a claim. Indeed, many people in Puerto Cabezas did
question the motives of Beach families in this case. On the other hand,
to view this case as the organic reemergence of a latent indigenous
identity by authentic Indians would be equally problematic. In actuality
it was through their participation in the land conflict that Beach
residents actively asserted and simultaneously reevaluated the nature of

their communal ties. Identity in Puerto Cabezas must be understood
within contexts in which individuals and other social actors challenge
and transform social categories in practice.
L i ng ui st i c I de olog y and O f f i c i al
Ethnicity in the RAAN
The practice of ethnic and racial identification in Puerto Cabezas
also must be understood in the context of official attempts by the
Nicaraguan government to create ethnic policy. In 1987 the Nicaraguan
government, in an attempt to address the long-standing problem of
political, economic, and social discord between the eastern and western
halves of the country, approved the Statute of Regional Autonomy,
which created a legal and legislative basis for a limited amount of politi-
cal decentralization within the Nicaraguan polity. The Autonomy
Statute replaced the former Atlantic Coast department of Zelaya with
two new administrative units (known as autonomous regions), RAAN
and RAAS, and it also chartered the formation of elected legislative
bodies in each region.20
Although generally welcomed by Costeño political leaders, the
statute has been criticized for its lack of clarity with regard to the juridi-
cal and administrative relationship between the autonomous regions and
the national government. After the election of 1990, in which the first
representatives to the regional assemblies were elected, Costeños on both
the left and right questioned the national government’s commitment to
respecting the spirit of the Autonomy Statute. The implementation (la
reglamentación) of the Autonomy Statute has since that time emerged as
the single most important political project in the region, as regional
leaders have universally recognized that in its current form the statute
lacks the capability to provide for anything more than a token autonomy.
Although completely lacking in muscle with regard to political and eco-
nomic matters, the statute makes, according to many Costeño leaders,
important and novel provisions with regard to cultural matters.
The Autonomy Statute, rather than delineating the duties, rights,
and powers of the regional government with respect to the national
government, devotes itself primarily to recognizing the social hetero-
geneity of the region and guaranteeing inhabitants the right to maintain
their distinctiveness on an individual and communal level. In order to

identify and define the nature of this social heterogeneity, the statute
uses a set of terms, and the underlying assumptions on which these terms
are based, which taken together form what I call “official ethnicity.” Key
concepts within official ethnicity include culture, identity, ethnic
identity, and ethnic group (cultura, identidad, identidad étnica, y étnia in
Spanish). The specific nature of the official recognition and use of these
terms represents a new development in the relationship between the
Central American national governments and the indigenous and minor-
ity groups that inhabit these countries. Official ethnicity is based on a
specific kind of analysis of the social diversity in the region—an analysis
whose introduction has been relatively recent and is in many ways
at odds with Costeño ways of understanding and characterizing this
diversity.
The Autonomy Statute guarantees the right of all inhabitants of the
autonomous regions to “preserve and develop their languages, religions
and cultures” (for the full text see Anuario Indigenista 1987, 106–117).
The statute explicitly protects the ethnic and cultural rights of the
inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast—rights that have not explicitly been
extended to the rest of the nation’s population. The high concentration
of so-called ethnic communities (comunidades étnicas) in the Atlantic
Coast is the demographic feature that clearly motivated the govern-
ment’s decisions to extend these special rights to Costeños (CAPRI
1992, 230).
The implicit assumption behind enacting such legislation in the
Atlantic region as opposed to the Pacific region is that, in contrast to
Nicaraguans from the Pacific Coast, Costeño groups were viewed to
manifest a culture and ethnic identity that warranted specific govern-
mental consideration. The social variation within the Pacific Coast was
not recognized as ethnic or cultural because the common presumption
within Nicaragua is that the Pacific Coast does not contain significant
indigenous populations or ethnic communities. This perspective reflects
what Gould (referring to the Pacific Coast) calls the “myth of a Mestizo
Nicaragua,” which he defines as “a collective belief that Nicaragua has
been an ethnically homogenous society since the nineteenth century”
(Gould 1993a, 394). The myth of mestizaje (in which Nicaraguans
emphasize the mixed, neither solely Indian nor solely European, nature
of the nation) represents an official discourse that has penetrated in one

form or another all levels of Nicaraguan society.
The text of the Autonomy Statute lays out what amounts to a
demographic analysis of the population of the Atlantic Coast region, an
analysis that operates under the assumptions of official ethnicity. The
statute declares that, given that distinct ethnic communities populate the
Atlantic Coast, Nicaragua must be considered a “multi-ethnic, pluri-
cultural and multi-lingual” country.21 In contrast to the Pacific region,
each inhabitant of the Atlantic is associated with one of the so-called
ethnic groups identified in the statute. Article II of the document states:
The Atlantic region of Nicaragua constitutes approximately 50 per-

cent of the territorial patrimony of the nation and close to three
hundred thousand inhabitants, representing 9.5 percent of the
national population, which are distributed in: one hundred eighty-
two thousand Mestizos who speak Spanish; seventy-five thousand
Misquitos who speak their own language and twenty-six thousand
Creoles who speak English; one thousand seven hundred Garífonas
the majority of which have lost their language and eight hundred
fifty Ramas of which only thirty-five conserve their language.
(CAPRI 1992, 229)
The most striking feature of the classificatory system elaborated in

the statute is its comprehensiveness. That is to say, the statute implicitly
identifies a single genus or category (ethnicity) containing species or
headings (e.g. Miskito, Creole, etc.) with which each and every Costeño
can be exclusively associated. Thus, official ethnicity submits ethnicity
not just as a limited classificatory scheme, such as, for example, occupa-
tion (a category that is not expected to manifest itself in every member
of a society), but rather as an all-encompassing system such as gender,
which is applied to all people. The official ethnicity as manifested in the
Autonomy Statute confidently asserts its own universal applicability.
Not only does the statute correlate every Costeño with one of
the mentioned ethnic groups, it also associates each ethnic group with
a particular language (Mestizo, Spanish; Creole, English; Miskito,
Miskitu). The European-derived languages are referred to by name in
the text, while each indigenous language is referred to as the possession
of the ethnic group to which it presumably pertains. This way of
referring to the languages of the region, far from trivial, betrays a

significant feature of official and unofficial linguistic ideologies. Pacific
Nicaraguans in general manifest a clear ideological distinction between
European language and indigenous languages, the former being consid-
ered intrinsically superior. It is a common practice, even in the Atlantic
Coast, for Spanish and English speakers to refer to Miskitu and Sumu
as “dialects” within an ideological framework that ranks languages vs.
dialects on a superior-inferior scale. In contrast to speakers of European
languages, speakers of indigenous languages are viewed to have a pro-
prietary relationship with these languages as ethnic groups. The statute
tacitly postulates an inextricable link between a specific ethnic popula-
tion and a specific indigenous language. Thus the Miskito, Sumu, and
Garífonas possess “their language” (“su lengua”).22
I found that Porteños frequently engage, often vehemently, in
debates as to whether Miskitu is a language or dialect. Many Porteños
refuse to grant Miskitu status as a language and instead disparage it as
only a dialect. The negative associations that are attached to indigenous
“dialects” do not go uncontested, however. Particularly in postwar
Puerto Cabezas, Miskitu is witnessing something of a linguistic renais-
sance. Many of my Miskitu-speaking informants confessed to me that in
the past they had been ashamed to speak Miskitu, especially when they
found themselves in Managua. Now Miskitu is defiantly spoken in
official places, where in the past its use had been considered inappropri-
ate. For example, in the offices of the municipal government of Puerto
Cabezas, only Miskitu can be heard. The current mayor of the city,
elected in 2004, is Elizabeth Enrique, a Miskito woman from the
YATAMA party. Miskitu leaders, all of whom speak Spanish and Eng-
lish, now insist on speaking Miskitu for at least part of their public
appearances in places such as schools and sporting events.
Some Miskitu speakers attempt to counter the claim to the superi-
ority of the English language by criticizing Mosquito Coast English
as “inglis saura” (bad English). A number of my Porteño informants,
defensive of the negative characterizations of Miskitu by English-
speakers, disparagingly referred to “cus inglis” (“coast English” in
Miskitu) as “plas untara” (from the banana plantation). In order to learn
Miskitu in Puerto Cabezas, I frequently exchanged conversation practice
in Miskitu for conversation practice in English. Many of my Miskitu
teachers/informants expressed their enthusiasm about learning “inglis

pain” (good English), which they perceived as being far superior to the
Mosquito Coast English that many of them spoke to varying degrees.
On the surface, these linguistic ideologies could be interpreted as
indications of the deeply rooted ethnic divisions between Creoles and
Miskitos that are presumed to exist in the region. For example, the
derision of Mosquito Coast English by Miskitu speakers in response to
the claim to superiority of European languages (Spanish and English)
over Indian languages might be interpreted as an illustration of ethnic
rivalry. In this ethnic rivalry, each group would be perceived to have its
own distinct cultural expressions that it defends against the foreign
cultural expressions of another group. This sort of interpretation would
certainly be consistent with the perspectives that are prominent in jour-
nalism and scholarship, as well as the official stances of the Nicaraguan
government.
However, it is important to note that non-Miskitu-speaking English
speakers also express very ambivalent attitudes about the alleged quality
of their English. During fieldwork in Puerto Cabezas, I noticed that
some English-speakers were reticent to speak English with me and pre-
ferred to speak Spanish with me in one-on-one settings. When I asked
about this, they explained that their English was hard for North Ameri-
cans to understand and that it was “bad English.” These people were
usually younger English speakers who had less access to the traditional
sources of knowledge of North American English (e.g., the Moravian
Church and US companies). Older Porteños, in contrast, often relished
the opportunity to converse in “good English” (some Porteños even
defined good English as “the Queen’s English”) with a person from the
United States. They took pride in their ability to speak both good
English and Mosquito Coast English.
In Puerto Cabezas in the 1990s, the primary source of good
English was the Moravian Church, where church services in the so-
called Creole Church are held in an idiom that more closely approxi-
mates North American English. In fact, one of my young informants
told me that she preferred to attend Moravian services at the Beach
church, which conducted services in Miskitu, because she could not
read English and she did not understand much of the English spoken in
the Creole Church. Although she insisted that she spoke “Coast
English” better than Miskitu, she said that reading Miskitu was easier for
her than reading English.
In the face of the perceived threat to Creole power in the city in the
postwar period, the issue of the nature of the differences between Cre-
ole and Miskito has become highly politicized. This has resulted in the
attempt by leaders and non-leaders alike to consciously remove per-
ceived mutual influences from their language and culture. This push
towards purification, however, stands in the face of the long-standing
value of cosmopolitanism that has predominated in the region.
English speakers who identify themselves as Creoles often deny or
downplay their command of Miskitu. The act of denying speaking
Miskitu was interpreted as an assertion of social status on the part of such
a person. So, for example, among a multiethnic, multilingual group
of friends that I spent time with, Lutz (a self-proclaimed Creole) was
chided for being “fachente” (conceited in English and Spanish) for claim-
ing that he did not speak Miskitu. Many Creoles admitted to picking up
some Miskitu “in the street” but denied any real fluency. This denial of
Miskitu fluency and refusal to speak Miskitu can be interpreted as a
manifestation of “second order indexicality” in which the linguistic per-
formance of speakers serves primarily as a way of marking social iden-
tity rather than simply communicating information (Graham 2002, 203).
Among Miskitu speakers, I frequently came across the conscious
rejection of English loan words that were perceived to be nonnative to
Miskitu. From a philological point of view, such a rejection is a very
tricky proposition in light of the deep interpenetration of Miskitu and
English due to the historical alliance between the British and the
Miskito that was a precondition for the expansion of the Miskitu lan-
guage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless, I wit-
nessed the impulse among Miskitu speakers to purify Miskitu of English
influence.
During interviews with Miskito political leaders, I noticed that it
had become a common practice when dealing with outsiders (particu-
larly so-called internacionalistas such as myself ) for party leaders to con-
duct the interview in Miskitu with Spanish translation, despite the fact
that all Miskito leaders in Puerto Cabezas were fluent in Spanish. This
practice, also a kind of linguistic indexicality, has become common
among indigenous leaders in Latin America as a way of establishing their
authority as indigenous leaders and performing difference (see Graham

2002).
I often surprised my informants with my ability to speak Miskitu
that steadily increased as my fieldwork progressed. This was always a
pleasant surprise for my interviewees, who typically spoke with foreign
researchers and journalists who were making brief visits to the region
and did not speak Miskitu. They were flattered that an English-speaking
North American would take the time to learn the language, and they
would often shift the tone of the interaction away from formal and
dramatic to informal and pedantic. They would evaluate my abilities,
question me about how I went about learning Miskitu, and educate me
about the subtleties and varieties of Miskitu.
On many occasions I was corrected for using terms that my
informants stated were truly English. For example, it is the norm in the
Miskitu of Puerto Cabezas to seamlessly use the words “want” and “like”
without marking them as loan words. So “Plun [food] piaia [to eat] want
[want] sna [I am]” means “I want to eat food.” I was informed, however,
that the true Miskitu way to express this idea of wanting was to use
“brih ai duakaia”—a more cumbersome term that I found was used
infrequently.
In general, Miskito leaders and others lamented what they perceived
as the heightening contamination of the language that had been precip-
itated by the Miskitu displacement from the Wangki River (the ideolog-
ical core of Miskito culture and language) to the English-speaking and
Creole city of Puerto Cabezas. Although Miskitu had been spoken con-
tinuously in the city since well before its foundation as Puerto Cabezas
in the 1920s, it was commonly believed that the varieties of Miskitu spo-
ken along the Wangki River were the pure representatives of the lan-
guage that had resisted the English influences of city life.
I also spent time attending rehearsals and performances of a
Miskitu dance group that was headed by the sister of a major Miskito
political leader. In one of my conversation with her, she suggested that
I should not use the term “dans pulaia” to describe what they do, given
that “dance” is an English loan word. She explained that they simply
practice “pulaia,” a word that means play. Her group performed in tuno
(pounded bark) outfits, the official traditional fabric of the Miskito, and
as a director she was actively interested in trying to present authentic
Miskito culture. With regard to the style of dance, she instructed her
dancers that to dance as a Miskito was to dance in truncated hopping
motions (she used the Spanish term brincadito). She distinguished the
brincadito style from what she called the Black style of dancing, which
used the hips and was sexually suggestive. This distinction was in line
with the common belief in Afro-Caribbean hypersexuality, as well as a
broader Latin American belief in the moral purity of Indians in contrast
to non-Indians.
Continuing with the issue of language, linguistic ideology, and cul-
tural purity, the case of the Rama Indians is revealing on the same score.
According to the Autonomy Statute, the Ramas are a group that has all
but lost their language. According to the historical and anthropological
work done in the region, the inhabitants of Rama Key (a small island in
Bluefields Bay) and its surroundings have to different degrees spoken
both Rama and Mosquito Coast English since the colonial period.
Researchers speculate that the geographical territory of the Rama lan-
guage has shrunk drastically from the seventeenth century to the pres-
ent, having been replaced by both Miskitu and English (Craig 1992;
Salamanca 1993). Historically speaking, Creole and Rama ethnic iden-
tities have not been mutually exclusive, nor have they been plainly
linked to the English or Rama language. The boundary between a Rama
Indian and a Creole, when these identifiers have been used at all, has
always been porous.
Historically, there exist many examples of people with strong famil-
ial ties to the inhabitants of the Rama Keys who used a Creole label and
the English language in their political dealings with Britain and the
Mosquito Government (see Hale 1987a). Yet according to the reasoning
of the Autonomy Statute, a Rama Indian who no longer speaks English
(in favor of Spanish for example) would be not be considered to have
lost their language because Rama identity is rigidly defined as being
linked to the Rama language, not English.
In practice the assumptions of the official ethnicity of the Auton-
omy Statute come into conflict with systems of racial categorization that
exist among people. The case of the Mestizo provides an example of
such dissonance between official and popular racial vocabularies. Gener-
ally, in Latin America the word “Mestizo” refers to a person of mixed
race. In the Pacific regions of Nicaragua, “Mestizo” functions as an
intermediate category in a system of racial classification in which Indian

and European occupy opposite poles. As mentioned earlier, the
Nicaraguan “myth of mestizaje” claims that Nicaragua’s population is
dominated by Mestizos.
Nevertheless the word “Mestizo” in both the Pacific region as well
as the Atlantic region is not a commonly used term for self-identification.
In the Pacific region, rural Nicaraguans (more than half of the popula-
tion) predominantly identify themselves as campesinos (peasants) in order
to distinguish themselves from city dwellers. In terms of racial terminol-
ogy, Nicaraguans most commonly situate themselves within a skin-color
spectrum (dark-skinned to light-skinned, moreno to claro or blanco) rather
than in terms of a racial continuum (Indian to European).23
In the Atlantic Coast, the word “Mestizo” functions differently. In
this region it not only refers to a presumed mixed ancestry but also to
one’s presumed place of origin. This is to say that in the Atlantic Coast,
a Mestizo is a person who is considered to have come, at some indeter-
minate point in history, from the Pacific part of country. Thus, within
the system of racial classification in the Atlantic Coast, Mestizo carries
a strong geographical component in addition to the strictly racial one. It
is telling that a person of mixed Miskito and Creole/Black ancestry is
not considered a Mestizo despite the fact that they are of undeniably
mixed ancestry. When the Autonomy Statute speaks of “ one hundred
eighty-two thousand Mestizos” who inhabit the region, it is not refer-
ring to all those people who are considered to be of mixed race. Rather,
it refers to those people who in some sense are not considered to be
native to the region. The Mestizo category of the Autonomy Statute
corresponds to a set of commonly used Costeño terms that refer to
people from the Pacific.
Using a telling anachronism that dramatizes the deeply rooted divi-
sions established by European colonialism between the Atlantic and
Pacific regions, Creole English refers to Pacific Nicaraguans and Pacific
Coast Central Americans in general as “Spaniards” and “Spanish,” while
Miskitu uses an equivalent term, ispail. When Spanish speakers in
the Atlantic coast want to distinguish themselves from the Miskito or
Creole, they rarely use the term “Mestizo”; rather, they affirm that they
or their family, at some real or mythical point in time, was “del Pacífico”
(from the Pacífic). I found that it was very common for Spanish-speakers
born in the region to identify themselves as being “del Pacífico” and later
feel obligated to clarify that they were born in the Atlantic Coast:“Yo soy
del Pacífico . . . bueno yo nací aqui pero mi familia es del lado del Pacífico.” (“I
am from the Pacific . . . well, I was born here but my family is from the
Pacific side.”) Thus, a term that has an ostensibly geographical referent
functions within nominally racial- or color-based vocabularies of social
differentiation.
The classificatory scheme of the Autonomy Statute eliminates the
disharmonic term “del Pacífico.” It substitutes “Mestizo,” a term with a
clear racial referent but which is rarely used in the daily life of Costeños,
for “del Pacífico” or “Español” (Spaniard.) Within the popular Costeño
classificatory system, to assert that one is “del Pacífico” is a way of resist-
ing identification as a Creole or Miskito. In this sense it is a negative or
leftover category that functions as a distancing mechanism from the pos-
itive or better established terms of Miskito and Creole. Yet the Auton-
omy Statute recognizes its official substitute, Mestizo, as an ethnic group,
which can be identified according to the same kind of characteristics as
the other ethnic groups of the region.
What, then, does this imply about the principles of official ethnic-
ity as embodied in the Autonomy Statute? What kind of social grouping
does the official ethnicity presume an ethnic group to be? In addition
to the identification of an ethnic group with its native language, the
statute presumes that each “ethnic group” can be identified and defined
according to its particular “culture,” “traditions,” “values,” “art,” “social
organizations,” and “communal, collective and individual property stan-
dards.”24 In addition to language, these are the supposedly objective cri-
teria that distinguish one group from another. The Autonomy Statute
assumes that the Mestizo category indexes an ethnic group in the same
sense as other ethnic groups of the region. The ethnic discourse thus
necessarily defines all ethnic groups as being inherently parallel, self-
evident, social formations. Thus, according to the Autonomy Statute,
the ethnic group is the product of a set of presumably objective charac-
teristics, all regarded as being, in one way or another, cultural.
Chapte r 6
Costeño Warriors and

Contra Rebels
Nature, Culture, and Eth n ic

C onf lict
The Contra War and the Costeño-Sandinista con-

frontation received a great deal of attention from scholars and journal-
ists, particularly because it represented a hot spot in the tense cold-war
standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. For leftists
around the world, the Sandinista Revolution became a symbol of hope
in the losing struggle against unfettered global capitalism. Within the
hemisphere the revolution stood for the power of popular nationalist
movements against dictators and their traditional US patrons. For the
right, the revolution invoked the fear of the domino effect in a region
in a perpetual state of brutal civil war in which related national liber-
ation fronts fought against unpopular right-wing governments.
Countering the hostility of the US government against the Sandin-
istas, an outpouring of support came from leftists throughout the world,
including social scientists—some of whom took posts in the new gov-
ernment or offered their services as consultants. The US government
turned to right-wing scholars and journalists, enlisting their services in
the battle of world opinion that was waged with the pen. The cold-war
polarization that characterized this time was, not surprisingly, reflected
in the theoretical models of social scientists and others in their analyses
of the conflict.
In the Mosquito Coast, the fall of the Somoza dictatorship and the
triumph of the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, Sana-
dinista National Liberation Front) in 1979 initiated a series of events in
Nicaragua that eventually led to the proliferation of, at times, highly
190
Costeño Warriors and Contra Rebels 191
organized and, at times, heavily armed social movements. These move-

ments expressed Costeño aspirations to exercise greater control over
regional affairs, as well as their dissatisfaction with the changes brought
about by the revolutionary government.1 Initially, Costeños expressed
these aspirations primarily through civil organizations that had some
degree of continuity with prerevolutionary groups, as well as Sandinista-
sanctioned “revolutionary” organizations promoted by the FSLN through-
out the country. Later, however, many Costeños began to organize
themselves into anti-Sandinista armed groups. The US government
promoted the formation of these groups as part of its destabilization
campaign against the government of Nicaragua.
As the civil war escalated in 1981–1984, thousands of Costeños fled
to refugee camps in Honduras and Costa Rica (Americas Watch Com-
mittee 1986, 5).2 The budding civil war and the unrest that accompanied
it received a tremendous amount of international attention. The assort-
ment of counterrevolutionary armed groups that began to form in and
around Nicaragua came to be referred to collectively as the Contras.
Internationally and nationally, the confrontation between the San-
dinista government and the Contras was presented as a military and
political question related to the continuance of the Nicaraguan National
Guard that for almost fifty years had propped up the Somoza dictator-
ship. However, the armed rebellion of Costeño groups was viewed as an
ethnic and indigenous question that was related to the so-called cultural
and historical differences between the Pacific and Atlantic regions of
Nicaragua. In an environment of increasing polarization, Sandinistas and
their allies labeled the Contras as “Somocistas” (Somoza loyalists) and
“vendepatrias” (traitors), whose behavior could be explained by purely
political factors such as political patronage and foreign intervention.
Meanwhile, the same pro-Sandinistas applied the label “separatists” to
the insurgent Costeños whose behavior, in their view, needed to be
explained by cultural factors.
On the other hand, ardent pro-Contra groups commonly referred
to the Contras as pro-Democracy rebels and even (to use the term dis-
seminated by the propaganda machine of the Reagan Administration)
“freedom fighters” that were fighting for enlightened principles such
as democracy and freedom.3 Costeño combatants, in contrast, were
referred to as warriors and members of separate nations and ethnic
groups who were fighting for “tribal” rights (Nietschmann 1984a; US

Department of State 1986b, 193). Their behavior needed to be under-
stood as a manifestation of deeply rooted identification with the land
rather than abstract ideals. Whereas both sides predictably leveled accu-
sations of military atrocities, the Reagan administration referred to
atrocities allegedly committed on the Atlantic Coast as genocide.4
Clearly, both sides (pro-Sandinista and anti-Sandinista) mobilized a
rhetoric that made a consistent and clear set of distinctions between pol-
itics vs. culture and ideology vs. identity, and applied this to the geo-
graphical distinction of Pacific Coast vs. Atlantic Coast. Thus, culture
and identity were perceived to motivate the Indians and ethnic groups
of the Atlantic Coast, while politics, patronage, and ideological convic-
tion motivated the northern campesinos (the rank and file of the Con-
tras). The status of the Mosquito Coast, in contrast to the Pacific Coast,
as a place inhabited by Indians contributed to use of an exoticizing lens
through which to view the conflict.
Undoubtedly, this dual perspective was adopted at least in part as a
response to the discourse of Costeño leaders and their advisers, who
increasingly couched their aspirations in the language of ethnicity and
cultural difference. The tone of the meetings and negotiations between
Costeño and Sandinista leaders, beginning in November of 1979, ini-
tially expressed hope and mutual accommodation in which commonal-
ities between the Sandinista program and Costeño aspirations were
stressed. Costeños, for example, actively accepted the literacy campaign
that the Sandinistas promoted nationwide, but they insisted that it be
conducted in the languages of the region, Miskitu, Sumu, and English
(Shapiro 1987). However, despite this initial accommodation, within
two years negotiations became confrontational and polarized as Costeño
leaders, disappointed with developments in the region, stressed the need
for the national government to respect indigenous and minority demands
to territory and political power as ethnic groups and Indians.
Costeños increasingly justified their demands on the grounds of cul-
tural differences that entitled them to particular rights. For example,
with the aid of indigenous rights groups in the United States (particu-
larly Cultural Survival of Boston), MISURASATA (the newly reconsti-
tuted Costeño Indian organization) demanded control of about
one- third of what the Sandinistas considered national lands (CIDCA
1984, 23). MISURASATA did not make this demand as part of the San-
dinista agrarian reform that distributed large amounts of lands to both
individual peasants and cooperatives in the Pacific. Rather, they
demanded the land as “indigenous peoples” who were “descended from
the original inhabitants of the area” and possessed a “communal [collec-
tive] style of life” that was in a “harmonious ecological equilibrium”
with nature (Ohland and Schnieder 1983, 163). MISURASATA
affirmed that the “right of the indigenous nations over the territory of
their communities holds more importance than the right over the terri-
tory by the state” (ibid.).
The Sandinista government, threatened by statements such as these
that it interpreted as “separatist,” reacted by jailing MISURASATA lead-
ers, an action that resulted in massive Costeño flight from the region and
a surge of Costeño participation in the counterrevolution. Thus, the
confrontation between Sandinistas and Costeños was paralleled by the
increasing self-assertiveness of Costeño leaders as indigenous peoples and
ethnic minorities whose rights devolved from their closeness to nature
(“aboriginal rights”) rather than simply from their rights as citizens of
Nicaragua.5 For a country that had historically presented itself as ethni-
cally homogeneous, the fact that the Sandinista government found itself
at odds with an indigenous and ethnic movement was both unexpected
and enigmatic.
Anthropology on the Warpath in

