URACCAN Campus, Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense
People in the street, hello
More people in the park
I've written a far too long text in Norwegian about this, I'll try to keep it short. First about the name of Bluefields: There was a lot of piracy here, often sanctioned by the British Crown, since they looted Spanish ships. One of them was a Dutchman called Blauveldt, which turned into Bluefields, as the city was named after him.
Spain colonised the western coast of Nicaragua, and England took the east coast, the Caribbean coast, where I am now, as a British protectorate. The indigenous miskitoes of the north collaborated with the British, receiving weapons and goods as a thank you for keeping the Spanish away. There has been a lot of back and forth between the British and the Spanish, and in the end the British signed a treaty saying that they would leave the Nicaraguan coast to Nicaragua, and go up to Belize. So they left, leaving behind plantations with suddenly-free slaves, in addition to the Creole and Garifuna (afro-descendants), and the indigenous peoples of Rama, Mayagna, Ulwa, and Miskito. None of them with a good relationship with the rest of the country, and never having been a united country before.
Almost as from any textbook on how to suppress the indigenous tribes of a country, the government went on to forbid indigenous languages in schools, and impose Spanish language, traditions and property owners on the east coast. The different ethnic groups on this coast were all seen as inferior. There is still a lot of prejudice from people living in the west and north of the country. Even I was told to be careful of people in Bluefields, because they are apparently a lot more likely than anyone else to steal all my things.
Finally, after the revolution and civil war, there was a lot of will to change in the country. A lot of leaders from the Caribbean worked hard to create a new autonomy law, and they managed to finish it in 1987. The autonomy law is quite progressive, even today. It states that there are two autonomous regions in Nicaragua, the northern and the southern autonomous regions: RAAN and RAAS. They cover about half the country. The forwardness of the law exists in it saying that all ethnic groups are equal, and they are all autonomous, whether they are of Spanish or African descent, or indigenous people. This is pretty strong in a region with so much history about race and origin.
The autonomy law also speaks about the demarcacion (is this a word in English?) of land. The land that was once given to rich friends of those in charge, is supposed to be shared out as communal land between the different communities. No personal ownership. There are a lot of rules and regulations though, a lot of different traditions to consider, and even places where this is impossible to go through with, like Bluefields, which is a city where people have owned their land maybe hundreds of years. Others have their deed scrawled on paper, without witnesses or proper signatures.
We are going to learn a lot about this (I have learned some already, as you can see from my actually quite short summary). I am already comparing it, and finding that others have compared it before, with the indigenous people of the Nordic countries: the Saami. More about this to come!
