Much has been written in recent years on the Miskitu people of the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, the area commonly referred to as the Atlantic Coast. The Miskitu (or Miskito), with at least 70,000 members in Nicaragua, are the largest Indian group in the region; they have been the most prominent in the efforts to articulate and secure cultural, linguistic, economic, territorial, and political rights for the indigenous peoples of the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast.
Partly because of the fame and visibility of the Miskitu, the existence of other Indian groups in Nicaragua is often overlooked by outsiders. In addition to the Miskitu, two other Indian groups, the Sumu (or Sumo) and the Rama, still identify with living indigenous linguistic traditions. The indigenous languages of Nicaragua represent two distinct linguistic families: Misumalpan, to which Sumu and Miskitu belong, and Chibchan, to which Rama belong.
Indigenous Linguistic Traditions and Autonomy
The educational and research programs involving four indigenous languages in Nicaragua - Miskitu, Rama, and two varieties of Sumu (northern and southern) - are due in large measure to a highly constructive and exemplary struggle to resolve an important and complex contradiction inherent in the building of a revolutionary society devoted to bringing justice to the people of an ethnically diverse nation. The contradiction occurs when the interests of the nation and the interests of local ethnic communities conflict. The instrument that has resulted from this conflict is the so-called Autonomy Project, a model of political construction built by those participating in the very process of struggle.
The Autonomy Project affects virtually every aspect of the lives of the peoples of the Atlantic Coast - education, land rights, health, subsistence, and language, among others. Language rights were among the earliest to be emphasized. The recognition of the right to develop and use local languages was incorporated into the earliest educational project of revolutionary Nicaragua, the Literacy Crusade's "Alfabetización en Lenguas" a program designed to teach literacy in Miskitu, Sumu, and English (the language spoken by the Creole people of the Atlantic Coast and by the Rama people of Rama Cay). The right to be educated in one's native language was formulated in an official decree in December 1980; and indigenous languages have been given official status in the Nicaraguan Constitution. The first bilingual programs for Miskitu began in 1984, and linguistic research on Sumu and Rama began shortly thereafter. Active linguistic work on Nicaraguan indigenous languages coincided closely with an increasingly mature and developed autonomy process in Nicaragua; the work presently being done on the indigenous languages of the Atlantic Coast is a fundamental part of that process.
Language Research and Development Programs
Official recognition of local languages is a necessary and positive step, of course, but that alone will not serve to effectively integrate them into the autonomy process. Four kinds of activities are also required: (1) basic linguistic research; (2) programs that apply that research to immediate practical needs (e.g., education and translation); (3) native-speaking language personnel who can meet the present and future linguistic needs of the communities: and (4) general education for all Nicaraguans on the languages and cultures of the Atlantic Coast.
The extent to which these needs can be met for a particular language community in Nicaragua depends in part on the position that language has occupied historically within the life of the Atlantic Coast, and in part upon its status in relation to basic demographic and social factors - number and age of speakers, community attitudes, and so on. Miskitu is the most advantaged language in this respect; Northern Sumu has achieved a position of strength only recently. The situation is quite different for Rama and Southern Sumu, however, languages with much smaller speaker populations and more modest prospects for the development of a wide range of programs.
Miskitu
Miskitu has been a written language for many years. It was identified by the Moravian Church, the most important religious organization in the Miskitu community, as the language of the church in the area where Miskitu is spoken, for Miskitu and Sumu people alike. The bible, hymn books, prayer books, and other religious literature are all available in Miskitu, and a significant population is literate in the language. Miskitu also boasts two very good dictionaries, dating back to the early part of this century, and a reference grammar of quite good quality. Given this, and the relative size and age mixture of the Miskitu community, the language is in an ideal situation to achieve its status as part of the intellectual and cultural wealth of the Atlantic Coast. Most people recognize the importance of Miskitu, and many non-Miskitu Nicaraguans, and foreigners as well, are taking courses in the language in Puerto Cabezas.
