Forced Relocation: Catalyst for Indigenous Resistance on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, 1980–1990

Over the course of this paper, the author carefully illustrates how Sandinista programs of cultural assistance and social reconstruction that were intended to benefit the peoples of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast actually served to alienate large segments of the indigenous population. Likewise, he shows how the apparent ignorance of the Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in regard to their understanding of indigenous social and political formations produced high levels of indifference among the Coast communities toward the revolutionary process. As a result, he demonstrates how increasingly repressive responses on the part of the Sandinista government toward popular dissension helped to transform the fundamental character of the indigenous opposition from one of political apathy to that of armed resistance. However, to reach such valid conclusions, the author first retraces the origins and evolution of the Miskito, Sumu, Rama, and Creole peoples within the context of their continuing struggle against the Nicaraguan state to maintain their own separate cultural and ethnic identities. In addition, he discusses the arrival of the Sandinistas on the Atlantic Coast and how their social and political interaction with the Costeños precipitated hostilities. Finally, the author examines the Sandinista decision to forcibly relocate large numbers of Miskito civilians and how it related to subsequent indigenous emigration and the emergence of an armed conflict