Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War

7: The Indian Wing: Nicaraguan Indians, Native American Activists, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1979–1990

175 · Chapter Seven · The Indian Wing Nicaraguan Indians, Native American Activists, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1979–1990 5 James Jenkins In 1973, the American Indian Movement (AIM) withstood a seventyone -day siege by the U.S. government at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Carlos Fonesca, a cofounder of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), sent a letter from Nicaragua in support of Russell Means and other Indian activists who were protesting U.S. policies. Yet thirteen years later, Means traveled to Nicaragua, where he fought the Sandinista army in armed combat on behalf of an indigenous counterrevolution.1 Means went to Nicaragua to assist an insurgency of Miskitu Indians on the Atlantic Coast that began in mid-1981. The insurrection made up a portion of a war against the new socialist government, a war that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and President Ronald Reagan actively supported. The Miskitu conflict has generated an immense literature that traces the impact of U.S. intervention and Sandinista policies to explain the militancy of the Miskitu.2 However, scholars have all too often emphasized the left-right ideological conflict without fully examining the influence of global indigenous activism, which emerged as a powerful force within international politics by the end of the 1980s. Native American organizations became involved in the hope that Miskitus would attain expanded political autonomy. But contrary to their James Jenkins 176 intent, American Indians ultimately weakened Miskitu demands in Nicaragua and fragmented their own movement in the United States. The Miskitu conflict underscores the complicated ways Latin American politics operated in the context of the Cold War. Miskitu leaders took advantage of the polarizing Cold War discourse and the emerging indigenous rights politics to assert themselves in the international sphere. At the same time, the political environment compelled Miskitus to appear differently depending on their audience, and this divided both the Miskitu guerrilla movement and the U.S. Indian organizations that supported it. As the largest indigenous group inhabiting the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, Miskitus positioned themselves as victims of encroachment by an assimilationist mestizo Nicaraguan state. In addition to their racial difference from western Nicaragua, Miskitus spoke their own native language, tended to be Moravian rather than Catholic, and inhabited a sparsely populated jungle that was dominated by U.S. corporate interests. Miskitus occupied the bottom rung of the social ladder in eastern Nicaragua, but they maintained a considerable degree of autonomy from state institutions.3 This helps to explain why many Miskitus initially supported the Sandinista revolution against Somoza only to distrust the Sandinista government once its influence expanded over the Atlantic Coast. The Contras, or counterrevolutionary Nicaraguans, took up arms against the revolutionary government for geopolitical reasons that mattered little to the Miskitus. Contra leaders espoused a right-wing agenda and tied their struggle to the global east-west conflict. By contrast, Miskitu leaders demanded autonomy and self-determination, and they defended their alliances with Contras as a matter of expedience or survival. By the mid-1980s, the MiskituSandinista conflict had simmered to a low-intensity conflict. Miskitu guerrilla leaders projected varying images to different groups as they negotiated their demands with the Nicaraguan government. The presence of international indigenous groups, particularly the Indian organizations from the United States, profoundly transformed the character of the Miskitu insurgency. Roots of the Insurgency From the moment of its inception, the Miskitu insurgency struggled to project an image apart from the Somocistas, who wished to reinstate the Somoza family dynasty that had ruled Nicaragua since 1936. This downplaying of Somocista ties caused tension within the indigenous resistance that The Indian Wing 177 would eventually fracture the group’s leadership and lead Miskitu leader Brooklyn Rivera to stage a separate rebellion based out of Costa Rica. These developments reflected the need for an armed force that could appear outside of the left-right political spectrum and thus receive greater international assistance . Rivera positioned himself and his followers as part of a decolonization movement rather than as a rejection of the Sandinistas’ leftist policies. The Nicaraguan Indian leaders’ relations with the United States and the Contras allowed Miskitus to obtain military resources. But that relationship threatened to deny the Miskitu people a place within the global indigenous movement. As a result, Miskitu attempts to distance the revolt from the larger U.S.-backed war marked the first several years of military confrontation with the Sandinistas. Ironically, the...