Mosquito Coast Kingdom of Mosquitia | |
|---|---|
| 1637–1894 | |
 | |
| Motto: Crescit sub pondere virtus “Virtue thrives under adversity” | |
 1822 map of Mosquitia | |
| Status |
|
| Capital |
|
| Common languages | |
| Religion | |
| Demonym | Mosquitian |
| Government | Monarchy |
| King | |
• c. 1637–1686 | Oldman (first known) |
• 1842–1860 | George Augustus Frederic (last) |
| Hereditary Chief | |
• 1861–1865 | George Augustus Frederic (first) |
• 1890–1908 | Robert Henry Clarence (last) |
| Legislature | Council of State |
| History | |
• Established | 1637 |
• Disestablished | 20 November 1894 |
| Today part of | |
TheMosquito Coast, also known asMosquitia, is a historical andgeo-cultural region along the western shore of theCaribbean Sea inCentral America, traditionallydescribed as extending fromCape Camarón to theRiver Chagres.[1][2][3][4][5] The namederives from the Miskito people, one of the Indigenous inhabitants of the region. The area was historically associated with theKingdom of Mosquitia, an Indigenouspolity that exercised varying degrees ofautonomy from the 17th to the 19th centuries.[6] In the late 19th century, the kingdom was succeeded by theMosquito Reservation, a territory established throughinternational agreements aimed at preserving a degree of localgovernance.
During the 19th century, the question of the kingdom's borders was a serious issue of international diplomacy between Britain, theUnited States, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Conflicting claims regarding both the kingdom's extent and arguable nonexistence were pursued in diplomatic exchanges.[7] The British and Miskito definition applied to the whole eastern seaboard of Central America from theAguan River to theChiriqui Lagoon area.
Before the arrival of Europeans in the region, the area was divided into a large number of small, egalitarian groups, possibly speaking languages related toSumu andPaya.Columbus visited the coast briefly in his fourth voyage. Detailed Spanish accounts of the region, however, only relate to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. According to their understanding of the geography, the region was divided between two "Provinces"Taguzgalpa andTologalpa. Lists of "nations" left by Spanish missionaries include as many as 30 names, though careful analysis of them by Karl Offen suggests that many were duplicated and the regional geography included about a half dozen entities speaking related but distinct dialects occupying the various river basins of the region.[8]
During the 16th century, Spanish authorities issued various licenses to conquer Taguzgalpa and Tologalpa in 1545, 1562, 1577, and 1594, but no evidence suggests that any of these licenses resulted in even brief settlements or conquests. The Spanish were unable to conquer this region during the 16th century and in the 17th century sought to "reduce" the region through missionary efforts. These included several attempts byFranciscans between 1604 and 1612; another one led by FrayCristóbal Martinez in 1622, and a third one between 1667 and 1675. None of these efforts resulted in any lasting success.[9]
Because the Spanish failed to have significant influence in the region, it remained independent of outside control. This allowed the native people to continue their traditional way of life and to receive visitors from other regions.English andDutchprivateers who preyed on Spanish ships soon found refuge in the shore.
Although the earliest accounts do not mention it, a political entity of uncertain organization, but probably not very stratified, which the English called the "Mosquito Kingdom" was present on the coast in the early seventeenth century. One of the kings of thispolity visitedEngland around 1634 at the behest of theProvidence Island Company and stayed for three years.
In subsequent years, the kingdom stood strongly against any Spanish incursions and was prepared to offer rest and asylum to any anti-Spanish groups that might come to their shores. At the very least English and French privateers and pirates did visit there, taking in water and food. A detailed account of the kingdom written by a buccaneer known only as M. W. describes its organization as being fundamentally egalitarian, with the king and some officials (usually called "Captains" in that period but later being more elaborate) being primarily military leaders, but only in time of war.[10]
The first British contacts with the Mosquito region started around 1630, when the agents of the English charteredProvidence Island Company—of which theEarl of Warwick was chairman andJohn Pym treasurer—occupied two smallcays and established friendly relations with the local inhabitants.Providence Island, the company's main base and settlement, entered into regular correspondence with the coast during the decade of company occupation, 1630–1641.[11]
The first English settlers to the mainland arrived in 1633, exchanging products through primitive trade with theMiskitos. The English exchanged manufactured goods such as guns, machetes, beads, mirrors etc., in exchange for cocoa, animal skins,sarsaparilla, rubber, wood, and turtle shells.
