Settler colonialism and the colonization of indigenous territories in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, Nicaragua

Keywords: settler colonialism, Latin America, indigenous territories
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Several authors have shown how the indigenous territories in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Latin America are under siege by non-indigenous “mestizo” settlers. This invasion of indigenous territories is generally analyzed and understood through the lens of colonization (e.g., Herlihy, 2016). Yet, in this paper, I suggest that the concept of “colonization” disregards the racialized structural domination that drives the settlement of non-indigenous settlers, or “colonos,” in Nicaragua’s indigenous territories. Drawing on work in critical race studies and feminist political ecology (e.g., Bonds & Inwood, 2016; Kobayashi & De Leeuw, 2010), as well as long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, the paper analyzes whether we could better understand this phenomenon through the lens of settler colonialism. That is, as a process where the colonizer “never leaves” (Simpson, 2011: 206), and indigenous communities are subjected to everyday racism, violence, and subjugation by the mestizo society. This lens calls for rethinking who a "settler" is, what “never leaving” means, and how structural domination may extend beyond physical settler bodies. This settler colonialism analytic points to how the continued invasion and violence in indigenous territories in Nicaragua and elsewhere can be understood as an ongoing structure rather than a one-time, passing instance. That is, the violent appropriation of indigenous territories is a demonstration of how the mestizo society and its “white institutional spaces” (Moore, 2008:5) continue to exercise everyday racialized domination over indigenous territories and worldviews, even in the supposedly “postcolonial” era.