The Miskitu\u2014an indigenous group of around 180,000 people who inhabit the Muskitia, a rainforest that expands from Black River, Honduras to Bluefields, Nicaragua\u2014are perhaps most famous for the role they played as a counterrevolutionary force against the Sandinista (FSLN) revolution in the U.S.-backed Contra War of the 1980s. Despite the Miskitu\u2019s allegiance to the Contras, in 1987, the FSLN state passed a law to appease the Miskitu\u2019s demands. Under the terms of Nicaragua\u2019s so-called \u201cautonomy law\u201d (Law 28), two pluriethnic, autonomous regions were established on the country\u2019s Caribbean coast, a region that is home not only to the Miskitu but also the indigenous Sumu-Mayangna and Rama people, the Afro-descendant \u2018Kriols, and the Afro-indigenous Gar\u00edfuna, among others. What\u2019s more, Law 28 awarded indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples the right to the preservation of their cultures and languages, self-governance, and resource control and declared that communal lands were inalienable, meaning they \u201ccould not be donated, sold, leased or taxed<\/a>.\u2019 At the time, the Law 28 represented one of the most novel and progressive advances in state-indigenous relations anywhere in Central America.<\/p>\n Since the passage of Law 28, a series of international and national laws and declarations have, at least in name, supported indigenous peoples\u2019 ongoing quest for autonomy in the Nicaraguan Caribbean. In 2003, for example, Nicaragua adopted a new communal property law (Law 445), which provided community-elected, indigenous authorities a leadership role in the process of demarcating and gaining legal title to their communal lands\u2014something Law 28 had stopped short of doing. Moreover, Law 445 gave the Nicaraguan state the power to carry out\u00a0saneamiento\u00a0<\/em>(cleansing), a term that refers to the forced removal of\u00a0colonos (<\/em>settlers) and extractive industries from indigenous and Afro-descendant territories.<\/p>\n Despite these legal protections granted to the Miskitu, the reality on the ground has been far from peaceful in recent years, as the coastal peoples of Nicaragua are once again fighting for their survival in the face of violence and on-going land grabs. Although the current government\u00a0publicly agreed to\u00a0saneamiento<\/em><\/a>, to date it has not responded with any plan of action or to requests for comment about the policy. Moreover, since 2013 mestizo colonists have\u00a0killed 30, wounded 38, and kidnapped 18 Miskitu men<\/a>\u00a0with almost complete impunity. The colonists\u2019 periodic attacks on Miskitu communities continue unabated in\u00a0Wangki Twi-Tasba<\/a>\u00a0Raya,\u00a0Li Aubra<\/a>, and now,\u00a0Lilamni Tasbaya Kum<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a result,\u00a0some 3,000 Miskitu people\u2014 mainly women, children, and the elderly\u2014 have become internally-displaced refugees<\/a>, forced to flee to Waspam, Puerto Cabezas-Bilwi, and Honduran border communities, such as Suj\u00ed.\u00a0 The refugees lack basic medical supplies. Many\u00a0children have not attended school for over eight months<\/a>. Today,\u00a0colono\u00a0<\/em>settlers are believed to be illegally occupying nearly half of the indigenous and Afro-descendant ancestral territories of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n How has all of this come to pass in Nicaragua, a country that was not so long ago considered to be one the most progressive countries in the region when it came to the rights of its indigenous peoples?<\/p>\n Starting in the early 1990s, Spanish-speaking mestizo\u00a0colonos\u00a0<\/em>from the interior and Pacific coast began invading Nicaragua\u2019s Caribbean coast \u2014often at the behest of the country\u2019s lauded cattle-ranching class and with the tacit support of the Nicaraguan state.<\/p>\n Colono<\/em>\u00a0land grabs in the Muskitia rainforest land increased significantly\u00a0starting around 2008<\/a>, a year after Daniel Ortega and the FSLN returned to power. The driving forces behind this migration were a drought on the Pacific coast as well as the expansion of extractive industries throughout much of Nicaragua\u2019s rural interior. These conditions forced Nicaraguan farmers who typically grew corn, yucca, rice, and beans, but who could no longer support their families on dry soils, to search for more fertile lands on the Caribbean coast. The\u00a0general decline of the agricultural industry in Nicaragua<\/a>\u2014 the share of Nicaragua\u2019s GDP this is based on agricultural business fell from 40 percent in the 1970s to 17.5 percent in 2014\u2014also added to the farmer\u2019s difficulty in earning a living.