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From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Jun 22, 2007 6:21 PM
Subject: [TheBlackList] AFRICAN PEOPLE IN NICARAGUA
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Published: June 10, 2007Nicaragua and Honduras

Black populations in Latin America are undergoing a cultural and
civil-rights awakening

By Audra D.S. Burch
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PEARL LAGOON, Nicaragua -- In hidden fishing villages
straddling the wide, muddy Kukra River along the
Atlantic Coast, a quiet cultural and civil-rights
movement flickers:

Almost six feet and dark-skinned, a 17-year-old whirls
in her kitchen, enchanted by the intricate African
beading on the gown she will wear in the village's
first black beauty pageant.

A 47-year-old reggae artist who chronicles the pain
and hope of his people in song makes history as the
first black to win his country's highest cultural
award.

A 30-year-old activist finally liberates her hair,
lets it grow naturally, an act that screams race more
than complexion ever could.

These stories are part of a slow but dramatic shift in
consciousness among blacks here and throughout Latin
America. In something akin to the civil-rights
movement in the United States -- without the
lynchings, bombings and mass arrests -- blacks are
pushing for more rights and reclaiming their cultural
identity.

"For years, it was just so much easier to not 'be'
black, to call yourself something else," says Michael
Campbell, who grew up 18 miles downriver in
Bluefields. "But the key to our future is to
strengthen our identity, to say we are black, and we
are proud."

Carmen Joseph, a caterer and mother of eight children
in Bluefields, Nicaragua, prepares potato salad as her
granddaughter Britney Cash, 5, stands by. 'Some folks
don't say they are what they are,' she said. 'You see,
I am black, and I raised my family up knowing they
were black.' (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)
BELATED ATTENTION

Latin American governments are listening and have
finally begun to address racial inequities that have
simmered since slavery.

Just four years ago, Brazil created a Cabinet-level
position to deal with race. In Colombia, activists
have won legislation legally recognizing blacks and
their history. In Cuba, increasing numbers of
non-political groups are forming to tackle race
issues, including the Martin Luther King Movement for
Civil Rights. And in the nearby Dominican Republic,
some blacks are fighting state authorities for the
right to be categorized as "black'' on their
passports.

Statistics show that blacks in the region are more
likely to be born into poverty, to die young, to read
poorly and to live in substandard housing.

Authorities are only now starting to count the black
population, but the World Bank estimates that it
numbers anywhere from 80 million to 150 million,
compared with 40.2 million in the United States.

The new push for change is fueled by support from
African-American politicians and civil rights groups
through globalization -- the technological ability to
share common human experiences. Indeed, once isolated
Latin American countries now have access to
pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which
broadcast social messages worldwide.

Students share a bench -- and some candy -- during a
break in classes at Moravian High School in
Bluefields. A black-history curriculum for public
schools is on the agenda of black leaders and
activists. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald) Just
last week, U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., led
members of the Congressional Black Caucus in a
nationally televised townhall discussion in Colombia
with President Alvaro Uribe about the living
conditions of Afro-Colombians.

"[Afro-descendants] can see what the outside world is
doing. That's caused a consciousness where they say,
'We can do it, too,' '' says Meeks, who is also
working with blacks in Peru and Bolivia. "They can see
what the civil-rights movement did in the United
States and know that they have the ability to benefit
also."

The movement challenges a widely held belief that
Latin America comfortably witnessed the civil-rights
movement in the United States from afar because the
region was not racist, and blacks were already
integrated.

"The black movements have been able to get people to
question that notion, and to acknowledge that racial
democracy is a great idea and kind of wonderful dream,
but it really doesn't exist on the ground yet," says
George Reid Andrews, author of Afro-Latin Americans
and a professor of comparative race at the University
of Pittsburgh. "That, I think, is a real achievement."

Elizabeth Forbes, 85, known as 'Ms. Lizzie' -- on the
porch with grandchildren Sean, on her lap, and Brandy,
and with Jayson MacField, 8, peering from the window
-- is helping to revive the ties of Bluefield's blacks
to their heritage. Nine percent of Nicaragua's
population is black. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami
Herald) DISADVANTAGED GROUP

Nicaragua's black population is the largest in Central
America, but there is only one black member in its
National Assembly, Raquel Dixon Brautigam, who was
elected last year.

