Militarization and Extraction in the Afro-Indigenous Miskitu Coast of Nicaragua (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)
Creators: name: Montero, Fernando
Publisher: name: (:unav)
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Moskitia
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/85696/moskitia
subject: Mexico and Central America
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/85621/mexico-and-central-america
subject: NICARAGUA
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/17418/nicaragua
subject: Honduras
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/76060/honduras
subject: Indigenous Customary Law
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166975/indigenous-customary-law
subject: Narcotics Economies
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166976/narcotics-economies
subject: Militarization
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166973/militarization
subject: War on Drugs
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166974/war-on-drugs
subject: Afro-Indigeneity
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166979/afro-indigeneity
subject: Martial Law
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166977/martial-law
subject: Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166866/dissertation-fieldwork-grant
subject: Extractivism
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166978/extractivism
subject: Socio-Cultural
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166855/socio-cultural
subject: Indigeneity
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/153992/indigeneity
subject: Ethnographic Research
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/investigation-type/14/ethnographic-research
subject: Ethnohistoric Research
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/investigation-type/17/ethnohistoric-research
subject: Historic Background Research
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/investigation-type/18/historic-background-research

description: This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. My research examines new configurations of sovereign power in Central America in the context of two momentous transformations currently taking place on the Afro-indigenous Miskitu Coast of Nicaragua. The first of these is the escalating militarization of the coast by the neo-Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega, allegedly in response to high volumes of cocaine trafficking. The second is the concession to a Chinese company of the rights to build a transoceanic canal across Nicaragua, requiring the expropriation of wide expanses of Afro-indigenous communal land. These large-scale political and economic interventions are being enacted without prior popular consultation in the affected regions and against the expressed wishes of elected indigenous and Afro-Creole leaders. My research asks how these processes of militarization and extraction clash or converge with Afro-indigenous forms of sociopolitical organization. My fieldwork will focus on two of the most important institutions of local governance in the rural villages of the Miskitu Coast: the annually-elected indigenous judges, known as 'wihtas,' responsible for arbitrating conflicts and determining the appropriate forms of punishment or restitution in cases of injury and criminal offense; and the annually-elected 'sÃ­ndicos,' regulators of communal resources and economic concessions for multi-communal 'territorial blocks.' How does the presence of the military alter indigenous legal practices, and how do practices of community policing morph as a result? What would a new regional economy dominated by a new transoceanic canal look like, considering that the concessionaire is a Chinese company acting in a purportedly socialist country, in a region technically governed by a communal property regime?