The Providence Island Company sponsored the Miskito's "King's Son" visit to England during the reign ofCharles I (1625–1649). When his father died, this son returned home and placed his country under English protection.[12] Following the capture of Providence Island by Spain in 1641, England did not possess a base close to the coast. However, shortly after the English capturedJamaica in 1655, they recommenced relations with the coast, andOldman went to visit England in 1661. According to the testimony of his sonJeremy, taken around 1699, he was received in audience by "his brother king",Charles II and was given a "lac'd hat" and a commission "to kindly use and relieve such straggling Englishmen as should chance to come that way with plantains, fish, and turtle."[13]
While accounts vary, theMiskito Sambu appear to be descended from the survivors of a shipwrecked slave ship who reached this area in the mid-seventeenth century. These survivors intermarried with the local Miskito people, thereby creating a mixed-race group. They gradually adopted the language and much of the culture of their hosts. The Miskito Sambu settled near theWanks (Coco) River. By the late 17th century, their leader held the office of general with jurisdiction over the northern portions of the kingdom. In the early eighteenth century, they managed to take over the office of King, which they held for at least the rest of the century.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Miskitos Zambos began a series of raids that attacked Spanish-held territories and still independent Indigenous groups in the area. Miskito raiders reached as far north as theYucatán, and as far south as theRiver Chagres. They sold many of the captives they took as slaves to English or other British merchants; the slaves were transported to Jamaica to work on sugar plantations.[14] Through such raiding, the Zambo gained a more dominant position and the king's domain was inhabited primarily by Zambos. They also assisted the government of Jamaica in hunting downMaroons in the 1720s.[15]
Although English accounts referred to the area as a "kingdom", it was relatively loosely organized at first. A description of the kingdom written in 1699, notes that it occupied discontinuous areas along the coast. It probably did not include a number of settlements of English traders.[16] Although English accounts refer as well to various noble titles, Miskito social structure does not appear to have been particularly stratified. The 1699 description noted that people holding titles such as "king" and "governor" were only empowered as war leaders, and did not have the last word in judicial disputes. Otherwise, the author saw the population as living in an egalitarian state.[17]
M. W. mentioned titled officers in his account of 1699, but later sources define these superior offices to include the king, agovernor, ageneral, and anAdmiral. In the early 18th century, the kingdom became organized into four distinct clusters of population, centred on the banks of the navigable rivers. They were integrated into a single if loosely structuredpolitical entity. The northern portions were dominated bySambus and the southern ones byTawira Miskito.[18] The king, whose domain lay from the Wanks River south to the RioKukalaya, including the king's residence near Sandy Bay, was a Sambu, as was the general, who ruled the northern portions of the kingdom, from theWanks River to nearly Trujillo. The Governor, who was aTawira, controlled the southern regions, from the Cucalaya River toPearl Key Lagoon. In the later 18th century (post 1766), another title,Admiral, was recorded; this man was also a Tawira, controlling a region on the extreme south fromPearl Lagoon down to aroundBluefields.[19]
The Miskito kingEdward I and theBritish concluded a formalTreaty of Friendship and Alliance in 1740, and Robert Hodgson, Senior was appointed asSuperintendent of the Shore.[20] The language of the treaty includes what amounts to a surrender of sovereignty, and is often taken by historians as an indication that a Britishprotectorate was established over the kingdom.
