Honduras’ Harsh Conditions Force Miskitos to Go Home to Nicaragua

On a reddish dirt road that begins at this Atlantic port’s only stoplight, men and women line up early in the morning with unwieldy sacks of rice and corn, plastic jugs of cooking oil and children in tow.

Conversing in a staccato dialect as the blistering sun rises overhead, they wait with the patience of those accustomed to waiting. Eventually, a truck will come to take them home to their native villages on the Coco River, which many have not seen for several years.

In recent months, thousands of Miskito Indians have returned to Nicaragua from havens in neighboring Honduras, where some fled Sandinista repression in the early 1980s and others escaped from fighting between the army and anti-Sandinista rebels last year.

While no one has precise figures, relief workers, government officials and Indians agree that more and more refugees are returning each month--on their own or through a U.N. repatriation program.

Meager Food Rations

Returning Miskitos say harsh conditions in Honduras were pushing them back to Nicaragua. At the same time, on the grapevine by which rural people communicate through marshes and across rivers, the refugees heard that the Sandinistas had begun treating Indians better and were talking about Indians’ rights. They heard that fighting had subsided in northeastern Nicaragua. And oddly enough, Indian guerrillas, who for months had warned the Miskitos against going back to Nicaragua, suddenly were telling them it was all right to leave the refugee camp. Some refugees said that Indian rebels had pushed them to move to Honduras in the first place.

Returning Miskitos said that they could not live in Honduras on the meager food rations that relief organizations gave them and that Honduran authorities would not allow them to work.

The risks of war, they decided, were preferable to idle hunger.

“I was there for six years, two of those without work,” said Benita Henriquez, 34, who returned this month. “My needs are great. I have five children. My husband doesn’t have any work. I said it’s better to go home. . . ,” she said.

Like most residents of her village, San Jeronimo, she left Nicaragua in 1981 after 17 Miskitos were killed in the nearby town of Leimus during a Sandinista military operation against the rebels.

During that period, refugees said, Sandinistas routinely arrested Indians suspected of cooperating with the rebels, burned many houses and killed animals.

Elba Ramsey, 29, a Miskito schoolteacher from San Jeronimo, said she left last spring when fighting between Sandinistas and members of KISAN, the Indian guerrilla group, frightened thousands into leaving their villages. Ramsey, who returned in December, said 61 of San Jeronimo’s 78 families have returned.

Sandinista officials refused to let two journalists travel outside of Puerto Cabezas to visit villages along the Coco River, which marks the border between Honduras and Nicaragua and is considered a restricted military zone. But refugees interviewed said families were returning to Waspam, Bilwascarma, Kum, Sandy Bay and many other communities on the river and Nicaragua’s northeastern coast.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees brought 1,700 Indians back from Honduras last year and about 370 during the first six weeks of this year. Others have simply crossed the Coco River on their own, although by doing do, they risk of running into fighting or rebel factions who oppose their return.

Government officials say there are 12,000 to 13,000 Indians living along the river in Nicaragua now--up from about 2,000 last April. Relief workers say the figure is slightly lower.

Difficult Conditions

U.N. officials in Honduras said 16,000 Indians remain in camp there, compared to about 20,000 last April, and an unknown number live on the Honduran side of the river. Many of those are family members of the rebels.

The Indian exodus last spring to Honduras and the teeming refugee camps was a propaganda advantage for the rebels. But some Miskitos said KISAN rebels told them late last year that they no longer objected to their return to Nicaragua.

“They said to wait until December and, if there was no heavy combat, to go back, that they couldn’t help us (in Honduras). But they said if we decided to go to Nicaragua that we should go to the communities, not stay in Puerto Cabezas,” Ramsey said.

Conditions in the steamy river area are difficult for the returning Miskitos. Some who have been back to their villages say many people do not have materials to build houses or enough tools to farm. Residents from San Jeronimo said some people were camped out.

The government, the International Red Cross, the U.N. refugee group and religious groups are assisting the refugees, but all agree that there is a shortage of aid.

Many refugees still are afraid to venture up to the river and have stayed in Puerto Cabezas, where the population has quadrupled to 20,000 in the last few years with a mixture of Indians, English-speaking Creoles and Ladinos, a local term for Spanish-speaking Indians.

Puerto Cabezas boasts two paved streets and a stoplight that rarely works. It is loosely linked to the rest of Nicaragua by rugged dirt roads, airplane service that is frequently canceled for lack of fuel, and Morse Code telegraph service that functions intermittently.

The port’s economy is nearly stagnant, for while hardwood forests flourish in the countryside, two major sawmills have been burned by rebels and a third was closed by mechanical failure. Cashews, grapefruit and coconuts flourish in the sultry climate, but none has been developed for export.

Many of the recent immigrants from the rural areas sustain themselves selling food in the marketplace or peddling wood they manage to cut in the countryside.

The region traditionally has been isolated from the rest of Nicaragua and culturally distinct, with three groups of Indians: the Sumos, the Ramas and the largest group, the Miskitos. The Indians’ historic distrust of Spanish-speakers from the Pacific Coast region was aggravated by the Sandinistas with early human rights abuses.

In the last few years, the Sandinistas have worked hard to remedy what they now call their early “errors.” They have hired locals to work for the government, increased education for Indians and encouraged the return of refugees with food and other assistance.

The government also has negotiated a cease-fire with one group of the Indian rebels, called KISAN for Peace, allowing about 200 rebels to remain armed and in charge of security in the town of Yulu.

But the KISAN combatants--allegedly more than 1,000--who are allied with the larger Nicaraguan Democratic Force, remain in the Honduran border area and, although badly divided, still command the support of some of the civilian population.

“They are Indians too, and it is their children who are fighting,” explained a church social worker.

Some Miskitos, however, have expressed fear of the rebels, who reportedly have engaged in forced recruiting and kidnaping.

The Sandinistas’ biggest push to win the Indians’ confidence and keep them in Nicaragua rests with an Atlantic Coast autonomy plan. A commission was set up to negotiate conditions of autonomy with KISAN for Peace and unarmed Indian and Creole groups. They have scheduled a meeting of a multi-ethnic assembly to debate the issues at the end of the month.

Observers say autonomy is a potentially explosive issue because the government and the Indian groups may have widely divergent definitions of the term, ranging from shared rule to self-rule.

Juan Salgado, a leader of KISAN for Peace, said the Indians want to be able to move throughout the Atlantic region without permits and to have unrestricted hunting, bilingual education, the rights to Atlantic Coast natural resources, and an autonomous regional administration to run Indian affairs.

The Sandinistas appear to be making some inroads. The Indians acknowledge that Sandinista soldiers have stopped their abuses, and observers say the Sandinistas have managed to reduce much of the Indians’ previous hostility toward them to mere suspicion today.