Today is the festival of the patron saint of Managua, Santo Domingo. All of Managua celebrates, but like Nicaraguan society the parades are sharply divided between the rich and the poor.
In Nicaragua it is the upper class descendents of the Spanish conquerors who control nearly all the nations wealth. Little wonder that these wealthy ranchers choose to celebrate their Spanish heritage.
On the other side of town Managua’s less fortunate majority are holding their own parade. Nearly all the poor people on the pacific coast are Meztiso. A mixture of Spanish Colonizers and the Nicas Indians they enslaved.
The Meztiso see their Indian ancestry as an embarrassment since it still forms a social barrier to opportunity. On the pacific coast the Nicas Indian, who gave its name to Nicaragua is just a racial memory.All that is left of their Indian culture is the parody and the painted face. – Drums playing.
While the festival is a chance for the Meztiso to celebrate even here, there’s no escape from the grim realities of day to day existence.
Violence disease and illiteracy are a way of life in post revolutionary Nicaragua. The poorest of the poor in Managua are the Campainos whose lands has been taken by big agri businesses or destroyed by environmental neglect. For many of these farmers the only route left is to migrate to the relatively untouched Atlantic coast.
Magda Lanuza (Humbolt environmentalist): Most of our lands have been devastated and our water sources contaminated. So some poor families, some poor farmers are moving to those areas of pristine forest and starting to trade in wood and animals.
Sun rises on the forests of the Mosquito Coast. The Atlantic side of Nicaragua is the largest and least populated part of the country.
Rich in natural resources it is the home of the last of Nicaragua’s remaining indigenous population. But now the Indians like the forest are in danger of disappearing.
Geographically isolated from the west by a mountain chain, the Atlantic side has a history of English and American colonization.
For centuries the Indians and the English speaking Creoles have successfully resisted the invasion of Spanish speakers from the Pacific. But now they are being swamped by waves of Latino migrants from the crowded Pacific side.
Anna: The rich area of the Atlantic you know is beautiful is nice it has a great potential. Its not being exploited by its own people instead the people are losing and losing and every time they have less and less and they get poorer and poorer.
Joining me in Blue fields on the Atlantic coast is Anna Padia. Anna is a highly regarded journalist who’s covered wars and revolution in the region for the past 15 years.Even the taxi driver taking us to the wharf is a Latino.Emigrants from the pacific coast own most of the fishing, mining and logging concessions as well as all the small businesses. But it is the loss of their land that really threatens the Indians of the Mosquito coast.
John Taylor is a local politician and Creole medicine man. He is taking us with him to meet the Rama Indians.
John Taylor: We can see clearly that the central government is mostly sending a lot of Campasinos… taking over all the communal properties.
After surviving English and American colonizers, Caribbean pirates, devastating cyclones and civil wars, this island refuge is the end of the line for what was once an Indian nation.
There are less than 1000 Rama left in the world and only four of them who can speak the language fluently.Among the Rama only 8 people have jobs and they are all teachers at the local school. The students here learn English and Spanish.
Rama elder Avado Jones is worried that they can’t do anything to stop the land grab.
Avado Jones: them not have the title, they have five six hectares and plant it with trees and grass for the cows and after they have taken five or six hectares they seek out someone who has the money and say OK I will sell you this land, just write out a piece of paper and I will sell this land, but its not legal what they do.
Though the government has promised them their traditional land the actual titles have never eventuated.
Avado Jones: If the government had the will to give us a title of the land we the rama would stand strong but day to day when I worked 8 years at city hall I work when I see the government day to day all they play is politics what it is.
John Taylor: All these lands, Blue fields people they have a right to communal land. What has happened this area is a head department has always been controlled by the national political parties and those political party member have shared up the majority of the land in this region.
But its not only people from the Pacific who are sharing up the spoils. Companies from Central America such as this heavily guarded Colombian fishing company have managed to gain concessions.