Britain's primary motive and the most immediate result of the treaty was to secure an alliance between the Miskito and British for theWar of Jenkins' Ear, and the Miskito and British cooperated in attacks on Spanish settlements during the war. The most notable being theRaid on Matina in August by 1747 – the main fort (Fuerte de San Fernando de Matina) was captured and thecacao rich area was subsequently ravaged.[21] This military cooperation would prove important as Miskito forces were vital to protecting not only British interests in Mosquitia but also for British holdings inBritish Honduras (nowBelize).
A more lasting result of this formalrelation was that Edward and other Miskito rulers who followed him allowed the British to establish settlements and plantations within his realm, and issued the first land grants to this effect in 1742. British settlement concentrated especially in the Black River area, Cape Gracias a Dios, andBluefields. The British plantation owners used their estates to grow some export crops and as bases for the exploitation of timber resources, especially mahogany. Most of the labor on the estates was supplied by African slaves and by Indigenous slaves captured in Miskito and British raids into Spanish territory. By 1786, there were several hundred British residents on the shore and several thousand slaves, mostly African.
The Miskito kings received regular gifts from the British in the form of weapons and consumer goods, and provided security against slave revolts and capturing runaways.
Spain had long suffered considerably from the Miskito attacks which continued during peacetime. When theAmerican Revolutionary War broke out, Spanish forces attempted to eliminate the British presence, seizing thesettlement at Black River, anddriving British settlers from the isle ofRoatán; however, this ultimately failed when armed settlers and Miskito Sambu, led by the Anglo-Irish soldier,Edward Despardretook the settlements.
Although Spain had been unable to drive the British from the coast or occupy any position, in the course of the diplomatic negotiations following the war, Britain found itself making concessions to Spain. In the1786 Convention of London, Britain agreed to evacuate British settlers and their slaves from the "country of the Mosquitos" to their as yet informal colony in what was to becomeBritish Honduras. There, under the superintendence of Edward Despard, to the dismay of the establishedBaymen they were accommodated without "any distinction of age, sex, character, respectability, property or colour".[22] Later treaties recognized Britain's commercial, but never territorial rights in the region.[23] Some of the settlers and their slaves remained after they swore loyalty to theKing of Spain, especially inBluefields.[24]
Although Spain had formally recognized the independence of the Kingdom of Mosquitia with the signing of a preliminaryTreaty of Peace and Commerce in 1778, theViceroy of New Granada,Francisco Gil de Taboada suggested that theconquest of Mosquitia should be carry out from acolonial government set up inHavana, Cuba, mirroring the long-standing relation that the kingdom had earlier withBritish Jamaica, but this idea was rejected by theSpanish Crown. Guatemala protested the perceived unruliness of the Spanish appointed governor atBluefields, who was none other but a former British Superintendent of the shore who had sworn recent fealty to Spain, Robert Hodgson Jr., but his loyalty and good work were defended by the New Granadan ViceroyJosé Manuel de Ezpeleta, who succeeded Taboada in 1789 and considered that Hodgson's influence among the Miskito was vital to avoid a revolt.[25] Hodgson Jr. was the son of Robert Hodgson Sr., the first British appointed Superintendent in 1749–1759, and he had occupied himself this post from 1767 to 1775, when his political enemies persuadedLord George Germain to replace him with James Lawrie, the last British Superintendent before the evacuation and a declared adversary of Hodgson.[26]