As a language with a written tradition, Miskitu was in a position to participate immediately in the autonomy process. A corps of translators was formed in the early 1980s to produce Miskitu versions of materials concerning autonomy, the Nicaraguan Constitution, and a variety of historical and cultural materials. Despite the many difficulties caused by the war and the scarcity of materials, a readable Miskitu grammar was produced in Spanish in 1985 by a linguist and a native-speaking grammarian working for CIDCA (Centro de Investigaciones y Documentación de la Costa Atlántica). CIDCA, an organization that conducts a wide range of research projects on the Atlantic Coast and serves as a Nicaraguan host to members of Linguists for Nicaragua, has also produced a small school dictionary of Miskitu.
From the outset, bilingual-bicultural education has been an integral component in the autonomy process. At CIDCA the Miskitu leader Hazel Lau worked on formulating a program that produced a first reader and exercise book in its first years, and a second later on. In addition, a book of tales has been printed, and another is on the way. Theoretical linguistic work on Miskitu has also been undertaken during the past several years, resulting in a dissertation on aspects of its grammar and several theoretical papers. An extensive study of the Miskitu lexicon, requiring the training of Miskitu-speaking lexicographers, has helped to lay the personnel foundation necessary to a truly autonomous linguistic scholarship in the Miskitu community.
Northern Sumu
The Sumu, who number about 9,000, have always been dominated by the Miskitu both linguistically and politically. Most Sumu speak Miskitu in addition to Sumu, and literacy for Sumu people has, until recently, been primarily in Miskitu. The Sumu are now associated with three linguistic subdivisions: the Twahka, the Panamahka, and the Ulwa. The first two, spoken by Northern Sumu, are clearly dialects of a single language; the Ulwa, or Southern Sumu, should probably be classed as a separate but closely related language. The Northern Sumu far outnumber the Ulwa. Until recently, Sumu was known only from word lists and sparse grammatical notes, though a reasonably good dictionary of Northern Sumu was produced in the mid-1970s.
With autonomy, the linguistic fortunes of the Northern Sumu have brightened considerably, not only through official recognition but through concrete programs and research as well. The Sumu language was part of the literacy campaign and was used to articulate Sumu concerns in developing the autonomy law. This, together with the development of a Sumu Spanish bilingual education program, has revived interest in Sumu among members of the community who were on the point of abandoning their language in favor of Miskitu. Though Sumus continue to speak Miskitu, Sumu now flourishes as a language of daily use.
Sumu is also entering spheres formerly dominated by Miskitu or Spanish. Some Sumu pastors now use Sumu in church, and a Sumu translation of the bible is being completed. Other important documents affecting the lives of Sumu communities also exist in Sumu, too, such as the constitution and the autonomy law. The Ministry of Education is producing school texts for the bilingual-bicultural education program, which started in 1987, and radio programs in Northern Sumu as well as in Miskitu air daily. All of these developments have required the training of professional Sumu translators, a process that provides a secure foundation for the continued progress in achieving autonomy for the language.
Linguistic investigations into Northern Sumu have produced a grammar of the language, to be published in the near future, and several technical papers on aspects of the grammar that are of special interest to linguists. The grammar itself was written for both professional and lay readers, and it includes not only information on the Northern Sumu language but also information on the very business of describing the grammar of a language. It is, in effect, a textbook on how to discover and understand the grammatical structure of a language very different from Spanish or English. It was written this way in order to be generally accessible to the public, thereby contributing to an important goal of revolutionary Nicaragua, that of informing its citizenry about the cultural wealth of the Atlantic Coast.
Rama
The native language of most Rama people today is English rather than Rama. Of the 800 members of the Rama community, fewer than 50 speak Rama as their first language. Most native speakers live on the mainland, rather than Rama Cay, where the majority of Ramas have lived since the beginning of the eighteenth century.
The small size of the native-speaking population, together with the geographic separation of the English speakers and the Rama speakers, resulted in a state of affairs that did not bode well for the program of language development for Rama. One of the main problems was the general attitude among the English-speaking Ramas that the Rama language was of little worth - nothing more that "the growls of tigers," as some said - and was not a "real" language.