About the same time as theses companies arrived large amounts of cocaine started to wash up on the shores of the Mosquito coast which created a new problem.
Greg Smith: Its getting bad, its bad in the sense that even drugs something that until now ten years ago you started seeing it. Crack cocaine, pure cocaine. Marijuana was something kind of common but not something wild spread, but crack is taking up the youth and its something scary.
As night falls the sleepy Caribbean port transforms into bars and brothel and crack dens. To venture out here you need to come prepared.
Greg: I always carry this with me because I don’t trust any shadow after dark. You ever heard that saying -Don’t trust any shadow after dark? Music starts up.
Greg: This is what they call Little Miami or the Red zone.
Our guide Greg Smith offers to take us into the Ghettos of the Creole community – where crack cocaine, another legacy of the Contra wars has arrived with a vengeance.
Crab: So to get something to survive to eat you have to go sell something to get a little money to eat.Greg: It doesn’t matter what it is?Crab: Whoring ,thieving, selling drugs, something like that.
Crab: if you want it you want it.
Greg: they sell something. You see this lady going over there- she’s a crack head.
Crack is no respecter of class or race. Even upper class Spaniards find themselves trapped in the web of drugs.
Crab: Like elsewhere in the world the loss of land culture and livelihood for the indigenous people has wreaked havoc on the indigenous community.
Down the streets boys as young as en are selling crack cocaine to a procession of taxis
Once we stepped off the street in Little Miami we were in another world. Everything and everybody was selling, buying or just badly needing
Greg: that’s a piece of rock right there. How much does that cost?
One dollar.
Crack cocaine is cheap and addictive. With 80% of the male population on the Atlantic coast unemployed it is nothing short of an epidemic.
We had to leave the area quickly when the crack dealers came looking for us.
The next day Anna makes contact with the Yatama. An armed group of the Miskit Indians confronting the government in the Miskit heartland in the far north of the coast.
Sin Sin is the center for the present crisis
Immediately we arrived, heavily armed Indians emerged from the bushes. Already there have been casualties.
The Sin Sin clinic is a rough wooden hut without any medicine.
Anna: Its Tylenol there are no medicines here so maybe it will help the pain.
This Miskit Indian war party consists of ex contras who have taken up arms again. Frustrated and angry after eight years of broken promises the battle hardened Indians are demanding full autonomy for the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua.
Commandant Viante: We always knew this land was ours before. We did not need autonomy before. We want the whole Atlantic to be autonomous. The Sadanistas wrote a law in 1987 and said this lands belongs to us and that’s what we want and that’s what we are fighting for.
One hundred meters away the army has taken the bridge and mined the riverbanks isolating the village.
Anna: The civil community is really afraid of what is going on because they use the river as a source of water to wash themselves and they are afraid of going to the river and getting hurt and this is really unfair. The river is the only source of water they have.
We decided to ask the Nicaraguan commandant if he is laying mines which would be in violation of the International convention to which Nicaragua is a signatory,
Soldiers warned us to put away our cameras so the confrontation with this Nicaraguan officer was filmed with a hidden camera.
Anna: We hear that you are placing mines can you deny or confirm that
Nic. Capt.: I cannot give you any information and we are not authorized to allow anyone to film around here.
Anna: Why not?
Nic. Capt.: The only person who can give you the ultimate permission is Commandant Guatemala.
Anna: Where is he?
Nic. Capt.: Puerto Cabesa
Our attempts to get interviews with the military command were also stone walled. Perhaps they are more at home with their land mines and helicopter gunships than with media scrutiny.
while trucks ferry in reinforcements for the government soldiers;Anna and I can do nothing but take the wounded Indian to hospital in Puerto Cabeza.
Anna will go back to New York to file her story placing extra pressure on the government to remove their land mines
The Indians on the Mosquito coast can see the writing on the wall.Their culture and their land are slipping away
Avada Jones: We the rama think about that…our children, our grand children how them will live later if them don’t have a piece of land. All that is left for them is to take on their own government. They are in a fight that they can neither win nor can they afford to lose, And this time they are truly on their own.
