On April 18th the Elders Council of La Mosquitia (considered the maximum authority of the indigenous Miskito people's traditional organizational structure) held an assembly in Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas) at which they declared the independence of the Northern and Southern Atlantic Regions (RAAN and RAAS) from Nicaragua. The new nation the Elders intend to create will be called the Communitary Nation of La Mosquitia.

During the event at which the surprise announcement was made, Reverend Hector Williams was elected as Gran Wihta Tara, the maximum leader of La Mosquitia and of the authority the Elders now recognize as the legitimate government of the Caribbean region.

Also during the assembly the Council of Elder Ministers assist Williams' government, as was the Indigenous Army of La Mosquitia, a force of approximately 200 former Yatama combatants which was designated the task of defending the independence of La Mosquitia.

[During the 1980s, Yatama, then an indigenous resistance movement, was involved in the armed conflict against the first FSLN government. In the 1990s the movement became a political party and has since participated in several regional and national elections with relative success. Currently Yatama is part of the FSLN led governing political alliance. The members of the Indigenous Army of La Mosquitia, however, expressed their profound discontent with the recent policies and actions of Yatama leader Brooklyn Rivera.]

The Declaration of Independence read during the assembly proposes a six month transition period and issues a formal request for assistance from the UN to carry out this process. The declaration goes on to order the suspension of all political elections and instructs companies operating within the region to desist from their tax payments to Nicaragua's central government and to come to agreements vis a vis tax and other arrangements with the newly proposed authorities.

The Miskito people's troubled recent history

Until the latter part of the 19th century La Mosquitia (the territories belonging to the Miskito people comprising part of the current northern Nicaraguan and southern Honduran Caribbean regions) was an autonomous region where Miskitos lived relatively peacefully with the English who had colonized certain parts of the coastal region.

In 1894 Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya invaded the part of La Mosquitia that today forms Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and obliged a number of representatives of the Miskito people to sign a convention agreeing to become part of Nicaragua. As journalist Sergio Simpson describes in a recent article published on his blog, the Miskito people have, ever since, suffered discrimination, violence, exploitation and disrespect at the hands of their mestizo "co-patriots:" [Mestizo is the term used to describe persons of mixed Nicaraguan-Spanish ancestry]. Sergio Simpson:

"The independentist proposal is not new ... it has existed ever since ... 1894 when President José Santos Zelaya militarily invaded [La Mosquitia] refusing to acknowledge the local autonomous authorities. Mestizo representatives from the Pacific coast turned up, displaced creoles and indigenous persons and imposed their own classist and, of course, racist discriminatory visions. A concept of "civilization" was imposed which established unsurmountable differences between costeños (indigenous people and afrodecendents) and mestizos.

"Since then all the different ... leaders of Nicaragua have signed concessions permitting the exploitation of [the Caribbean coast's] human and natural resources, although such concessions have never permitted indigenous communities to enjoy the benefits of their properties. ... The majority of the indigenous lands were declared as Nicaraguan national territory. ...

"With the triumph of the Popular Sandinista Revolution (1979) the contradictions between the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and central government were magnified to such an extent that indigenous tribes resorted to armed violence against the government as part of the [Contra] war financed by the US. ... The Law of Autonomy of the Caribbean Coast (Law 28 approved in September 1987) was the product of negotiations between Miskito armed groups and the Sandinista government which, after four years at war, yielded to the pressure and understood the demands [being made by the Miskitos].

"Since the electoral defeat of the FSLN (1990) ... the indigenous territories have suffered the onslaught of individuals anxious to acumulate immediate wealth even if that implies the destruction of large areas of terrain. We see National Army helicopters involved in the destruction of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, local and Pacific leaders investing in timber processing, cattle farming and industrial fishing, thousands of people getting involved in the trafficking and consumption of cocaine, thousands of former soldiers, mestizo contras and land merchants invading the jungle.

"The Miskito people went straight from the suffering of armed conflict to the distress of hunger, loss of communal values, delinquential violence, the increasing deterioration of their natural and environmental resources and the corruption of indigenous leaders."