N i carag ua: Col d - War Th e ori zi ng 6
The so-called ethnic conflict in Nicaragua attracted the attention of
social scientists throughout the world. Given that cultural and historical
elements were considered to be at work in the Atlantic Coast (and pre-
sumably not in the Pacific Coast), anthropologists, historians, and geog-
raphers (in sum, those social scientists under whose jurisdiction culture
and Indians usually fall) focused their attention on the crisis in the
Atlantic Coast. Social scientists served as advisers to both the Sandinista
government and the Costeño Contra forces, and therefore some of their
opinions, analyses, theoretical approaches, and recommendations, far
from a matter of purely academic interest, influenced the parties
involved in the conflict. For this reason, the following analysis of social-
science writing on the Atlantic Coast crisis represents a review of the
perspectives of parties that in more conventional circumstances would be

outside analysts but in this case were inside actors in the events involved.
Not surprisingly, pro-Sandinista social scientists employed theoreti-
cal and conceptual approaches that were different from those of anti-
Sandinista social scientists. Within the anti-Sandinista camp, I identify
two approaches: anticommunist and Indianist. The pro-Sandinistas
adopted a “deconstructionist” approach that established as its main inter-
pretive problem the explanation of Costeño false consciousness. On the
other hand, the anticommunists and Indianists generally adopted an
essentialist framework that relied on stereotypical notions of an ahistor-
ical and unchanging Indian identity.
Socialist-leaning analysts in the pro-Sandinista camp, many of whom
volunteered to work for the government in Nicaragua as part of an out-
pouring of international solidarity for the revolution, approached the
crisis in the Atlantic Coast as being rooted in the combination of resid-
ual effects of British and US colonialism and neo-colonialism, along
with the modern manipulations of the US State Department and its
Contra proxy army. They stressed the role of exterior factors in predis-
posing the region to anti-governmental mobilization. These factors
included, for example, the British government’s indirect rule of the area
during the colonial period, repeated US Marine invasions, the quasi-
governmental role of US banana, mining, and lumber companies, the
indoctrination of German and North American Moravian missionaries,
and the neglect and corruption of the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.
With regard to the actions of the Sandinistas, they echoed the San-
dinista government position that recognized that the FSLN had simply
made “mistakes” in the region, and that by talking into account the cul-
tural particularities of the region, it would be able to avoid repeating
these mistakes. According to the Sandinista government, these mistakes
stemmed from their inability to understand and be prepared for
Nicaragua’s “national question”—the term for ethnic conflict used in
the Marxian tradition. Pro-Sandinista social scientists downplayed the
severity of alleged Sandinista human rights violations. Inasmuch as
they held the Sandinista government responsible for the crisis, they
argued that the Sandinistas’ dogged insistence on viewing the
Nicaraguan reality through a class-tinged lens that obscured the import-
ance of ethnic identities was the fatal error of the Sandinistas.7 They
encouraged reconciliation and offered regional autonomy as a solution

to the crisis.
Paradoxically, pro-CIA/anticommunist cold warriors found them-
selves allied with supporters of indigenous rights and human rights, if
only in their mutual opposition to the Sandinista policies in the Atlantic
Coast (Buvollen 1987, 597). This placed the United States (a country
with a far-from-stellar record regarding indigenous groups, not to men-
tion human rights in Central America) in the highly ironic position of
nominally supporting Indian rights. Meanwhile, human-rights groups
and Indian-rights groups (such as Americas Watch and Cultural Sur-
vival), as well as Indian groups themselves (e.g., Mohawk Nation, Indian
Law Resource Center, and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples),
voiced protests and goals similar to those of the Pentagon.
North American Indians were themselves divided over the issue of
the Sandinista policies toward the Indians of the Atlantic Coast (Hale
1994b, 272; Dunbar Ortiz 1983). Some Indian organizations, such as the
International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), supported Sandinista
policies, while others were extremely hostile to the revolution. Clem
Chartier (then president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples)
traveled to Nicaragua in 1986 as part of an armed delegation that
engaged Sandinista army forces. The trip was later condemned by the
WCIP and Chartier was removed as president. Russell Means, hero of
the Wounded Knee uprising, was part of this delegation.8 Means had at
one point petitioned the help of the US State Department to recruit and
train North American Indian veterans to fight in Nicaragua (Buvollen
1987, 597).
Individuals and organizations that normally would be identified
with the left and that under other circumstances would have been more
inclined to favor a popular and “anti-imperialist” (to use the Sandinista
term) socialist revolution, found themselves divided over the issues of
human rights and indigenous rights in Nicaragua. They maintained that
the issue of indigenous identity did not fit within paradigmatic cold war
oppositions such as left vs. right or socialist vs. capitalist. In their opin-
ion, a completely different vector, which pitted minority and indigenous
group claims against those of the bullying central government of a
divided country, added a new dimension to these polarized cold-war
oppositions.
Warri or s and Cold Warrior s:

The Anticommunist Po sition
Anticommunists (such as the Contras and the US State Department
and their supporters) portrayed the confrontation between Costeños and
Sandinistas as being the result of the attempt of a totalitarian state to
assert absolute control over an unwilling population:“From the start, the
Sandinistas could not tolerate individual expression, whether in the form
of a newspaper article that disagreed with their position, or the desire of
Indian populations to follow cultural traditions . . .” (US Department of
State 1986a, 13). This quotation illustrates a dual perspective with regard
to perceptions of Costeño resistance to the revolution vis-à-vis Pacific
Nicaraguan resistance to the revolution. Whereas opposition to Sandin-
ista despotism in the Pacific Coast was said to have galvanized around
issues such as press censorship (a consummate civil right), in the Atlantic
Coast among Indian populations opposition was claimed to have arisen
around the necessity to follow vaguely defined cultural traditions. In
general, anticommunists focused on the allegedly oppressive policies of
the Sandinistas that they argued were the conscious product of aggres-
sive and authoritarian intentions. Not merely a matter of reacting to
“mistakes” unthinkingly committed by a young, idealistic, and inexpe-
rienced government, the opposition to the Sandinistas directly resulted,
according to this perspective, from the automatic and inevitable resist-
ance to authoritarianism.
According to anticommunists, the Nicaraguan government was
attempting to reorganize Costeño society away from their idyllic
“communal lifestyle” towards Cuban and Soviet communist models
(US Department of State 1986a, 3). One anticommunist publication
explained: “Historically, there has been little understanding between the
peoples of the east and west coasts of Nicaragua. Under the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN), relations have not only gotten worse,
but they have evolved into open warfare. Shortly after the revolution,
the government insisted that Cuban-style block committees replace
tribal councils, that religion be supplanted with allegiance to the FSLN,
and that Indian lands belong to the state, instead of to community
farmers” (ibid., 1).
In this quotation, anticommunists invoked the heuristic value of the
region’s separate history and traditions, in this case, tribal councils and
community farming.9 Miskito Indian “cultural identity,” which accord-

ing to this perspective was inherently incompatible with communism,
predisposed them to resist Sandinista programs. Communist-inspired
Sandinista collective entities such as the Comites de Defensa Sandinista—
militant Sandinista neighborhood organizations built on the Cuban
model—clashed with the corresponding Costeño collective entities such
as tribal councils that provided the similar function of local self-
administration and which were an entrenched part of Miskito culture.
Within this framework these Miskito cultural forms were endorsed on
the grounds that they were both traditional (therefore legitimate) as well
as non-oppressive. (For another example of this approach, see Ortega
1991, 42–45.) For these reasons, anticommunists generally discouraged
Miskito negotiation with the Sandinistas. In fact, the Reagan adminis-
trations used funds illegally garnered in the Middle East as part of the
Iran-Contra affair to pay Miskito Indian leaders to withdraw from nego-
tiations (Lernoux 1985a, 1985b; Pichirallo 1987, 1, 16).
The late Bernard Nietschmann, a cultural geographer from the Uni-
versity of California at Berkeley whose pre-Revolution work in the cultural
ecology of coastal Miskito communities was well known, loudly con-
demned what he called Sandinista “Indian policy.” His criticism reached far
beyond the confines of academic ivory towers. In fact, he served as an expert
witness to Congress and the Organization of American States, as well as a
chief advisor to the Miskito armed insurgency. He also published exten-
sively on the Miskito-Sandinista conflict in academic and popular journals.10
During the tense years of Miskito-Sandinista armed confrontation, he
championed the cause of the nation of “Yapti Tasba,” a name for the
“Miskito nation” that came into limited use in the 1980s (see B. Rivera
1988, 95–120). He adamantly discouraged Miskito leaders from negotiating
with the Nicaraguan government. Rather, he advised “Indian warriors” to
settle for nothing less than complete sovereignty and the expulsion of all
“invaders in Yapti Tasba” (Nietschmann 1989, 15). Nietschmann’s agenda
extended far beyond the Miskito nationalist movement. He supported the
armed uprising of all indigenous nations, which constituted “40% of Cen-
tral America,” because “indigenous nations are a territorial and cultural
firebreak to the spread of communism . . .” (ibid., 52).11
In contrast to his theoretically more sophisticated and empirically
grounded earlier work, Nietschmann’s post-revolutionary work adopted
a crude and conjectural approach to culture and identity—an approach

that was firmly grounded in essentialist principles. For Nietschmann, the
Miskito-Sandinista struggle represented just one example of a larger
phenomena (which he called the “Third World War”) in which indige-
nous nations, which he estimated number from 3,000 to 5,000 world-
wide, struggle to resist incorporation into the “168 states” (Nietschmann
1987, 2). This confrontation between indigenous nations and modern
states represented the most important cause of war in the modern world
and also the most important threat to indigenous nations. Each of these
indigenous nations represented, for Nietschmann, a clearly bounded and
easily definable group that could be identified on the basis of objective
cultural criteria. He wrote: “Nations are geographically bounded ter-
ritories of a common people. A nation is made up of communities of
people who see themselves as ‘one people’ on the basis of common
ancestry, history, society, institutions, ideology, language, territory and
(often) religion. Nation peoples distinguish themselves and their
countries from other adjacent and distant people and countries. The
existence of nations is ancient” (ibid., 1).
The indigenous nation for Nietschmann thus represented an
unchanging and transhistorical entity that finds itself threatened by the
encroachment of states that aspire to strip members of these nations of
their collective identity. The boundaries, both physical and sociological,
of these nations were thoroughly unproblematic for Nietschmann.
Regarding the case of the Mosquito Coast, he insisted that the
Miskito people fit in every respect his definition of a nation and there-
fore they should enjoy self-determination. He regarded as unproblem-
atic the fact that the Miskito represent only one population among many
in the Atlantic Coast. He also took for granted that those people whom
he identified as the Miskito nation should necessarily possess a separate
and distinct culture from their Costeño counterparts. It is precisely the
centrality that he gives to this simple-minded equation between culture
and social group (not his strident support of the Miskito cause as he
defined it) that is most objectionable in his work. Predictably, this flawed
theoretical framework spilled over into his analysis of the Costeño-
Sandinista conflict:
The Indian peoples had their own distinct national systems of iden-
tity, economy and property that were different from those of the
Sandinista invaders. What the Sandinistas saw as the ‘Indian Prob-

lem,’ the Miskitos saw as ‘the Sandinista Problem.’ Limited by class-
based Marxism, the Sandinistas have been unable to comprehend an
identity and a resistance based on culture. Culture and homeland
unify a people more strongly than do ideology, class, or adherence
to a particular political-economic system or group of leaders.
(Nietschmann 1989, 28)
Nietschmann’s framework obliged him to view the clash between

the Sandinista government and the Miskito people as having resulted
from fundamental and absolute cultural differences between the Mestizo
Nicaraguan state and Miskito Indians. According to Nietschmann these
differences automatically prevented collaboration and understanding
between Miskitos and the Sandinista government. What remained absent
from this framework that fetishized cultural difference and group iden-
tity was a treatment of the interests of the multiple actors (not just the
so-called ethnic groups) involved. Also, in postulating a unified and
homogenous identity for the Miskito nation, he ignored the tremendous
differentiation within the Miskito category, as well as those cultural
features that are shared by Costeños.
Indianists, Indian Rights, and th e

Mi sk i to Moral Economy
Indianists, the second subgroup of anti-Sandinistas, made similar
claims about the nature of the Costeño-Sandinista crisis as did their
anticommunist counterparts. Their motivations, however, were very
different. Among the Indianist anti-Sandinistas, I include Harvard-
based Cultural Survival (along with other indigenous rights organiz-
ations), various so-called Fourth-World organizations such as the World
Council of Indigenous Peoples and the Indian Law Resource Center,
North American Indian organizations (such as the American Indian
Movement), and North American Indian tribes themselves (such as
the Mohawk Nation). Throughout the 1980s, Cultural Survival and
the Mohawk Nation published articles and updates (which included
articles by Nicaraguans as well as North Americans) about the conflict
in their respective publications, Cultural Survival Quarterly and Akwesasne
Notes.12
Although Indianists by no means adopted the same position with

regard to the conflict, they did share the view that the Sandinista gov-
ernment, regardless of what may have been benign initial intentions,
enacted programs and policies that had harmful effects on the indige-
nous peoples and ethnic minorities of the Atlantic Coast. They argued
that these policies threatened both the “way of life” as well as the
well-being of Atlantic Coast peoples, particularly the Miskitu and Sumu
Indians.
During the 1970s, Costeños, who had long been used to calling
themselves and being called Indians in certain contexts, entered into
contact with a new kind of “pan-Indian” ideology that was being devel-
oped in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Before the revolution,
ALPROMISU joined the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, which
had been formed in the early 1970s as a self-proclaimed Fourth-World
organization. The WCIP promoted a progressive “pan-Indianism” that,
it argued, stood in opposition to prevailing doctrines of paternalism and
integrationism held by national governments and development agencies.
The WCIP and other organizations like it emerged with the explicit goal
of defending indigenous peoples and their cultures from destruction at
the hands of an economic model relying on modernization and indus-
trialization. These organizations contrasted subordinate and oppressed
Indian cultures to oppressive Western cultures. Their philosophy associ-
ated indigenous peoples with a distinctive pan-hemispheric Indian ethic,
typified by, among other things, harmony with the environment and a
communal way of life. In general, firmly anti-imperialist and anticapi-
talist, pan-Indian ideology saw itself as at odds with Marxism, which was
integrationist and ignored and devalued ethnicity (Mohawk 1981;
Dunbar Ortiz 1983, 79–87).13
Indianist anti-Sandinistas did not necessarily oppose the heavy-
handed integrative programs of the Sandinista government solely because
they were communist. Rather, they opposed the Sandinistas on the
grounds that the government, regardless of its revolutionary rhetoric, was
unwilling negotiate on the issues most crucial to Nicaraguan Indians—
specifically the issue of “independent Indian self-determination”
(Macdonald 1988, 143; also see IACHR 1984, 126). Notwithstanding
the Sandinista accusations to the contrary, Indianist groups and human
rights groups (and most importantly Costeños themselves, some of
which I include here among Indianists) were well aware that the non-
Costeño Contras would be no more willing to negotiate on these issues.
Immediately as Sandinista-Miskito relations began to sour, Akwe-
sasne Notes, whose editors were in contact with Costeño rebels, expressed
its ambivalence over denouncing the Sandinista treatment of Nicaraguan
Indians:
The NOTES reports on this situation with some reservation. The

position by Native peoples that they constitute real nations and their
continued struggle for international recognition as such—is a
difficult one for nation/states to entertain. That this conflict should
come to the point of eruption in recently-liberated Nicaragua, and
at this particularly dangerous time for the beleaguered revolution
there is unfortunate. Certainly, the counter-revolutionary forces
inside Nicaragua (and in the neighboring countries and North
America as well) could find much to manipulate in it. . . . Nobody
wants to play into the hands of the US war machine, least of all in
this instance. (Akwesasne Notes 1981, 11)
For Akwesasne Notes, a Contra victory would not necessarily repre-

sent a solution to the fundamental Indian problem in Nicaragua. The
unwillingness of states, regardless of their official ideologies, to modify a
rigid conception of rights and citizenship, linked to Western notions of
democracy, society, and personhood, lay at the root of the indigenous
problem not only in Nicaragua but all over the Americas, according to
Indianists (ibid., 11).
Indianists endeavored to elaborate a third position that, in their
view, would not fall within any of the political spectrums that were
being employed nationally and internationally: neither left nor right,
neither east nor west, neither Contra nor Sandinista. In their opinion
other analysts committed the error of forcing the Indian position within
foreign, and ultimately Western, models that left no room for a true
Indian perspective. Everyone, according to Indianists, tended to down-
play the agency of Miskito actors, thereby reproducing stereotypical
images of the passive Indian who is easily manipulated by outside agents.
The left and the right portrayed “genuine leaders as either putty or
puppets, molded and manipulated by outside interests” (Macdonald
1988, 111).
Theodore Macdonald, projects director of Cultural Survival (an

organization that had contact with Miskito organizations), expressed
such an Indianist critique:“Concerned primarily with the political sym-
bolism of the Nicaraguan revolution, many observers chose to portray
the Indians as either dupes of imperialist advances or victims of Com-
munist totalitarianism; their perceptions were influenced more by their
image of the Nicaraguan revolution than by any analysis of the Indians’
actual condition” (Macdonald 1988, 107). According to this position,
both Sandinistas and Contras equally misrepresented the Indians of
Nicaragua, and each was, or would be, resistant to considering Miskito
demands. The Indianist position of the Miskito insurgency attempted to
claim immunity from cold-war biases because the insurgents as Indians
championed an agenda that transcended cold-war oppositions.
Macdonald, borrowing from James Scott’s notion of the moral
economy, traced the roots of Indian resistance in the Mosquito Coast to
“a different understanding of their past and somewhat divergent aspira-
tions for the future.” He described Nicaragua as a plural society that was
deeply divided on cultural lines (ibid., 111).14 He attributed the ultimate
cause of the civil war in Nicaragua to these cultural differences between
Miskitos and Sandinistas. He postulated ethnic identity as a real and tan-
gible possession of the Miskito, the potential loss of which sparked the
Miskito Indians to rebellion. Because the “Miskito moral economy,”
which consisted of “both subsistence rights and deep emotional con-
cerns regarding land rights and resource rights” (ibid., 122), had never
previously been violated, the Miskito had never risen up against the US
companies or the Nicaraguan government. He wrote:“Subsistence secu-
rity was never threatened. So, despite periods of undeniably intensive
expropriation, feelings of exploitation were not particularly strong”
(ibid., 114). The reason, according to Macdonald, that the Miskito
rebelled in the 1980s was that the Sandinista government placed this
moral economy in jeopardy and did not respect Miskito ethnic identity.
Referring to the Sandinista hostility to ethnic organizations, as well
as their insistence on viewing the history of the Atlantic Coast through
the lens of class struggle, Macdonald argued that one of the main goals
of the Sandinistas was the “dissolution of ethnic identity.” Upon arriving
at the view that their ethnic identity was in danger, the Miskito took up
arms. Macdonald explained: “Ethnicity is not simply the cause of racism
and discrimination, it is also the source of a unique, vital self-identity; it

is something that Indians will not relinquish simply on the promise of
improved social and economic conditions” (ibid., 111). Thus Macdonald
incorporated the concept of ethnic identity (specifically Indian identity)
into the center of his analysis of the causes of the Costeño-Sandinista cri-
sis. Given the fluid and contextual nature of self-identification in the
region, which I have outlined in the previous chapters, Macdonald’s
reliance on the concept of identity was limiting. Macdonald and his
Indianist colleagues fell into the trap of reifying the boundaries of the
social groups in the region to a degree that was not warranted.
Sandinista Social Scie nce I:

The Ethnic Prism, False Consciousne ss,
and Dogmatic Marxism
In an often-quoted interview that appeared in a Mexican magazine
soon after the escalation of the crisis in the Atlantic Coast in 1981,
Tomas Borge (FSLN cofounder and Nicaraguan Minister of the Interior
during the Sandinista administration) attributed the problems in the
Mosquito Coast to the political, economic, and social “backwardness” of
Costeños. In his opinion the Mosquito Coast’s unique colonial and
post-colonial history lay at the root of this backwardness (Ohland and
Schneider 1983, 189–192). He stated: “It is very difficult to fight against
backwardness, and this is an extremely backward zone. . . . We are
decolonising them. So we are taking roads to them, telephones, medical
care, literacy, television; for the first time in their lives they have seen a
television image; but two years is a very short time in which to overcome
the prejudices, the religious fanaticism, the ignorance, the apathy of
centuries” (ibid., 191).
In the eyes of the revolutionary leaders the Atlantic Coast repre-
sented a glaring example of the disastrous effects of imperialism.15
Indeed, the region represented a paradox for the Sandinista leaders: it
was a region that had the greatest direct exposure to world capitalism
(particularly to wage labor and proletarianization) as well as the most
extreme levels of poverty, and yet its inhabitants demonstrated the least
revolutionary potential of all segments of Nicaraguan society. Sandinista
social scientists became trapped in a limiting paradigm in which they
devoted their interpretive energies to addressing this alleged paradox.
Generally, Sandinista analysts employed a two-pronged model that

included a deterministic structure-oriented approach and a voluntaristic
agency-oriented approach (Hale 1994b, 17). During the crisis in the
1980s, a structure-oriented approach was applied to the historical roots
of Costeño ethnic identity, while an agency-oriented approach was
employed to explain the increasing ethnic militancy of Costeños, partic-
ularly Miskitos. Sandinista analysts brought to the fore the process
through which US and British extractive industries created an ethnically
based labor hierarchy that pitted ethnic groups against one another in a
competition for scarce opportunities and resources (Vilas 1989, 7; Hale
1987a). Also, the Moravian Church’s policy of providing education and
proselytization to Creoles in English and to Miskitos in Miskitu drove
wedges between Creoles, Miskitos, and Catholic Mestizos. Over time,
both of these factors caused ethnic differences to deepen within the
Costeño worldview, obscuring the material base of ethnicity, which was
regarded as a “superstructural” ideology within the Marxist theoretical
tradition. CIDCA (Centro de Investigación y Documentación de la
Costa Atlántica), a social science research institute commissioned in the
early 1980s by the Sandinista government, identified this propensity to
view the world through an ethnic lens as being a crucial feature of
Costeño culture that predisposed them to counterrevolution. CIDCA
investigators labeled this process, by which Costeños misrecognized the
true class basis of their exploitation, the “ethnic prism” (CIDCA 1984, 17).
With regard to the causes of contemporary ethnic radicalization,
Sandinista social scientists highlighted the duplicity of Miskito leaders,
who manipulated ethnic and indigenous rhetoric in order to promote
their personal agendas (as well as, of course, the agendas of US imperi-
alism) at the expense of the great majority of Costeños (Vilas 1989,
132–135; Gurdián 1987, 175; Jenkins Molieri 1986, 315–318). These
investigators put their social science theories to the primary task of
invalidating the legitimacy and representativeness of the “ethnic dis-
course” that Costeño leaders developed during the crisis.16 Many San-
dinista social scientists placed themselves, and their science, in the highly
paternalistic position of demonstrating to Costeños that their cultural
movement was both false and ingenuous.
Although Sandinista social scientists explicitly distanced their own
interpretations from “dogmatic Marxism” and its alleged reliance on
economic determinism (Gurdián 1987, 172; Hale 1994b, 15), all

asserted, in one way or another, that Costeño consciousness (particularly
that part of it that predisposed Costeños to oppose the revolution as eth-
nic groups and Indians) was at some level false. According to Sandinista
social scientists, the fact that Costeños organized themselves along eth-
nic lines indicated that they operated under the assumption that their
problems stemmed from their marginalization as ethnic minorities
within a country, rather than as workers within a national and interna-
tional capitalistic economy that exploited them. In this sense, their
uprising was based on a fallacious interpretation of their situation
because it was based on an ethnic model rather than a class model.
In the following passage, Galio Gurdián, a Nicaraguan anthropolo-
gist working at CIDCA who later took a PhD from the University of
Texas, clearly expressed this insistence on the primacy of class analysis:
“Ethnicity, within this position, should be seen as one particular dimen-
sion of social structure, as a form of organization of certain social groups
that have a clear class nature, however. In complex societies, ethnic
groups are neither distinct from nor independent of the class structure,
but are rather the way in which certain classes or class sectors are differ-
entiated in terms of different socio-cultural elements” (Gurdián 1987,
177). Given that ethnicity was an epiphenomenon of class, Costeños
drew attention away from, according to Gurdián, the true nature of their
exploitation by asserting ethnic demands. Although Sandinista social sci-
entists granted the importance of recognizing ethnic and cultural differ-
ences within the nation, they stood by the claim that Costeño ethnic
discourse was both politically harmful and ideologically incorrect.
Many Sandinista social scientists made little attempt to hide their
contempt for Costeño ethnic discourse. Vilas labeled the positions taken
by MISURASATA as “ethnic chauvinism.” He defined this term as “a
kind of reductionism that privileges ethnic elements in the analysis of a
given social group, including the mystification of its own history.” He
added that the main characteristics of Miskito “ethnic chauvinism”
include an “oversimplified view of reality and a simplistic, black-
and-white schema of confrontation” (Vilas 1989, 126). According to
Vilas, ethnic chauvinism had “very little to do with Miskito culture” and
was used by Miskito leaders motivated only by the desire to attract inter-
national attention and to appeal to Miskito followers. Vilas’s unabashed
paternalism is most apparent when, on a conciliatory note, he conceded

that similar kinds of claims are “also found in other social groups in the
first stages of their consciousness of themselves as a distinctive social
entity” (ibid., 127).
Other Sandinista social scientists manifested similar antipathy
towards what they perceived as radical demands by Costeño organiza-
tions. They attempted to deconstruct and delegitimize Costeño ethnic
discourse. Gurdián, for example, reprimanded Miskito leaders for
engaging in an “ethnicist” rhetoric that “preaches an almost mystical
exaltation of ethnic traits” (Gurdián 1987, 177). He described this posi-
tion, which he lamented was “gaining ground in Latin America,” in the
following manner: “It is based on an ahistorical romantic vision of eth-
nicity: on the one hand, it affirms the existence of a millenary ethnic
nucleus, invariable in its essence and uncontaminated by the historical
process; on the other hand, the ‘superior’ nature of ethnic traits is
affirmed in contrast to the decadent nature of all things Western” (ibid.).
Jorge Jenkins Molieri (Nicaraguan anthropologist and militante San-
dinista) launched an equally belligerent salvo at Miskito ethnic discourse:
The ethnicist romanticism of this proposal [MISURASATA’s “Plan

