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The article highlights the history of Nicaragua with population of seven Indigenous Peoples in Nicaragua. It focuses on the use of state violence against human rights defenders along with internal governance and natural resource management, known as Indigenous and Afrodescendant communal; also discusses the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.

This article examines the formation of the Nicaraguan National Guard before and during the period of the Sandino rebellion, U.S. military intervention, and its aftermath (1925-1936). Focusing on the radically abrupt, upward displacement of coercive capacities in these eleven years of war, we emphasize the agency of Nicaraguans in shaping the kind of institution the Guard became. We argue that the process of war against a homegrown nationalist insurgency most profoundly shaped Guard identity and that the Somocista state represented a masked and modernized form of caudillismo, as a political system within which political authority and power resided in personal and patronage relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Volcanto music is a specific label for Nicaraguan testimonial music, coined after the 1979 left-wing triumph of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, or Sandinistas). This protest music, with its roots in the Latin American Nueva Canción genre, has evolved over the years from folkloric and rural music with socially committed lyrics to one with hybrid sounds and global influences. Ramón Mejía, better known as Perrozompopo, is one of Nicaragua’s most celebrated contemporary singer-songwriters who has continued the volcanto tradition with his hybrid compilations. As the nephew of Carlos Mejía Godoy, Nicaragua’s most influential composer of volcanto music, Perrozompopo has social and musical advantages because he will always be associated with the volcanto tradition; however, his focus on urban spaces and contemporary social problems somewhat distances his songs from the more traditional protest music steeped in rural folklore. His alternative urban rock style and socially committed lyrics, therefore, encourage listeners to reimagine the volcanto tradition. By drawing on Josh Kun’s theoretical concept of audiotopia, this article argues that Perrozompopo infuses Nicaraguan volcanto music with global sounds, creating a hybrid musical style with audio(u)topian longings for a more just society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nicaragua, indigenous and afro-descendant peoples' demands for territorial rights have become inseparable from demands for the exercise of autonomy in the Caribbean Coast. Alone, the new titles obtained by these communities, like the autonomy regime, will not guarantee legal security over collective lands, control over natural resources or the exercise of free determination. Through the analysis of three indigenous territories in Nicaragua's Northern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region ( RACCN), the article argues that the state is still setting the terms of debate. It suggests that the defence of rights should be anchored not only on the ownership of territory but also on the social fabric of indigenous communities and territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rama are a coastal population from southern Nicaragua who in large part were able to resist, at least for a time, the cultural changes and social reorganization brought on by colonial and modern influences. Historical information leaves the Rama origins and biological relationships with nearby extinct and extant groups ambiguous. The objective of this study was to examine the internal genetic microdifferentiation based on the first hypervariable region of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a sample of approximately 20% of the population, and to expand the few available historical and anthropological data on the Rama by exploring the effects of cultural practices and historical events on genetic structure, providing an integrative perspective on the Rama genetic history. When considering differences in the spatial distribution and genetic diversity of the mtDNA haplotypes together with historical information on the Rama, a noteworthy pattern emerges. (a) Haplotypes are differentially distributed among a central Rama community (Punta Águila) compared with the other five peripheral communities (analysis of molecular variance: FCT = 0.10, p < 0.001), and their distribution is consistent with the historical relocation of this population after their split from Punta Gorda in the 18th century. (b) Differential genetic signatures found among central and peripheral Rama communities resemble two population histories: one of stability (haplogroup A2) and other of expansion (haplogroup B2), supporting the possibility that these patterns of genetic microdifferentiation between central and peripheral populations resulted from the 18th-century unification in southern Nicaragua of the Rama and a group of Voto migrants from Costa Rica that later split off and moved to the Bay of Bluefields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nicaragua and El Salvador share many commonalities, including geographical vulnerabilities, widespread poverty, the experience of civil conflict in the 1980s, and a transition to democracy in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, each state has drastically divergent levels of violence, as measured particularly by homicide rates, with Nicaragua among the lowest in Latin America and El Salvador among the highest in the world. This paper assesses the historical and institutional variables that account for this divergence and evaluates each state's security structures using a civil-military relations analysis. In particular, the author uses Bruneau and Matei's criterion of effectiveness. The findings demonstrate that Nicaragua's security forces consolidated during the 1980s in a manner more capable of sustaining the democratic transition and confronting new security threats like gangs and organized crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of women in Nicaraguan history and their relationship to the Nicaraguan state.

