Accommodating Mestizaje on Nicaragua's Río Coco: Miskitu activism before the Sandinista Revolution

Abstract

This article examines the Miskitu peoples’ efforts to gain equal rights in mid-20th-century Nicaragua through a discourse of citizenship within the larger ideological framework of Latin American mestizaje (interracial and intercultural mixing as the basis for Latin American identity in refutation of European and/or Anglo-American values). Specifically, it explores Miskitu recollections and reactions to Nicaraguan efforts to integrate them into the national identity through an indigenist programme known as the Río Coco Pilot Project for Basic Education. Acknowledging Miskitu accommodation and even embracement of this assimilationist project provides an alternative interpretation of 20th-century indigenous social activism and validates an earlier Miskitu generation's achievements in advancing the cause of Miskitu social and political equality in Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast region before the era of multicultural autonomy.