Democracy gets close and personal

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Taxes make the difference. But Howard's term of office was scheduled to end in November 2000, and he had a lot to get done. His next stop that morning was another construction site, this one for a new school. As the pickup truck labored up a hill, he explained that the municipality bought the land for the school with money raised from taxes.

Corn Island is one of the few Atlantic Coast municipalities that spends money it has raised itself, in this case, a 1 percent levy on businesses. The tax moneys come primarily from fishing, and almost exclusively from small-scale lobster fishermen. The big firms won't pay, according to Howard, and he has initiated legal action against them.

Taken together, the money raised from taxes, some limited funds from the central and regional governments, and donations–for example from Corn Island's sister city of Gouda in the Netherlands–yield an annual municipal budget of around $560,000. With these funds, Corn Island has bought a multigrader and compactor to maintain roads, as well as other road maintenance equipment.

The school Howard was visiting will be staffed by teachers paid by local tax money. Most of them will come from the mainland, either from nearby Bluefields or distant Managua. Their living quarters will also be provided by the municipality.

Arriving at the construction site, Howard consulted with the foreman, who was from Managua. In fact, all of the workers were mestizos from the Pacific side of Nicaragua, not local Creoles, people of African origin who identify with the culture of the Caribbean.

This was another cultural idiosyncrasy of island life, said Howard. He would prefer to see local people doing the work, but islanders have other things on their mind, like fishing. They might work for a few days, said Howard, and then go off in search of lobster. "Even in the off season," he said, "they will think, 'today will be my lucky day'." Since local people are also not inclined to go into business, shops are generally owned by nonislanders. The local people resent this, but they would rather fish than run a business themselves.

The morning nearly over, Howard pulled up in front of a shack on the beach that served as a lobster acopio, or receiving station. There, for the next hour, he talked to the fishermen and played dominos. Slap, and slap again, went the blue plastic pieces, hitting the table so hard its legs wobbled.

The complex history of a long-ignored region. To understand the problems of Mayor Howard and Corn Island, it helps to know a little about the complex history of this region. Although called the Atlantic Coast, it comprises fully half of Nicaragua's national territory, from the beaches and twisting estuaries, through the arid lowlands, to the foothills leading to the country's populated heart in the Pacific region.

But more than geography distinguishes the Atlantic Coast from the rest of the country. When its residents refer to people "del Pacífico," (from the Pacific), or españoles, they mean persons with a very different cultural and racial mix from their own. The Pacific side of the country is Spanish in its heritage and mestizo in its ethnic background. Its graceful colonial cities of Granada and León recall the early years of Spanish rule. After independence from Spain, the country briefly became part of the Mexican Empire, and then a member of a federation of independent Central American provinces. Then followed a period as an independent republic marked by intense political rivalries, and a brief interlude in which an American interloper briefly seized the presidency.

But while the Pacific region passed through these tumultuous years of adolescence on its path to nationhood, the Atlantic Coast remained a British protectorate. Its communities developed a distinctive racial, linguistic and cultural mix that exists to this day.

Only in 1894 was the Atlantic Coast region incorporated into Nicaragua. And until 1987, the entire area was administered from Managua, the capital, as one enormous department.

A product of its geography and history, the population of the Atlantic Coast is very different from that of the rest of the country. In the south and on into Costa Rica live large numbers of Creoles of African heritage. They speak a distinctive language, all but unintelligible to an outsider, as well as English, and in many cases Spanish too. Members of the distinct Garifuna communities speak their own language altogether.

The northern part of the Atlantic Coast is a bastion of the Miskito Indian culture that extends beyond the Coco River and into Honduras. Maintaining their language, beliefs, and traditional political institutions, the Miskitos continue to assert their identity and their historic relationship to the land.

In addition, the Mayagna (also known as the Sumu, which in the Miskito language means "non-Miskito") live in isolated areas in the north, and in the south, the Ranas add to the region's ethnic and cultural diversity. All are intent on conserving their linguistic and cultural traditions.

Today, the Atlantic Coast is home to less than 15 percent of Nicaragua's five million inhabitants. But its population is growing fast as mestizos from the rest of the country come in search of economic opportunities, rapidly expanding the agriculture frontier. The result in many cases is increasing tensions between the local population and the newcomers as well as mounting pressure on natural resources.

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Date posted: May 2001

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