Copyright of Revista de Indias is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Cold War affected countries throughout the Americas, including Costa Rica, which was important because of its strategic location between the Panama Canal and Nicaragua. This article examines the major Cold War events that affected Costa Rica from 1948, the year when Costa Rica's Second Republic was born, until 1990, when Nicaragua's Sandinista government lost a presidential election and its East German ally disappeared. It argues, first, that both the United States and the Soviet Union actively involved Costa Rica in their Cold War pursuits; second, that relations with neighbouring Nicaragua were the single most important determinant of Costa Rica's Cold War policies; and third, that despite US pressure, Costa Rica managed to maintain considerable autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article offers a first-hand account of a grassroots peace initiative that appeared in war-affected areas of Nicaragua in the 1980s and still exists to date. While bottom-up initiatives usually hardly scale up, the Nicaraguan peace commissions managed to convert into a broad peace infrastructure, weaving horizontal and vertical relationships with a variety of actors with the assistance of external organizations. They adapted their work to the evolving socio-political context, beginning with immediate concerns during the armed conflict, such as mediating between warring parties to protect civilians, and progressively addressing a broader range of conflicts. While this adaptive capacity could explain their endurance, the sustainability of their peacebuilding endeavours matters most. By establishing local capacities for peace throughout society, the peace commissions laid the ground for these peacebuilding endeavours to last. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After presenting some considerations on the importance of schools and in particular history textbooks in the formation of a national conscience and the creation and consolidation of a sense of nationality, in this article we analyze the first book used in Nicaragua as a textbook for teaching Nicaraguan history and geography, at the end of the 19th Century. We consider this book, Notas geográficas y económicas sobre la república de Nicaragua (Geographical and economical notes on the Nicaragua republic), written by a French engineer, Paul Levy to be one of the first textual images of that Central American country, reflecting the vision and concept that Nicaraguan elites of that time had of their own country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Memorias is the property of Fundacion Universidad del Norte and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the Black Sandinista Movement in Nicaragua. The participation of Creoles in the revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship of the Sandinista National Liberation Front is examined as well as the interpretation of this participation from the Creoles and Sandinistas' perspectives. The revolution is linked to questions of race and national identity.

Provides a historical account of publications on Central America by the North American Congress on Latin America in the 1970s. Political situation in Central America during that time; Report on the Nicaraguan crisis; Focus on the conflict in El Salvador. INSET: El Salvador Violence: Politics become personal.

Examines the revival of Marimba, a folkloric dance historically associated with Nicaragua's Masaya region during the Sandinista government of 1980s. Reproduction of the authentic dance of the region; Limitation imposed on the creative freedom of local troupes of Masaya residents due to urban art-house influenced troupes; Struggle of the Masaya dancers to maintain their regional identity.

Despite the fact that the historical experience of the construction of socialism has taken place in predominantly agrarian societies, it is notorious that the 'agrarian question' remains unresolved and constrains their progress to a greater or lesser degree. This is all the more crucial for those revolutions of the second half of the twentieth century which, generated in the Third World by the 'liberation struggle', not only seek an increased food supply as the basis for raising popular living standards, but also greater exports from the primary sector to secure imports of producer goods. Thus the agrarian question becomes central to the accumulation model, not only as a source of investible surplus but also as part of the articulation between the different forms of production which underlie the inherited social structure. An account of the Nicaraguan experience of agrarian reform in its first five years (1980-84) should have some intrinsic interest; it also serves to illustrate this central problem of the economics of the transition to socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various reports published within the issue, including papers on the revolutionary transformation of Nicaragua.