Only about one in five residents in Nicaragua's
predominantly black neighborhoods have access to clean
water, versus the national average of three in five.
Between 4 percent and 17 percent have electricity,
compared with the national average of 49 percent.

Twenty years ago, the country recognized blacks and
indigenous people through autonomy laws, making it
possible for them to claim natural resources,
demarcate communal lands, govern themselves and
reclaim their ancestral identity.

For years, the struggle has been framed largely in
regional terms -- the Atlantic Coast, led by towns
such as Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas, versus the
Pacific Coast -- English versus Spanish, Creole versus
Spanish-indigenous mestizo. Creoles, descendents of
English masters and their Caribbean slaves, often
identify themselves as black.

"Race and region are inextricably linked," says Juliet
Hooker, a native of Bluefields and assistant professor
of government at the University of Texas. "We have
never really been acknowledged in the national
narrative about identity. Much of the discrimination
has been through the lens of the coast we live on."

Now, for blacks -- about 477,000, or 9 percent of the
5.3 million Nicaraguans -- the movement is largely
about visibility.

A Garífuna boy, kicking a soccer ball, is part of a
dwindling group descended from shipwrecked Africans
exiled to Honduras in 1797. (Patrick Farrell/Miami
Herald) Black leaders and activists say they are
collectively defining, and redefining, what it means
to be black here. They are working on an ambitious
agenda that includes redistricting for better
political representation, bilingual education and a
black-history curriculum for public schools. And in
March, the National Assembly passed a reform measure
to include race issues in the new penal code.

Before now, there were no anti-discrimination or
affirmative-action laws. Still, a bill that would
outlaw institutional racism has languished in the
assembly for more than two years, with not enough
backers to push it through.

This isn't the first time blacks have mobilized.

A black-power movement started along the coast as
early as the 1920s through the nationalist message of
Marcus Garvey.

In the 1960s, as the civil-rights movement was
unfolding in the United States, blacks formed a
coalition to negotiate better living conditions. That
effort fell apart with the start of the Sandinista
revolution in 1979. After the war, the Sandinistas
promised to end racial discrimination and to promote
regional cultures. At the same time, they were accused
of precisely the opposite -- oppressing groups already
disenfranchised.

It would be almost three decades before meaningful
steps were taken under the Sandinista regimes. Now,
there is cautious hope with the return of that
government.

A horse is ferried across the Kukra River, where black
awareness is rising in villages. (Charles Trainor
Jr./Miami Herald) RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

Although the Atlantic Coast has been settled since the
17th century, the first road connecting the coast to
the rest of the country opened only 50 years ago. It
is still impassable during the rainy season and still
doesn't go all the way.

The last leg to Bluefields from Managua is by boat,
along the Escondido River. Despite the remoteness, it
has not been closed entirely to the outside world.
Some residents talk on the telephone, listen to the
radio, watch foreign programs on television and a few
have access to the Internet. Much of the contemporary
movement along the coast came from men who died long
ago -- Martin Luther King Jr. and Bob Marley. King's
unyielding message of equality and Marley's social
lyrics were delivered here starting in the 1970s by
kids who got jobs on cruise ships and brought back
books and music.

Pearl Lagoon's unofficial leader, William Wesley, a
warm guy with an easy smile, lives on the main road
with a view of the village. Just inside his living
room, a picture of King hangs near the phone.

"The kids came home, and they kept talking about these
people," says Wesley, a retired teacher. "I knew a
little bit already. But I wanted to know more. I found
myself in the teachings of King and Malcolm X. I
discovered my Afro heritage. We have to take what they
said to help us create a direction that we can all
follow."

U.S. sports are popular in Pearl Lagoon, on
Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami
Herald) In Bluefields, Carmen Joseph, more comfortably
''Miss Carmen," a caterer who is said to make the best
potato salad in town, quickly steps outside a
neighbor's house. She sits on the front porch, this
racial business too touchy for inside talk.

