Rights, Resources, and the Social Memory of Struggle: Reflections and Black Community Land Rights on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast

In early 1997, the three authors accepted a research contract, funded by the World Bank, to carry out a diagnóstico (research and analysis) of the communal land claims of some 130 indigenous, Garífuna, and Afro-Nicaraguan communities on the Atlantic (Caribbean) Coast of Nicaragua. This essay makes the diagnóstico itself the subject of analysis, summarizing the research results and examining their impact. After a brief overview of the role of land claims in the history of coast peoples, we present a summary of the research project’s conception, methodology, and principal findings. Two substantive analytical sections follow. One examines the contradictory positioning of this research—funded by the World Bank, administered by the state, yet conceived to advance the interests of community members who perceive the state as their long-term adversary. The second reflects on theoretical insights gained from this type of research, in which the very process of data collection transforms the object of inquiry, and in which “research subjects” actively produce the knowledge that forms the basis of the study’s analysis and conclusions. Within this second topic, we focus primarily on how coast community members conceive and justify their rights to communal land and how these formulations help us think beyond the morass of “invented traditions,” the tension between “essentialist” and “constructed” identities, and other Western social science conundrums. We conclude emphasizing the obstacles and challenges that will lie ahead, as these communities continue their efforts to achieve legal recognition of their communal land claims.