1981”] is rooted in the fact that it does not recognize, or portends
to not recognize, the general situation of oppression and misery that
the Nicaraguan peasantry has lived, not to mention the other disad-
vantaged classes, as a result of the capitalist development imposed on
the country by the liberal-conservative regimes in complicity with
imperialism. They claim that being an Indian in itself confers supra-
national, incontrovertible and self-evident rights which are above
history and social processes—a kind of divine grace that, removed
from humanity and its struggles, turns its back on the achievements
of national liberation. The infantility of the proposal made by these
leaders can only be matched by the religious idea of judgment day—
in which they would be seated on the best balcony. (Jenkins Molieri
1986, 313)
For Jenkins Molieri the history of the Miskito was a history of

exploitation and manipulation at the hands of British and later North
American capitalism. His book on this crisis consisted of an extended
discussion of the negative ideological and social effects this foreign pres-
ence had on the Miskito people. This history of foreign exploitation
robbed them of the possibility of assuming their true Nicaraguan
“national sentiment” (ibid., 22). It also created mutual resentment
between “the indigene of the Atlantic and the ladino of the Pacific”
(ibid., 23).
A particularly glaring irony of this history for Jenkins Molieri was
that foreigners “made the indigene believe in the goodwill [bondad ] of
his exploiters” (ibid., 26). The inability of the Miskito to recognize the
objective fact that they were “brutally exploited” was rooted in two idio-
syncratic features of the region’s history: (1) “its early articulation in the
english mercantile and colonialist economy,” and (2) “fundamental ele-
ments in the ideological formation of the indigene, particularly the inte-
riorization of the moravian religion” (ibid., 238). It was precisely this
aspect of Miskito consciousness (part of what he called their “social
backwardness”) that caused them to mis-recognize the boon represented
by the Sandinista revolution. Instead they rebelled, thereby failing the
revolutionary challenge to “improve the conditions of their pathetic
existence” (ibid., 23).
For Jenkins Molieri, Miskito people’s long historical ties to the cap-
italist world economy and its English and North American agents
molded them as a distinctly modern people—a modernity that he
argued contradicted their status as Indians. He chided Miskito leaders
and their supporters for appealing to indigenous rights because, accord-
ing to his analysis, this appeal flew in the face of hundreds of years
of capitalist exploitation as wage workers. Referring to the Miskito
activism of the post-revolutionary period, he stated: “The real problem,
which has always been the exploitation of the indigene’s labor and the
permanent alienation of his territory, was hidden craftily behind a mask
of idyllic ethnicism promoted even by the paternalistic and philanthropic
attitudes of anthropologists and religious leaders” (ibid., 239).
The romantic notion of the Indians’ “idyllic” existence, promoted
by the self-romanticizing Miskito leaders and their religious and anthro-
pological advisers, was directly contradicted and indeed undermined, in
Jenkins Molieri’s view, by their historical exploitation as workers.17
According to Jenkins Molieri’s formulation, Sandinista social science
provided a corrective to the tendency of Miskito leaders and indigenists
to exoticize and “idealize” their own history (ibid., 22). Clearly, his ver-
sion of this social science operated on the assumption that Indianness is
innately pre-modern and pre-capitalist. Departing from this primitivist
set of assumptions, he critiqued the genuineness of the assertion of
indigenous identity by Costeños, whom he viewed as proletarianized,
and therefore un-Indian, Nicaraguans.
It is crucial to note that although Jenkins Molieri aggressively
attacked Miskito appeals to rights as Indians on the grounds that these
were romanticized and ahistorical, he simultaneously assumed some of
the very assumptions about Miskito history and culture on which he
argued these appeals were based. He limited his analysis exclusively to
indígenas (primarily referring to Miskitos), a category whose bounded-
ness he leaves unquestioned. By relying on the unqualified salience of
this term, he unwittingly adopted a fundamental assumption of the posi-
tion he was trying to deconstruct—namely that the Miskito Indians rep-
resent a bounded social group united by race, language, and culture.
Despite consistently emphasizing the impact of foreign influence on the
Miskito, he nevertheless adopted primitivist language to describe the
social structure that resulted from this interaction. That is to say, in his
analysis of the Miskito he embraced stereotypical characteristics com-
monly associated with Indians, such as communal living, harmony with
the environment, closeness to nature, and having distinct culture and
traditions. He wrote:
In the face of the irrational plunder of the natural resources and the
destruction of their environment the Miskitos almost instinctively
reacted by maintaining the steadfastness of their communal life,
exchange relationships, reciprocity, kinship ties, customs, traditions
and language. Granted all of these characteristics were blended with
enormous european, north american and caribbean influences in
such a way that this group [the miskito] took shape as a motley cul-
ture with multiple manifestations but with the stamp of an authen-
tic cultural continuity in continual change. (ibid., 28)
Jenkins Molieri countered Miskito claims to cultural purity and

indigenous essence by focusing on their victimization within the world
economy. However, in the process he constructed a reconfigured
Miskito essence based on stereotypically Indian features. Thus, although
Jenkins Molieri engaged in a deconstructionist project aimed at delegit-

imizing Miskito claims to indigenous rights, ultimately this project
incorporated key elements of these claims within the analysis.
Sandinista Social Scie nce II:

The I nve nt i on of Trad i ti on,
Cont radi c tory C on sc i ou sne s s,
and the Anthrop ology of Libe ration
The late Martin Diskin, an MIT anthropologist, published a num-
ber of articles that also operated within a modified deconstructionist
mode (Diskin 1987, 1989, 1991). In these articles Diskin dedicated him-
self to examining two separate but related phenomena: (1) the challenge
to anthropology represented by the increasing importance of “native
self-representation” (Diskin 1991, 157); and (2) the “manipulation of
indigenous struggles” by outside actors (e.g., the United States).18
Diskin argued that these phenomena were integrally related (particularly
in the Miskito case) because modern “ethnic discourse” (or “native self-
representation”) has become highly politicized as indigenous groups
have altered, invented, and reshaped their self-representations in
response to external actors and external paradigms of self-representation
(Diskin 1989, 11).19 Echoing Clifford Geertz’s 1960s work on ethnic
bloc formation and primordial loyalties in the so-called New Nations
(Geertz 1963), Diskin characterized the emergence of ethnic discourse
as a creative, modern, and undeniably strategic and tactical tool that
is used by formerly isolated or sheltered societies that, caught in the
maelstrom of global politics, find themselves being drawn into self-
consciously multi-ethnic states.20
With regard to the specifics of the Costeño-Sandinista conflict,
Diskin concentrated on what he perceived to be the increasingly radical
ethnic discourse of Miskito organizations and their leaders, a discourse
that he described as a “new voice” in the region. For Diskin, the claim
to native and Indian status by Miskito leaders represented an instrumen-
tally motivated attempt to maximize their access to national and inter-
national resources. In response to the radical changes in their world (e.g.,
the Sandinista revolution, pan-Indian activism, and the US support of
the Contras), Costeños simply chose to adopt and propagate an ethnic
identity that suited them best in that moment. Diskin wrote: “In the
example of Nicaraguan Costeños, ethnic discourse is employed to alter

the historic image of coastal peoples and argue for specific guaranteed
rights from the central government. The ethnic discourse, a tool in
ongoing social negotiation, is therefore eminently situational. . . . The
identities chosen may shift depending on the group’s allies and adver-
saries of the moment, the resources they seek, and, of course, timing”
(Diskin 1991, 157). In his view of the role of ethnic identity formation,
Diskin clearly assumed that the modern politicized version of Miskito
self-representation (i.e., situational and shifting) departed from a pre-
crisis true self-presentation that was devoid of such elements. Armed
with this assumption, he went about the business of citing the alleged
reality from which Miskito ethnic discourse diverged.
According to Diskin, Costeño ethnic discourse consisted of the
claims to: (1) the primacy of ethnic identity over other identities; (2) the
Indian identity and nationhood of coastal peoples; (3) the spiritual and
cultural identifications of these nations with their land; (4) their com-
munitarian nature; and, finally, (5) their right to self-determination. All
of these, he argued were, at best, recent reformulations and reshapings of
Costeño ethnic identity. At worst they were, from the privileged
perspective of the social scientist, patently false.
For example, Diskin criticized MISURASATA pronouncements (at
one point he referred to these as “ideological statements” [Diskin 1989,
20]) in which Miskito leaders referred to the Atlantic Coast Indians as
the “original inhabitants” of the region. He explained that “this charac-
terization often ignored the history of coastal people’s interaction with
the Caribbean, especially with the British Naval Force” (ibid., 19).
Diskin noted that Miskito claims to a history of self-rule and cultural
continuity “contradicts other [scholarly] accounts” (Diskin 1991, 169).
For example, he reported that the Miskito leaders of MISURASATA
refer to the “council of elders” as a distinctly Miskito form of self-
governing that they continued to respect during the 1980s. Citing his
knowledge of the anthropological scholarship on Nicaragua, he objected
that this “group of decision makers, are simply not recorded in the liter-
ature.” He added that only the Moravian Church (a consummate out-
side influence) could have provided any “centralized form of governance”
to the alleged Miskito nation, but “that is hardly an aboriginal pattern of
governance” (Diskin 1991, 170).
Citing Hale, he insisted that Miskito pretensions of having had a

long history of communal land tenure is undermined by the fact that at
the turn of the century a British agent actually initiated the practice of
communal land claims in order to ease his work load. At the turn of the
century, the culturally informed inclination of the Miskito, according to
Diskin, was to claim lands as individuals—a fact that Diskin believed
delegitimized modern Miskito claims to communal lands. He used
Helms’s ethnographic data from her 1971 book, Asang, on individually
owned cash-producing lands to support the conclusion that “communal
subsistence activities are not as widespread as the ethnic discourse insists”
(ibid.). These factual inconsistencies, according to the deconstructionist
logic of Diskin, are due in large part to Miskito leaders’ contact with
indigenous advocacy groups that support a “maximalist statement of
indigenous rights” and which were responsible, at least ideologically, for
the “consistency and increasing sophistication of Indian demands and
maneuvers” (Diskin 1989, 19).
The main problem with Diskin’s approach was not his critical stance
towards Miskito ethnic discourse. There can be no doubt that Miskito lead-
ers geared their descriptions of themselves and their culture to suit, or
counter, the expectations of outsiders. And there also can be no doubt that
the details of these self-descriptions in some cases had very little to do with
how the majority of Costeños live and describe their lives. The problem
was that Diskin implicitly assumed that there existed a more authentic
Miskito ethnic identity prior to the 1980s that became polluted and dis-
torted by the outside interference brought about as a result of the crisis. He
assumed that premodern self-representations (ethnic identity) are more
genuine because the Indian societies that produced them lacked an analyt-
ical sense of self-awareness. This self-awareness, then, only results from the
attempt of modern states to insert marginalized Indians into national soci-
ety as ethnic groups (Hill 1996). Diskin took the newness of this post-
revolutionary Costeño cultural production as prima facie evidence of its
illegitimacy, the case for which he ironically dedicated his “engaged science
of liberation” to prove (Diskin 1991, 17). In his insistence on deconstruct-
ing Costeño ethnic discourse, he neglected to analyze this discourse on its
own terms in order to understand how it worked within Costeño society.
Although other Sandinista social scientists refrained from frontal
assaults on Miskito ideology (like those of Vilas, Gurdián, and Jenkins
Molieri), all of them, in one form or another, worked within an inter-

pretive framework geared towards explaining the paradox of Costeño
cultural and political backwardness. Charles Hale, a North American
anthropologist who during the 1980s worked with CIDCA and con-
ducted fieldwork in Nicaragua for his PhD dissertation at Stanford Uni-
versity, provided a much more subtle analysis of “Miskitu consciousness”
in his dissertation and subsequent book and other publications, but even
these teeter at the brink of this paternalistic interpretive trap (Hale 1990,
1991, 1994b). As a self-proclaimed “politically engaged anthropologist”
(Hale 1994b, 217) and “quasi-insider within what might be called the
revolutionary establishment,” Hale made no attempt to disguise his sol-
idarity with the FSLN and its goals of revolutionary social transforma-
tion (ibid., 9). Due to the antigovernment hostilities in the region, Hale
found himself in the uncomfortable position (particularly for a North
American anthropologist committed to “research, theory and political
practice of a radical bent”) of supporting, and working for, a govern-
ment that was hostile to an anti-state subaltern uprising (albeit a subal-
tern uprising that temporarily had a powerful ally in the form of the US
State Department) with which the majority of his informants in his field
site harbored sympathy and with which many directly and indirectly par-
ticipated (ibid., 7).21 The task then became managing to maintain theo-
retical and practical sympathy for the Miskito while at the same time
supporting a Sandinista interpretation of (and solution to) the conflict.
Hale attempted to distance himself from what he described as “struc-
tural” explanations of the conflict that ignored Miskito agency and
focused exclusively “either on the intrusive, repressive character of the
Sandinista state or on the interventionist policies of the United States.”
Such structural analysis was incomplete because “it offered at best a vague
and deductive sense of what Miskitu people understood themselves to be
doing” (Hale 1994b, 17). On the other hand, he regarded the “Indian
perspective” to suffer from an over-reliance on “people’s motivations.”
He stated: “Accounts that began from the ‘Indian perspective’ tended to
caricature the structural determinants of the conflict, to portray Miskitu
culture in a vacuum, and to neglect how structural conditions had shaped
Miskitu people’s consciousness” (ibid., 17). For Hale, the dilemma
between focusing on Miskito consciousness in a vacuum and focusing on
structural factors that played a crucial role in shaping this consciousness
was symptomatic of a larger theoretical tension in the social sciences

between “voluntaristic and deterministic types of theory” (ibid.,18).
On a practical level, his solution to this dilemma was to work as an
agent of “conflict resolution” by contributing research that supported
the Sandinista-initiated autonomy project (Hale 1994b, 217). On a
theoretical level, Hale argued for a compromise in which Miskito
consciousness was regarded both as an ideological apparatus with which
to resist oppression and a hegemonic ideology that exposed them to
other forms of oppression. Miskito insurgency could then be viewed at
some level as being rooted in a rational response to real threats as well as
a misguided rejection of real opportunities. Both right and wrong, both
nearsighted and farsighted, the Miskito were, according to Hale, driven
by what he called (inspired by Gramsci’s discussions of hegemony)
“contradictory consciousness.”
Miskito contradictory consciousness was composed of two compet-
ing and partially intertwined elements that he labeled (1) Anglo affinity
and (2) ethnic militancy. Miskito Anglo affinity referred to their histor-
ical over-identification with the Anglo-American world. Anglo affinity,
more than simply a product of a strategic alliance with English and
Americans, manifested itself in a series of beliefs that venerated Anglo-
Americans, their cultures, and their companies. As a result of extended
contact with Anglo-American institutions and the traders, soldiers, min-
isters, and managers that led these institutions, the Miskito people “came
to accept some of those institutions’ self-justifying premises as their
own” (Hale 1994b, 83). Thus, to be Miskito meant to believe that
“Americans were benevolent allies, that North American companies
brought unmitigated benefits . . . that white people are superior in
phenotypes and intelligence” (ibid.).
Miskito ethnic militancy, which emerged and gained strength dur-
ing the confrontation with the Sandinistas, represented that part of the
Miskito worldview that opposed subordination to a “Spanish” central
government. According to Hale, Miskito demands for control over east-
ern Nicaragua stemmed from their ethnic militancy (ibid., 81).
The status of Anglo affinity as an analytical concept remained neb-
ulous throughout his analysis. Distancing himself from the “class/ethnic
dichotomy” of some of his Sandinista colleagues, he insisted that this
aspect of Miskito consciousness was not false. He explained that it
consisted “of ideas, values and notions of common sense” but was not a
“discrete variable or attribute” nor “a set of ideas—much less an ideol-
ogy.” However this ambiguous concept was defined, Hale found himself
in the awkward position of being a White North American anthropolo-
gist (and a self-proclaimed radical one at that) who was placing the term
“Anglo affinity” at the center of an analysis of a rebellious Indian group.22
Hale argued (in opposition to those who criticized the Indian
movement and Indian ideology as false) that Miskito ethnic militancy
actually was at one level very rational. Following Paul Willis’s analysis of
the role of hegemony among working-class high school children in
England, Hale argued that the Miskitos’ analysis of their situation and
the reasons for their plight contained true and important “penetrations”
as to the causes of their plight (Hale 1994b, 25). He stated: “I contend
that the ethnic militancy of the 1980s contained a perceptive critique of
the dominant society, an eloquent series of insights into the structural
and historical factors underlying Miskitu oppression. It entailed an
understanding of the workings of the system and gave rise both to pro-
found feelings of empowerment and an explosive inclination for collec-
tive action” (ibid., 83).
On the other hand, these “penetrations” simultaneously manifested
“limitations,” where the process of resisting one type of oppression
causes one to embrace another form of oppression. Precisely in this
Gramscian formulation of hegemony, in which resistance to one form of
domination creates susceptibility to another form of domination, Hale
offered his solution to the dilemma. An analysis that would incorporate
hegemony (so defined) could both explain Miskito so-called backward-
ness (within a Sandinista framework) and positively analyze the Miskito
worldview on its own terms.
Hale incorporated hegemony into his explanation of the Miskito/
Sandinista clash of the 1980s in the following manner. The Miskito were
historically caught up in two separate “spheres of inequality”: (1) North
American-dominated economy and civil society, and (2) the oppressive
Nicaraguan state (Hale 1990, 22). The Miskito had never openly resis-
ted the Nicaraguan government on a large scale because, from the
moment of Nicaraguan annexation of the region in 1894, the govern-
ment had been complicit with United States companies and the United
States government. This partnership between their historical allies
(North Americans) and their historical enemies (the Spanish

Nicaraguans) caused Miskito ethnic militancy to remain dormant
because their Anglo affinity stood in the way of the Miskito developing
a critique of their economic situation that would have included the role
of the US companies.
After the triumph of the Sandinistas in 1979, who came to power
with an outspoken critique of “Yankee imperialism” (to quote the
Sandinista epithet), North American capital fled and quickly relations
between the Sandinistas and the US government soured. Miskito Anglo
affinity no longer stood in the way of the Miskito resisting the
Nicaraguan government. In the 1980s they aggressively asserted them-
selves in defiance of their oppression—an oppression that they now were
able to attribute (albeit mistakenly for Hale) to communism and Pacific
Nicaraguan oppression, and not North American capitalism. In this
process, however, they could not help but “‘lock’ themselves into a cul-
tural form that lacked the basis for critique of ongoing Anglo-American
domination” (ibid., 23).
Although providing a more-nuanced explanation of Costeño rebel-
lion against the Sandinista government, Hale’s analysis remained caught
up in the Sandinista social science paradigm that posited Costeño back-
wardness as the key interpretive problem. Ultimately, his elaborate
analysis of Miskito consciousness was aimed at demonstrating the irra-
tionality of Miskito rebellion against the Sandinista state. He conceded
that Miskito ethnic militancy responded to a real appraisal of a histori-
cal pattern of Nicaraguan governmental neglect and marginalization of
the region that in part was supported by racist beliefs of Pacific
Nicaraguans towards the Miskito (Hale 1994b, 82). However, by resist-
ing this neglect and marginalization through forming affinities with the
Anglo-American world, the Miskito exposed themselves to another,
equally detrimental, form of oppression—namely, manipulation at the
hands of the CIA and the US State Department. Modern Miskito mili-
tancy suffered acutely, according to Hale, from “the absence of a critical
orientation toward the United States” (Hale 1991, 128). Its negative
response to a perceived communist threat was the product of a mis-
guided and thoroughly colonized worldview; to quote the provocative
title of Hale’s contribution in a volume titled Decolonizing Anthropology,
“They exploited us, but we didn’t feel it.”
It is ironic that Hale, who worked as an anthropologist for a San-

dinista government that he admitted often treated the region as an inter-
nal colony and that was at war with his subjects during fieldwork (Hale
1994b, 13), should be included in a volume devoted to an “anthropol-
ogy of liberation” that condemns, in the words of the editor, “anthro-
pology’s collusion with and complicity in colonial and imperialist
domination” (Harrison 1991, 1).23
Hale’s 1994 book, Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the
Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987, was widely praised, and many reviewers
focused their commendations on his handling of the professional and eth-
ical contradictions of his role in Nicaragua (Diskin 1995; Gudmundson
1995; Herlihy 1994; Weiss 1995). Indiana University’s Jeffrey Gould, for
example, wrote that it “should become a model for politically engaged
scholarship” (Gould 1995). However, anthropologist Mary Helms, who
worked in the Mosquito Coast before the revolution and strongly
opposed the Sandinista policies vis-à-vis the Miskito Indians, did not join
in the chorus of praise for Hale’s political engagement. She wrote that
“Hale’s Sandinista sympathies seem to have led him largely to ignore the
most destructive aspects of Sandinista militancy particularly . . . where
some forty Miskitu and Sumu communities were totally destroyed and
their populations forced to flee in order to create a ‘sanitized’ zone”
(Helms 1995).
The case of engaged anthropology in the Nicaraguan revolutionary
context puts into uncomfortable focus the much-debated relationship
between engaged activism and scientific detachment. Particularly telling
is the critique leveled against the activist camp within this debate, to the
effect that one anthropologist’s activism is another’s imperialism.