The Spanish hoped to win over support of the Miskito elite by offering presents like the British had and educating their youth in Guatemala, as many Miskito had been educated previously in Jamaica.Catholicmissionaries also travelled to the Coast with the aim of converting the native population in this period.[25] The acceptance of the new order was unequal and often influenced by the underlying tensions within the own Miskito elites, divided between the northern regions controlled by the Sambu, loyal to KingGeorge II Frederic who remained himself friendly to the British, and the Tawira southerners aligned with Admiral Briton, who developed closer ties with Spain and adopted the nameDon Carlos Antonio Castilla after his own conversion.[25]
The Spanish also sought to occupy the positions formerly held by British settlers with their own colonists. Beginning in 1787, around 1,200 settlers were brought in from theIberian Peninsula and theCanary Islands. They settled in Sandy Bay,Cape Gracias a Dios andBlack River, but not in the new capital Bluefields.[27]
The colonization project suffered setbacks as a result of many of the settlers dying en route and theMiskito Crown showing its dissatisfaction with the gifts offered by the Spanish. The Miskito resumed trade with Jamaica and, when news of anotherAnglo-Spanish War arrived in 1797, George II raised an army to attack Bluefields, expelling Hodgson from the country, and drove the Spanish out of the kingdom on September 4, 1800.[28][29] However, the king died suddenly in October 1800. According to British George Henderson, who visited the Mosquito Coast in 1804, many in the kingdom believed that George II had been poisoned by his brother Stephen as part of a deal with the Spanish. In order to prevent Stephen from seizing power for himself, General Robinson spirited George II's young heirGeorge Frederic Augustus II to Jamaica by way ofBelize and established a regency in his name.[30]
With Spanish power over Mosquitia vanished and British influence rapidly returning, the Captaincy General of Guatemala sought full control of the shore from Spain. The Colombian Ricardo S. Pereira, writing in 1883, considered this act a miscalculation on the part of theReal Audiencia of Guatemala, and if they had simply raised an army and marched into Mosquitia, nobody would have questioned that the area was part of the Captaincy General once Spanish power was fully restored. Instead, the Spanish government heeded the old advice espoused by Gil de Taboada and Ezpeleta, and decided against Guatemala's request on November 30, 1803, reaffirming the military control of theViceroyalty of New Granada over theArchipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina (used by New Granadan coast guards as a base against British privateers, often coming from Mosquitia itself), and transferring military jurisdiction of the south-eastern part of Mosquitia over to New Granada and considering the area a dependency of San Andrés. While Spanish rule was never restored over Mosquitia (instead, the British occupied the Archipelago itself in 1806 during the course of the war against Spain), the Royal Decree of 1803 became the reason for territorial disputes between the Kingdom of Mosquitia and theUnited Provinces of Central America andGran Colombia afterLatin American independence, and between Nicaragua and Colombia for the rest of the 19th century.[31]
In the meantime Prince Stephen, who was serving asking regent, along with Admiral Naul, and Captain Mariano, son of the Governor of Tubapí, went on astate visit to theKingdom of Guatemala in 1797.[24][32] In 1815, prince Stephen and 33 other Miskito notables gave their "consent, assent, and declaration to, for, and of"George Frederic Augustus II as their "Sovereign King".[33] His coronation in Belize on January 16, 1816,[34] in a deliberate move to secure British support, marked the end of the regency. Meanwhile, Spain lost rule over New Granada in 1819 and over Central America in 1821, when theFirst Mexican Empire was proclaimed.
As internecine conflicts seized both Gran Colombia and Central America post-independence, the potential of any regional power to threaten the Kingdom of Mosquitia declined. Miskito Kings continued their alliance with Great Britain, which in 1801 had merged withIreland to form theUnited Kingdom, with Belize replacing Jamaica as the principal British connection to the kingdom. George Frederic Augustus II's 1816 coronation in Belize was imitated by his successorRobert Charles Frederic in 1845.
