The department of Zelaya, commonly referred to in Nicaraguas as la costa atlantica-the Atlantic coast-encompasses nearly half of the country's territory, yet contains only 10% of the population. Its long-standing isolation from the rest of Nicaragua is the product of its history as a British and than North American enclave, a reality enforced by the Somoza dictatorship.
    The Miskito I Indians were the dominant culture in the northern Zelaya during the 18th and 19th centuries, their traditional Moskitia domain staddling the Nicaraguan/Honduran border.
    Along the southern part of the coast, British settlements at Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon and Corn Island brought in African slaves to work on plantations and in timber-cutting. These Africans gradually mixed with the European and with the small mestizo, Indian and Chinese populations to produce a black and mulatto group known as the Creoles. Towards the end of the19th century, North American entrepreneurs entered the area to export coconuts, bananas, and precious woods. To service this growing business, two new groups of black workers were brought in from Jamaica and New Orleans.
    Creole culture developed as typically Afro-Caribbean, English speaking and heavily influenced by the British. Both the creoles and the Indians viewed outsiders the metstizo Nicaraguans from the Pacific region as "Spaniards". This ethnic and cultural isolation of the coastal enclave was compounded by its physical isolation. The only way to reach the Pacific was to travel by boat up the Escondido River to Rama, with only a rustic overland connection between Rama and Managua. The coastal people thus developed a perspective which was focused both on indigenous culture and across the ocean to British and America, but they did not relate to the rest of Nicaragua.
    Britain's Miskito Reserve was finally reincorporated into Nicaraguan state by President Zelaya in 1895 and renamed in his honor. A conservative revolt led by General Estrada overthrew President Zelaya with U.S. assistance in 1912. The conservatives favored foreign ties and thus left the Atlantic coast largely in the hands of U.S. business.
    From 1912 to 1932, the U.S. companies dominated the economic life of the Zelaya through banana exporting, lumbering and mining. This not only created jobs, but most of the coastal population purchased food, clothing and houswares from company commissaries, contributing to the "pro-American" outlook.
    Although the U.S. companies had exploited the area and reinvested almost nothing to benefit the local economy, many costenos still look back on that period as the "golden years" and view the U.S. as benefactors.
    During the 1950's, Spanish-speaking mestizo peasants began to move into the Zelaya in large numbers, forced off their small plots in the fertile Pacific lowlands by Somoza's army to make way for expanding cattle and cotton production. Today, the mestizos represent the largest population in the region, numbering to about 120,000. Next insize is the Miskito Indian population at 80,000, which is concentrated in the northeastern Zelaya. Third are the Creoles, at about 26,000, found mainly in the towns of Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon and Corn Island. The remainder include the Sumu Indians in the northern interior highlands( 8,000); the Garifuna living along the coast north of Bluefields( 1,500 ) and the Rama Indians in villages south of Bluefields( 800).
    Although the Sandinistas carried out almost no organizing in the Zelaya before 1979, the FSLN declared that when it took power it would end the the age-old isolation and backwardness of the region. Its platform included call  for ending the exploitation by foreign monopolies in the area and doing away with the hateful discrimination which the Indians and Creoles had long endured.
    The Sandinistas initially held great hopes that this tactical alliance would finally overcome the centuries old antagonism between the Atlantic and Pacific halves of the country and produce benefits for the impoverished peoples of the Zelaya. Literacy programs in English, Miskito and Sumu were carried out, along with the development of private cooperatives, housing and water systems, and the beginnings of small industries under the auspices of the Nicaraguan Institute for the Atlantic Coast
( INNICA ). INNICA was to be headed by a tri-ethnic leadership consisting of Comandante William Ramirez of the FSLN(a mestizo), Com. Lumberto Cambell( a creole) and the number two Miskito Indian leader, Brooklyn Rivera-although ultimately Rivera refused to participate.
    These early initiaves of the Sandanistas, while motivated by idealism, were marred by their failure to understand or take seriously both the traditional animosities and the importance of cultural differences between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
More than any one transgressions of the Sandinistas,  the costenos resented the arrogance of a revolutionary movement in which they had not been involved but which now sought to come into their communities to improve their way of life. In early 1981, it was learned that the MISURATA, a Sandinista ally, planned to present a demand for outright control of 33% of all Nicaraguan territory( 3/4 of the Zelaya). The Miskito proposal also antagonized some creole communities which were told that when MISURATA controlled the region that they would have to go elsewhere.
    Against this backdrop of Sandinista errors and Indian desires for autonomy, the stage was set for the Indian population to be swept into the growing conflict between the Sandinistas and Somoza's exiled guardsmen supported by the CIA. Initially many Creoles also were suspicious of or hostile to the Sandinistas. But the appointment of Creole leaders like Lumberto Campbell and support for the revolution by others, such as the respected Ray Hooker gradually softened the opposition in the black community.

See CIA Demographics

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