With regard to the crisis in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua in the
1980s, social scientists and journalists, many of whom joined the groups
involved as members or advisers, found themselves divided along cold-
war lines. Pro-Sandinistas at times provided an apologist position for the
so-called mistakes committed by the revolutionary government. These
mistakes were said to be rooted in an alleged Marxian over-reliance on
class analysis by Sandinista leaders—a bias that blinded them to the
salience of ethnic factors. On a practical level, pro-Sandinistas supported
a reconciliation that would include provisions allowing for regional

autonomy. On the level of theory, pro-Sandinistas employed a decon-
structionist approach that endeavored to explain the reasons that the
Miskito failed to understand the true sources of their exploitation.
Pro-Sandinistas fell into a paternalistic interpretive trap in which they
uncritically accepted the dilemma of Costeño “backwardness” as a key
interpretive problem. Emphasizing the situational and changing nature
of the Miskitos’ ethnic identity assertion, they critiqued what they
regarded as essentialist approaches to ethnicity on the part of the Miskito
and their supporters.
However, this approach did not sufficiently question the bounded-
ness of the ethnic categories in question. In this sense, pro-Sandinistas
fell prey to the same sort of essentialism that they vigorously critiqued.
Pro-Sandinistas, some more than others, often neglected to fundamen-
tally interrogate the assumption that the Mosquito Coast was divided
into separate ethnic groups that each manifest distinct culture. Although
many Sandinistas were remarkably sympathetic to the Miskito cause, the
use of this deconstructionist theoretical approach was designed at least in
part to discredit Costeño and Miskito aspirations.
On the other hand, anti-Sandinistas were divided into two camps
that had very distinct motivations but shared a similar essentialist
approach. The first camp, anticommunists, attributed Costeño resistance
to Sandinista authoritarianism and the incompatibility of communist
programs and Costeño culture. In practice, anticommunists made great
efforts to prevent Sandinista-Costeño reconciliation.
The second camp, Indianists, opposed the integrative revolution of
the Sandinistas on the grounds that, despite ideological differences with
traditional nonrevolutionary nation-building projects, the Sandinistas
program for the Atlantic Coast reproduced integrationist policies
that were typical of governments in the Americas.24 They tended to
admire the fear and respect inspired by Costeño bellicosity, which
according to them stood in the face of five hundred years of Indian and
African defeat at the hands of European and European-descended soci-
ety. Wary of classic “regional autonomy” governmental arrangements,
which had been routinely practiced with varying degrees of success in
regions of the Soviet Union with significant ethnic minorities, they
encouraged negotiation with the Sandinistas, but only negotiations
that would put true indigenous self-determination on the negotiating

table.
Despite their divergent ideological and political motivations, anti-
communists and Indianists constructed a similar framework that relied
on romantic stereotypes of native societies. Each camp placed at the cen-
ter of their respective analyses a set of stereotypical qualities that they
presumed to be inherent to native societies. These qualities counter-
productively reified ethnic boundaries to the point of ignoring other
crucial elements of Costeño society. Rather than attempting to explain
the ways in which seemingly “false” Costeño ideological structures (such
as Anglo affinity or simply ethnic identity itself) worked themselves out
in practice, Sandinista social scientists strove to delegitimize Costeño
cultural self-representation.
Chapte r 7
Conclusion
There are, I am informed, about thirty English families

residing here [the Mosquito Coast], who possess lands
granted to them by the Indians, and have begun to
settle plantations; but the quantity of that produce
they have hitherto manufactured has not been consid-
erable enough for exportation. Of other commodities
sufficient is collected to load a large annual ship for
Great-Britain; besides several small ships belonging to
Jamaica. . . . But, however extensively these articles
may be attended to by the European settlers, I think
that more capital advantages might be obtained by
striking out such employments for the native Indians
as they would be willing to enter into, and pursue to
the mutual gain of themselves and great Britain.
Preparatory to this, some degree of civilization is
necessary; without which, their consumption of
British manufactures cannot reach to any great extent.
They are rather of an indolent temper; and will not
labour, unless when indigent and compelled to it by
want. . . . The better to attract these Indians to such
objects, it is necessary to open a market, where their
crops might find a ready price, and yield a quick
return. . . . Their wants will undoubtedly increase in
proportion as they grow more civilized; and, in order to
gain the costlier articles of dress and convenience,
they may soon be taught, that nothing is requisite on
their part, than an advancement of skill, and redoubled
diligence in selecting and procuring commodities of
superior value; or larger collections of the same kind,
for carrying on their barter, and due payment of their
annual balance.
—Edward Long, The History of Jamaica
(Long 1774, 318)
219
A few miles up the main river live the Woolvas and

Cuckeras Indians. Mr. Henry Corrin, of Jamaica,
settled here in 1752, and acquired a large fortune from
the luxuriant productions of this district. He exported
great quantities of mahogany, tortoise-shell, &c. to
Jamaica, and the Northern colonies. He likewise took
some pains to civilize the neighboring Indians; for, on
his first coming to reside here, they lived in a savage
state, and had very little commerce either with the
Spaniards or English. This example of success, from
the endeavours of a private person, may lead us to
conclude on the proportionately greater advantages to
be gained by establishing a regular colony in these
parts, who might labour to gain the good-will of the
Indian tribes, and by fair dealing and a generous
communication wean them from a state of barbarism
to civility and industry. It seems, I think, probable,
that they might soon become reconciled to much of
the English manners in their dress and habitations,
and gradually induced to take large imports of
clothing, furniture, implements, and food, from us. In
order to purchase these, they would necessarily apply
themselves to procure such commodities of value, for
the exchange, as they might find to be most in request.
Thus, by a discreet management, it is reasonable to
believe, that our British wares and manufactures
might be dispersed to many thousands of people on
this continent, and so many solid emoluments reaped
from the intercourse, as would amply overpay our
utmost affiduities in the prosecution of it.
—Edward Long, The History of Jamaica
(Long 1774, 324)
The above observations, written in the mid-

eighteenth century by the British historian of the Caribbean Edward
Long, speak to the historical depth of the interpenetration of racial ide-
ologies and political economy in the Mosquito Coast. Long’s words also
dramatize the profound paradox of being a native of a New World that
has for five hundred years been in the process of being conquered and
“civilized.” The conquest of the Americas produced an ideological sys-
tem that, in order to justify European domination, posed Indians as
Conclusion 221
savage, premodern foils to European progress, civilization, and moder-

nity. Europeans placed Indians in the primitive half of an ontological
dichotomy between civilization and savagery, man and nature. In the
other half of the dichotomy, Europeans and their North and South
American standard-bearers have simultaneously been engaged in intro-
ducing a mercantilist-cum-capitalist economic system into the farthest
reaches of the Americas. Given that within this ideological system a
benchmark of civilization and progress is the degree of involvement with
the world economy, a dramatic and often tragic conflict arises between the
opposed forces of identity and economy. In this book I have traced the
ways in which this conflict has played itself out in the history and social
science of the Mosquito Coast, as well as in the Mosquito Coast itself.
The contradictions of this Euro-American drama make themselves
particularly manifest in the Mosquito Coast of Central America. The
Mosquito Coast lies on the boundary between Mesoamerica and the
Caribbean. Caribbeanists commonly refer to the Caribbean as an eco-
nomically precocious region that at an early date was forged “from
scratch” into a center of export production in the wake of the devasta-
tion of its indigenous inhabitants. The role of the Caribbean as an
exploited peripheral region within an expanding European world system
foretold the role that would be forced on the rest of the Third World. The
Mosquito Coast unmistakably represents a Caribbean society. The region
became an active participant in the growing contraband trade in the west-
ern Caribbean from the time of the establishment of the Providence
Colony in the early 1600s. Although, as a result of complex historical
twists of fate, the region did not become a formal British colony nor did
it witness the rise of a typical Caribbean plantation complex, the economy
of the region became inextricably linked to a growing world economy. As
a result, the inhabitants of the region became increasingly dependent on
goods of foreign manufacture, and they adapted their productive strategies
accordingly. In Long’s prophetic words, they became civilized.
This process intensified in the twentieth century when a series of
US and Canadian lumber, mining, and banana companies began opera-
tions, making Puerto Cabezas the most modern and international city
of the Mosquito Coast. Porteños looked positively on their own
cosmopolitanism, as well as on their reliance on, and access to, high-
status international sources of goods and money. This positive self-image
was in part rooted to the strategic alliance made between natives of the
Mosquito Coast and the English against the Spanish and Nicaraguans of
the Pacific Coast. Costeños valued their contact with the English as a
civilizing influence, and they adamantly resisted Nicaraguan “reincorpo-
ration” on the grounds that the Nicaraguan rule would place a barrier
to their economic progress. In this sense, the inhabitants of the Mos-
quito Coast region have over time actively and consciously maximized
their interaction with the Caribbean and its particular nexus in the
world economy. In fact, a number of my Porteño informants, when
asked to comment on the ways in which Pacific Nicaraguans perceived
them during “company time” when they traveled to Managua, described
themselves as “dollar men” because Spaniards, in their opinion, per-
ceived Costeños as having greater access to cash, specifically US dollars.
In the continuing climate of economic depression and “abandonment”
in which the region has found itself in the years after the revolution,
Porteños have a harder time living up to their billing as “dollar men,”
particularly in light of the wave of relatively wealthy Pacific Nicaraguans
who returned to Managua from Miami after the Sandinista electoral
defeat, speaking Standard American English (SAE) and carrying US
passports. In complicated and regionally specific ways, these expressions
of cosmopolitanism dovetail with Caribbean constructions of Blackness
and Englishness—discourses to which insiders and outsiders in the Mos-
quito Coast have appealed for hundreds of years.
On the other hand, the Mosquito Coast is part of Mesoamerica, a
Mesoamerica that is renowned, in the scholarly literature, for its Indian
survivals. Again as a result of a number of highly contextual historical
twists of fate, the Mosquito Coast is known, both by insiders and out-
siders, as a place inhabited by Indians. In this regard, the region stands
in contrast to the majority of Nicaragua, Central America, and Latin
America, where the great majority of the population is referred to in a
wide variety of terms such as Ladino, Mestizo, el pueblo (the people),
campesino (peasant), gente humilde (common folk), and del campo
(country folk)—all terms that are used in contrast to “real” Indians. As
Indians, Costeños have been associated with a series of stereotypical
traits, some more insidious than others, that place them on par with a
static and unchanging natural world that stands in contrast to a dynamic
modern world. David Frye identified this tendency to view Indians as
inherently unchanging as a “colonial ideology” (Frye 1996, 10).
Conclusion 223
The complex and dynamic history of ethnic, tribal, and racial

identification of the inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast is not merely a
philosophical problem that Euro-American scholars have considered
over the centuries. Rather, the contestation and use of these categories
has been a highly charged and integral part of the social and political
practice of the region. In this book I carefully trace the expressions of
these ideologies, and in the process I interrogate both the standard
anthropological “other” (in this case the diverse historical actors who
have operated in the Mosquito Coast) and our own selves as historians
and social scientists. In this respect I am following Andrew Lass’s call to
“treat [anthropological] theory . . . as an ethnographic object” (Lass
1997, 722). Literature review, of course, is a standard part of any schol-
arly work. However, I do not intend the discussion of previous scholar-
ship to simply represent my attempt to situate my argument vis-à-vis that
of scholars who have worked on similar issues. Rather, I trace the com-
plicated ways in which social scientists and their concepts have mingled
with and influenced and been influenced by their subjects. In the Mos-
quito Coast, where activist scholars of both the right and left have played
significant roles as advisors and policy-makers, this mutual influence
warrants such scrutiny.
In some extreme cases the line between scholars and actors has been
impossible to draw. One particularly notable example of this phenom-
ena is E. G. Squier, a nineteenth-century US scholar and diplomat, who
wrote a highly polemical attack on the Mosquito Government as being
composed of “drunken negroes,” while simultaneously encouraging the
US State Department to intervene in favor of Nicaragua in the dispute
between Nicaragua and Great Britain over the status of the country of
Mosquito (see Olien 1985 for a fascinating analysis of “anthropological
scholarship and political propaganda”).
Another, more recent, example is the case of the late Bernard
Nietschmann, who served as a hawkish adviser to insurgent Miskito
groups during the Contra War while publishing, with the help of the
arch-conservative press “The Freedom House,” a rabidly anticommunist
“scholarly” treatment of Miskito identity. These two examples represent
clear cases of what anthropologist Richard Handler condemned in his
work on Quebecois nationalism as the “close congruence between
actors’ ideologies and observers’ theories” (Handler 1988, 8). In many
cases, as scholarly writing attempts to objectify and rationalize “native”
ideology, local social movements incorporate these rationalized inter-

pretations of their culture into their own rationalizations of their culture.
This situation creates “two discourses that feed off of each other”
(Handler 1988, 9). This process became increasingly charged during the
Contra War as cold-war polarization deeply divided the scholarly
approaches to the Costeño-Sandinista crisis.
I argue for the importance of consciously resisting the tendency to,
in the words of Raymond Smith, “biologize social relations.” I have
demonstrated at length the ways in which identification as Miskito
Indian and Creole, although undeniably an important matter among
Costeños, has been overdrawn in the scholarly literature on the region.
In the contemporary period, developments linked to the cold-war
struggle between Contras and Sandinistas, the globalization of indige-
nous activism, the regional autonomy process, and official ethnicity have
provided a strong impetus to force an otherwise highly fluid social situ-
ation with regard to socio-racial identifications into a standardized and
objectivized system that operates on certain anthropologically-derived
presuppositions about the relationship between race and culture.
The struggle for regional autonomy in eastern Nicaragua, in addi-
tion to representing a struggle for increased political and economic con-
trol vis-à-vis the Nicaraguan state, represents also a struggle over the
meanings of being Black or Indian. This struggle takes place, not only
in formal political contexts, but also in everyday social interaction.
Costeños are actively engaged in the process of reworking and creating
ideologies of racial difference, which are enacted and transformed in
practice. They are trying to sort out what it means to be a Miskito,
Creole, or Mestizo in the Mosquito Coast. As Brackette Williams has
shown in the case of Guyana, the ethnic stereotypes and syncretic cul-
tural forms that emerge from this process are forged in individuals’
everyday practice. However, this process does not occur in an ideologi-
cal vacuum where any cultural creation is possible. Rather, it occurs
within an ideological arena heavy with the weight of the past’s ideolog-
ical, which is to say categorical, baggage (Williams 1991).
Apart from a providing a fruitful approach to understanding the
roots of the Costeño-Sandinista conflict of the 1980s, the analysis that I
develop in this book helps us to assess the future prospects for the Mos-
quito Coast. Allow me to introduce a final anecdote. In 1992 I attended
Conclusion 225
the “Indigenous Assembly” of Miskito Indian communities that had been

called by Stedman Fagoth, the controversial ex-leader of the largest
Miskito faction of the Contras. Representatives from most Miskito vil-
lages and neighborhoods had walked, paddled, and driven for days in
order to crowd into the large auditorium in the river city of Waspám.
Fagoth drew the following two lists on the chalkboard:
1. Texas
2. California
3. Ukraine
4. South Africa
5. RAAN [the North Atlantic Autonomous Region]
Oil 180 million

Pesca [fish] 150 million
gold 150 million
lumber 100 million
total 580 million
He proceeded to explain, in Miskitu, to his audience that the first list

was of the five wealthiest regions in the world in terms of natural
resources. The second list represented the monetary value of these
resources that would soon be enjoyed by Costeños once the US compa-
nies would accept their invitations to return.
For better or for worse, Costeños are searching for viable ways to
cash in on the natural resources that exist within the Mosquito Coast.
Their cosmopolitan ethos and their experience of environmental
dissonance—the nagging sense that they should not be so poor while
living in such a naturally abundant region—give them a strong ideolog-
ical predisposition to attempt to rectify their current situation through
recourse to foreign extractive industries. Just like the mythical Indian of
Mosquito Coast folklore who could turn the leaves of oranges trees into
bills of cash, the modern inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast and their lead-
ers are working on the same magic. The trick will be to benefit from this
conversion within a global economic system that rarely rewards the
custodians of raw materials.
Notes
Chapte r 1 The Setti ng

1. I conducted the majority of my ethnographic fieldwork in Nicaragua, most
of the time in Puerto Cabezas, from April 1992 until September 1993.
Although I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, my family is from
the Pacific side of Nicaragua and I make regular visits to the country. I
employed both participant-observation and formal and informal interviews
with a wide variety of informants, including foreigners, Costeños, and Pacific
Nicaraguans. Except for widely known political leaders, I employ pseudo-
nyms for all of the people that I refer to in this book.
2. The flight of these companies at the time of the triumph of the Sandinista
Revolution punctuated the end of company time.
3. Nicaraguans use the term Costeño as a generic way of referring to the inhab-
itants of the Mosquito Coast. In Spanish the region is most commonly
referred to as the Costa Atlántica. In the chapters that follow, I use the term
Costeño as a key analytical and descriptive category. In the languages of the
Mosquito Coast, the category of Costeño closely parallels the term cus uplika
in Miskitu and “coast people” in English.
4. Edmund Gordon and Mark Anderson identify “two competing notions of
blackness” among the Garifuna of the southern Mosquito Coast—one tradi-
tional and the other modern (Gordon and Anderson 1999, 292). It is pre-
cisely this association of modernity and blackness among Costeños that I am
identifying here.
5. Inhabitants of the city of Puerto Cabezas refer to themselves in Spanish as
Porteños. In English and Miskitu the corresponding terms are “port people”
and Bilwi Uplika.
6. Miskitu, Miskito, and Mosquito are used variably to refer to a language,
region, and people. In this book I use “Miskitu” to refer to the indigenous
language of Nicaragua and Honduras, “Miskito” to refer to the socio-racial
category, and “Mosquito” to refer to the region. This is a distinction that I
make for the purposes of analytic clarity. According to some linguists, mis-
sionaries, and educators, the Miskitu language does not have an o. As a result,
over the last twenty years the u has been increasingly used to refer to the lan-
guage and the people. Although this change has been accepted by some
Nicaraguan, North American, and European academics and journalists, most
Costeños, with the exception of some educators and political leaders, have
not replaced the o with a u in their writing. A recent linguistic analysis of
Miskitu phonetics by Margaret Badlato was inconclusive as to whether the
Miskitu phonetics has the letter o (Badlato 2001, 47). However the phonetic
bottom line is ultimately adjudicated, it is reasonable to claim that Miskitu has
an o by virtue of the fact that Miskitu speakers often believe that their
language has an o. The case of the Miskitu o provides an example of modern
227
228 Notes to Pages 6–13
cultural politics in the region in which some Costeños and others are attempt-
ing to conceptually purify socio-racial categories that in practice are flexible.
7. The Contra War starting in 1980 pitted the newly formed armed forces of the
Sandinista government, which came to power by overthrowing Nicaraguan
dictator Anastasio Somozo in 1979, against the US-backed Contras whose
ranks included former National Guard troops and leaders. The Contras
attacked Nicaraguan targets primarily from bases in Honduras along the bor-
der with Nicaragua. In the Mosquito Coast, many Costeños joined the Con-
tras and operated under their own leadership and in their own region (on the
eastern part of the Honduras border) under the larger Contra organizational
structure that was led by Nicaraguans from the Pacific. Although most of the
units of Costeños had demobilized before the late 1980s, some retained their
arms well after the elections of 1990 that removed the Sandinista administra-
tion from office.
8. Costeños use the term “community” (comunidades in Spanish, and comunidad
nani or tawan nani in Miskitu) to refer to the region’s settlements. It is a very
important concept and I will return to it at length in chapters 4 and 6.
9. The distinction that I make between primitivism and cosmopolitanism reca-
pitulates the civilization vs. nature dichotomy that Fredrick Pike fruitfully
explored in his historical analysis of United States-Latin American relations
in the Americas, titled The United States and Latin America: Myths and Stereo-
types of Civilization and Nature (Pike 1992). However, in contrast to Pike, who
focuses on the ways in which North Americans applied this flawed worldview
to Latin Americans, I recognize that within Nicaragua (and the Americas
generally) this framework is adopted in varying degrees by those very indi-
viduals who North Americans have viewed as primitive. Hence a primitivist
ideology does not easily index a defined group of people (e.g., North Ameri-
cans, Latin Americans, Pacific Nicaraguans, Costeños). Rather, it is part of a
complex of ideas that are expressed in a contextual way across a broad spec-
trum of regions and social groups.
10. Concepts such as culture, race, identity, and ethnicity have become highly
politically charged and often appear at the center of contentious political
struggles and social movements in the modern world. The studied articula-
tion and internalization of these concepts within modern Latin American
social movements represents a principal distinguishing feature of what Sonia
Alvarez and Arturo Escobar define as new social movements, which they
contrast to old class-based movements (Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1998,
6; Alvarez and Escobar 1992, 3;Wade 1997, 95) such as the crushed national-
popular projects (Hale 1997, 573) of Latin America. With regard to the cur-
rent wave of indigenous activism in the Americas, Michael Kearney identifies
a modern process of new ethnicity in which the construction of ethnicity by
contemporary indigenous people has become and is becoming, more of a
conscious, intentional activity than before (Kearney 1996, 10; also see Brysk
1996, 2000; Messer 1995; Wright 1988).
11. In an article that reviews the rise of the cultural politics of identity, Charles
Hale identifies this problematic entanglement of analyst’s lens and topic of
study in Latin American anthropology (Hale 1997, 569; see Jackson 1995, 16,
and Handler 1988 for a similar observation). This phenomenon represents an
element of a larger crisis of representation (Marcus and Fischer 1986) and a
related crisis in confidence (Watanabe 1994, 25) that has left anthropologists
calling into question not only the value of their traditional methods and
Notes to Pages 13–15 229
rhetorics but also the virtue of the anthropological enterprise in light of the
structures of inequality in which they operate.
12. I put the word “debate” in quotation marks here because, to quote Johannes
Fabian, “I don’t know of any essentialists calling themselves essentialist.”
Fabian recognizes that these two labels are currently employed to mark posi-
tions, but he disputes the way that this debate is framed on the grounds that
“essentialism is essentially an ontological position; it asserts a reality, in this
case Maya identity. Constructivism (at least in the understanding of someone
who has been put in that corner) marks an epistemological position. It
regards the conditions of possibility of, in this case, knowing what Maya iden-
tity might be. Put somewhat differently, essentialism is one of the things
constructivists try to understand” (Fabian 1999, 490).
13. This theoretical move closely corresponds to a similar moment in the 1960s
and 1970s when social scientists, sparked to some degree by the controversy
surrounding Clifford Geertz’s essay on primordial identity (Geertz 1963),
proposed boundary maintenance (Barth 1969) and interest group models
as a foil to static trait-oriented or culture-as-things (Jackson 1994, 385)
approaches to politicized cultural, racial, and ethnic groups.
14. See the recent work of Kay Warren (1998, 1999) for a provocative example
from Guatemala. Also see Christopher Brumann’s appeal (1999) to retain the
concept of culture, as well as Abu-Lughod responses in a 1999 issue of
Current Anthropology dedicated to this topic.
15. Here Fernandez adds to Jean Jackson’s provocatively titled article, “Is There A
Way to Talk about Making Culture without Making Enemies?”
16. Hobsbawm and Ranger’s provocative volume, The Invention of Tradition,
would have to be considered the prime example of this approach (Hobsbawm
and Ranger 1983). The following work also stands out in my mind: Bourri-
caud 1975; Diskin 1991; Hahn 1996; Handler 1988; Handler and Linnekin
1984; Herzfeld 1982; Jackson 1994, 1995; Vail 1989; Williams 1991. I would
also include Friedlander’s passionately written polemic on forced identity in
Mexico in which she decries the elite Mexican glorification of the Mexican
Indian while simultaneously using Indian identification as a strategy of mar-
ginalization (Friedlander 1975, 1976). Kay Warren’s earlier work in Guatemala
dealt with this theme (Warren 1989, 1993).
17. This is not to say that this approach is inherently antagonistic or that those
that I identify as falling into this camp literally make enemies in the fieldwork
setting, but rather that the analyses that they make of the cultural production
of the group or groups that they study calls into question or potentially
undermines at some level the premises of this cultural production that is prac-
ticed by one or more of the groups with whom they are involved.
18. In this group I include anthropologists who explicitly recognize that the
appeals to culture and identity of the people they study have emerged as
strategies of resistance that are forged in a highly politicized context. They,
however, are hopeful and optimistic about the unifying potential of
these strategies. In the Latin American context I include the following
authors: Brysk 2000; Gandin 1997; Gossen 1996; Kearney and Nagengast
1990; Kearney 1996; Kidd 1995; Nash 1995; C. Smith 1991; Ströbele-Gregor
1996; Varese 1996; Warren 1999; Watanabe 1994; Whitten 1996; R. Wilson
1995.
19. In doing so I follow the lead of anthropologists, historians, and social
scientists who have innovatively responded to the challenge of practicing
anthropology in the crucible of the political and social upheaval of twentieth-

century Central America. Recent works by Les Field and Jeffrey Gould on
the Pacific half of Nicaragua have effectively dealt with the issue of identity
politics in this part of the country, where a “myth of mestizaje” exists that
perpetuates the construction of the Pacific as a place that lacks indigenous
influence (Gould 1998; Field 1999). Gould’s work is part of a set of innova-
tive treatments of the politics of mestizaje in Latin America. See the special
volume of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology, edited by Charles Hale
(1996), that is devoted to this issue, as well as Marisol de la Cadena’s book on
mestizaje in the Peruvian context (de la Cadena 2000). All of these works
implicitly or explicitly take up the call to write against culture because they
take up a history-of-identity approach to a distinctively “halfie” social cate-
gory (Mestizo), thereby resisting the temptation to take the prevailing iden-
tity categories on face value—as bounded, unchanging entities.
Chapte r 2 Nicaragua’s Two Coast s