The Miskito kings allowed the settlement of foreigners in their lands as long as their sovereignty was respected, opportunity that was seized by British merchants andGarifuna people fromTrujillo, Honduras. Between 1820 and 1837 theScottishcon manGregor MacGregor pretended to have been named "Cacique ofPoyais" byGeorge Frederic Augustus II and sold forged land rights to eager settlers and investors in Britain and France. Most settlers suffered from the lack of infrastructure and died fromtropical diseases, MacGregor having led them to believe that the area was already developed and just in need of skilled workers. In the 1830s and 40s King Robert Charles Frederic also appointed small traders, notably William Hodgson and brothers Peter and Samuel Shepherd, as his agents to administer his claims to tribute and taxes from lands as far south as Boca del Toro.[35][36]
At the same time, themahogany trade peaked in Europe, but the supply in Belize, a main exporter, was becoming scarce. Mosquitia became an alternative source to Belize-based traders and wood cutting companies, who acquired concessions and land grants from Robert Charles Frederic. In 1837, Britain started to take diplomatic measures to prevent the new nations that left the implodingFederal Republic of Central America in 1838–1841 from interfering with the kingdom.[37][38]
The expansion of the economy attracted and benefitted from the arrival of capital from the United States, and immigrants from the States, theWest Indies, Europe,Syria and China.[24] Especially abundant was the immigration ofAfro-Caribbeans following the abolition ofslavery in the British and French Caribbean in 1841, who settled mainly in and around Bluefields, merging with the descendants of the slaves that had not been evacuated in 1786 and giving origin to theMoskitian Creoles. Because of their greater knowledge of English, the Creoles soon became the workers most sought by foreign companies, occupying the intermediate levels in the businesses and relegating the native Miskito to the worst paid occupations at the base.[24]
In August 1841, the BritishfrigateTweed carried King Robert Charles Frederic and theBritish Governor of Belize,Alexander MacDonald, to remove the Nicaraguan officials from the port at the mouth of theSan Juan River. At the request of the civil population and an American captain of a United Statesbrig the Nicaraguancommandant of the port, Colonel Manuel Quijano, was removed and later dropped off atCape Gracias a Dios to find his own way back to Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan government protested, but the British did not take action against MacDonald for the incident.[23]
In 1844, Patrick Walker was appointed as the British Agent and Consul-General to the Kingdom of Mosquitia. The appointment was motivated by the state of anarchy in Mosquitia after the death of Robert Charles Frederic, but also by the impending Americanannexation of Texas and the British desire to build a canal through Central America before the United States did.[23]
The kingdom was claimed to extend from Cape Honduras in the north to the mouth of the San Juan River in the south, and south to the area around theChiriquí Lagoon. Nicaragua protested again and sent forces to San Juan del Norte, which the Miskito KingGeorge Augustus Frederic II replied to with an ultimatum, on 25 October, 1847, demanding Nicaragua "to withdraw the Nicaraguan establishment from the mouth of the River St. John" before January 1, 1848, or "that forcible means will be employed to maintain the King's rights and authority." On 8 December 1847, King George expressed to his Council of State of "the very regal reception he had met with in Jamaica and the particularly friendly and kind treatment he had received from the Governor, his Excellency Sir Charles Grey, it was resolved that the town at the mouth of the St. John’s should be called for the future Grey Town."
Nicaragua appealed to the United States, but the Americans, thenat war with Mexico, did not answer. After the ultimatum expired, Miskito-British forces led by the King and Patrick Walker, and backed by two British warships, seized San Juan del Norte. They also destroyedSerapaqui, where the British prisoners captured during the first attempt on San Juan del Norte were interned, and advanced toLake Nicaragua, during which Walker drowned. On March 7 Nicaragua signed a peace treaty where it ceded Grey Town to Mosquitia, who had renamed it Grey Town afterCharles Edward Grey,governor of Jamaica.[23]
With theMexican–American War concluded, the new US delegate in Central America,E. G. Squier, tried to get Nicaragua,El Salvador and Honduras to form a common front against the British, who were now threatening to annexTiger Island (El Tigre) in Honduras' Pacific coast. After British and American forces nearly clashed in El Tigre, both governments reprimanded the commanders of their forces there and concluded theClayton–Bulwer Treaty on April 18, 1850.[23] In this document the two powers pledged themselves to guarantee the neutrality and equal use of the proposed canal, and to not "occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua,Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast or any part of Central America", nor make use of any protectorate or alliance, present or future, to such ends.[39]
