Miskitos have not determined their own history. If the war in Nicaragua lasts a long time, they risk being torn to pieces as a people between a national revolution and an internationally organized counterrevolution.
So, first the war has to end, and then it should be considered whether talks with the Miskitos and Creoles in exile might not be the only way to avert a long drawn out guerrilla war.
to read and write in Spanish, a completely different language than their own Indian tongues.
"Today, education is conducted in both Spanish and the Indian languages along the Atlantic coasts. The first four years, instruction is through the Indian language, and Spanish is only a school subject. At higher levels, the relationship is reversed.
"The government has published a grammar of the Miskito language. That is in five years after the fall of the dictatorship. We Lapps got our first grammar of Southern Lappish here in Sweden only two years ago. So, they are ahead of us in Nicaragua!"
But people in the audience asked about genocide and forced migration.
Ann Katrin Haakansson had heard no talk about genocide, although she met Miskito leaders who took refuge in Costa Rica and were hostile to the Sandinistas. But there was in fact forced migration of Miskitos from the Honduran border in
That was when the "contras," the counterrevolutionaries, started their raids into the country.
"All the belongings of the people, land, animals and so forth were noted down. Then everything was burnt. The objective was to keep the "contras" from getting a foothold in the north.
"The government has since pledged in writing that the people will get replace. ments for everything as soon as the state of war ceases.
"Naturally, the Indians reacted against
FSLN leader Tomas Borge with Miskito Indians (DR) A Lapp view of the Miskito question Dick FORSLUND
Most of the regimes in Central America are carrying out genocide against their Indian populations. But the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua is not one of them. The claims about Nicaragua's treatment of the Indians in the mass media are a combination of lying propaganda and half truths.
That was the conclusion that the audience could draw from Ann Katrin Haakansson's low-key report on her trip to Central America at the meeting of the Central America Committee in Nacka [a district of Stockholm]. She was sent by the Scandinavian Lapp Council last year to observe on the spot how the Mexican, Nicaraguan, Costa Rican, Guatemalan and Panamanian regimes were treating their Indians. The native peoples in the region number about ten million.
"Mexico enjoys an unearned reputation for democracy in Sweden. The government there has decided to destroy International Viewpoint 18 June 1984
The Indians' resistance has been met with military force.
where there are millions of Indians, they face a war of extermination.
"The former president Rios Montt said openly in a TV interview that the US had advised him to begin his term of office by killing 1.5 million would be the basis for solving the country's problem."
Ann Katrin Haakansson pointed to similar evils in the other countries. what about Nicaragua?
"Nicaragua's new government is carrying out a policy toward the Indian pop ulation in the western part of the country that is unique in Latin America.
"They began badly, but then they
"The Sandinistas first mistake in my opinion was when they first came to pow-
They said, from now on, we are all Nicaraguans.'
"So, during the literacy campaign, they expected the Miskitos, Somos and this. When I was on the Atlantic coast, it was evident that there is an underlying suspicion of everything the government
The people here did not participate in the uprising against They are not participants in the revolution now. I felt suspicion.
"They have gotten private and collective plots of land. The Sandinistas are trying to build up a fishing industry. They have now brought water into every neighborhood Cabezas, where there are 10,000 refugees from the north. next step is to bring potable water into
But what about the line being pushed now by the journalist Fritiof Hagland?
"I was shocked when I heard his radio program. I met the same people he did. He has access to the mass media.
"He was the one who brought Armstrong Wiggens [an anti-Sandinista Miskito figure ], and gave him fifteen minutes on the news.
"He had a collection of pictures murders and acts of violence. authorities had to admit that the pictures were from the Somoza period! Radio Sweden paid for Wiggins'
Ann Kristin Haaksannson offered an
"The traditional life of the Miskito was disturbed fundamentally 150 years ago. A German church was responsible for that. Fritiof Hagland's father was a missionary for that church."