The Miskitu People of Awastara (review)

Swashbuckling, resilient ethnic militants are the protagonists of this excellent historical ethnography of a Miskitu village. For the last 300 years the Miskitu people have tenaciously defended their lands, protected, they feel, by water ghosts and magical spells that divert hurricanes and enemy bullets. Miskitu kin networks stretch along much of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. Miskitu in dozens of villages have made the sea and shorelines their own for centuries. Dennis, a medical anthropologist with a musician's ear for the faint sounds of history, has lived and studied the area off and on for more than 20 years.

Besides natural disasters and civil wars typical of Central America, Nicaragua and the Miskitu have also been cursed with a spectacular succession of corrupt national leaders. From Anastasio Somoza senior, of whom Franklin Roosevelt reputedly said that "he may be a son-of-a bitch, but he's our son-of-bitch," to Somoza's son, who pocketed most of the foreign aid that arrived after an earthquake flattened the capital in 1972 to Arnold Alemán, who was sentenced in 2003 to 20 years in jail for corruption and moneylaundering, caudillos have contributed to making this the poorest country in the isthmus. The Sandinista National Liberation Front tried to convert the nation to a form of socialism during the 1980s while fighting a bloody war against the U.S.-backed contras. Sadly, the Sandinistas have been dogged by corruption scandals since they left office. The GDP per head is barely a quarter that of El Salvador, which suffered an even bloodier civil war between leftist revolutionaries and the U.S.-backed right-wing military.

Throughout these events, the Awastara villagers have cultivated distinctive cultural traditions and practices.A great virtue of Dennis's analysis of Miskitu persistence is the scrupulous fairness with which he treats controversial matters (e.g., the Sandinista-Contra-Miskitu war, land disputes and Miskitu identity). He carefully defines concepts in plain English, assesses their range of applicability and limitations, and avoids posturing and cheap rhetorical devices. Thus, Dennis's book is more than just an attempt to understand ethnic history and militancy along the Caribbean Sea. Even to readers with no interest in either indigenous politics or social movements in Central America, this book can serve as a model for the anthropological study of the impact of cocaine consumption and trafficking. Other key issues include turtles and farming, kinship and daily life, work, school, Protestantism and belief systems, illness, disease, magic, politics and leadership, economic growth and the Nicaraguan state. Dennis shows that many of the Miskitu have relied on an uncanny mix of militancy and foot-dragging to limit state and development agencies' abilities to enforce usually ill-founded reform schemes (water wells, sí; pigs and toilets, no!).

The four fields of anthropology receive ample treatment in this eclectic volume, with even historical archaeologists benefiting from the author's discussion of settlement patterns. Dennis is a bridge builder between the science end of anthropology—politics, medicine, botany—and interpretative perspectives. He focuses on empirical findings in medicine and land/sea production systems, guiding readers through the cultural construction of the categories he measured. Dennis' delight in Miskitu rhetoric, humor, and storytelling provides insightful linkages between meaning-based and behavior-based arguments. His explanations about politics, leadership, and economic growth are based on cross-cultural data and comparative theories. Pages 265-272 and most of Chapter 11 are a "must read" for students of Nicaragua's regional political economy. The author could have benefited from the work of Michael Taussig on shamanism, Roger Lancaster and David Stoll on Protestantism, Lancaster on power in Nicaragua, Arturo Escobar about development and social movements, and Pete Wilson about "crab antics" and social stratification among Caribbean peoples. Yet, overall the research is thorough.

The book is appropriate for undergraduate courses in Latin America Studies and anthropology. The chapters on "Christianity," "Health and Curing," "Public Affairs and Community...