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About Us
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We
are part of the inland indigenous community of the RAAN representing
both Sumo and Miskito indigenous cultures. Our history with
Nicaragua, while long and rich in terms of a European presence,
obviously long predates our introduction to the European culture.
The exact origin of our present day populations is open to some
debate, but it is generally accepted that our peoples have deep
roots in the whole of the Caribbean region. The presence of
Europeans since the 15th century clearly established a
record of written history of several hundreds of years. The
influence of both Spanish and English over this period has had a
profound influence on our lives, cultures, languages and attitudes.
The British, competing
for control in the Americas, established themselves on the Atlantic
Coast from early 1600’s by forming strong alliances with the
indigenous peoples against the Spanish influence. The Miskito
engaged in a weapons trade with English such that they became a
major military force along the Caribbean coast and a major agitator
to inland Spanish settlements. The English supported indigenous
nationalism and in 1687 introduced a ‘puppet’ monarchy through a
system of Miskito Kings that lasted until the late 1800’s. This
effectively provided a symbolic Miskito ethnic identity in conflicts
against the neighbouring Sumu peoples and the Spanish. The Miskito
kings essentially operated as middlemen between the people and the
British trade and political interests.
The San Juan
River-Lake Nicaragua waterway was a potentially strategically
important Atlantic to Pacific canal that was the fuel for much of
the British-Spanish conflict. However, with the Treaty of Versailles
of 1786 the British agreed to withdraw from the region leading to a
retreat of many British colonizers to Belize. But this was not the
end of British interest in the potential control of an inland canal
connecting the coasts of Nicaragua. By the mid-1800’s the United
States interest in the canal challenged British claims to this
territory; this eventually led to a more formal withdrawal of British
interests in 1860 through the Treaty of Managua. However, the
British exited with a conditional acceptance of the Miskito Coast as
an Autonomous Region within Nicaragua, but under the sovereign
control of the Nicaraguan government. |
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This is the environment in which we as Limi-Nawâh are trying to
effect a change. Clearly, given the ecological, social, cultural
and economic histories of the area, effecting a change in attitude
must swim against an attitude steeped in literally centuries of
exploitation. Obviously this is not a simple undertaking and despite
a mountain of logic for a different future, we as people face a
difficult challenge in reshaping our image of the world. But this
is who we are.
Our 16
members communities include the following representing more than
7,000 people:
| Tungla |
Dos Amigos |
| TaspaPauni |
Tuburus |
| Alamikamban |
Betel |
| Klarindan |
Auka /Mango |
| Ladrikula |
Prinzubila |
| Buena Vista |
Isnawas |
| Lymbaikan |
Wasakin |
| Galilea |
Layasiksa |
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However when Jose
Santos Zelaya became the President of Nicaragua in 1893 he
strengthened his ties with U.S. economic interests and essentially
erased the concept of regional autonomy. Added to this, the British
signed the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty in 1905 renouncing their
rights and interests in the region in exchange for political
considerations elsewhere in the world. This led to a multi-decade
period of lucrative natural resource exploitation by North American
interests in both fruit and timber extraction.
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The pine timber
interests in the early 1900’s led to a $5 Million investment
including a 1,100 mile-long railroad and a sawmill able to produce
5,500 feet of wooden planks daily, and the founding of Puerto
Cabezas; by the mid- 1920’s, this lumber company was Nicaragua's
largest employer, with 3,000 workers. The last large sawmill closed
down in the region in 1963 following decades of non-sustainable
exploitation forcing thousands of wage-earners back to a traditional
lifestyle based on hunting, gathering, fishing and subsistence
agriculture.
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Rapid deforestation
and population resettlement leveraged a host of environmental and
social problems resulting from frequent flooding and overharvest of
wildlife to sustain human populations.
Other industries fared
little better. Banana and rubber exploitation went through similar
boom and bust cycles displacing labour and leaving a depleted
resource base and memories of more prosperous times. Numerous other
intrusions into the politics and economy of the Atlantic Coast
throughout the 1990’s have only served to perpetuate the cycle of
boom and bust economies based on aggressive efforts to exploit any
opening or weakness in the resource economy whether it be timber,
minerals or fish. The attempts of cultural integration of the
Sandinistas of the 1980’s was met with a violent opposition by
indigenous peoples who did not share that the lands in which they
lived should be the source of the interest of outsiders.
This has led to our
multi-century learned attitude of severe distrust of the outside
world and a system of political control based on disarray, ignorance
of what it takes to resolve such conflict, and an attention span
that is driven by extreme poverty and impatience.
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