"Yes," she whispers, never making eye contact. "Some
folks don't say they are what they are. You see, I am
black, and I raised my family up knowing they were
black."

With eight children, Joseph has spent a lifetime
trudging up and down the hills of Bluefields,
establishing her place as one of the town's
matriarchs. "I am not ashamed. I never turned on my
color, but some people do."

To appreciate the story of race here, is to understand
the kaleidoscopic legacy of slavery, the historic
demonization and denial of blackness and the practice
of racial mixing.

This portrait is complicated by the lack of reliable
census data because of traditional undercounting and
because some blacks decline to identify themselves as
such.

The dynamic along the coast is a layered quilt of
Miskitos, mestizos and blacks. The ancestors of other
Afro-Nicaraguans were free blacks who immigrated from
Jamaica and other Caribbbean countries, lured by the
good, steady jobs available for English speakers.

Stories abound about people who have hidden behind
ambiguously brown complexions, "passing'' for Miskito
Indians, or mestizo.

"It's hard to mobilize when you are still recouping
the identity and just starting to openly use the term
black," says Hooker, the University of Texas professor
whose father was a regional councilman.

A year ago, Shirlene Green Newball, who grew up in
Puerto Cabezas, allowed her perm to grow out. "I
really wanted to show and know who I am," says
Newball, who works for a women's organization.

Newball had thought for a while about what it meant to
be black here. She considered all the terms morena,
coolie, afro, chocolate, la negra. Then she decided
that natural hair -- an enduring barometer of
ethnicity was the purest expression of blackness.

"You are seeing an authentic black movement along the
coast, but things are moving slowly," says Kwame
Dixon, an assistant professor of African American
Studies at Syracuse University.

Koreth Reid McCoy, 17, gets her hair combed by 'Ms.
Vilma' in preparation for a black beauty pageant in
Pearl Lagoon. 'I'm so proud of my heritage and my
ancestry,' she said.(Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)
SYMBOL OF CULTURE

In Pearl Lagoon, population 3,000, the dogs sleep on
the dock, the main drag is more dusty path than
street, the country-western music drifts from open
windows and doors, and Koreth Reid McCoy rushes home
from school.

She floats the whole way, more than a mile, to behold
the lovely lavender gown with beads she is to wear at
the beauty pageant. In the last decade, the coast has
held annual black beauty pageants, but this is the
first one -- along with an African cultural festival
-- in Pearl Lagoon.

"I love the way it falls. I love the colors. I love
the style," Koreth says, her voice falling into a
lullaby. "It reminds me of Africa. I'm so proud of my
heritage and my ancestry."

Leaving her house, Koreth steps into the road, and,
carried by the giggles of barefoot little girls, makes
her way toward the river and back, as poised and
glamorous as she would be on anybody's runway. All of
a sudden, and maybe not so suddenly, she is more than
a pretty girl in a pretty dress. Koreth is a symbol of
cultural possibilities.

"I want people to know where we are from."

Philip Montalban Ellis sings about his hometown,
Bluefields. 'I been trying to sing songs that say
something and that uplift my people,' he said.
(Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald) MESSAGE IN MUSIC

For as long as he can remember, and certainly when
times were bad, Philip Montalban Ellis -- beautiful
dreadlocks to his waist and a guitar that rarely
leaves his side -- has been singing about the black
experience.

. . . We gotta fight or we will die. . . . Lord knows
we need liberation, Lord knows it's the only solution.
. . .

Today, Montalban sits on an old, rusted chair under a
lime tree in his backyard, strumming away.

"I been trying to sing songs that say something and
that uplift my people. We have struggled so long," he
says. "I have been charged with carrying the message
of my people."

Earlier this year, the Nicaraguan government
recognized Montalban's art, awarding him its highest
cultural honor. Before now, the idea of an
unapologetically black man even being considered was
unthinkable.

"I feel like I am accepting the award for a whole race
of people," Montalban says. "I hope this means
something."

Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet and special
correspondent Tim Rogers contributed to this report.

Interactive map
Copyright (c) 2007The McClatchy Company
Web design by Shawn Greene/Miami Herald

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