1. The Spanish took advantage of this feature to build a Pacific fleet using native
labor, which in its first years primarily transported Nicaraguan Indian slaves
to the mines of Peru (Sherman 1979, 237).
2. Newson, whose numbers correspond generally with other estimates of the
pre-Conquest population, puts the Nicaraguan population level at about 1.6
million, of which over 1 million lived in the Pacific lowlands and about
350,000 lived in the Central Highlands. The Caribbean Coastal Plain had by
far the lowest population density, with 60 percent of the land area but only 5
percent of the total population. According to Newson the population density
of the region (one person per square kilometer), was dramatically lower than
that of the Pacific Lowlands (sixty people per square kilometer) and the Cen-
tral Highlands (fifteen people per square kilometer) (Newson 1987, 88).
3. Lateric soils (acidic, bright red in color with a high content of iron oxide and
aluminum hydroxide) predominate in and around Puerto Cabezas as well as
the Atlantic coast in general. During my stays in Managua, I noted that the
red soils of the Atlantic often stood out in the minds of Pacific Nicaraguans
who had spent time in Puerto Cabezas as an unforgettable distinguishing
feature of the region.
4. Cacique was an Arawak-derived Taíno Indian word meaning “leader,” which
the Spanish applied to New World Indians in general (Moscoso 1991, 38).
This represented a typical case of the Spanish imposing native terminology in
an over-generalizing way on a complex American social reality.
5. Strong noted that as of the late 1940s, the region was almost completely
archaeologically unexplored (Strong 1948, 121, 138).
6. Julian Steward viewed this decrease in productive skill as an example of the
high degree of post-Conquest “deculturation” of Caribbean tribes. According
to Steward, the pre-Columbian populations of the Eastern Coastal Plain of
Nicaragua and Honduras conformed to what he labeled the “Circum-
Caribbean Culture,” which represented a middle stage between the “civilized
peoples” (Steward 1948, 7) of Central Mexico and the Peruvian Andes, and
the less-developed “Marginal” and “Tropical Forest” tribes (27). As a result of
the Conquest, the cultural level of these Circum-Caribbean tribes composed
of semi-civilized people “stepped down to the Tropical Forest level” (15).
7. This history helps to explain the overwhelming preponderance of Nahuatl

toponyms and ethnonyms in Central America, many of which, counteri-
ntuitively, emerged during the colonial period (Newson 1987, 30; also see
Guerrero and Guerrero 1982 and Incer 1985).
8. The use of Nahuatl as a lingua franca in lower Central American continued
into the seventeenth century (Stone 1964, 214; also see Wolf 1959, 41).
9. Nahua is a language grouping that includes a wide variety of historical and
modern dialects. Nahuat refers to dialects that branched off at an earlier date
and were spoken in the periphery of Middle America. Nahuatl refers to the
dominant language of the Mexica State (arising in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries) that had its “intellectual capital” in Texcoco. This “pol-
ished and sophisticated” dialect came to be the court language of the non-
Aztecan ruling groups throughout the Aztec Empire (Wolf 1959, 42).
10. The name of the modern Nicaragua department that occupies the eastern
border of Lake Nicaragua bears this same name—Chontales. Daniel Ortega,
the beleaguered ex-president of Nicaragua, who from the moment of his rise
to power was regarded with disdain as something of a “rustic” country bump-
kin by many of the Nicaraguan elite centered in Managua, Leon, and
Granada (Nicaragua’s three major cities and not coincidentally the areas of
highest Mexican-derived pre-Columbian population) is the most prominent
recent native Chontaleño.
11. Caribe was a generic (non-Nahua) term used by the Spanish to label tribes
from the Lower Antilles and the northern coast of South America who
allegedly practiced cannibalism (Incer 1990, 248).
12. It is difficult to determine whether or not this alleged nomadism was a fea-
ture of pre-contact Mosquito Coast groups or whether, if it existed at all, it
was a defensive response to the pressures of European (and pre-Columbian
central Mexican) contact. Offen argues that the belief in Mosquito Coast
nomadism is part of a “mythical landscape” that plagues the historiography of
the region (Offen 1999, 222).
13. A number of historians have described seventeenth-century Spanish attempts
to conquer the region (Gamez 1939, 45–53; Potthast 1988, 18–29; Houwald
1990, 11–140).
14. Lenca usually referred to highland groups that occupied the Segovias of
northern Nicaragua and central Honduras, while Jicaque usually came to refer
to lowland groups in the Caribbean watershed of the Segovias. These even-
tually became officially recognized Indian group names in Honduras. The
modern ethnological literature also maintains the use of these terms (Steward
1948, 30; Johnson 1948, 60). The modern Jicaque occupy the Yoro region of
northern Honduras at the source of the Aguan River (Incer 1990, 251).
15. See Moscoso (1991) and Romero Vargas (1993a) for detailed descriptions of
the institutions through which the Spanish exploited communally organized
Indian labor in Nicaragua.
16. Jeffrey Gould described in detail the process by which Nicaraguan Indians
finally became formally redefined as Ladinos in the early twentieth century
(Gould 1993b, 201). He calls into question the common (Nicaraguan nation-
alist) portrayal of this process as being a simple “one-way road to assimilation
with the Indian at the beginning and the ladino citizen at the destination.”
Although he critiques the economic determinism of Jaime Wheelock’s per-
spective that underscores “the loss of land and consequent proletarianization
as the principal cause of Ladinoization,” he concedes that the “acceptance of

a mestizo Nicaraguan identity usually involved the withdrawal of indigenous
claims to communal land and the loss of communal autonomy” (Gould
1993a, 395). Gould concedes that after hundreds of years of struggle central
Nicaraguan Indians finally became defined as Ladinos.
17. Rights did correspond with the labor and tributary obligations imposed on
formally recognized indigenous communities. The most prominent of these
rights was the possession and use of communal lands that throughout the colo-
nial period were selectively recognized by Spain (Romero Vargas 1993a, 11).
18. In the last fifteen years there has been a renewed interest within Nicaragua
in the traditionally “denied existence” and “obstinate persistence” (Membreño
1994, 181) of Pacific indigenous communities. This research, falling within
the Latin American indigenist tradition, has attempted to address what is per-
ceived as an anomalous feature of Nicaraguan society, that despite the wide-
spread belief that Indian communities in the Pacific ceased to exist, certain
Pacific Nicaraguans continue to have an “Indian identity” although they do
not retain indigenous language or dress. A major goal of this research, then,
is to positively demonstrate that in fact these people indeed are Indians.
For examples see García Breso (1992), Rizo (1993), Membreño (1994), and
C. Sánchez (1994).
19. Although the Spanish colonial rulers and later the Nicaraguan elite used
Indian communal affiliation to their own advantage, this does not mean that
indigenous communities were not at times able to use their “communal sol-
idarity” to resist their exploitation (Gould 1993b, 199). Gould provides a fas-
cinating example of a Pacific indigenous community’s (Subtiava) resistance to
the pressures of “Ladinoization” and capitalist expansion (ibid.).
20. For particularly illustrative examples, see Gamez (1939, 59); Floyd (1967, 22);
Smutko (1985, 72); Dunbar Ortiz (1986, 59); Incer (1990, 291, 294);
Solórzano (1992, 38).
21. Geographer Karl Offen convincingly refutes the often repeated claim to the
effect that the shipwrecked African slaves joined Sumu communities, which
together subsequently became the Miskito Indians. This claim views the
Miskito as “transformed Sumus” and in general downplays the cultural con-
tinuity between the pre- and post-shipwreck populations. He argues that a
sizable “proto-Miskitu” population, which is sometimes referred to in the
early colonial literature as “Guaba” Indians, inhabited the Cape Gracias a
Dios section of the Mosquito Coast well before the shipwreck (Offen 2002).
22. Much of the scholarship that views the emergence of the Miskito Indians
as primarily a biological phenomenon relies in part on the work of
Eduard Conzemius, the first professional ethnographer of the Mosquito
Coast, who published a full-length monograph in 1932. In this monograph
Conzemius wrote, “The hybrid tribe of the Miskito owes its origin to the
intermarriage of the Bawihka with the Negroes escaped from the slave ship
which was wrecked to the south of Cabo Gracias a Dios in 1641” (Conzemius
1932, 17).
23. Modern histories have consistently cited the following four sources in their
historical reconstruction of Miskito Coast history. These easily accessible
accounts written by English and French buccaneers who visited the region in
the last quarter of the seventeenth century make the first reference to the
inhabitants of the region as “Miskito Indians”: William Dampier’s A New
Voyage Around the World (1698), Raveneau de Lussan’s Raveneau de Lussan,

Buccaneer of the Spanish Main and Early French Filibuster of the Pacific (1930)
[1689], Alexandre Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America or, A true account of
the most remarkable assaults committed of later years upon the coasts of the West Indies
by the bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga (1684) [1678], and the mysterious M.W.’s
The Mosquito Indian and his Golden River (1728).
24. In the early descriptions of the area, a wide variety of spellings are used for
“Miskito,” such as Mosqueto, Mosquito, Moskito, Mosco, Moustique,
Musketo and Musquito (Helms 1971, 15).
25. Parsons noted how the instructions of the directors of the Providence Com-
pany regarding their conduct with the Indians of the Coast had been explicit:
“You are to endear yourselves with the Indians and their commanders and we
conjure you to be friendly and to cause no jealousy” (Parson 1956, 13).
26. In Colonial Spanish America a complicated system of categories emerged
(known as castas) that attempted to order and name the varying levels of racial
mixing between Whites, Blacks, and Indians. The most essential terms were
Mestizo (“Spaniard and Indian woman beget mestizo”), Mulatto (“Spaniard
and Negress beget mulatto”), and Zambo (“Negro and Indian woman beget
sambo de Indio”) (Mörner 1967, 58). A host of other terms emerged to mark
the complicated combinations that resulted. These categories became part of
a colonial society that was stratified on the basis of “blood” and “birth.” As
Helms has pointed out, the absence of Spanish control in the Mosquito Coast
sheltered the inhabitants from the legal and social consequences in Spanish
society of inclusion into the Zambo or Indian caste (Helms 1977, 63). It is
important also to point out that these terms putatively made reference to
varying levels of European, African, and Indian “blood” but did not refer to
legally, or socially, constituted collective entities. In this sense they were
descriptions rather than ethnonyms.
27. See Conzemius for a description of the different versions of the shipwreck
account among the colonial sources (Conzemius 1932, 16).
28. William Dampier, an English pirate who visited the region in 1681, described
the “Moskito Indians” in the following manner:“They are but a small Nation
or Family, and not 100 men of them in number, inhabiting on the Main, on
the North side, near Cape Gratia Dios; between Cape Honduras and
Nicaragua” (Dampier 1698, 7).
29. After the British occupation of Jamaica in 1655 (in partial fulfillment of
Oliver Cromwell’s “Western Design” to divide the Spanish Main) (Parsons
1956, 9), buccaneers incessantly raided Spanish settlements from Campeche
to Venezuela. Mosquito Coast inhabitants (regardless of whether they were
labeled Indians, Zambos, or Mulattoes) formed an integral part of the leg-
endary and infamous English expeditionary forces that sacked Pacific
Nicaraguan cities, establishing a pattern of Mosquito Coast-based raids on the
Pacific that were continued well after the passing of the heyday (1640–1685)
of European state-sponsored buccaneering (Floyd 1967, 28; Naylor 1989, 34).
30. In 1688 the governor of Jamaica, in a letter to the Lords of Trade and Plan-
tations in London, wrote: “Some Indians known by the name of ‘Musketa’
Indians (whose country is called Cape Gratias de Dios, in latitude 15° 20⬘ or
thereabouts) have been here with me and have told me that they became
subjects of King Charles I, and they earnestly desired the King’s protection or
they must fall under the French or Dutch” (Olien 1983, 204).
31. See Romero Vargas and Gabbert for thorough historical accounts of slavery,
both Indian and African, in the Mosquito Coast (Romero Vargas 1995,
273–296; Gabbert 1992, 38–70).
32. Although Exquemelin’s account has been cited in the historical literature as
one of the first to employ the term “Mosquito Indian,” he uses the term only
once (Exquemelin 1685, 158). He most commonly uses the phrase “Indians
of the Cape” and “Indians of those parts.”
33. In the mid-1980s, US anthropologists Michael Olien, Phillip Dennis, and
Mary Helms filled the pages of the American Ethnologist with a lively debate
about political authority in the Mosquito Kingdom (Dennis and Olien 1984;
Helms 1986). Dennis and Olien argued that, contrary to Nicaraguan and US
nineteenth-century claims as to its falsity, the Mosquito Kingdom and the
Mosquito king represented very real and durable institutions that had deep
roots in Miskito culture. Helms argued that Dennis and Olien had overstated
their case and that in actuality the historical truth lay somewhere in between
the US and Nicaraguan critics’ of the Mosquito Kingdom as a “British pup-
pet” and Dennis and Olien’s Mosquito Kingdom as a “centralized political
structure” that endured for 240 years (Helms 1986, 506).
34. For example, Gabbert estimates that in 1757, African slaves numbered 500
and Indian slaves 300 of the total regional population of 8,124. The number
of whites, 154, paled in comparison to the number of free Indians, 7,000
(Gabbert 1992, 55).
35. According to Helms, in Jamaica before the stabilization of an economy based
on African slave labor, Indians slaves helped to fill, at least in part, the eco-
nomic gap created by the curtailing of buccaneering in 1685 and the ceasing
of the flow of white indentured labor in 1700. She claims that the lack of
documentation of the use of mainland Indian labor in Jamaica owes to the
fact that primarily “struggling small farmers” used Indian labor, which was
significantly cheaper than African slave labor (Helms 1983, 185).
36. In 1832 Mosquito King Robert Charles Frederic passed a law that forbade
the taking of Indian slaves (Olien 1983, 222).
37. The newly independent Central American Republic outlawed slavery in
1824 (Naylor 1989, 256).
38. Bartolomé de Las Casas, famous Spanish witness to the “devastation of the
Indies,” estimated that the Spanish sent a half-million Indian slaves to Panama
and Peru (Las Casas 1992 [1552], 56). Newson has confirmed this figure
(Newson 1987, 105). See William L. Sherman’s Forced Native Labor in
Sixteenth-Century Central America for an exhaustive treatment of the slave trade
in Nicaragua (Sherman 1979).
39. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the English typically
referred to the region as the Mosquito Shore or simply Mosquito.
40. Robert Hodgson, the first British superintendent of the Mosquito Shore,
firmly believed in the tremendous strategic importance of the Mosquito
Indians in the British struggle against Spain. In 1741 he wrote to Governor
Trelawny of Jamaica, “By the help of our friends the Mosquito Indians I
should imagine we might induce, by the offer of liberty, the neighboring
Indians to revolt. Indeed I do not think it romantick in the least to expect
that we might, by supporting the Indians a little, spread the revolt from one
part to another, till it should be general over the Indies, & drive the Spaniards
entirely out” (Potthast 1988, 123).
41. See Karl Offen’s PhD dissertation for an extended discussion of the role of
English symbols of prestige for the Miskito Indians (Offen 1999, 352–395).
42. Many Miskito villages did not fall within the geographical boundaries set by the
Treaty of Managua for the Mosquito Reservation. The entire Coco River was
not subject to the Treaty of Managua and instead became part of Nicaraguan ter-
ritory that was named the Comarca Cabo Gracias a Dios. Karl Offen argues that
the boundary of the Mosquito Reserve neatly corresponds to the boundary
between the Tawira Miskito and the Sambo Miskito (Offen 2002).
43. The “Great Awakening” is the term given by the Moravian Missionary
Church, which started to evangelize in the region in the early 1800s, to the
mass conversion of Miskito Indians to Christianity in the 1880s. See Lioba
Rossbach for a description of Moravian-Miskito relations in the nineteenth
century (Oertzen, Rossbach, and Wunderich, 1990).
44. The full text of the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty is reprinted in Oertzen,
Rossbach, and Wunderich (1990, 436–437.)
45. The formalization of Indian and Creole lands stood in the way of this process
of heightened penetration of capital by which the Mosquito Coast was
becoming more and more an “enclave economy.” The government granted
monstrous parcels of land to foreign companies, ignoring the claims of Indian
villages. For example, the Emery Company of Massachusetts was granted a
parcel one-tenth the size of the region. In 1903 one grant, which was later
annulled, gave the Dietrick Company the rights to the exploitation of an area
one-fourth the size of Nicaragua (Vilas 1989, 43). The work of surveying and
giving titles was not seriously begun until 1915, when the land commission
began to function. Between 1915 and 1920, 121,179 acres were set aside for
forty-five Sumu and Miskito villages. One way the government avoided its
responsibility was to require that the Indian villages pay for the surveys of the
land they claimed, or pay for a new survey when this land came into dispute.
Chapte r 3 From Bilwi to Pue rto Cab e zas

1. Centuries before, English pirates and mahogany traders had given the name
Bragman’s Bluff to the area’s most distinguishing feature, a broad twenty-
foot-high mesa that dropped abruptly at the sea.
2. The village that today is known by Miskitu speakers as Sawmill, located along
the banks of the Wawa River, was one such early lumber village, composed
of mostly Costeño workers and foreign overseers. This village exists to this
day, although the sawmill to which it owes its name was long ago dismantled.
German Moravian missionary and linguist George Heath claimed that the
original indigenous name of Sawmill was Iniwaska and that the sawmill was
dismantled at the turn of the century (Heath 1927, 88).
3. A variety of spellings appear in the historical record, including “Brancman’s”
and “Brangman’s.” These English names were most commonly used in the
eighteenth century. Spanish sources referred to the place in Spanish as “Caleta
Barrancas” and “Monte Gordo” (Incer 1990, 497, 539).
4. Bilwi is a Sumu word that means “snake eye” (Valle 1944, 22). The fact that
Bilwi is a Sumu word has led Mosquito Coast historians to conclude that a
Sumu group originally inhabited the site and later was driven inland by
Miskito Indians.
5. Geographer Karl Offen, in an article about racial distinctions among Miskito

Indians, claims that Bilwi was settled by Tawira Indians, while Karatá, to the
south, was settled by Sambo Indians. Offen claims that the Tawira-Sambo dis-
tinction among Miskito Indians was based on the recognition of phenotypic
distinctions between the Tawira (straight-haired) “pure” Indians and Sambo
mixed Indians (Offen 2002, 328).
6. The 1860 Treaty of Managua, which abolished the country of Mosquito and
established the Mosquito Reservation in its place, also replaced the title of
Mosquito King with the Mosquito “Hereditary Chief.”
7. The use of last names directly corresponds to the adoption of Christianity by
Costeños, which did not occur on a large scale until the so-called “Great
Awakening” of the 1880s and 1890s.
8. In Miskitu, Wita means headman or leader and it is unlikely that “Andrew”
actually used this term as his last name. Rather, it appears that the Nicaraguan
officials who prepared the “Decrees of Incorporation” were not able to effec-
tively communicate with the Miskito representatives. This conclusion is further
confirmed by the fact that the names of many Miskito villages are misspelled
in the document. This and other evidence supports the claim that the 1894
Miskito convention was illegitimately staged by the Nicaraguan government.
9. In his book, Tropical Enterprise: The Standard Fruit and Steamship Company in
Latin America (1978), Karnes described the decision to enter into agribusiness
in Nicaragua as a “costly mistake.” In chapter 8 (“Anarchy and Losses in
Nicaragua”) he described in detail from a corporate historian’s perspective
the rise and fall of the Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company in Puerto Cabezas.
Karnes used primary sources from the company archives, as well as interviews
with surviving company employees.
10. This is an anglicized form of the Spanish síndico, which is the Nicaraguan
administrative title that replaced the Mosquito position of “headman.” The
office of síndico was created by the Nicaraguan government in the Atlantic
Coast on February 18 of 1919 (Ruiz y Ruiz 1925, 12). This change of ter-
minology, of course, represented part of the overall Nicaraguan project of
Hispanicization of the former country of Mosquito.
11. After the “Reincorporation” of 1894, the Mosquito Reservation became the
Nicaraguan “Departamento” of Bluefields (later renamed Zelaya), and the city
of Bluefields, which already hosted British and US consulates, became the
seat of the national government.
12. Apart from administrative workers, both banana and lumber companies
required laborers with special training (which these companies did not pro-
vide) to complete particular tasks essential to their operation, such as carpen-
try, tie-rod fabrication, and mule husbandry. Companies used policies, such
as higher pay scales and subsidized company housing, to recruit and retain
these laborers who were valued more than laborers who were considered
interchangeable because of the lower skill level required to complete their
respective tasks. Hence the companies specifically used the distinction
between skilled and unskilled labor. See Chomsky (1996) for a thorough dis-
cussion of labor and management in the banana industry of the Caribbean
coast of Central America.
13. To this day Costeños refer to Pacific Nicaraguans as the “Spanish” in English,
“españoles” in Spanish, and “ispail nani” in Miskito.
14. The Fortress of the Conception, El Castillo de la Concepción, was a Spanish
fort along the eastern frontier of Spanish influence in Nicaragua. It lies along
the San Juan River, which flows from the Lake of Nicaragua, in the heart of
the Spanish-controlled half of Nicaragua, to the Caribbean Sea. English and
Miskito raiders continually used this route to sack Nicaraguan cities. From
early colonial times to the time of construction of the Panama Canal, the
route was regarded as ideal for a canal between the oceans.
15. According to the 1920 Nicaraguan census, the three Atlantic Coast counties
which composed about half of the national territory contained only 43,698
inhabitants, 7 percent of the national population (República de Nicaragua
1920). Indeed, Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast continues to be one of the most
sparsely populated regions in all of Central America.
16. In present day Nicaragua it is the common perception that Costeños have
darker skin than Pacific Nicaraguans because of their African and Indian
heritage—a heritage that has historically been denied in the Pacific Coast.
Although there does exist a very dark-skinned minority in the Atlantic Coast
and a very light-skinned minority in the Pacific Coast, it has not been my
perception that (apart from these minorities) the majority of Costeños have
darker skin than the majority of Pacific Nicaraguans. This observation is, of
course, very subjective and ultimately irrelevant.
17. Jeffrey Gould demonstrates that in the Pacific region at the turn of the cen-
tury, many communities that identified themselves as Indians began to iden-
tify themselves as Ladinos and Mestizos as their lands were expropriated by
coffee growers. Gould contrasts this relatively recent shift to the widespread
Nicaraguan belief that Nicaragua possesses a racially homogenous population—
a belief he labels the “myth of Nicaragua mestiza” (Gould 1993a).
18. Puerto Cabezas was named after General Rigoberto Cabezas, the Nicaraguan
officer who in 1894 militarily occupied Bluefields, effectively overthrowing
the Mosquito government.
19. It is important to note that these figures are of highly questionable accuracy
considering Ruiz’s attempt to discredit Miskito land claims in Puerto Cabezas
by claiming that the city is not a legitimate Miskito community and is rather
a recently inhabited Mestizo city.
20. Modern inhabitants of the city recall that until the cessation of US lumber
operations in the area (1979), this area of town was known as the “zone” or
“American zone.” In chapter 4, I explore Porteño memories of “company
time” in the zone.
21. By the beginning of the twentieth century, rural Nicaraguans in the Pacific
region who in the past had been labeled as Indians came to be identified
according to the non-racially-marked term campesino. The indigenous com-
munities in urban neighborhoods of Sutiava and Monimbó, located respec-
tively in the major Pacific Nicaraguan cities of León and Masaya, represent a
notable exception to this rule. These neighborhoods have throughout the
twentieth century been identified in many contexts as Indian communities,
and they manifest some of the typical Latin American “closed corporate
community” institutional features, such as communal land holdings, “cargo”
arrangements, and “cofradías.” These institutions continue to exist in other
Pacific Nicaraguan communities, but what is distinct about Sutiava and
Monimbó is that they are communities that regard themselves as Indians. See
García Breso (1992) and Gould (1993b) for a description of Indian identity
in the Pacific.
22. After the “Reincorporation” of 1894, Costeño leaders vehemently con-
demned this practice on the part of the national government in Managua.
Even US diplomats, who generally favored a Nicaraguan takeover of the

Mosquito Coast, recognized the parasitism of the central government’s fiscal
policies in the Atlantic Coast—a parasitism that directly contradicted the
commonly held opinion in the Pacific Coast that the “Coast” and the
Costeños were economically unproductive. Take, for example, the following
report sent by William Heard, US consul in Bluefields, to the US secretary of
state in 1923:
I have observed from the reports of the Collector General of Customs
that an average of $15,000 is collected annually as a Municipal tax
on goods imported into Bluefields. This sum, however, is taken by
the Central Government towards liquidating its indebtedness. The
Municipal licenses or taxes of Bluefields average $3,000 per month,
but as previously pointed out all of this is embargoed. The total col-
lections at El Bluff Custom House was $418,611 for 1922, this
includes duties on imports and exports, storage charges, fines, 121⁄2%
surtax, hospital dues, tonnage and lighthouse, forestal tax, municipal-
ity tax, wharfage, consular fees and overtime payments. It will thus
be seen that the people of this coast are contributing nearly half a
million dollars to the general revenues of the country for which they
receive practically nothing. (Department of State Records 817 08/21,
Heard to Secretary of State, Bluefields, Dec. 19, 1923)
Chapte r 4 Company Time

1. Harold Denny was a New York Times journalist who traveled to Puerto
Cabezas in 1929.
2. For examples of approaches that focus on the effects of the “class-ethnic”
hierarchy in the region, see Bourgois 1981, 1985, 1992; Hale 1987b, 103;
Jenkins Molieri 1986; R. Adams 1981; Buvollen 1987; Diskin 1987, 1989;
García 1996; CIDCA 1984; Dunbar Ortiz 1988; Schneider 1996;Vilas 1989.
3. Puerto Cabezas during company time contained social and institutional
configurations that were remarkably similar to those of lumber towns of the
American South and West (see Allen 1966; Brown 1923; Kellogg 1914;
Maxwell and Baker 1983; Robbins 1982). In many ways it makes sense to
view Puerto Cabezas during company time as an extension of the North
American frontier.
4. Bourgois noted the use of this term by Creoles, who he claimed used it
to refer to Mestizos (Bourgois 1992, 28). I found in my interviews with
Porteños that the term was not directly linked with a particular socio-racial
group; rather, it was used to describe rural agriculturalists regardless of any
socio-racial identification.
5. I will briefly return in this chapter to the issue of gender and the central
“Where are the women?” question that Cynthia Enloe convincingly argues
has received inadequate attention in the study of labor and globalization.
6. As I will describe in greater detail later, in the modern usage of the Atlantic
Coast, to refer to a Miskito Indian as being from “the communities” (cómu-
nidad nani ra or tawan nani ra in Miskitu, and de las comunidades in Spanish) is
a way of saying that person is a rural person from a small village. The impli-
cation is often that such a person is from a small inland village and not from
the outside-oriented cities and villages.
7. “Los gringos ni estan aqui pero nos siguen cagando.”