The United States assumed that this meant the immediate British evacuation of the Mosquitia, while the British argued that it only bound them to not expand further in Central America and that both the longstanding protectorate and the 1848 peace treaty were still valid. On November 21, the American steamerPrometheus was fired upon by a British warship for not paying port tariffs at Grey Town. One of the passengers wasCornelius Vanderbilt, business magnate and one of the richest people in the United States. The British government apologized after the United States sent two armedsloops to the area.[23]
More incidents happened in the following years. In 1852, Britain occupied theBay Islands off the coast of Honduras and rebuffed the American protests claiming that they had been part of Belize before the treaty. The American representative in Nicaragua,Solon Borland, considered the treaty breached and argued openly for the US annexation of Nicaragua and the rest of Central America, for which he was forced to resign. In 1853, the buildings of the US-ownedAccessory Transit Company in Grey Town were looted and destroyed by the locals. In 1854, an American steamer captain killed a Grey Town Creole, and Borland, who had remained in Grey Town after his resignation, stopped the arrest for murder by threatening the marshal and his men with a rifle, arguing that they had no power to arrest an American citizen. Though he held no office, Borland ordered 50 American passengers bound for New York to remain on land and "protect US interests" while he sailed to the United States for help. In an example ofgunboat diplomacy, the Americans sent then theUSS Cyane and demanded 24,000dollars in damages, an apology and a pledge of good behaviour in the future. When the terms weren't met, the crewbombarded Grey Town, then landed and burnt the town to the ground. Damage was extensive but no one was killed. With its attention seized by the ongoingCrimean War and the firm opposition of Britain's merchant class to a war with the United States, the British government only protested and demanded an apology that was never received.[23]
By 1859 British opinion was no longer supportive of their nation's presence in Mosquitia. The British government returned the Bay Islands and ceded the northern part of Mosquitia to Honduras, negotiating withGuatemala to enlarge the British territory in Belize as compensation. The next year, Britain signed theTreaty of Managua, ceding the central part of Mosquitia to Nicaragua.[23]
In the 1840s, two British citizens who travelled Europe advertising the sale of land in Cabo Gracias a Dios attracted the interest ofPrince Charles of Prussia. Charles' first plan was to establish a Prussian settlement in the area and sent three German merchants to study this possibility on the ground. Theirdictamen was against colonization, but their suggestion to evangelize Mosquitia was taken up by the Prince ofSchönburg-Waldenburg, who delegated the task to theMoravian Church. The first missionaries arrived in 1848 with a letter of recommendation fromLord Palmerston and began to work in 1849 in Bluefields, targeting the royal family and the Creoles before expanding to the rest of the kingdom.[24] In 1880, the mission saw a membership of 1,030 made up of mostly urban creoles. By 1890, the membership was 3,924 and made up of mostly Miskito and rural natives.[40]
Mosquito Reservation | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1861–1894 | |||||||||
.svg) | |||||||||
| Status | Constituent territory of Nicaragua | ||||||||
| Capital | Bluefields | ||||||||
| Common languages | |||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
| Hereditary Chief | |||||||||
• 1860–1865 | George Augustus Frederic II (first) | ||||||||
• 1890–1894 | Robert Henry Clarence (last) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 13 September 1861 | |||||||||
| 20 November 1894 | |||||||||
| Currency | |||||||||
| |||||||||
Britain and Nicaragua signed theTreaty of Managua on January 28, 1860, which transferredsuzerainty over the central part of Mosquitia between Cabo Gracias a Dios and Grey Town to Nicaragua. Attempts to decide the sovereignty over the northern bank of the Wanks/Coco River which cuts Cabo Gracias a Dios in half, began in 1869, but would not be settled until ninety-one years later when theInternational Court of Justice decided in favour of Honduras.[41]