Authorities and media, apparently taken a back, await further events

Although the general discontent of the Miskito and other indigenous peoples is a well known, if little understood, phenomenon in Nicaragua, the proclamation of independence on April 18th came as a surprise to Nicaraguan authorities and society alike. So far central and regional government representatives have said very little in public about the implications of the Elder's announcement or how they plan to react. Similarly national media outlets (admittedly all based in Pacific urban centers) have published little about events in the Caribbean regions. There is a sense in which the generalized silence surrounding events suggests that people are waiting anxiously to see how serious the Elder's council is about its proclamation, and what is going to happen next.   

According to Wilfredo Jarquín Lang, Special Ombudsman for Indigenous People and Ethnic Communities for the RAAS, the Miskito Elders Council's separatist aspirations are not shared by the rest of the indigenous peoples and other communities of the Caribbean region. This was certainly the inexplicit intepretation the FSLN party political periodical, El 19, made of the Sumu Mayangna Nation General Assembly celebrated in the town of Rosita, RAAN, at the beginning of May, during which new authorities were elected in the presence of central and regional government representatives.

Special Ombudsman for Indigenous People and Ethnic Communities for the RAAN, Violeta Irías Nelson, is of the opinion that, whether or not the Miskito Elders Council is acting in representation of majority regional opinion, the decision "not to recognize the established authorities, and the formation of the Indigenous Army of La Mosquitia, could be bad signs."

Brooklyn Rivera, a National Assembly Deputy and leader of the indigenous party Yatama (which, as mentioned above, is allied with the FSLN), coincides with Irías' fear. "As long as whichever government is in power fails to attend to the demands and aspirations of [the people of the Caribbean regions] those demands will gain more and more force," says Rivera. "As inhabitants of [the Caribbean regions] we acknowledge that the [separatist movement] could gain broad support from all sectors. ... Although the proclamation of independence is juridically weak, the eventual cultural and political impact could provoke large forces to rebel and create a serious conflictive situation."

Secretary of Indigenous Affairs at the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, Joel Dixon, minimized the Elders' Council annoucement saying "it doesn't even have the full support of the Miskito people, let alone the other peoples" (mayangna, garifuna, rama, creole and mestizo). Dixon believes that beneath the announced aspiration of independence lies another objective - to undermine the leadership of Rivera within Yatama and among the region's population as a whole.

No explanation of any diplomatic or other response to the Elders Council's announcement was given by Dixon, the only central government official to have publicly commented on recent events. Undeniably, if the Miskito communal authorities were to go ahead with their announced plan to establish an independent nation, Nicaragua's central government would be faced with a very difficult and potentially explosive situation. The very existence of the Indigenous Army of La Mosquitia violates the Nicaraguan constitution which states that the only armed forces legally permitted to exist are the Nicaraguan Army and the National Police.

Possibile manipulation of Miskitos by underground forces

As could be expected a number of conspiracy theories have been put forward about who and what superior forces are behind the surprise separatist announcement. In an article which appeared on the right wing news and information website,www.nicaraguahoy.info, run from Costa Rica, Roberto Escobedo Caicedo claims that agents of both the Colombian government and Colombian drug cartels are involved in underground campaigns to encourage separatist aspirations among Miskitos. The former, he says, are doing so with the intention of avoiding Nicaragua's claim against Colombia over the maritime border the two nation's share coming to fruition at the International Court of Justice, while the latter are interested in creating the conditions to install a cocaine trafficking haven.

Meanwhile, during comments to a national TV news program, FSLN Deputy Gustavo Porras expressed his suspicion that US Ambassador Robert Callahan is the one behind the formation of the separatist Miskito movement. Porras cited Callahan's experience as US Embassy spokesmen in Honduras during the 1980s, during which time he assisted John Negroponte in coordinating the Contra war against the FSLN government. "And I understand that he [helped organize separatist movements] in Yugoslavia," Porras went on.

Going on publicly available information, it is as yet impossible to come to any sort of conclusion about whether some underground force with sinister intentions is behind the Elders Council's recent actions, or what the possible outcome of the situation may be. One can but hope that the Council is motivated by a genuine desire to help the Miskito and other peoples of Nicaragua's Caribbean coastal regions overcome their current situation of desperate impoverishment and marginalization. It would be naïve, however, to overlook the attractiveness the extreme social and political vulnerability of the region (the poorest and least developed of Central America) would represent, in terms of being a potential punto de entrada, for groups interested in destabilizing the country and its central government.

Source: Tortilla con sal (Photos added by Axis of Logic)

See The subversive work of the Christian church and their missionaries in Nicaragua