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Southeastern Nicaragua is one of the richest natural areas remaining in Central America. The region is blanketed with a tropical rainforest that provides shelter to animals such as jaguar, puma, tapir, scarlet and green macaw, harpy eagle, howler monkey, and poison dart frog. This forest is adjacent to the equally-rich Caribbean coastal waters, inhabited by manatees, sea turtles, shrimp, lobster, and abundant fishes. The rainforests, rivers, beaches, lagoons, and islands of southeastern Nicaragua are also home to a people known as the Rama Indians. Although the Rama have been in contact with people of European descent for hundreds of years, up to now they have largely managed to retain their cultural identity and traditional way of life. While the Rama have survived the diseases brought by early settlers, mistreatment at the hands of the English and neighboring ethnic groups, devastating hurricanes, and Nicaragua's civil war in the 1980s, today they face what is very possibly the greatest challenge to their survival as a people - the loss of their ancestral lands.
In a situation that echoes the disappearance or displacement of many of North America's indigenous groups that occurred when white settlers expanded westward across the continent, the Rama are being pressured to abandon the riverbanks and forests that they have traditionally inhabited. This pressure is coming from Mestizo settlers along Nicaragua's rapidly advancing agricultural frontier, and from a proposed interoceanic rail line, or "Dry Canal", which would pass through the heart of the Ramas' remaining territory. Despite the existence of international conventions on human rights and sections of the Nicaraguan Constitution that guarantee the protection of indigenous land rights, the theft and deforestation of Rama land is proceeding unchecked.
This report documents the historical and present inhabitation of southeastern Nicaragua by the Rama Indians. It is hoped that the evidence presented here will contribute to efforts toward the legal titling, demarcation, and defense of Rama Indian community lands, and will prevent conflicts over landownership from escalating in the region. At stake is not only the cultural survival of the Rama people but also the future of the Nicaraguan rainforest. The loss of either would leave the world immeasurably poorer.
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