8. “Las empresas norteamericanas debieran de pagar a los Costeños y al pueblo
Nicaraguense por todo el daño que causaron y no al reves.”
9. The log pond was an essential element of logging cities throughout the
American West in this period. Industrial historians Maxwell and Baker wrote:
“Any description of the operation of a major sawmill must begin at the
millpond. Most companies . . . considered the log pond an essential part of
their operations, and when none already existed, they built one” (Maxwell
and Baker 1983, 73).
10. “En esa época las lagunas esas estaban llenas de madera. Uno podría caminar
de un lado para el otro sin mojarse pisando puros trozos de pino, buen pino.
Despues metieron caoba y cedro. Y alli mismo al lado estaban los aserríos que
en tiempo de madera trabajaban todo el día con aquella gran bulla. En esa
época siempre había bulla por todos lados, aquellos camionazos gringos, no
como los sovieticos que hay ahora que no sirven. Puerto Cabezas parecía
panal de abejas.”
11. In the Mosquito Coast and more generally in Nicaragua, a set of three terms
are used to identify people of Asian and Middle Easterner descent or birth
who live in Nicaragua. Nicaraguans refer to Middle Easterners, often Pales-
tinians or Lebanese, as “Turcos.” East Asian immigrants from mainland China
and Hong Kong, most of whom came to the Atlantic Coast region in the first
half of the century during company boom periods, are referred to as “Chi-
nos.” Both “Turcos” and “Chinos” are known for their success in small- and
medium-scale retail. “Hindu” is the term used to refer to South Asians
regardless of their religion or nationality.
12. After the last of the companies fled the region in 1979, the Sandinista gov-
ernment confiscated unoccupied and unclaimed properties in Puerto Cabezas
and throughout Nicaragua. The properties were then distributed to govern-
mental and private institutions that were linked to the revolution. The
Sandinista administration formed CIDCA (Centro de Documentacion e
Investigaciones de la Costa Atlantica), a social science research group, to study
the growing problems that were arising on the Atlantic Coast.
13. The role of women as workers in Puerto Cabezas during “company time”
was in many ways similar to the role that Cynthia Enloe attributed to women
in Central and South American banana plantations in her Bananas, Beaches,
and Bases (1989). She wrote: “Notions of masculinity and femininity have
been used to shape the international political economy of the banana. Banana
plantations were developed in Central America, Latin America, the
Caribbean . . . as a result of alliances between men of different but comple-
mentary interests. . . . To clear the land and harvest the bananas they decided
they needed a male workforce, sustained at a distance by women as prosti-
tutes, mothers and wives” (Enloe 1989, 129).
14. Bluefields is the Atlantic port that offers the greatest accessibility from the
Pacific region of Nicaragua. The Managua-Bluefields trip requires a two-
pronged voyage. From Managua, passengers and cargo are transported along
an all-weather road to the river port of Rama (about fifty kilometers from the
Atlantic coast). This is the only all-weather road that exists in the Atlantic
Coast. At Rama, passengers and cargo are loaded on riverboats that make the
meandering voyage down the Rio Escondido to Bluefields. The two hun-
dred-kilometer trip lasts at least twelve hours. Owing to the difficulty of
this trip and the low quality of the Bluefields area port facilities, goods and
materials of Pacific origin destined for international markets are most fre-
quently transported from Pacific Nicaraguan ports to the Atlantic Ocean via
the Panama Canal. The Bluefields-Managua land route is primarily used to
transport goods and materials of domestic production and consumption. As a
result of Bluefields’s accessibility, albeit limited, vis-à-vis Pacific Nicaragua, it
has in the twentieth century captured the majority of the domestic Pacific-
Atlantic commerce. Puerto Cabezas, on the other hand, has since its abrupt
birth in the 1920s been primarily an international port that links the north-
ern Mosquito Coast “enclave” to North America and the Caribbean.
15. As the Standard Fruit Company expanded its operations in Nicaragua, it
bought majority shares in two US commercial companies that operated stores
in the Atlantic Coast: the Wawa Boom Company and the Bluefields Mercan-
tile Company (Karnes 1978, 115–117). These takeovers speak to the import-
ance to the company of adding retail commerce to their resource-based
business.
16. “Aqui en Puerto uno tenía, pues, del todo. Si no lo encontrabas donde los
gringos lo encontrabas donde los chinos aqui en la calle commercial. Llegaban
todas las semanas barcos llenos de productos que venían directo de los Estados
Unidos y eran productos buenos, los mismos que los gringos usaban—botas
de hule, jabones, camisas, lo que fuera. Y repuestos para motores? De toda
clase. Aqui la vida era muy buena.”
17. I discuss the Chinese community of Puerto Cabezas in a 2001 article titled
“The Chinese Creoles of Nicaragua: Identity, Economy and Revolution in a
Caribbean Port City” (Pineda 2001a).
18. During the Constitutionalist War of the late 1920s, Bragman’s Bluff Lumber
Company charged the Liberal Forces in Puerto Cabezas for use of the com-
pany radio that was used to communicate with the Pacific Coast. When the
Liberals could not pay their radio bill, the company refused service—thereby
leaving the Liberal “provisional government” without communications. This
case illustrates the degree to which US companies possessed resources and
infrastructure in the Atlantic Coast greater than that of the Nicaraguan
governmental, or quasi-governmental, factions.
19. In Asang, Helms identified an “ethic of poverty” among Miskito Indians
who, despite the “soundness of the subsistence economy,” suffered the
absence of cash and foreign products in the depressed coastal economy of the
1960s (Helms 1971, 156).
20. See T. M. Scruggs for a thorough discussion of the role of music in the con-
struction of Nicaraguan nationalism (Scruggs 1999).
21. Census data from Nicaragua confirm this perception for the Mosquito Coast
as a whole. Using the 1920 census, if we calculate the percentage of non-
Central American foreigners within the total population, we find that the
three Atlantic departments, Comarca San Juan del Norte, Bluefields, and
Comarca Cabo Gracias a Dios, contain the three highest values, 10.9 percent,
6.3 percent, and 1.4 percent, respectively. Managua, the capital city of the
republic, comes in a distant fourth at 0.84 percent, while the populous
departments of Chontales and Nueva Segovia contained only 0.06 percent
non-Central American foreigners (República de Nicaragua 1920, 4).
22. “Kampani time ra upla manas nara iwi kan . . . States wina, Jámaica wina,
Germany wina, Cayman wina, Pánama wina, diara sut. Nation bani ba Bilwi
ra balan wark daukaia dukiara. Bilwi tawan tara kan.”
23. Helms noted a similar use of “nation” in the Coco River Miskito village in
which she worked in the late 1960s (Helms 1971, 158, 218).
24. The use of Puerto Cabezas for military purposes by the US armed forces
arose almost immediately after its creation by Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Com-
pany. Karl Mueller, a Moravian Missionary who visited Puerto Cabezas in
1927, described the city in the following manner: “Bragman’s Bluff is the
name of the elevation (ca. 90 ft.) on the coast, on which the industrial and
administrative town of Puerto Cabezas (ca. 2,500 inhabitants, mostly British
and American) is built. The town has a well-built dock, an ice plant, a large
Department Store (The Commissary Department of the Company), railroad
yards, round house, and repair shops, and above all a sawmill, capable of cut-
ting 55,000 feet of lumber per day. It has a fine hospital, a creditable club
house, ball grounds and tennis courts, and at present is the headquarters of
the American Marines for the upper coast, with a considerable garrison, a US
war vessel stationed in its harbor and 2 US aeroplanes regularly stationed in
the flying-field” (Mueller 1931, 67).
25. See LeGrand (1984) for a treatment of agrarian politics in a United Fruit
Company banana region on the Caribbean coast of Colombia; see May and
Plaza (1958) for a pro-company perspective on the role the United Fruit
Company in the Caribbean; also see Chomsky (1996) for an excellent treat-
ment of labor and race relations in a banana-exporting region of Costa Rica
that has many of the same Anglo vs. Spanish and West Indian vs. Central
American dynamics as the Mosquito Coast.
26. Helms’ definition of peasantry, which she derived from the Mesoamerican
anthropology of Redfield (1956), Wolf (1966), and Foster (1967), is as good
as any for my purposes: “Rural cultivators who carry on agriculture as a
traditional way of life, rather than for profit in a capitalistic sense, and
part of whose is tapped by the state in order to support is own structure and
activities” (Helms 1971, 4).
27. North American anthropologist Eduard Conzemius, who conducted field-
work in the Mosquito Coast in the 1920s, made the following observations:
“Rice is rarely cultivated and has been introduced recently; it is known by its
English or Spanish name . . . it differs considerably from the native wild rice
of tropical America.” He also noted that beans “are grown to a very small
extent by either Miskito or Sumu . . . it is very probable that beans have been
introduced only in recent times” (Conzemius 1932, 63).
28. Using official Nicaraguan agricultural census data from 1963 and 1971, Vilas
determined that the total acreage dedicated to farming in the Department
of Zelaya (the pre-revolution name of the region) increased by 60 percent,
from 468,000 acres to 774,000 acres (Vilas 1989, 73). Also, the number of
cattle doubled. Vilas also noted a marked rise in the number of agricultural
workers: “The number of self-employed agricultural workers grew 40
percent between 1963 and 1971, and the number of unpaid family members
grew 38 percent; the two occupational categories, which together in 1963
constituted 66 percent of the economically active agricultural population in
Zelaya, grew to 90 percent in 1971, possibly as result of the expansion of the
agricultural frontier through immigration both spontaneous and planned”
(Vilas 1989, 72).
29. It seems that Rio Coco rice and bean production filled the gap left by the bust
of Standard Fruit banana operations, which had been particularly aggressive
in their attempts to keep Costeño workers dependent on foreign products,
242 Notes to Page 129
including food. Helms’s observations confirm this conclusion:“Only after the

decline of Standard Fruit’s banana operations in the early 1940s did rice cul-
tivation, along with bean production, become commercially important to the
Miskito, who found a regional market for their crops at the gold mines, lum-
ber camps, and administrative centers of the coast” (Helms 1971, 135).
30. Starting in the twentieth century, Waspám became a central orienting point
on the Coco River. Coco River villages came to be popularly identified as
“rio arriba” (upriver) or “rio abajo” (downriver), based on their position rela-
tive to Waspám. In the present, the distinction between “rio arriba” and “rio
abajo” is a deeply entrenched native category, which demonstrates the con-
tinued importance of Waspám as a riverine port.
31. In 1960 the World Court adjudicated a long-standing border dispute between
Nicaragua and Honduras. Owing to the historical absence of Spanish colo-
nial and Central American governmental presence on the Mosquito Coast,
the exact boundary between Honduras and Nicaragua had never been
decided. The World Court in 1960, judging in favor of Honduras, designated
the Rio Coco as the official border, dividing the northern sector of the Mos-
quito Coast in two. Coco River villagers had historically used both sides of
the river for hunting and agriculture, maintaining residences on one side and
“insla nani” (Miskitu for swidden plots) on the other. Although these villagers
had limited interactions with Central American governments, they generally
regarded themselves as Nicaraguan citizens. After the World Court decision
they found themselves in the difficult situation of having to choose between
Nicaraguan and Honduran citizenship, and abandon their plots or residences
on the opposite side of the river. Thousands of villagers who had been living
along the northern shore of the river crossed the river and established resi-
dence in Nicaragua, some of them relocating to special inland settlements
along the Puerto Cabezas-Waspám road, such as Santa Marta and Tasba Raya
(Vilas 1989, 67). This forced relocation of Coco River villagers toward
Puerto Cabezas represented the first of a series of similar forced resettlements
that culminated in the massive evacuation of the Coco River region toward
Puerto Cabezas and inland camps (Tasba Pri) ordered by the Sandinista Gov-
ernment in the early 1980s (Ortega 1991). Miskito villagers bitterly resented
this imposition by the “Spanish” governments but were powerless to resist it.
In the 1980s the Rio Coco was to become the principal zone of combat
between the Miskito/Contra insurgency and the Nicaraguan government.
Nicaraguan anthropologist Galio Gurdián, who had received his master’s
degree from the University of Chicago in 1979 and worked closely with the
Sandinista government during the 1980s, served a brief stint as the director
of Tasba Pri at the end of 1983 (Gurdián 2001, 80). Gurdián was a founding
member of the Sandinista-sponsored research group CIDCA that included
current University of Texas anthropologists Charles Hale and Edmund
Gordon. All three of these researchers have acknowledged the contradictions
that went along with CIDCA’s connection to the Sandinista administration,
particularly its policy of forced relocation of people in the Coco River
region. In his 2001 PhD dissertation at the University of Texas, Gurdián
claims that he was deeply troubled about the errors in Sandinista policy
regarding the Atlantic Coast, but he chose to inhabit the role of dissident voice
within the Sandinista administration. Gurdián discusses at length the hazards
of establishing a legitimate role for CIDCA as an engaged social science
research institute during this time of armed conflict and intense international
scrutiny (ibid.).
32. Tuno is a rubber-like raw material used in the production of chewing gum.
33. Such was the level of deforestation in the northern Atlantic region that when
NIPCO closed in 1963, Nicaragua for the first time became a net importer
of wood (Jenkins Molieri 1986, 206).
34. For example, ATCHEMCO fenced in the offices and industrial installations
of the company in an area known as “la zona.” Nicaraguans were not allowed
to enter the zone without permission. According to a study carried out by
Nicaraguan sociologist Sandra Gómez, a rigid ethnic hierarchy operated in La
Tronquera in which North Americans occupied the highest rung, followed
by Creoles and then Miskito Indians (Gomez 1991, 51–57).
35. Mining companies, discouraged by the difficulty of building and maintaining
the roads between the mines and Puerto Cabezas, commonly transported
materials to and from Puerto Cabezas by plane. In the 1940s the mining city
of Siuna, run by the Neptune Gold Mining Company of the United States,
which had seven hundred employees and “the best hospital in the country,”
was essentially unapproachable by land (Talleres Gráficos Pérez 1941, 12).
36. The parallels between prewar Puerto Cabezas and the postwar mining cities
are striking. In the absence of Nicaraguan governmental structures, there
came to exist a “de facto government-citizen relationship between the com-
pany and local workers” (T. Adams 1981, 64). Companies paid the salaries of
the police. Taxes on the minerals, mostly gold, that they extracted were
avoided by paying kickback money to the Somoza dictatorship.
37. The majority of Sumu speakers, particularly men, also speak Miskito (Sala-
manca 1993; Áviles Campo 1993).
38. During the 1950s the government began its first concerted effort to take
charge of the educational system in the region and enforce its policy of
Spanish-only instruction. Before this, the Moravian Church was almost
exclusively responsible for education, instructing in English and Miskitu.
Public schools were set up all along the coast and the Rio Coco. Spanish
slowly began to replace English as the second language of the Miskito.
Creoles also began to take on Spanish as a second language. In the 1970s the
government began to offer scholarships to Miskito and Creole youths to
study in Nicaraguan universities. The majority of the Miskito leaders who
emerged after the Revolution were educated in Managua.
39. Notable exceptions to this generalization were the Moravian schools at
Waspám and Bilwaskarma, which were top-of-the-line Miskito schools.
40. At the recommendation of a 1953 World Bank delegation, these forest
reserves began to be established in 1959 as part of the Proyecto Forestal del
Norte that was spearheaded by INFONAC (Instituto de Fomento Nacional).
The purpose of this project was to reforest pine savannas devastated by North
American lumber companies, combat forest fires, and establish in the future
wood-pulp and paper-processing complexes (Vilas 1989, 63).
41. The Catholic Church has been the second-strongest church in the region
since the turn of the century. However, Catholic activities in the region have
been primarily instigated by the North American-run Capuchin Mission,
which has operated independently of the Nicaraguan Catholic Bishopric in
the Pacific region. In 1970 the Moravian Church estimated its membership
at 30,000 out of a total regional population of 75,000. During the same time,
the Catholic Church claimed about 35–40 percent of Miskitos as Catholics

(Hawley 1997, 121). For a brief history of the Moravian Church in Puerto
Cabezas, see Coleman and Green (1976).
42. Moravian Synod meetings occurred in 1968 and 1971 in Puerto Cabezas, and
in 1974 in Bluefields (Wilson 1983, 52).
43. It is interesting to note that the Moravians refrained from evangelizing in the
Rama language because this language was viewed to have too few speakers to
warrant preservation. University of Oregon linguist Collette Craig has argued
that the decision by the Moravians not to evangelize in Rama was a key fac-
tor in the decline of the Rama language, which today has less than fifty
speakers (Craig 1992, 12–15).
44. Given that ALPROMISU was the immediate predecessor to MISURASATA
(the indigenous organization that eventually came into direct conflict with
the Sandinista government), it was often referred to in the extensive literature
produced by journalists and social scientists about the Costeño-Sandinista
conflict. The most thorough account of the formation of this organization
comes from German scholar Ernesto Richter (Richter 1987). Also see
Jenkins Molieri 1986, Hale 1994b, R. Adams 1981, Vilas 1989, CAPRI 1992
(60–63), C. García 1996, Hawley 1997, and Sanders 1985.
45. ACARIC received funding from USAID that was filtered through the
Nicaraguan development project INFONAC. It also received funding from
Catholic Relief Services and the American Institute of Free Labor Development.
In general, funding for organizations such as ACARIC and ALPROMISU was
part of a larger US “Alliance for Progress” fight against socialism and communism
through “development” (Hale 1994b, 125; Jenkins Molieri 1986, 243).
46. Tuno is a raw material used in making chewing gum. From 1955 to 1979 the
Wrigley Company was the main international buyer of tuno in Nicaragua.
Throughout the twentieth century the collection of rubber and tuno repre-
sented one of the main sources of cash and foreign products for villagers who
lived along the Rio Coco and its tributaries where these plants were found
(Jenkins Molieri 1986, 214–218).
47. In the late 1960s CASIM (Comité de Acción Social de la Iglesia Morava) was
established by the Moravian Church to promote economic development in
the region (Vilas 1989, 87).
48. The organization held annual meetings in 1975, 1976, and 1977.
49. Sisín was one of the Diez Comunidades (of which Bilwi was a part) that filed
collectively for land titles at the turn of the century. The Diez Comunidades
also received a land grant from the IAN (Instituto Agrario Nicaraguense) in
1976 (Jenkins Molieri 1986, 300).
50. In these paragraphs I am referring to Rev. Alfred Higgins, retired pastor of
the “Beach” Moravian Church in Puerto Cabezas, and Rev. Borley Taylor,
current pastor of the San Luis Moravian Church, also in Puerto Cabezas.
Given that I had already established friendships with their adult children, I
had the opportunity to speak with them informally at their homes in a
relaxed familial setting. The conversations that I refer to in this paragraph
took place during the first few months of my fieldwork when my Miskitu
speaking ability was very limited. Like many of my informants in Puerto
Cabezas who had had extended dealings with North American and West
Indian English speakers at some point in their lives, they were eager to
demonstrate to me their ability to speak “good” English as well as Mosquito
Coast Creole English. Our conversations were primarily in English and

Spanish, although we did “practice” Miskitu. I did not tape-record our con-
versations, nor did I take notes as we spoke; rather, at a later time I wrote nar-
rative accounts of our conversations that included brief quotations and key
words. In these paragraphs I use quotation marks to bring attention to the key
words that they used in our conversations.
51. Pope Paul VI had lamented the “division between Gospel and culture” as “the
drama of our time” (Smutko 1992, 65).
52. Susan Hawley has argued convincingly that these pastoral innovations “led to
the articulation of a more self-conscious and politicized ethnic identity
among the Miskitu” (Hawley 1997, 119).
53. “Evangelizadores Laicos Miskitos” (Smutko 1983, 45).
54. In the oral traditions (sturka in Miskitu) of the region, Moris Davis and Awas
Tara are figures associated with the mythical past, pas taim in Miskitu and
“first time” in English.
55. Miskut is also a figure in the sturka of the region. He is a heroic character who
brought the Miskito to their present home along the Rio Coco.
56. Owing to the fact that to this day, Christian missionaries continue to be the
source of almost all written material in Miskitu, Miskitu speakers very rarely
have the opportunity to read non-religious material in Miskitu—much less
nonreligious material that directly pertains to them (see Helms 1971, 177).
57. In his book-length study Between Land and Water:The Subsistence Ecology of the
Miskito Indians, Eastern Nicaragua (1973) Nietschmann, a cultural geographer,
relied heavily on Marshall Sahlins’s pre-1980s work on “primitive exchange”
and noncapitalist economies (Sahlins 1965, 1968, and 1972).
58. See Jamieson (1998, 2003) for a more recent ethnographic perspective on
shifting racial identification in the Pearl Lagoon basin.
59. Nietschmann echoed Helms’s conclusions with regard to the role of women
in maintaining Miskito “traditional” culture. He wrote: “Traditional Miskito
culture, kinship patterns, and food distribution are largely precipitated and
maintained by Miskito women. Women form a consanguineal core which has
kept Miskito cultural patterns intact” (Nietschmann 1973, 58).
60. Here I agree with Raymond Smith’s approach that he articulates in an article
on race, class, and political violence in Guyana:“The question is not whether
cultural constructions of race continue to exist in the modern world—they
do—but under what conditions does ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’ come to be a major
fault line in the society, making for violence of the kind that was seen in
British Guiana in the 1960s” (Smith 1996, 175). At this point in the analy-
sis, I am setting the stage for an analysis of the role of race in the 1980s, when
socio-racial identifications in many ways did become fault lines.
61. According to data from a CIERA-MIDINRA report (1985), the Creole pop-
ulation of the city of Puerto Cabezas dropped drastically after the Sandinista
Revolution, falling from 63 percent of the population in 1963 to 40 percent
in 1980 to only 5 percent in 1984.
Chapte r 5 Nei g hbor h ood s and O f f i c i al E th n i c i ty

1. Although Costeños recognize that they are Nicaraguan citizens and in many
contexts are quite receptive to Nicaraguan nationalism, they most frequently
refer to Pacific Nicaraguans as simply Nicaraguans.
2. Although I had a respectable batting average during the regular season, my