The 1860 treaty also recognized that the Kingdom of Mosquitia, now reduced in size, would become self governing district, usually calledMosquito Reservation orMosquito Reserve, and was described as animperium in imperio.[42] The municipal constitution of the reserve, signed on September 13, 1861, confirmedGeorge Augustus Frederic II as ruler of the territory and its inhabitants, also changing his title fromking toHereditary Chief; and that the hereditary chief would be advised by a council of 41 members elected for a period of eight years.[43] The composition of this council was not limited to Miskito: instead, the first council included a number of Moravian missionaries and its first session started with anoration in this denomination. In compensation for his losses, George Augustus Frederic II would bepaid £1000 yearly and until 1870 by theNicaraguan government.[24]
The death of George Augustus Frederic II in 1865, after only half that time had passed, led to a dispute between Nicaragua and the reserve's government. As indicated in its name, the position of hereditary chief was not completely elective like the title of King that preceded it, but had to be occupied by a member of George Augustus Frederic II's lineage of full Miskito ancestry. The council argued that none of George Augustus Frederic II's wives was Miskito and that none of their children was eligible as a result.[24] The election ofWilliam Henry Clarence as new chief, George Augustus Frederic II's nephew by his second sister, was not recognized by Nicaragua. William Henry Clarence asked for support to Great Britain, accusing Nicaragua of not abiding to the terms of the 1860 treaty and threatening theself governance of the district, and complaining both about increasing Nicaraguan immigration and the political instability in Nicaragua proper, which threatened the peace within the reserve.[24]
In 1881, Nicaragua and Britain agreed to subject the most disputed points of the 1860 treaty to the arbitration of the EmperorFrancis Joseph I ofAustria-Hungary. His decision, released on July 2, agreed largely with the interests of the Miskito—and by extension, the British. The arbitration decided that:[44]
From 1883, the land and capital in the reserve began to be agglutinated[clarification needed] by an increasingly small[clarification needed] number of US citizens.[24]
When in 1894,Rigoberto Cabezas led a campaign to annex the reserve, natives responded with vigorous protest, an appeal to Britain to protect them, and more militant resistance[46] – to little avail. The situation was such that, from July 6 to August 7, the USoccupied Bluefields to 'protect US interests'. After enjoying almost complete autonomy for fourteen years, on 20 November 1894 their territory was incorporated into that of the republic of Nicaragua by Nicaraguan presidentJosé Santos Zelaya. Most of the central region of Mosquitia was established as theZelaya Department. During the 1980s, the department was dissolved and substituted by theNorth Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) andSouth Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). Those regions were renamed the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN) and the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCS) in 2014.
The Miskito continued to enjoy a certain autonomy under Nicaragua, though there was considerable tension between the claims of the government and those of the Indigenous people. This tension was expressed openly duringSandinista rule, which sought greater state control. The people of Mosquitia were strong supporters of U.S. efforts to undermine the Sandinistas and were important allies of theContras.[citation needed]
Miskito dissidents declared the independence of the unrecognizedCommunitarian Nation of Moskitia in 2009.[47][48] The movement is led by Reverend Hector Williams, who was elected as "Wihta Tara" (Great Judge) of Moskitia by the Council of Elders, its governing body[49] composed of traditional leaders from within the Miskito community. The council advocates for independence and has considered a referendum, seeking international recognition. It also addresses the needs of the impoverished Moskitian communities, such as drug addiction among youth as the coast is slowly gaining influence as a corridor for drug trafficking.[49] However, the allure of possible Narco funding might be a tempting method of supporting independence should the movement find no support.[50]
The movement was backed by a 400-man "indigenous army" made up of veterans of theContras, which captured the YAMATA party headquarters in 2009.[51]
The Mosquito Coast was a sparsely populated territory.
Today, what used to be the Miskito Coast ofNicaragua has a population of 400,000 inhabitants, consisting of 57%Miskito, 22%Creoles (Afro-Europeans), 15%Ladinos, 4%Sumu (Amerindian), 1%Garifuna (Afro-Indians), 0.5%Chinese and 0.5%Rama (Amerindian).[52]
Anglicanism and theMoravian Church gained a significant following in Mosquitia.
Early history of Mosquitia also saw minor involvement from thePuritans.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)FormerBritish Empire and currentBritish Overseas Territories | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
13°22′44″N83°35′02″W / 13.379°N 83.584°W /13.379; -83.584
