Nicaragua's ethnic minorities in the revolution

Monthly Review, Jan, 1985 by Philippe Bourgois

By the end of the fifth year, tensions with ethnic minorities had become an Achilles heel of the Nicaraguan revolution: 1) militarily, the Atlantic Coast region where the minorities lived had exploded into an arena of bitter fighting; 2) politically, accusations of human rights violations against the indigenous population had damaged the revolution's international image; and 3) morally, the inability to incorporate minorities--the most marginalized sector of Nicaraguan society--into a full participation in the revolutionary process had contradicted Sandinista political principles. Although the Nicaraguan government committed errors in its policies toward the coastal--costeno--population, the crisis can best be understood from a historical perspective, as the outcome of several hundred years of tension between ethnic minorities and the Mestizo national majority. In the final analysis, the responsibility for the conversion of these historic tensions into a fratricidal war lies with the United States, which armed, trained, and provided international legitimation for the counter-revolutionary (contra) forces, thereby preventing a peaceful solution from emerging based on dialogue and compromise.

Ethnic minorities at the time of the revolutionary triumph represented less than 5 percent of the national population and were all located in the Atlantic Coast province of Zelaya, the poorest, most isolated region in the nation. The Miskitu Amerindians numbering 67,000 were the largest minority group and lived, along with some 5,000 Sumu Amerindians, in the northeast near the Honduran border. Together they comprised 25 percent of their province's total population. The Creoles were the second largest minority group, an English-speaking, Afro-Caribbean population of just under 26,000 concentrated mostly in the southern coastal port of Bluefields. Also in South Zelaya were 1,500 Garifuna, a people of Afro-Amerindian descent, and some 600 Rama Amerindians. Finally Mestizos, the product of European, Amerindian, and some African admixture were the dominant ethnic group, both at the regional and national levels, constituting over 180,000 or 65 percent of the Atlantic Coast population.

From the outset, the revolution encountered problems on the coast. Prior to the triumph of the revolution there had been almost no fighting or clandestine organizing in Zelaya. Consequently, especially in the Miskitu-dominated North, there was no indigenous revolutionary leadership forged in struggle. The first major Sandinista/Amerindian tension arose when the Miskitu demanded the recognition of an ethnic-based mass organization. Although the Sandinistas initially thought the fundamental interests of minorities could be represented in the class-based mass organizations that operated at the national level, out of revolutionary principle, they acceded. MISURASATA, the new indigenous mass organization, was given political legitimacy, logistical support, and a seat on the National Council of State by the new government.

MISURASATA seized the democratic opening provided by the revolution in order to mobilize militantly throughout the northeast on a platform of indigenous rights devoid of class content.

Although the organization lobbied for concrete economic gains, its central thrust was to stress the dignity--and indeed, it turned out later, the superiority--of Amerindian identity. Furthermore, the Amerindian nationalist tone of the organization struck a responsive chord in most of the over 300 impoverished Miskitu agricultural communities. A full-fledged indigenous revitalization movement caught hold and MISURASATA emerged as a powerful force in Northern Zelaya to the point of challenging Sandinista political influence.

Relations between MISURASATA and the FSLN were confrontational from the outset. MISURASATA leaders lacked a class consciousness and FSLN cadre, most of whom were from the Pacific provinces, were unprepared to deal with the historical patterns of interethnic domination and tension that they encountered in the Atlantic. In practice, however, in response to minority demands during the first year and a half, the Nicaraguan government passed more legislation favorable to the indigenous population than has any government in the history of Central America. Most notably, a bilingual education law was passed in the Council of State and a literacy campaign was launched in Miskitu, Sumu, and English. The government also commissioned MISURASATA to prepare a study on indigenous land rights stating its willingness to grant communal land titles to the indigenous communities.

In South Zelaya, on the other hand, the ethnic organization purporting to represent the Afro-Caribbean population, known as the Southern Indigenous Creole Community (SICC), was not recognized by the FSLN as a mass organization since it was openly against the government from its inception, and it never emerged as a powerful movement. Tensions, however, exploded in the South in late September and early October of 1980 with street demonstrations and the paralyzation of economic activity in Bluefields. The crowd, which was multiethnic but largely Creole, was protesting the presence of "communist" Cuban primary school teachers and doctors in the town. Through a process of dialogue, compromise, and flexibility the FSLN sensitized itself to local concerns, and tensions in Bluefields were slowly dissipated. Nonetheless, although few Creoles took up arms and joined the contra, they tended to remain apathetic toward the revolutionary process.