lack of home-run power at the plate, as well as the early elimination of my
team (sponsored by Marta’s Videos) from the city playoffs, put me far out of
contention for the Puerto Cabezas all-star team. Thus, my inadequacies as a
player prevented my true participation as participant/observer in the intra-
regional series.
3. In 1987 the Sandinista Government divided the Atlantic Coast region into
one northern and one southern “autonomous region,” called the RAAN
(Región Autónomo del Atlántico Norte) and the RAAS (Región Autonomo del
Atlántico Sur ). This official territorial demarcation coincided roughly with the
preexisting Costeño folk division of the region into North and South. The
North is bordered by Honduras and has Puerto Cabezas as the principal port.
The South is bordered by Costa Rica and is connected from Bluefields to the
Pearl Lagoon/Rio Grande area by a series of navigable canals and rivers. The
Rio Grande of Matagalpa marks the boundary between the two autonomous
regions.
4. Two Costeños from Pearl Lagoon and Bluefields played Major League Base-
ball in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. They were Al Williams from
Pearl Lagoon, a 6⬘4⬘⬘ pitcher for the Minnesota Twins who had limited suc-
cess over a brief career, and the highly heralded outfielder David Green from
Bluefields, who had a number of disappointing seasons for the San Francisco
Giants and St. Louis Cardinals. Costeños relish in recounting the successes
of these native sons, even more that of the more-accomplished Nicaraguan
pitcher Dennis Martinez, who played in the major leagues until well into his
40s and was one of the winningest Latin American pitchers in major league
history. Martinez is highly regarded by Costeños, but as a Spaniard he is more
socially distant. Marvin Benard, born in Rosita, is the most recent Costeño
to have success in the major leagues, with a respectable career as an outfielder
playing for the San Francisco Giants from 1995 to 2003.
5. Philip Dennis, in a recent ethnography of Awastara, a Miskito village up the
coast from Puerto Cabezas, notes that the villagers view Puerto Cabezas as an
exciting place where people can spend money and have a wild time—away
from the eyes of judgmental fellow villagers (Dennis 2004, 70).
6. The following text is a paraphrased version of these jokes that I reconstructed
from my field notes. In the text I attempt to retain some of the flavor of the
Creole English in which it was originally told.
7. Creole English speakers of the Atlantic Coast use the term “meager” in con-
texts in which a North American English speaker would be more likely to use
“skinny” or “thin.” In the Mosquito Coast, the term strongly implies poor
health and unattractiveness. In Nicaragua, and indeed most of Latin America,
the ideal body type for both men and women is much heavier than the ideal
body type in the United States. My Porteño informants, both male and female,
frequently scoffed at the US women that they saw on television as “meager.”
8. I use the word “myth” here not to imply falsity but rather to emphasize that
these stories constitute a group of narratives, or folklore (or “tale types” in
the language of folklore studies), that form part of an oral tradition that
thrives in the city.
9. “Antes de que viniera la empresa norteamericana vivía una familia aqui. Era
un Miskito que se llamaba Noah Columbus. El vivía allá por los tanques
donde está el Hospital Moravo. Hoy día ese lugar se llama “El Cocal.” Pero
en aquel entonces ellos eran los únicos que vivían en Bilwi. ¿Vos sabés que
este pueblo se llama Bilwi en Miskito? Todo esto donde estamos nosotros era
puro monte. Allí en El Cocal es donde empezó Bilwi.”
10. According to a survey made by the Ministry of Housing in 1983, El Cocal’s
population was 88 percent Miskito, 12 percent Mestizo, and 0 percent Cre-
ole. Out of the twenty neighborhoods identified by the survey, only “Barrio
Sandino” and “Barrio Germán Pomares” had higher percentages of Miskito
residents. It is significant to note that both of these neighborhoods represent
new settlements that were populated primarily by Miskito refugees fleeing
the war and evacuation suffered along the Coco River in the early 1980s.
According to a Ministry of Health survey conducted in 1981 in the midst of
the refugee crisis, El Cocal already represented the most populous neighbor-
hood of Puerto Cabezas, with 1,596 residents and 166 houses. More recent
estimates put the population at 2,900, with 90 percent identified as Miskito
(Muñoz 1992, 265).
11. “Antes la gente se agarraba a vergazos . . . a veces a puñalazos si era cosa seria.
Pero ahora con estos Miskitos si peleás con uno de ellos vuelven a su casa y
luego te matan el la calle con un AKA.”
12. “Naku sika. Pas taim Noah Columbus witin kiamka wal nara iwi kan. Witin
Bilwi tah kan . . . título bri kan. Diara sut pain kan, plun manas, lih manas,
ispail apu Sakuna witin guaro laik kan. Yu kum Karatá baska nara balan. Naipe
pulan bara ron bottle kum kum saki munan. Noah Columbus uba blah
takan—blocked up, man. Lus baman . . . lalah manas lus takan. Baku witin bui
Bilwi titleka lus takan. Karata baska ba lilia mahka wan. Titan buan taim,
Noah bila: ‘Oh shit.’ ”
13. I discussed this case in a previously published article, as well as my PhD dis-
sertation at the University of Chicago (Pineda 1998, 2001b).
14. According to a language survey of Puerto Cabezas conducted by a team of
German and North American researchers in the mid 1980s, 35 percent of
Miskito respondents and 51 percent of Creole respondents claimed to be
trilingual. Four hundred and fifty Porteños in different neighborhoods were
surveyed, 52 percent of whom were labeled by the researchers as Miskito, 22
percent as Mestizo, and 10 percent as Creole. The Beach was specifically
included because researchers regarded it as a Creole English-speaking neigh-
borhood. I observed that very few Beach People used the term “Creole”
in any social context, although they did emphasize the fact that they spoke
English (Meschkat 1987).
15. In general, my research strategy with regard to matters of identity was to rec-
ognize and use the categories of identification that my informants offered,
rather than to compel them conform to my own categories or official cate-
gories. Not a single resident of The Beach I interviewed would naturally
respond to a question using the term “ethnic group” or “étnia” because this
type of language simply did not enter into common usage. Therefore, on
those occasions where I did want to probe the self-identification of inform-
ants with regard to official ethnic categories, I would simply list these official
ethnic groups and ask them to identify themselves with one or more of them.
For example, “What are you then—Miskito, Creole, or Mestizo?” I do not
presume that solely because an informant, in response to my query, should
identify themselves in a particular way that they therefore were, to use the
problematic phrasing of a certain kind of misguided multiculturalism, a
“member” of that group. It has been my experience that Porteños use ethnic
terminology in a very fluid and context-bound manner. Therefore, any
instance of ethnic identification or labeling must be understood in the con-
text in which it was produced. See Gabbert (2001) for a fruitful approach to
ethnic categories in the case of the Yucatan.
16. In contrast to the rest of Nicaragua, houses in the Atlantic Coast are typically
built entirely of wood and are elevated off the ground from about two to as
much as eight feet by large circular posts that are inserted into the ground.
Pacific houses are typically made of concrete or adobe on top of a concrete
foundation.
17. In the last thirty years as Nicaraguan government presence has increased,
especially after the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, Spanish has been increas-
ingly used by Porteños in official contexts, particularly those that require
dealing with local and national governmental institutions.
18. After overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the Sandinista Direc-
torate created an entirely new police force and army known as the EPS,
Sandinista Popular Army.
19. “Este es un problema muy difícil . . . muy difícil porque han pasado muchos
años y han pasado muchos gobiernos y no se ha dado una solución completa
a este problema. Esperamos aqui con nuestra presencia [the national direc-
torate of the Port Authority] . . . estamos seguros que no vamos a solucionar
todo el problema pero por lo menos con nuestra presencia iniciar un diálogo
regional para que tanto como el gobierno central como las autoridades locales
y la ley misma de autonomía y las comunidades lleguen a una solución inte-
gral de este problema . . . el problema de la tenencia de tierra. . . . La gran
parte de lo que indicaba el amigo Carpentier acerca de la historia de estos ter-
renos ya la habíamos manejado, inclusive nosotros hemos estudiado el Tratado
Harrison-Altamirano y nos hemos metido en la historia para comprender más
el problema. Hemos hecho una seria de entrevistas, hemos buscado docu-
mentación etcétera para darle solución a este problema. No es necesario mirar
ni a la historia de la propiedad ni al mismo Tratado Harrison, sino un poco
mas contemporaneo nosotros como empresa indicamos ser propietarios de
estos terrenos. Esto que está aqui conmigo es un mapa, un plano . . . donde
indica de acuerdo a los documentos de propiedad que estan debidamente reg-
istrados en Bluefields, que es donde se registra este caracter de propiedad, que
hay una polygonal aqui [pointing to the map] que claramente pertenece a la
Portuaria. . . . Por la gente que nos hemos entrevistado todo indican que han
hecho negociaciones directas con la comunidad de Karawala [sic] concreta-
mente con el Señor Chico Francis. . . . ¿Entonces cual el la realidad en si de
todos estos terrenos? Mas de la noventa por ciento en la practica han sido
tomados. Hemos hecho nosotros entrevistas con las personas. Unos han argu-
mentado que han sido dados directamente por la Alcaldía, otros nos indican
que han sido dados directamente por la Portuaria, pero la gran mayoría indi-
can que han sido dadosen calidad de venta o arrienda de parte de la comu-
nidad de Karatá. Entonces en este sentido yo corregiria un poco a lo que
decía Carpentier con respecto a lo de Karatá . . . hasta hoy surge en el
conflicto el barrio El Muelle. Con quien hemos estado en diferentes momen-
tos vinculados ha sido con la gente de la comunidad de Karatá. . . . Pero si
Uds. hablan con la gente alrededor del Cayuco enseñan documentos dados
por la comunidad de Karatá.”
20. In Nicaragua the departamento represents an administrative and territorial

division corresponding to counties in the United States. As a result of the
regional autonomy process, the Nicaraguan government divided the former
department of Zelaya (previously one of eleven departments in Nicaragua)
into two autonomous regions called the “North Atlantic Autonomous
Region” and the “South Atlantic Autonomous Region,” popularly known as
RAAN and RAAS, respectively. The government empowered each of these
regions to create a legislative body. Nicaraguan departments do not have
separate legislative bodies.
21. “multiétnica, pluricultural y multilingue” (CAPRI 1992, 230).
22. The distinction between language and tongue in English is parallel to that
between idioma and lengua in Spanish. Lengua carries connotations of intimacy
and informality, as opposed to the more formal and neutral term idioma.
Given that within the Pacific Nicaraguan imagination indigenous languages
are perceived to be closer to nature, it is significant that the text chooses to
call indigenous languages lenguas.
23. Anthropologist Roger Lancaster discussed the nature of Nicaraguan racial
prejudice, focusing primarily on the Pacific Coast (Lancaster 1991). In his
subsequent book, which is primarily on sexuality and gender in Managua, he
includes interesting material on the perception of Pacific Nicaraguans of
Costeños as primitive “Negros.” He labeled this ideological connection of
dark-skinned Costeños and savagery as “Atlanticity” (Lancaster 1992, 213).
24. “cultura,” “tradiciones,” “valores,” “arte,” “organizaciones sociales,” and
“formas comunales, colectivo o individual de propiedad” (CAPRI 1992,
229–237).
Chapte r 6 Co steño Warrior s and Cont ra Re be ls

1. The chronology of the Costeño-Sandinista conflict has been traced in
painstaking detail by a host of national and international analysts. My inten-
tion here is not to reproduce any of this work, but rather to illustrate the ways
in which the analyses of the conflict themselves reproduced and reflected
prejudices and stereotypes that were active in Nicaragua and that should be
given interpretive attention.
2. Many Costeños, primarily merchants (many of whom were Chinese) in addi-
tion to businessmen and soldiers associated with the Somoza regime, fled the
region in the months leading to the Sandinista takeover in July of 1979 (Pineda
2001a). In contrast to later refugees, these people possessed significant assets,
which allowed them to establish themselves in Central American cities and
the United States.
3. Americas Watch, a non-government human rights watchdog group, has doc-
umented the Reagan administration’s consistent exaggeration and fabrication
of evidence of Sandinista atrocities (Americas Watch Committee 1984 and
1986). The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, without speci-
fically mentioning accusations made by the Reagan administration, published
a report that, although highly critical of Sandinista policies in the region,
failed to confirm the most serious of atrocities allegedly committed by the
Sandinista army—specifically the mass killings of Miskitos. The IACHR
report did confirm arbitrary detentions and some cases of torture, abuse, and
murder during the period of 1981 to 1983 (IACHR 1984). Also see Diskin
(1987) for documentation of the distortions and misinformation produced by

the Reagan administration.
4. For the official view of the United States government, see US Department of
State 1984, 1986a, 1986b.
5. In my master’s thesis at the University of Chicago, I compared the demands
made by Costeños at the turn of the century with their postrevolutionary
demands in the 1980s. I illustrated how at the turn of the century Costeños
justified their resistance to incorporation into the Nicaraguan state on the
basis of their relationships and affinities to England. This practice stands in
contrast to the modern postrevolutionary period in which Costeños have
made claims that ground their distinctiveness in their status as indigenous
peoples (Pineda 1991).
6. I adapted this section title from the title of the provocative article by Eric Wolf
and Joseph Jorgensen titled “Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand”
(Wolf and Jorgensen 1970). This article helped to spark debate about profes-
sional ethics and the role of anthropologists and anthropological concepts in
the cold war.
7. According to a number of Sandinista analysts, however, the existence of these
identities could ultimately be traced to class dynamics. Carlos Vilas, a pro-
Sandinista Argentine sociologist who spent many years in Nicaragua during
the revolutionary period, maintained such a position in his book State, Class,
and Ethnicity in Nicaragua: Capitalist Modernization and Revolutionary Change on
the Atlantic Coast (Vilas 1989; also see Gurdián 1987).
8. Means writes at length about his experiences in Nicaragua supporting the
Miskito insurgence in his 1995 autobiography (Means 1995).
9. Sandinista social scientists were quick to point out that institutions such as
communal lands, tribal councils, and elders councils had a relatively shallow
presence in, if not complete absence from, the ethnographic literature deal-
ing with the region, and therefore the existence and importance of these
institutions became a matter of contention (Diskin 1991).
10. To his credit, he began to work with Miskito communities on community
development projects after the 1990 elections. To trace the full evolution
of his scholarship from less polemical to polemical and back again, see
Nietschmann (1973, 1974, 1976, 1983a and b, 1984a and b, 1987, 1989,
1991a and b, 1992a and b, 1993, 1995).
11. In the Iran-Contra hearings, a document, which luckily was saved from the
Pentagon’s shredding machines, was presented to Congress in which Oliver
North outlined his plan of propaganda aimed at winning congressional
approval for military aid to the Contras. One memo in this document stated
the following: “Request Bernard Nietschmann to update prior paper on
suppression of Indians by FSLN (to be published and distributed by April 1)”
(Sklar 1988, 262).
12. For articles in Akwesasne Notes, see Wiggins 1981; Mohawk 1981, 1983;
Akwesasne Notes 1981; W. Ramirez 1982; B. Rivera 1982; Mohawk and
Davis 1982; Nietschmann 1983a, 1983b; Barreiro 1984, 1985. For articles
in Cultural Survival Quarterly, see Macdonald 1981, 1984a, 1984b, 1985;
Mohawk 1982; Howe 1986; Morris and Churchill 1987; Nietschmann 1987;
Linguists for Nicaragua 1989; Dodds 1989; Wilcox 1993.
13. John Mohawk, a North American Indian leader and intellectual who was
involved in the Indian struggle in Nicaragua, expressed this idea clearly:“There
are distinct differences between what is widely accepted as Marxist ideology

and the ideologies which comprise the Native People’s movements. While both
movements are avowedly anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, it
will be seen that the two traditions have entirely different roots. The Native
People’s movement expresses an ideology which is, by definition, primarily
anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist and which emphasizes cultural diversity.
Marxist ideology, on the other hand, is primarily anti-capitalist and is unques-
tionably anti-capitalist imperialism and anti-capitalist colonialism [sic] many
will be surprised that these two different ideologies have very different objec-
tives. In fact, Marxist-Leninist thought and the ideologies of Native Peoples’
movements are so different that the question arises whether the two are in any
way compatible at all” (Mohawk 1991, 9).
14. In a subsequent article, Macdonald, backing off from the implications of his
previous characterization of the Atlantic Coast as plural society, warned of
the dangers of viewing each of the ethnic groups of the Atlantic Coast as
culturally isolated. Rather, he emphasized that these ethnic groups should
be viewed as “segments of the region’s complex socio-political mosaic”
(MacDonald 1996, 59).
15. In a section of their 1969 plan of action titled “The Reincorporation of the
Atlantic Coast,” the founders of the FSLN had proclaimed, “The Popular
Sandinista Revolution will put into practice a special plan for the Atlantic
Coast, lost in the depth of the greatest abandonment, in order to incorporate
it into the national life” (Vilas 1989, 103).
16. I am quoting the late Martin Diskin, an MIT anthropologist who wrote a
number of pro-Sandinista articles during the Sandinista-Costeño crisis. He
used the term “ethnic discourse” to describe the “new voice” in Costeño pol-
itics that emerged in the 1980s. Galio Gurdián, a Nicaraguan social scientist
working with CIDCA, used the term “ethnicist” to describe Costeño dis-
course (Gurdián 1987, 177).
17. It is interesting to note that in the passage in the previous paragraph, Jenkins
Molieri not only corrects the Miskito on their mistaken denial of exploita-
tion as laborers but he also claims that Indians were alienated from their land
as well. This directly contradicts the claim of most Costeños that the greatest
threat to their control of their land came as a result of the very recent inte-
grationism of the Sandinista revolution.
18. This is the title of Diskin’s 1987 article condemning the Reagan administra-
tion’s policy towards the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (Diskin 1987).
19. Diskin contrasted this modern state of affairs with the past, when anthro-
pology “traditionally served as the voice of indigenous people and ethnic
minorities” (Diskin 1989, 11).
20. Jonathon Hill vigorously criticizes the theoretical framework that Urban and
Sherzer (the editors) employ in Nation-States and Indians in Latin America (in
which Diskin’s 1991 article appears) because it assumes that pre-contact
Indian societies were isolated and culturally homogenous. They accuse Urban
and Sherzer of having “resurrected the ahistorical notion of a fundamental
contrast between ‘isolated Indian populations’ and ‘ethnic groups’ ” (Hill
1996, 8). In contrast, Hill argues that pre-contact Indian societies, linked to
other Indian societies through extensive networks along which objects,
peoples, and culture flowed, were already multilingual, culturally heteroge-
neous, and self-aware. My analysis here is in line with Hill’s critique of Urban
and Sherzer’s view of cultural self-consciousness as a unique product of

modern nation-state expansion.
21. Hale considered the village of Sandy Bay Sirpi his principal field site. Appar-
ently due to the war and other reasons, he was not able to live in the village
for extended periods of time as is the traditional anthropological practice.
Instead, he made periodic trips to the village while working in the Bluefields
CIDCA office. Hale considered his contact with government officials in
Managua and Bluefields part of his fieldwork, particularly that part of his
fieldwork that focused on the Sandinista side of the Miskitu-Sandinista con-
frontation (Hale 1994, 216).
22. In his literature review, Hale divided writings about the conflict in the
Atlantic Coast according to a set of criteria very different from those that I
have developed in this chapter. He divided the literature into two groups that
he argued crosscut political loyalties (e.g., Sandinista, Contra, or Indian): (1)
“structural analysis,” which focused on the determinative role played by pow-
erful external actors from either the left or right; and (2) a Miskito-centric
approach that relied heavily on what he called the “Miskito perspective” but
“tended to caricature the structural determinants of the conflict, to portray
Miskitu culture in a vacuum, and to neglect how structural conditions had
shaped Miskitu people’s consciousness” (Hale 1994b, 18). Hale argued that
together these perspectives represented a “dual barrier to a full understanding
of Miskitu politics” (ibid., 18). He linked this dual perspective with the the-
oretical divide in anthropological theory between voluntaristic agency-
oriented approaches and deterministic structure-oriented approaches. I do
not use Hale’s typology here because, despite his claim that the “two
emphases do not neatly correspond to political points of view,” the Miskito-
centric authors that he specifically listed all clearly supported the Miskito in
their struggle against the Sandinistas (Hale 1994b, 17). The structural
approach that he cited (US Department of State 1984) that focused on San-
dinista repression (as opposed to US imperialism) in actuality explicitly
attempted to include, albeit in a highly problematic way, a Miskito-centric
approach. Thus, Hale’s typology obscured the ways in which the political
polarization of analysts along cold-war lines directly paralleled the theoretical
polarization of the literature.
23. In a review of Decolonizing Anthropology, Raymond T. Smith noted the
unavoidable contradictions regarding issues of engagement and detachment,
which had to be negotiated by the contributors to the volume who had been
Sandinista collaborators (Smith 1993, 783).
24. Benedict Anderson argued that the Sandinista attempt at national integration
represented nothing less than a typical example of Latin American “Creole
nationalism”—a nationalism characterized by the attempt to promote
national unity through a program of Hispanicization while simultaneously
promoting a hypocritical “indigenist” project that was “necessarily con-
structed in bad faith and as a kind of political theater” (Anderson 1988, 404).
He wrote, “The Sandinista revolutionaries are the unwitting heirs of ladino
nationalism; that the Miskitos, whether they speak English or Miskito, block
the Hispanic, criollo project; and that, with—perhaps—the best will in the
world, Daniel Ortega and his colleagues simply have no idea what to do with
the Miskito aborigines, except to Hispanicize, museumize, socialize, and
patronize them” (Anderson 1988, 406).
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Inde x
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 15 Asang, 39, 126, 211

ACARIC (Association of Association of Agricultural Clubs of
Agricultural Clubs of Río Coco), Río Coco (ACARIC), 137, 138,
137, 138, 141, 244n45 141, 244n45
Africanization of Mosquito Coast, ATCHEMCO (Atlantic Chemical
52–53 Company), 130, 134, 243n34
African/mixed-African racial Atlantic/Pacific Coast, regional
category, disappearance of, 46–47 distinction between:
African slaves, 34, 39, 40, 47 colonial institutions, 32–33;
African vs. Indian laborers in house construction, 248n16;
Jamaica, 234n35 mestizaje process, 32–33; naming
Afro-Caribbean peoples, 7–8, 82 of indigenous groups, 29–30;
Afro-Nicaraguan Creoles, 10. native group identification, 31;
See also Creoles slavery, 45–47
agriculture: cash crop, 144–145, 149; Awas Tara, 245n54
increase during company time, Awastara, 246n5
128–129, 134, 241n28; maize, 22, Aztecs, 24, 27
23; pre-Columbian, 22, 23;
swidden, 22, 128 Badlato, Margaret, 227n6
agro-industry. See Puerto banana industry, 61, 68; during
Cabezas/Bilwi company time, 110, 111; demise
ALPROMISU (Alliance for the of, 130; gender and, 112–113,
Progress of the Miskito and 239n13; land grants, 74–75;
Sumu), 137, 138, 140–141, 144, skilled/unskilled labor in, 236n12
200, 244n44 Bay of Pigs invasion, 126–127
Alvarez, Sonia, 228n10 Beach People/Port Authority
Americas Watch, 249n3 dispute: bases of arguments,
Anderson, Benedict, 252n24 175–179; cause of, 172–173;
Anderson, Mark, 227n4 political affiliation effect on,
Anglo ideology, 125–126, 139, 140 173–174
anti-essentialism, 13–14 Benard, Marvin, 246n4
Arkes, Thomas, 71 bilateral kin groups (taya), 39
269
270 Index
bilingualism, 20 Caribbeanization, 84–85

Bilwi. See company time; Caribe, 27, 29, 30
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi Carpentier, Rigoberto, 175, 176
biological determinism, 35 Casanova, Charles, 76
biologizing social relations, 224 cash crops, 128
Black American workers, during CASIM (Comité de Acción Social de la
company time, 110 Iglesia Morava), 244n47
Black identification, institutional Catholic Capuchin missionaries, 144
disincentives toward, 46 Catholic Church, 136,
blackness, 5–15, 227n4 243n41–244n41
Black vs. Indian identification, Centro de Investigación y
83–84 Documentación de la Costa Atlántica
Bluefields, 19, 121; (CIDCA), 204, 239n12
as Afro-Nicaraguan Creole CEPAD (Comité Ecuménico para el
ideological center, 10; Puerto Desarollo), 138
Cabezas/Bluefields fruit worker Chamorro, Violetta, 173–174
rivalry, 123–124; Spanish Chartier, Clem, 195
occupation of, 61; US/British Chibchan language, 24, 41
investment in, 61 Chief William, 60–61
“Bluefields Express” (song), 123 Chinese Nicaraguans, 20
Borge, Tomas, 204 Chinos, 239n11
Bourdieu, Pierre, 15 Chontal, 26, 27, 30, 231n10
Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company, Chorotega language, 24
68, 74–75; British evacuation of, CIDCA (Centro de Investigación y
71; growth of, 77; labor Documentación de la Costa
recruitment policy of, 85; land Atlántica), 204, 239n12
disputes, 87, 91–92; land grants, Circum-Caribbean Culture, 230n6
74–75, 77–79, 109; payment in civil war, Nicaraguan, 95; Costeño
script, 90; skilled/unskilled labor, combatants, view of, 191–192;
236n12 divergent ideologies of pro- and
brothels, during company time, anti-Sandinistas, 192; formation
119–120 of Contras, 191; indigenous
self-assertiveness, 193; North
Cabezas, Rigoberto, 61 American Indian theorizing on,
cacao, as exchange medium, 22 195; views on Contras by pro/con
caciques, 22, 30 groups, 191. See also civil war,
campesinado, 33 Nicaraguan, anti-Sandinista
campesinos, 1–2, 23, 32, 103, 113, theorizing on; civil war,
132–133, 237n21 Nicaraguan, pro-Sandinista
Cape Gracias a Dios, 35, 36–38, 42, theorizing on
43–44, 51–52 civil war, Nicaraguan, anti-
Cape Indians, 35 Sandinista theorizing on:
capital flight, 12 anticommunist approach, 194,
Index 271
196–199; ethnic identity concept, plantation complex, 112–113,

202–203; Indianist approach, 194, 239n13; labor hierarchy, 118;
199–203, 212; moral economy machete men, 110–112, 113;
notion, 202 Nicaraguan workers, 110;
civil war, Nicaraguan, pro-Sandinista segregation, 113–114, 117–119;
theorizing on: anthropology of socio-racial identification,
liberation, 216; contradictory 146–147; symbols of US
consciousness, 212–215; exploitation during, 115–117;
deconstructionist approach, types of farm work, 110;
194–195; dogmatic Marxism, White American workers as
204–205; ethnic discourse, 204, management, 109;White women,
205–211; false consciousness, 205; 119;White worker occupations,
tradition 110. See also company time,
Clarence, Robert Henry, 62, 73 economic dependence; company
Clarence, William Henry, 58, 59 time, Indian institutions/collective
Coco River region, 242n30; banana action; company time,
companies in, 111; as breadbasket race/political economy
of Mosquito Coast, 129; company time, economic
as Miskito culture ideological dependence: company time vs.
center, 10 present day, 124–125;
colonization. See English creation of consumer values, 120;
colonization; Spanish colonization ease in worker communication
Columbus, Christopher, 26, 35 with US, 122–123; Puerto
Columbus, Noah, 87, 88, 165, Cabezas/Bluefields fruit worker
168–169 rivalry, 123–124; transportation,
Comité de Acción Social de la Iglesia 126; worker payment in company
Morava (CASIM), 244n47 script/US dollars, 121–121
Comité Ecuménico para el Desarollo company time, Indian
(CEPAD), 138 institutions/collective action:
Comites de Defensa Sandinista, 197 anthropological catechism,
company time: ambivalence toward 141–142; collective organizations,
US role, 114–115, 117; American 137–138; Hebrew/Miskito history
“zone,” 114–115, 237n20; parallels, 142–144; land titles,
banana industry, 110, 111; 135–136; meeting locations,
Black American workers, 110; 138–139
Black West Indian workers company time, race/political
as skilled laborers, 109–110; economy, 127–135; education,
brothels, 119–120; company script 132; extractive industries,
payment to workers, 110; end of, 129–131; increase in agriculture,
153, 227n2, 239n12; foreign 128–129, 134, 241n28; labor
worker housing, 118; gender and hierarchy, 130–131, 132;
traditional economic system, migration increase, 133–134;
147–149; gender in banana oil exploration, 135;
272 Index
company time (continued ) Miskitos, 54, 63, 64; identity

reforestation project, 133–134; politics in Mosquito Coast,
resin production, 134; seafood 53–65; linguistic ideologies of,
production, 134; síndicos, 132 184; over-identification with
Contras: formation of, 191; views by North Americans, 139, 140;
pro/con groups on, 191 population drop after Sandinista
Contra War, 3, 19, 152, 153, 154, Revolution, 245n61; population
228n7; standard interpretation of, statistics before 1880, 57;
9–10; stereotypes/epithets of as trilingual, 20
community people after, 165–167. Creole vs. Miskito language,
See also civil war, Nicaraguan 184–185
Conzemius, Eduard, 232n22, creolization, 7
240n27 Crowther, Samuel, 50
Cordoba (currency), 4 cultural purity, 208
Costeños: concept of community, Cultural Survival, 199, 202
166–167; language of, 84; over-
identification with Britain/North Dampier, William, 38
America, 4, 69; Pacific deculturation, post-Conquest, 230n6
Nicaraguan view on, 2–3, 51–52; de Espinosa, Vázquez, 27
Porteños/Costeños identity, 157; deforestation, 21, 243n33
prejudice against, based on de Gómara, Franciso López, 26
environmental ideologies, 2–3; de Las Casas, Bartolomé, 234n38
primitivist/cosmopolitan identity, Dennis, Philip, 246n5
12; self-identification by, 102, de Oviedo, Fernandez, 26
136–137; self-view as departamento, 249n20
cosmopolitans, 3–4, 12; Diez Comunidades (Ten
on skin-color hierarchy, 4; Communities), 74–75, 87,
unpopularity of Sandino among, 244n49
102. See also Miskito Indians; Diskin, Martin, 209–210
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi dollar diplomacy, 78
Costeño-Sandinista crisis. See civil dollar men, 4, 222
war, Nicaraguan
cotton industry, 132–133 ecological zones, Pre-Columbian
crafts, 23 period: Caribbean Coastal Plain,
Craig, Collette, 244n43 21–23; Central Lowlands, 21;
Creole, 19 Pacific Lowlands, 21, 22
Creole English, 44, 84 education: mail-order courses, 122;
Creole nationalism, 252n24 Moravian Missionary Church and,
Creoles, 7, 8; Afro-Nicaraguan, 10; 132, 136–137, 204, 243nn38–39;
alliance with Miskitos, 63–65; Spanish-only instruction, 243n38;
Anglo affinity/ideology as part of urban schools, 132
worldview of, 125; definition of, Edwards, Bryan, 48–49
33, 53–54; difference from El Avance, 92–93
Index 273
El Cocal, 20, 165, 167–168 Fernandez, James, 14