In Nicaragua it is the upper class descendents of the Spanish conquerors who control nearly all the nations wealth. Little wonder that these wealthy ranchers choose to celebrate their Spanish heritage.
On the other side of town Managua’s less fortunate majority are holding their own parade. Nearly all the poor people on the pacific coast are Meztiso. A mixture of Spanish Colonizers and the Nicas Indians they enslaved.
The Meztiso see their Indian ancestry as an embarrassment since it still forms a social barrier to opportunity. On the pacific coast the Nicas Indian, who gave its name to Nicaragua is just a racial memory.All that is left of their Indian culture is the parody and the painted face. – Drums playing.
While the festival is a chance for the Meztiso to celebrate even here, there’s no escape from the grim realities of day to day existence.
Violence disease and illiteracy are a way of life in post revolutionary Nicaragua. The poorest of the poor in Managua are the Campainos whose lands has been taken by big agri businesses or destroyed by environmental neglect. For many of these farmers the only route left is to migrate to the relatively untouched Atlantic coast.
Magda Lanuza (Humbolt environmentalist): Most of our lands have been devastated and our water sources contaminated. So some poor families, some poor farmers are moving to those areas of pristine forest and starting to trade in wood and animals.
Sun rises on the forests of the Mosquito Coast. The Atlantic side of Nicaragua is the largest and least populated part of the country.
Rich in natural resources it is the home of the last of Nicaragua’s remaining indigenous population. But now the Indians like the forest are in danger of disappearing.
Geographically isolated from the west by a mountain chain, the Atlantic side has a history of English and American colonization.
For centuries the Indians and the English speaking Creoles have successfully resisted the invasion of Spanish speakers from the Pacific. But now they are being swamped by waves of Latino migrants from the crowded Pacific side.
Anna: The rich area of the Atlantic you know is beautiful is nice it has a great potential. Its not being exploited by its own people instead the people are losing and losing and every time they have less and less and they get poorer and poorer.
Joining me in Blue fields on the Atlantic coast is Anna Padia. Anna is a highly regarded journalist who’s covered wars and revolution in the region for the past 15 years.Even the taxi driver taking us to the wharf is a Latino.Emigrants from the pacific coast own most of the fishing, mining and logging concessions as well as all the small businesses. But it is the loss of their land that really threatens the Indians of the Mosquito coast.
John Taylor is a local politician and Creole medicine man. He is taking us with him to meet the Rama Indians.
John Taylor: We can see clearly that the central government is mostly sending a lot of Campasinos… taking over all the communal properties.
After surviving English and American colonizers, Caribbean pirates, devastating cyclones and civil wars, this island refuge is the end of the line for what was once an Indian nation.
There are less than 1000 Rama left in the world and only four of them who can speak the language fluently.Among the Rama only 8 people have jobs and they are all teachers at the local school. The students here learn English and Spanish.
Rama elder Avado Jones is worried that they can’t do anything to stop the land grab.
Avado Jones: them not have the title, they have five six hectares and plant it with trees and grass for the cows and after they have taken five or six hectares they seek out someone who has the money and say OK I will sell you this land, just write out a piece of paper and I will sell this land, but its not legal what they do.
Though the government has promised them their traditional land the actual titles have never eventuated.
Avado Jones: If the government had the will to give us a title of the land we the rama would stand strong but day to day when I worked 8 years at city hall I work when I see the government day to day all they play is politics what it is.
John Taylor: All these lands, Blue fields people they have a right to communal land. What has happened this area is a head department has always been controlled by the national political parties and those political party member have shared up the majority of the land in this region.
But its not only people from the Pacific who are sharing up the spoils. Companies from Central America such as this heavily guarded Colombian fishing company have managed to gain concessions.
About the same time as theses companies arrived large amounts of cocaine started to wash up on the shores of the Mosquito coast which created a new problem.
