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ABSTRACT
This paper examines the relations between the FSLN government in Nicaragua and the social actors that have mobilized against it, especially Indigenous, campesino and Afro-descendant activisms during the second Ortega administration. These relationships are interpreted from the perspective on a ‘neostructuralist bargain’ which allowed the FSLN, since 2007, to embrace neoliberal policies under an environment of relative social cohesion and economic growth. That bargain came to an end in 2018 when the government – facing a political crisis – resorted to the use of force and authoritarian practices to contain the mounting social discontent. The limited realization of Indigenous and Afro-descendant rights and the ongoing transformation of agrarian structures that marginalizes peasant economies, coupled with the FSLN’s promotion of extractive forms of capitalist accumulation, all tested the bases of the bargain, while also revealed unprecedented articulations of collective agency by subaltern actors.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Schmook, and collaborators observe that ‘the percent of the population living below the poverty line in 2009 changed from 44.7 percent, down to 39.0 percent in 2015, and back up to 44.4 percent in 2019’ (Schmook et al., Citation2022, p. 16).
2 The civic protest that started in April 2018 was led by university students, pensioners, peasants, and environmental activists and resulted in a level of police repression and human rights violations only comparable to the worst decades of the Somoza dictatorship (1934–1979). According to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission between April and July 2018, 325 people were killed, 200 injured, dozens disappeared, and 700 persons were illegally apprehended and politically prosecuted (later released through a controversial amnesty law that offered immunity to the regime’s perpetrators). Also, approximately 65 thousand flee into exile to neighbour Costa Rica, the US, Canada and Europe (see IACHR, Citation2018). The OAS has been involved in pressuring the Ortega regime into a political agreement with oppositional forces, while both the US government and the EU have imposed sanctions to the inner circle of Ortega, including his wife, sons and senior officers in his administrations (US Treasury Department, Citation2020). There is a current standoff in political negotiations.
3 The abuses Ortega referred to in his apology were in relation to human rights violations against individuals and communities in the Moskitia region: forcibly displaced communities along the Wangki River, extra-judicial killings and illegal apprehensions conducted by FSLN forces during the military conflict on the Caribbean Coast. Independent sources extensively documented these abuses and the human costs of the war, such as CIDCA (Citation1984); IACHR (Citation1983). The Sandinista-Miskitu conflict has been extensively documented (Hale, Citation1994). A combination of government human abuses against the local population, threats against ancestral lands, and a nationalist approach to ethnic demands resulted in the uprising of the local population in 1981. The military confrontation came to an end in 1985 through peace agreements between YATAMA and the FSLN, and the approval of regional autonomy (Frühling et al., Citation2007).
4 Pseudonymous are used in this article to protect the safety of individuals interviewed.
5 Indigenous elder member of YATAMA’s councillors in the North Atlantic regional autonomous council, personal interview, August 2016.
6 In response to a petition from CEJUDHCAN, the Interamerican Human Commission of Human Rights has issued a dozen of precautionary measures to protect the lives and property of Indigenous communities on the Coast (Cunningham, Citation2017).
7 Chapter 181 of the Nicaraguan political constitution states that: ‘Concessions and contracts for the rational exploitation of natural resources granted by the State in the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast must have the approval of the Council Corresponding Autonomous Regional’ (Asamblea Nacional de Nicaragua, Citation2014, p. 83).
8 John Pedro, member of the Bluefields Communal Government, Bluefields, August 25, 2016. Personal interview.
9 Carlos Robleto, campesino leader, Nueva Guinea, personal interview, 29 August 2016.
10 ‘Faced with their mutual destruction some leaders from the Rama-Kriol Territory began to form relationships of solidarity with the mestizo campesino anti-canal movement’ (Goett, Citation2018, p. 28).
11 Martí i Puig and Baumeister observe that ‘the middle sectors, who owned units either between 35 and 140 hectares or between 140 and 350 hectares, were the ones who benefited the most’ (Citation2017, p. 387). Also, citing data from the United States Agency for International Development, Schmook and collaborators indicate that ‘in 2011 the richest 9 percent of landowners held 56 percent of farmland in Nicaragua, while an estimated 38 percent of the rural population owned no land at all’ (Schmook et al., Citation2022, p. 18).
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Miguel González
Miguel González is an Assistant Professor in the International Development Studies programme at York University, Toronto, Canada. In recent years Miguel has taught both in the undergraduate and graduate programmes in International Development at York University. His current research relates to indigenous self-governance and territorial autonomous regimes in Latin America and the governance of small-scale fisheries in the Global South, with a particular geographical concentration in the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. Miguel is a researcher associated with the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University. His current research involves the comparative study of multiethnic and indigenous governance regimes in the Americas, which will result in the publication of a volume on Indigenous Autonomy in the Americas, expected date of publication is 2020.