El Muelle, 20, 171 field site, for present study, 19–20
enclave economy, 9 fishing, 23, 128, 172
English colonization: British flora/fauna, 22
symbols/goods as power sources, Flores, Roberto, 116
44–45, 54; terms for Atlantic forced identity, 229n16
Coast inhabitants, 36 forest reserves, 133, 243n40
Enloe, Cynthia, 112–113, 239n13 founding myths, 5–6, 164–165,
Enrique, Elizabeth, 183 168–169
environmental dissonance, 4–5, 12 Fourth-World organizations, 199,
EPS (Sandinista Popular Army), 200
173–174, 248n18 Franciscan missionaries, 27–29, 35
Escobar, Arturo, 228n10 Frederic, King Robert Charles,
essentialism: anti-essentialism, 234n36
13–14; vs. constructivism, 13–15, Frye, David, 222
229n12 FSLN (Sandinista National
ethic of poverty, among Miskito Liberation Front), 153, 190, 191,
Indians, 240n19 194, 196, 212
ethnic categorization of, 171–172
ethnic chauvinism, 205–206 Gabbert, Wolfgang, 234n34
ethnic/racial identification. Gal, Susan, 139
See Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, Garifuna, 59, 227n4
ethnic/racial identification in Garret y Arloví, Benito, 39–40
ethnonyms/toponyms, 23–33; Geertz, Clifford, 209, 229n13
colonial period, 30, 31, 32, 42; geopolitical self-importance, of
Franciscan missionaries, 27–29; Porteños, 127
Mosquito Coast, nineteenth George Augustus Frederick (Chief ),
century, 33–34; Nahual, 231n7; 57, 72
Spanish adoption of native, Gibson, Charles, 41
25–26, 27 gold mining, 61
evangelists. See Moravian Missionary Gómez, Sandra, 243n34
Church Gonzales, Nancie, 59
exploitation law, 59 Gordon, Edmund, 125, 139, 140,
Exquemelin, Alexander, 37, 38, 39 227n4
extractive industry: during company Gould, Jeffrey, 216, 231n16–232n16,
time, 129–131; gold mining, 61; 232n19, 237n17
lobster diving, 172; mining, Great Awakening, 64, 235n43,
130–131; rubber, 61, 129–130; 236n7
tuno, 129–130, 137, 243n32, Green, David, 246n4
244n46; turtling, 23, 145, 172 Greytown, 55, 57
Guaba Indians, 35, 232n21
Fabian, Johannes, 229n12 Gurdián, Galio, 205
Fagoth, Steadman, 40–41, 225 Guyana, 224, 245n60
274 Index
Hale, Charles, 52–53, 63, 125, 140, Inter-American Commission on

146–147, 179, 211, 212–216, Human Rights, 249n3
228n11 International Indian Treaty Council
Handler, Richard, 223 (IITC), 195
Hanson, Earl, 50 invention-of-tradition approach, 14
Harrison, Herbert, 72 Iran-Contra hearings, 250n11
Harrison-Altamirano Treaty, 65–66,
73, 75, 88, 133, 135–136, 164, Jamaica, 43–44; African vs. Indian
175–177 slaves in, 234n35; emigration of
Heard, William, 79 Jamaicans of African descent, 57
Heath, George, 41, 67, 235n2 Jenkins Molieri, Jorge, 206, 207–209
Hebrew/Miskito history parallels, Jicaques, 27, 231n14
142–144
Helms, Mary, 39, 41, 125–126, 127, Karatá: land rights and, 87–88, 164,
138, 148–149, 211, 216, 233n26, 168–169, 175–176; settlement of,
234n35, 240n19, 240n26, 236n5
241n28–241n29 Karnes, Thomas, 236n9
Hendy, George William Albert, 72 Kearney, Michael, 228n10
Hill, Jonathan, 251n20–252n20 kiamp (unilateral kin group), 39
Hindu, 239n11 Kroeber, Alfred, 129
Hodgson, Robert, 45, 48
Holm, John, 41, 44 labor policies/racial conflict:
Hooker, John H., 57 English-speaking worker
hunting/gathering, 23, 128 preference, 91; foreign labor at
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, 78–79, 86,
IAN (Nicaraguan Agrarian 109–110; imported workers,
Institute), 133–134, 135 91–92, 93; labor hierarchy, 93,
identity politics, 230n19; tensions in 118, 130–131, 132; labor union,
studying, 13–15 92; light/dark skin ideology,
immigrants: German/Chinese, 122; 93–94, 95; machete men,
Jamaicans of African descent, 57; 110–112, 113; payment in
northern, pre-Columbian, 24–25 company script, 94, 122;
Incer, Jaime, 51 seasonal, 131; workday length, 94
income/subsistence, 172, 175–178 Ladino, 23, 32, 231n16–232n16,
Indian policy, Nicaraguan, 65–66 237n17
Indian slave trade, 47 Lancaster, Roger, 5, 249n23
Indian vs. Black identification, land claims: after annexation, 73–74;
83–84 at Bilwi/Puerto Cabezas, 73–80,
indigenous people. See Miskito; 87–89; founding myths and,
Rama; Sumu 168–170; Nicaraguan sovereignty
INFONAC (Institute for National over, 65–66; Standard Fruit
Development), 133, 243n40 Company/indigenous community,
infrastructure, built by foreign 175;Ten Communities, 74–75,
companies, 66, 126, 129 87, 244n49
Index 275
land grants: banana industry, 74–75; Miskito Indians, 19; abandonment of

Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Bilwi/Puerto Cabezas by, 88;
Company, 74–75, 77–79, 109; Anglo affinity/ideology of,
large, 235n45 125–126; Black/Miskito Indian
land titles, 66, 135–136 relationship, 39–40; change in
Land Titles Commission, 73–74 image of, 59; definition of, 33;
La Revolución, 20 government participation by,
La Tronquera, 243n34 59–60; increase in agricultural
Lehmann, Walter, 41 production of foodstuffs, 128–129;
Lenca, 27, 231n14 lack of nonreligious reading
lobster diving, 172 material, 245n56; as language vs.
Long, Edward, 49, 219–220 dialect, 183; linguistic ideologies
of, 183–184; mass killings by
Macdonald, Theodore, 202–203 Sandinista army, 249n3;
macho, 98 organizations of, 137–138; role of
manufactured items, 22, 128 women in maintaining traditional
marine life, 22 culture, 245n59; shipwreck theory
Martinez, Dennis, 246n4 of origins, 34–42; socio-economic
Martinez, Pedro, 175–177 roots of, 41; stereotype of, 89–90.
Mayagna. See Sumu Indians See also Mosquito Coast
McConnico, A. J., 79 Miskitu language, English loan
Means, Russell, 195 words in, 185–187
Melgarejo, Santaella, 39 Miskut, 245n55
mestizaje (miscegenation), 8, 32, 33, missionaries, 24, 72, 143; Capuchin,
47, 181–182, 230n19 137; Franciscan, 27–29, 35. See
mestiza myth, 237n17 also Moravian Missionary Church
Mestizo, 7, 19, 23, 32, 48, 82, MISURASATA, 141, 192–193, 205,
233n26; in classificatory scheme of 206, 210, 244n44
Autonomy Statute, 189; use by Mohawk, John, 250n13–251n13
Atlantic vs. Pacific regions, Mohawk Nation, 199
187–189 Moncada, Jose María, 97
Mestizo nationalism, 3. See also monopolies, 66
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi Monroe Doctrine, 55
Mexicans, Nahuatl-speaking, 25–26 moral purity, of Indians, 187
Miles, Leroy T., 70, 74–76, 77 Moravian Missionary Church,
mining industry: English-speaker 210, 235n43; decline of
favoritism, 131; labor hierarchy in, Rama language and, 244n43;
130–131; lack of infrastructure economic development and,
and, 243n35; residential 244n47; education and, 132,
segregation for workers, 130, 131 136–137, 204, 243nn38–39;
Mintz, Sidney, 7 effect on Costeños self-
Miskito, derivation of, 40, 41–42 identification, 136–137; ethnic
Miskito Indian Patriot League, hierarchy in education, 132;
63–64 evangelical work of, 102;
276 Index
Moravian Missionary Church integration at local government

(continued ) level, 59–60; Nicaraguan
languages used in domination of, 61–64, 72;
education/prostelization, rebellion at, 62–63; resistance to
136–137, 204; membership, incorporation into Nicaraguan
243n41–244n41; progressive state, 60
pastoralism and, 144; service in Mueller, Karl, 241n24
“communities,” 139–140; Synod Mulattoes, 7, 36, 47–48, 233n26
meetings, 138, 158; use of English Muñoz, Luis Antonio, 39
in Creole Church, 184–185 Murphy, William, 40
Moris Davis, 245n54 Mustee, 7
Mosquito, as toponym, 35, 42–43 M.W. (English pirate), 38, 39, 71
Mosquito Coast: Africanization of,
52–53; British withdrawal from, Nahual toponyms/ethnonyms,
48; degrading effects of admixture 231n7
in region, 50; land issues after Nahua/Nahuat/Nahuatl, 231n9
annexation, 73–74; leadership Nahua-speaking people, 24–25
hierarchy in, 48; Nicaraguan Nahuatl-speaking people, 24, 25–26,
sovereignty over, 65–66; official 27–28
system of socio-racial national project, of Nicaraguan state,
categorization, 7–8, 55; official 81–83
annexation of, 73; Pacific Native People’s movement, 251n13
campesino immigration to, 129; as Naylor, Robert, 52
part of Caribbean, 221–222; as Negroes, 36, 47–48, 50
part of Mesoamerica, 222; racial new ethnicity, 228n10
identification, geopolitics and, 56; new social movements, 228n10
resistance to incorporation into Newsom, Linda, 31, 230n2, 234n38
Nicaraguan state, 56, 76–77; Nicaragua, resistance to US
social/economic transformation military/economic domination.
of, 43–53; trading ties with See race war/indigenism, in
British, 34; US view of, 50–51, Mosquito Coast
55–56. See also Mosquito Reserve; Nicaragua/Honduras border dispute,
race war/indigenism, in Mosquito 242n31–243n32
Coast Nicaraguan Agrarian Institute
Mosquito Coast English, 184–185 (IAN), 133–134, 135
Mosquito Keys, 35 Nicaraguan National Guard, 97,
Mosquito Municipal Authority, 103, 105, 191, 228n7
72–73 Nicarao, 24–25
Mosquito Reserve: boundaries of, NICPO (Nicaraguan Long Leaf Pine
235n42; creation of, 56; cultural Company), 129, 130, 243n33
incompatibility with Nicaragua, Nietschmann, Bernard, 41–42,
60–61; establishment of, 72; first 145–146, 149, 197–199, 223,
acts of government of, 58–59; 245n59
Index 277
nomadism, 29, 231n12 self-importance of, 127.

North Atlantic Autonomous Region See also company time
(la RAAN), 1, 19, 160, 180, Potthast, Barbara, 44
246n3, 249n20 primitivism vs. cosmopolitanism,
Norwood, Susan, 19–20 228n9
Prince, J. Dyneley, 41
Offen, Karl, 231n12, 232n21, progressive pastoralism, 144
235n42, 236n5 Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, 1;
oil exploration, 135 banana/lumber operations in, 68;
Olien, Michael, 51, 53, 54, 55–56 Bay of Pigs invasion and,
Ortega, Daniel, 231n10, 252n24 126–127; as classic US company
Ortega, Humberto, 173–174 town (See company time); dollar
Otomanguean language, 24 diplomacy and, 78; early resource
extraction, 70–71; English
Pacific Nicaraguans: on language dominance effects in, 86;
inhabitants/institutions of Atlantic foreign labor at, 78–79, 86;
Coast, 51–52, 69, 81, 249n23; on growth/transformation of, 68;
material poverty of Atlantic Coast, labor policies/racial conflict,
5; skin color consciousness of, 3, 91–95; land ownership issues, 69,
83, 188 73–80, 87–89; language of,
Panama, Caribbeanization of, 84–85 247n14; lumber/banana industry
Patterson, Henry, 57 in, 74–75, 77–79; Miskito
Pearl Lagoon, 158 abandonment of, 88; named
peasantry, defining, 241n26 change by Nicaraguan
Pike, Frederick, 228n9 government, 68, 86; Nicaraguan
Pipil, 24–25 reaction to influx of Black
Pipil language, 25 workers, 68–69, 91–92, 94;
pirates, 37 physical division between US
pollution, 115–117 company/native section, 94–95;
population statistics: aboriginal political implications of interwar
decline, 31–32; Atlantic Coast events in, 68–69; race as
counties, 237n15; Atlantic Coast impediment to progress in, 82–83;
increase, 133; Creole, before 1880, racial bifurcation in, 71–72;
57; Creole, in Puerto Cabezas, settlement of Bilwi, 236n5;
245n61; El Cocal, 247n10; Spanish ideologies of
non-Central American foreigners, race/language/culture/progress at,
240n21; pre-Conquest, 21, 230n2; 80–91; Spanish language school
Puerto Cabezas, 68; racial profile, instruction and, 85; strategic
colonial era, 47–48; slaves, location of Bilwi, 71;Ten
234n34; 2005 estimate, 19–20 Communities land claims, 74–75,
Port Authority (ENAP), 170–172 87, 244n49; US Marine
Porteños: environmental occupation of, 68, 95. See also
dissonance and, 4–5; geological Bragman’s Bluff Lumber Company;
278 Index
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi (continued ) racial categories: Colonial Spanish

Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, America, 233n26; disappearance
ethnic/racial identification in; of African/mixed-African, 46–47;
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, race/myth dissonance between
in Indian Bilwi official/popular, 187–188; official
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, ethnic/racial system on Mosquito Coast,
identification in: from company 7–8, 55
time to Sandino time, 153–154; racial determinism, 41
decapitalization/abandonment, racial metaphor, 41
154–157; linguistic Rama Indians, 187
ideology/official ethnicity in Rama language, 244n43
RAAN (See Statute of Regional Reagan, Ronald, 6
Autonomy); Porteños/Costeños Reagan administration,
identity, 157; sports leagues and, 249n3–250n3
157–163. See also Puerto reducciones (permanent settlements
Cabezas/Bilwi, race/myth in used by Europeans), 28–29
Indian Bilwi Rees, E. Owen, 87–88
Puerto Cabezas/Bilwi, race/myth in reforestation, 133–134, 243n40
Indian Bilwi, 163–169; Reincorporation of 1894, 73
class/spatially based distinctions religion, 61; pre-Columbian, 22.
intersection with racial/cultural See also missionaries; Moravian
ideologies, 163–164; founding Missionary Church
myths, 164–165, 168–169; residential racial segregation, 20
negative stereotypes of resin/turpentine industry, 130
community-born Miskitos, revitalization approach, 14
165–167 Rio Coco, 144
purchase society, 41 rubber industry, 61, 129–130
pure Indians, 42; stereotyped Ruiz y Ruiz, Frutos, 80–91, 94–95
description of, 49–50
Puritan Providence Island Company, Salmen Brick and Lumber
35–36, 38 Company, 70, 74–75
Sambo, 33, 39–40, 42, 52;
race war/indigenism, in Mosquito Sambo/pure Indian distinction,
Coast, 70, 95–106; assassination of 46, 48–49; stereotyped description
Sandino, 105; costs of, 96–97; of, 49
gendered metaphor of war, 97–99; Sambo-Tawira distinction, 236n5
main theater of operations, 96; Sandinista National Liberation Front
Nicaraguan National Guard in, (FSLN), 153, 190, 191, 194, 196,
97, 103, 105; patriarchy and 212
masculine/feminine ideology, Sandino, Augusto Cesar.
99–102; as race war, 97; rape See race war/indigenism,
during, 98; Sandino’s proposed in Mosquito Coast
district, 103–105; as undeclared Sawmill, 235n2
war, 97; US Marines leave, 103 Scott, James, 202
Index 279
seasonal labor, 131 ethnonyms/toponyms adoption,

sea turtles, 22, 145 25–26, 27; at Taguzgalpa, 27–29
segregation: during company time, Spanish language, in official
113–114, 117–119; physical contexts, 248n17
division between US sports leagues, 157–163; funding
company/natives, 94–95; problems, 159–160; Indian/Black
residential, 20, 130, 131 man teams, 160–161; Port people
self-assertiveness, of indigenous vs. Black men, 161–163
peoples, 193 Squier, E. G., 51, 55, 223
self-exoticization, 12 Standard Fruit Company, 1, 74, 111,
self-identification: by Costeños, 102, 118, 120, 121; banana/lumber
136–137; Indian, after Contra operation establishment, 68;
War, 153; of Zambo during expansion of, 240n15; indigenous
colonial period, 83–84 community land rights and, 175;
self-importance, geopolitical, 126, worker dependence on foreign
127 products, 241n29–242n29. See also
Sequeira, George, 74 Bragman’s Bluff Lumber
shipwreck theory, of Miskito Indian Company
origins, 34–42 Statute of Regional Autonomy,
Sider, Gerald, 13–14 180–181; assumption behind
silicosis, 131 enacting in Atlantic vs. Pacific
Sisín, 138, 244n49 region, 181–182; classificatory
skin color: Costeños on, 4; labor system of, 182–183, 187–189;
hierarchy and, 93–94, 95; Pacific dissonance between
Nicaraguans on, 3, 83, 188; official/popular racial categories,
in present day Nicaragua, 237n16 187–188; official ethnicity terms
slavery/slaves: Africans, 34, 39, 40, in, 181; primary purpose of,
47; African vs. Indian laborers in 180–181; provisions of, 181
Jamaica, 234n35; Indian, 234n38; Steward, Julian, 230n6
Indian slavery prohibited, 234n36; Sumu Indians, 10, 20, 41, 136, 137,
mixed race, 42–53; under Spanish 200, 232n21
colonization, 31
Smith, Raymond, 33, 224, 245n60 Taguzgalpa, 27, 28–29, 30
Smutko, Gregorio, 141–142 Tasbapauni, 145, 147
social movements, Costeño, 191 Tawira-Sambo distinction, 236n5
Solórzano, Flor, 2–3, 51–52 taya (bilateral kin groups), 39
Somoza, Anastasio, 134, 228n7 Ten Communities
Southern Atlantic Autonomous (Diez Comunidades), 74–75,
Region (la RAAS), 19, 158, 180, 87, 244n49
243n3, 249n20 “Third World War,” 198
Spanish colonization: communal life Thomas, John, 71
under, 30–31; missionaries, 28–29; toponyms. See ethnonyms/toponyms
names used to describe Atlantic trade, 22, 23, 58; Aztec, 24;
Coast groups, 29–30, 36; native slave trade, 5, 47
280 Index
transportation, built by foreign Waspám, 242n30; extractive industry

companies, 66, 126, 129 and, 129–130; transportation,
Treaty of Managua, 56–57, 60, 63, Puerto Cabezas-Waspám road,
235n42, 236n6 129
trilingualism, 20 Webster, Daniel, 40
tuno, 129–130, 137, 243n32, 244n46 Williams, A.J., 246n4
Turcos, 239n11 Williams, Brackette, 224
turtling, 23, 145, 172 Willis, Paul, 214
Twappi, 71, 72 Wolf, Eric, 25–26
World Council of Indigenous
unfaithful Indians, 27 Peoples, 200
United Fruit Company, 118, 120 World Court, Nicaragua/Honduras
UNO party, 173–174 border dispute and,
Uto-Aztecan language, 24 242n31–243n31
Wrigley Gum Company, 129–130,
Vacarro Bros. Inc., 70, 74. See also 244n46
Standard Fruit Company writing against culture, 13, 14–15
van Hagen, Wolfgang, 50
Vargas, Germán Romero, 30–31, 36, Yapti Tasba, 197
45, 47 YATAMA (“Descendents of Mother
Vázquez, Francisco, 25, 28, 29 Earth”), 175
Vázquez de Espinosa, Antonio, 26
Vilas, Carlos, 205–206, 241n28, Zambo, 7, 47–48, 233n26; definition
250n7 of, 36; kin groups, 39;
voluntary acculturation, 129 self-identification during
colonial period, 83–84
Wade, Peter, 8 Zambos-Misquitos, 51–52
Walcott, Derek, 5 Zelaya, 19, 61, 147
About the Author
Baron Pineda is a cultural anthropologist specializing in race and

indigenous peoples in Latin America. He has a bachelor’s degree from
the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree and PhD
from the University of Chicago. He currently is an assistant professor of
anthropology at Oberlin College.

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Shipwrecked Identities

Rutg e r s U n ive r s i ty Pre s s

Manufactured in the United States of America

 Nicaragua’s Two Coasts 

 From Bilwi to Puerto Cabezas: Mestizo

 Company Time 

 Neighborhoods and Official Ethnicity 

 Costeño Warriors and Contra Rebels:

Don Paco Mendez owns and operates a store among

halves: Atlantic (Mosquito Coast) and Paciﬁc. In the Segovian Moun-

Unfortunately, the sort of prejudice against Costeños, people of the

In the minds of many Nicaraguans the region’s natural abundance serves

continuing ties to the English-speaking world place them above Paciﬁc

ﬁnd the current state of material poverty in the Atlantic Coast to be

The Cultural Politics of Blackne ss and

In the mid-1600s a ship carrying African slaves is said to have ship-

From an early date Europeans identiﬁed many of the inhabitants of

Indian category, the term “Creole” has come to be used to refer to

and remains at an impasse today, appeals to cultural and ethnic differences

complexity of Costeño social life while recognizing the undeniable

Paciﬁc Nicaraguans and others have conﬂated the region’s geogra-

Making Frie nds and Making Enemie s

often regarded as a relatively new phenomenon: the centrality of strate-

problem as the activist’s dilemma (Sider 1993, xxiii). The activist’s

Each of these approaches responds in a different way to a common

Organi zat i on of th e Book

US company town at mid-century, and ﬁnally into the capital of the

disappearance of an African term in the Paciﬁc system of racial

with the theme of the interpenetration of racial ideologies and political

our interventions and our approaches as anthropologists under scrutiny

Nicaragua’s Two Coasts

In the pre-Columbian period human populations in

hunting and gathering with shifting cultivation of plantain and roots

E thnonyms and Top onyms

Chibchan languages spoken by central and eastern Nicaraguan Indians,

rulers in Nahuatl) (Wolf 1959, 40). Mexican Nahuatl speakers who

designating the territory they inhabit; the Otomí, nhyû. (Wolf

often the language of early Christian proselytization in early colonial

settlements, the Indians frequently abandoned the settlement or vio-

Communal life was the main feature of Indian society in Nicaragua

Every Indian was a “natural” of a pueblo. If an Indian from another

In the Paciﬁc region, the Spanish colonial administration carefully

settlement at Black River in today’s Honduras, Europeans did not

In the Atlantic Coast during the colonial period, the population

The Shipwreck Theory

becomes a self-evident feature of human bodies that inevitably precipi-

1629 were the ﬁrst Europeans to extensively interact on peaceful terms

1698; Lussan 1689; M.W. 1728).29 All of the seventeenth-century non-

Through the frequent Converse and Familiarity these Indians have

In the above quotations, it is apparent that as of the 1670s, northern

Exquemelin’s pirate contemporary William Dampier echoed this state-

Variations of this story have continued to be recounted, both inside

this group of migrants came to be known as “Miskut Uplika Nani”

staunch primordialist position with regard to the Miskito (which he

Zambo s, Mo squ i to s, Zambo s

was used to describe a small population that cooperated with the

represented the highest level of their authority in their respective

was predicated upon wrenching the slave from aboriginal communal

mixed-African racial category disappeared entirely (Romero Vargas

We should emphasize the importance that the African element of