In spite of these conditions, a Rama language project began in 1984 and secured a place within the autonomy process. The project deserves to be considered one of the greatest achievements of autonomy. With extraordinary foresight, members of the Rama team insisted at the outset on producing materials that would demonstrate that Rama was a "true" language - that is, one that could be written. Although in the initial stages it was not practical to produce a book written entirely in the language, it was possible to produce and distribute a calendar with Rama words and with pictures drawn by members of the Rama community. In addition, the Bluefields newspaper published a Rama text, making the written form of Rama available to all in the local area. The calendar was followed by an elementary dictionary also illustrated by Rama artists. These materials proved conclusively, to the people who mattered the most, that Rama could be written, read, and understood by Rama speakers.
The calendar and dictionary were produced with the maximum participation of the Rama community. As a result, the project has helped to dispel negative attitudes toward the language, creating an atmosphere in which a viable Rama language program can grow. The nature of this program will be vastly different from what is possible with Miskitu and Northern Sumu. The Rama project falls under the category of "language rescue": documenting what is still known by the surviving native speakers and disseminating this information, in appropriate ways, to Rama people. The calendar and dictionary are part of this educational process, and the Rama language team has also prepared a basic Rama course to be taught in the elementary school on Rama Cay.
Research on Rama has also produced material for a more general audience. In 1988 a Rama grammar was written, and a number of technical papers have appeared on particular topics in Rama grammar. A full dictionary is currently being compiled, using as a basis the Rama lexical material collected in the early 1900s by the German linguist Walter Lehmann.
Ulwa
The youngest of the language projects on the Atlantic Coast involves the Ulwa, or Southern Sumu, language. Since it is classified as Sumu, it was perhaps natural to assume that Ulwa would be covered by the programs developed for Northern Sumu. And since all Ulwa children speak Miskitu, and many do not speak Ulwa, they fit in well with the Miskitu bilingual education program.
Ulwa, however, is sufficiently different from Northern Sumu to warrant its own language program, even if it proves impractical to use the language in bilingual education. In 1986, inspired in part by the success of the Rama language project, members of the Ulwa community asked for an appropriate program for their language, and work began in January 1988.
Ulwa is spoken primarily in Karawala, a town of about 750 inhabitants located just north of the Rio Grande de Matagalpa, which divides the Atlantic Coast into its northern and southern administrative regions. Karawala, like other Rio Grande communities, belongs to the southern region for administrative purposes. Some Ulwa speakers live in nearby Kara, and a number live in Bluefields. The total number of Ulwa speakers is not known, but it probably does not exceed 800. Although all Ulwa speakers also know Miskitu well, their Ulwa is extremely vigorous. It is not known, however, how young the youngest speakers are, and so an accurate assessment of the state of the language is not possible. In any event, Ulwas have a strong desire to document their language.
The Ulwa language project began with the compilation of a preliminary vocabulary, which was published as a small book and delivered to Karawala as a sample of the written form of the language. The Ulwa speaker who helped compile this vocabulary was trained in certain basic lexicographic procedures so that he could compile further dictionary entries. He subsequently formed a team of language workers at Karawala, and they continued to work on developing a full-scale dictionary. In August 1988, the community formally recognized the team as the Ulwa Language Committee. The committee was not only to document the lexicon and grammar of the Ulwa language, but also to collect traditional Ulwa stories and prepare a history of the settlement of Karawala.
In January 1989, the Ulwa Language Committee completed an initial phase in the construction of an Ulwa dictionary: a large set of file cards with Ulwa entries and illustrative sentences, together with Miskitu translation. While this is being compiled in manuscript form for review and correction, the committee will turn its attention to collecting stories in Ulwa, with Miskitu translation, and to constructing a house in which to work and to store materials.
Conclusion
Nicaragua is a poor and embattled country; considering its other needs, its commitment to developing its cultural and linguistic resources is nothing short of heroic. The hardships brought about by the war and by the hurricane of October 1988 mean that Nicaragua cannot afford to support fully the work that is being done on the languages in this phase. The educational programs are supported by the Ministry of Education, but the research activities must be funded, in part at least, by sources outside the country, by those who see the Nicaraguan effort as an important model for local languages everywhere.
Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.