Greg Smith: Its getting bad, its bad in the sense that even drugs something that until now ten years ago you started seeing it. Crack cocaine, pure cocaine. Marijuana was something kind of common but not something wild spread, but crack is taking up the youth and its something scary.
As night falls the sleepy Caribbean port transforms into bars and brothel and crack dens. To venture out here you need to come prepared.
Greg: I always carry this with me because I don’t trust any shadow after dark. You ever heard that saying -Don’t trust any shadow after dark? Music starts up.
Greg: This is what they call Little Miami or the Red zone.
Our guide Greg Smith offers to take us into the Ghettos of the Creole community – where crack cocaine, another legacy of the Contra wars has arrived with a vengeance.
Crab: So to get something to survive to eat you have to go sell something to get a little money to eat.Greg: It doesn’t matter what it is?Crab: Whoring ,thieving, selling drugs, something like that.
Crab: if you want it you want it.
Greg: they sell something. You see this lady going over there- she’s a crack head.
Crack is no respecter of class or race. Even upper class Spaniards find themselves trapped in the web of drugs.
Crab: Like elsewhere in the world the loss of land culture and livelihood for the indigenous people has wreaked havoc on the indigenous community.
Down the streets boys as young as en are selling crack cocaine to a procession of taxis
Once we stepped off the street in Little Miami we were in another world. Everything and everybody was selling, buying or just badly needing
Greg: that’s a piece of rock right there. How much does that cost?
One dollar.
Crack cocaine is cheap and addictive. With 80% of the male population on the Atlantic coast unemployed it is nothing short of an epidemic.
We had to leave the area quickly when the crack dealers came looking for us.
The next day Anna makes contact with the Yatama. An armed group of the Miskit Indians confronting the government in the Miskit heartland in the far north of the coast.
Sin Sin is the center for the present crisis
Immediately we arrived, heavily armed Indians emerged from the bushes. Already there have been casualties.
The Sin Sin clinic is a rough wooden hut without any medicine.
Anna: Its Tylenol there are no medicines here so maybe it will help the pain.
This Miskit Indian war party consists of ex contras who have taken up arms again. Frustrated and angry after eight years of broken promises the battle hardened Indians are demanding full autonomy for the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua.
Commandant Viante: We always knew this land was ours before. We did not need autonomy before. We want the whole Atlantic to be autonomous. The Sadanistas wrote a law in 1987 and said this lands belongs to us and that’s what we want and that’s what we are fighting for.
One hundred meters away the army has taken the bridge and mined the riverbanks isolating the village.
Anna: The civil community is really afraid of what is going on because they use the river as a source of water to wash themselves and they are afraid of going to the river and getting hurt and this is really unfair. The river is the only source of water they have.
We decided to ask the Nicaraguan commandant if he is laying mines which would be in violation of the International convention to which Nicaragua is a signatory,
Soldiers warned us to put away our cameras so the confrontation with this Nicaraguan officer was filmed with a hidden camera.
Anna: We hear that you are placing mines can you deny or confirm that
Nic. Capt.: I cannot give you any information and we are not authorized to allow anyone to film around here.
Anna: Why not?
Nic. Capt.: The only person who can give you the ultimate permission is Commandant Guatemala.
Anna: Where is he?
Nic. Capt.: Puerto Cabesa
Our attempts to get interviews with the military command were also stone walled. Perhaps they are more at home with their land mines and helicopter gunships than with media scrutiny.
while trucks ferry in reinforcements for the government soldiers;Anna and I can do nothing but take the wounded Indian to hospital in Puerto Cabeza.
Anna will go back to New York to file her story placing extra pressure on the government to remove their land mines
The Indians on the Mosquito coast can see the writing on the wall.Their culture and their land are slipping away
Avada Jones: We the rama think about that…our children, our grand children how them will live later if them don’t have a piece of land. All that is left for them is to take on their own government. They are in a fight that they can neither win nor can they afford to lose, And this time they are truly on their own.