You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
While indigenous languages have become prominent in global political and educational discourses, limited attention has been given to indigenous children’s everyday communication. Voices of Play is a study of multilingual play and performance among Miskitu children growing up on Corn Island, part of a multi-ethnic autonomous region on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. Corn Island is historically home to Afro-Caribbean Creole people, but increasing numbers of Miskitu people began moving there from the mainland during the Contra War, and many Spanish-speaking mestizos from western Nicaragua have also settled there. Miskitu kids on Corn Island often gain some competence speaking Miskitu, Spanis...
Indigenous Struggles for Autonomy: The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast and the process of autonomy that was initiated in 1987 as part of a wider conflict resolution process during the years of the Sandinista revolution and has continued through to the present day. Over its 30 year period of development, the autonomy process on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast can be seen as a crucible for the autonomous struggles of minority peoples throughout the Latin American continent. Autonomy on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast remains highly contested, being simultaneously characterized by progress, setbacks, and violent confrontation w...
Global identity politics rest heavily on notions of ethnicity and authenticity, especially in contexts where indigenous identity becomes a basis for claims of social and economic justice. In contemporary Latin America there is a resurgence of indigenous claims for cultural and political autonomy and for the benefits of economic development. Yet these identities have often been taken for granted. In this historical ethnography, Baron Pineda traces the history of the port town of Bilwi, now known officially as Puerto Cabezas, on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua to explore the development, transformation, and function of racial categories in this region. From the English colonial period, through...
Vilas combines his academic background and first-hand experience to produce an insightful analysis of the conflicts between Nicaragua's central government and costenos, relating these to issues of class struggle, capitalist modernization, and revolutionary transition.
This unique transdisciplinary publication is the result of collaboration between UNESCO's Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) programme, the United Nations University's Traditional Knowledge Initiative, the IPCC, and other organisations
Shortly after the Sandinista victory of July 1979, the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua gained enormous international notoriety because of violent conflicts between the new government and the people of the Coast region. Today, asserts Carlos Vilas, it may be the region of Nicaragua in which the peace process has advanced furthest.