Nicaragua's ethnic minorities in the revolution

Monthly Review, Jan, 1985 by Philippe Bourgois

There are historical reasons why militarist Amerindian nationalism would strike a responsive chord among so many Miskitu. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Miskitu became the first Amerindian people on the Central American litoral to obtain firearms through trade with the European buccaneers preying on spanish shipping in the Caribbean. With their superior fire power, the Miskitu not only resisted Spanish conquest, but also "conquered" almost 700 miles of the Atlantic seaboard from Trujillo, Honduras, through Chiriqui Lagoon in Panama.

Gradually, British "alliance" with the Miskitu became valuable to Britain's strategy of undermining Spanish power, as well as trade, on the Caribbean mainland. In 1687 the Governor of Jamaica formalized the alliance by crowning a Miskitu leader "King of the Mosquitia." Indeed the British systematically promoted the concepts of Miskitu national sovereignty and militarism in order to legitimize their own colonial expansion into the region: "[We] . . . mounted . . . [the fort] . . . with cannon, hoisted the Royal flag and kept garrison to show that this independent country of the Mosquito Shore was under the direct sovereignty and protection of Great Britain."

Ironically, therefore, the Miskitu have long been at the center of international power struggles. In the 1700s it was Spain versus Great Britain; in 1984 it was the United States versus Nicaragua. The manipulation of the Miskitu contra by the United States, therefore, is analogous to the Miskitu-British relationship noted by a historian in 1774:

[The Miskitu] . . . have always been, and still are, in the place of a standing army; which, without receiving any pay, or being in any shape burthensome to Great Britain, Maintains the English in firm and secure possession [of the region], protects their trade, and forms an impenetrable barrier against the Spanish, whom they keep in constant awe.

Modern-day Miskitu have mystified the former existence of an Amerindian king into a symbol of nationalist aspirations. For example, in the 1970s under Somoza there were repeated rumors that the Miskitu king had returned and was circulating throughout the lower Coco River preparing his people for secession. Similarly when MISURASATA was in its early formative stage in 1980, elderly Miskitu sometimes talked of "working for the return of the King." On a more neutral level, the Miskitu could still point out descendants of the "royal family"; they used to argue over the true location of the cache holding the defunct monarch's scepter and crown jewels. In this context, debates over whether or not the Miskitu are a national minority become academic. The Miskitu do not fulfill the objective requisites necessary to constitute a sovereign nation state; at the same time, however, Amerindian nationalist ideology is a part of their ethnic identity and the contra, especially Fagoth, succeeded in distorting these nationalist aspirations in order to provoke confrontation with the new Nicaraguan government.