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By Laura Hobson Herlihy and Brett Spencer


The year 2020 has not begun favorably for the Indigenous Peoples on the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast. Amidst the impending coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, settler colonists (called colonos) violently attack Indigenous people and invade their rainforest lands. Ten Miskitu and Mayangna leaders and land defenders have been killed since early January.
 

En medio de un denso hermetismo se logra apenas saber de manera extraoficial que un grupo armado de aproximadamente 80 personas al que identifican como “el grupo armado Kukalón” irrumpió la tranquilidad de la comunidad Alal, Indígena Mayangna, en Bonanza, a 400 kilómetros al noreste de la ciudad capital, Managua.
 

According to early reports, an armed group of approximately 80 people who identify as “the Kukalón Armed Group” recently disturbed the peace of an Indigenous Mayangna village of Alal, Bonanza, 400 kilometers northeast of Managua, Nicaragua. On January 28, 2020, the group massacred 6 Indigenous Mayangnas, another 10 are reported missing, and several houses were burned. Five of the victims have been identified: Tránsito Mesa, Víctor Díaz, Juan Emilio Devis, Carlos Martín, and Miguel Dixon.
 

Indigenous Miskitu leader Brooklyn Rivera seeks to change electoral processes in Nicaragua’s North and South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Regions (the RACCN and RACCS). Rivera is submitting recommendations to the Organization of American States (OAS), as part of a follow-up report on Nicaragua’s recent municipal elections that occurred on November 5, 2017.
The Sandinistas symbolically massacred the Indigenous Miskitu people along the Caribbean Coast in the Nicaraguan municipal elections. The Nicaraguan state first conquered and incorporated the Caribbean Coast in 1894. Local intellectuals claim the recent elections on November 5, 2017 represent the Nicaraguan state’s final conquest and domination of the Miskitu people and their resource-rich, rainforest homeland along the Caribbean Coast.

Introducción por Laura Hobson Herlihy y traducción de la introducción por Sasha Marley

A finales del 2016,  un partido político minoritario de denominación indígena, YATAMA, por sus siglas en la lengua miskitu (Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka/Hijos de la Madre Tierra), logró un triunfo importante en las elecciones generales de Nicaragua, confrontando de forma eficaz al estado totalitario del régimen sandinista.

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