<\/p>\n Amidst the decline in the agricultural industry, large, land-owning cattle ranchers have consolidated their own land holdings in the country. In some cases these ranchers pay the\u00a0colonos\u00a0<\/em>to settle indigenous lands in order to eventually control the land for themselves. Nicaraguan cattle ranchers also supply settlers with weapons, and many have flipped large swaths of land, selling property to large agro-industrial businesses, and at times even narco-traffickers<\/a>. This situation has increased the militarization of Nicaragua\u2019s countryside and precipitated the building of new army bases in the region, and transformed many\u00a0colonos<\/em>\u00a0into a quasi-paramilitary force for Nicaragua\u2019s landholding elite. (A similar situation involving narco-trafficking and deforestation has also unfolded in the Hondruan Muskitia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n For the most part, the Nicaraguan government has tacitly supported the passage of fraudulent land titles and dispossession by the\u00a0colonos<\/em>\u00a0through its promotion of extractive industries and mega-projects in Muskitia. The FSLN government has approved mining and forestry concessions to companies such as HEMCO mining, a Colombian company, and ALBA Forestal, a logging company that operates under the protection of the state institution MARENA (Ministerio del Ambiente y Los Recursos Naturales).<\/em>\u00a0ALBA Forestal, launched in 2009, is a joint Nicaraguan-Venezuelan company controlled by President Daniel Ortega and the FSLN. As such, the company operates with little transparency and has\u00a0contributed to the rapid deforestation of the Mayangna Bosawas Biosphere Reserve<\/a>, an area that is considered to be the \u201clungs\u201d of Central America.<\/p>\n Corrupt officials in the autonomous regions of the Miskitu coast have also been implicated in the\u00a0illegal selling<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0trafficking<\/a>\u00a0of indigenous lands for personal profit\u2014 which direct affronts the country\u2019s communal property law (Law 445). Many\u00a0colonos<\/em>\u00a0have entered the Las Minas area of the Miskitu region and\u00a0unknowingly purchased fraudulent land titles<\/a>\u00a0from corrupt officials; the\u00a0colonos<\/em>then pay lawyers and notaries for their legal services and fabricated documents. With these fraudulent titles in hand, settlers then enter Miskitu Wangki Twi-Tasba Raya and the Mayangna Amasau territories through a road built by international banana plantation owners before the revolution.<\/p>\n Despite the fact that the settlers\u2019 colonization of indigenous lands clearly violates national and international laws, the Nicaraguan government has behaved indifferently to the crisis and failed to provide protection to those Miskitu communities whose livelihoods have been under attack. As a result, many Miskitu people suspect the Sandinista state has been complicit in the colonists\u2019 invasion of their indigenous territories.<\/p>\n Brooklyn Rivera was an anti-FSLN military leader during the Contra war of the 1980s who has served as the\u00a0L\u00edder M\u00e1ximo<\/em>\u00a0(Highest Leader) of the Nicaraguan Miskitu people for over 30 years. Rivera spoke about the issue at the\u00a02016 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in May<\/a>: \u201cThe government imposes violence against our communities by means of settlers who invade ancestral territories, carrying out armed attacks, murders, kidnappings, rape, and displacement, producing refugees, most of whom are women, children, and people of old age,\u201d he stated. \u201cAll this occurs in the face of governmental and institutional passivity, even complicity.\u201d<\/p>\n In response, the Nicaraguan state and the army argue that\u00a0dialogue, co-habitation, and working together can solve the crisis<\/a>\u00a0between the colonists and indigenous peoples. Similarly, Ortega denounces the illegal trafficking of lands by officials in the autonomous regions as the main impetus of the colonial invasion,\u00a0blaming the regional leaders themselves<\/a>. However, Ortega may be motivated to support the\u00a0colonos<\/em>\u00a0because the FSLN is counting on its votes to win the general elections against the Yatama indigenous party\u2014including the election of deputies to the National Assembly\u2014 this year. Additionally, Ortega (FSLN) surely does not want to eradicate ALBA Forestal from Muskitia, nor pay thousands of colonists to leave their lands and, in turn, provide them alternative lands to re-settle.<\/p>\n Do rising tensions between the Miskitu people and the Sandinistas represent a return to the conflicts that fueled the struggles of the 1980s\u2014a period when a U.S.-backed anti-communist crusade blended with an ethnic conflict that pitted indigenous peoples against the country\u2019s mestizo majority? Although the Cold War is over, many Miskitu suggest the ethnic tensions of the 1980s persist. In Wangki Twi\u2013Tasba Raya, groups of young Miskitu men patrol their forests and stand guard over their nearly vacated communities.<\/p>\n