Lottie Cunningham is the founder of the Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN) and recently won the 2020 Right Livelihood Award.
Lottie Cunningham: “They want to exterminate us, create ethnocide”
By Fabián Medina in La Prensa, Oct 11, 2020
Lottie Cunningham abandoned her Rio Coco in 1982 with “Red Christmas” studied four professional careers and has become the voice of the indigenous who are being exterminated in the Caribbean Coast.
Lottie Cunningham wanted to end her days along the shore of the Rio Coco that saw her grow up. She has a house in Bilwaskarma for her retirement. “I would like this struggle to end soon to be able to go to my community,” she says hopefully. Even though she thinks it will be difficult for her to live long enough to see “the end of the struggle.”
As a child she ran around the crystal-clear creeks, fishing in the river, or participating in “pana-pana”, an activity where the entire community joyfully harvests what was planted. “The planting is done collectively, and the harvest is done collectively,” she says.
Returning to where she was happy. The life of that girl in the stilt house of her grandmother Elvida Cunningham Davis, a woman who “talked to the trees”, complained to them when they did not produce and taught little Lottie, and another 11 grandchildren, the principles that would lead her today to be one of the most recognized defenders of indigenous rights. So much so that a few days ago she was awarded the 2020 Right Livelihood Award, the prize popularly known as the “Alternative Nobel”.
Cunningham studied Nursing to serve her community, and when she felt that as a nurse her claims were not being heard, she studied Law.
“I identify myself as a Mískita indigenous person,” says this 61 year old woman who abandoned her river in 1982 with the forced displacement operations known as Red Christmas, carried out by the Sandinista government. She studied four professional careers and has become the voice of the indigenous from the Caribbean Coast who are being exterminated.
You abandoned your community with Red Christmas. How was that?
I was then working as a nurse in Bluefields. I was not there at the moment that it started, nevertheless, I was transferred there and personally experienced the displacement of my communities as a nurse. When I was in the south (Bluefields) the Ministry of Health was looking for nurses who spoke Mískito and I signed up as a volunteer.
What happened with your family?
My grandmother lost her house, her animals, they took her to Puerto Cabezas and she stayed in the home of a cousin. I went to the settlements where all the people the government had removed were found. More than 200 communities. Four settlements known as Tasba Pri (Free Land): Wasminona, Sahsa, Sumubila, and Columbus. For me it was devastating.
Was life very difficult there?
Of course, we lived in tents. I built the clinics with the community from bamboo. I worked 29 communities with a mobile brigade that I organized and prepared within nine months. In the Wasminona settlement, it was just Mískitos, and another, Españolina, Mayangna people. I also treated poor peasants who lived there.
Did you support the Sandinista Revolution?
In my youth I did, because I felt that they were talking about a progressive philosophy. I felt that they were going to improve the conditions of the indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples. That we were no longer going to be excluded from national development. But when I began to see all the destruction that they did, the human rights violations, then in 1988 I made the decision to resign. At that time a professional who resigned was persecuted. I said that I was going to study. But I was never a member of the party.
At what time did you begin to get interested in human rights?
When I saw that they forcibly displaced people without their consent. I remember the grandmothers asking the members of the Army that at least they should let them take a sheet or a pot, and they said no, that for national sovereignty they had to remove them from there. Even though I felt that I was helping my community through my profession, I felt that as a nurse they were not listening to my opinion, and at that moment I could not choose a profession that subordinated me to the State. So, I chose Law.
Do you believe that there is a confrontation between the Pacific and the indigenous communities of the Caribbean?
What exists is institutionalized discrimination on the part of the State of Nicaragua. It is not a matter of Northern Pacific – Costal Pacific, but rather that there are different types of discrimination or racism that the system has been creating.
Cultural racism.
Of course. When I was studying Law in the UCA and spoke Mískito with other young women, they would tell me, “hey, don´t speak that here, here we are in Nicaragua”. But they were not to blame, when you analyze properly that pyramid of colonialization. Making some believe that they are better than others. I have felt discrimination since my childhood. In the legislation in the time of Somoza they spoke about bastard children. Children within marriage had more privileges than ones outside of marriage, like myself.
Is that racism also manifested among different indigenous ethnic groups? For example, between Miskitos and Mayangnas…
There are different forms of racism, but internal colonialization and external colonialization have been promoting it. The person who has power and economic resources is the person from the Pacific, who speaks Spanish, to whom the bank can make loans, and then when he works that loan in the Coast, he goes to look for someone who is fluid in Spanish, and then the Spanish person is going to look for an Afro-Descendent person because he speaks English and can have a relationship with an export business, and then comes the Mískito, and then the Mayangna, and so on. And the State, instead of establishing equality, has promoted it (racism). There you see it, most of the people who are in power right now are Afro-descendent. Of course, this has created racism between Mískitos and Mayangnas or between Mískitos and Afro-descendents and vice versa.
What does the figure of the settler mean for you at this time?
This word settler we did not start using. It came from the communities. Law 445, the Law of Communal Property, talks about “third parties”, and a third party is a natural or legal entity that has come to occupy their land without their consent and without any document. The law says that those people who are third parties who have an agrarian reform title from before 1987 will be recognized, will be respected. There are other people who have come but did not have any type of title and have occupied the land in an illegal way, but continue being third parties. When the massive invasion began, I began to hear “settlers” in some assemblies. Settlers and third parties. What is a settler for you? I asked in an assembly with approximately 200 indigenous. For us, they told me, third parties are those who the law mentions, but settlers are the people who have come to occupy our lands after the government gave us land titles. The government wants to take over everything and is sending these people to our land to settle it. They [the indigenous] call “third parties” those poor peasants who already were living with them and who have been respectful of the traditional norms. The settlers are not respectful. They are people who are armed, who do not respect neither the ancestors nor the traditional authorities, they have carried out kidnapping and murders.
Do they see the settlers as enemies?
They see them as people who they cannot live with.
Is there a war?
I would not say that it is a war. The State of Nicaragua has promoted the invasion of the settlers through concessions and permits to usurp the ownership of the land. They do not believe in communal property. The municipal governments themselves order that taxes be collected on the felling of the forests and extractive activities. It is not a declared war, but institutionalized discrimination. The State of Nicaragua has never protected communal property as it protects private property. It is a form of racial discrimination.
Is the survival of the indigenous in Nicaragua in danger?
Of course it is. Just like it happened to the indigenous brothers and sisters in the Pacific, Center and Northern Nicaragua. What they tell is something very similar. They left them without land and have denied them their autonomy. They want to exterminate us, create ethnocide, because by uprooting [indigenous[ where there is a greater population of settlers within indigenous lands, they are going to try to dominate the other population. Ethnocide is that in addition to losing our territory, this generation loses their cultural identity. You should see the letters from the settlers. They murder and leave letters with a stake in the body of a Mískito, or they leave letters in plastic bags tied to a tree where the indigenous pass by. They tell them, “You the Mískitos – they use a very degrading word, they call them “flies”[1]– must understand that you have no government. The government protects us. And as Nicaraguans that we are, we have rights to these lands. You are never going to get rid of us”. We have several notes. They are harsh messages.
Have you gone to the Police or the Army to seek protection? Do you have any backing from these institutions?
At no time. When the communities call me to advise them, we tell them, “First go to the closest military post and tell them to accompany you.” Example, when there is a kidnapping. The Army and the Police have told them that they have no authorization from their hierarchy to provide them accompaniment. But if we go in our boats and we go to meet with them, then we are stopped and seized by the Army.
It could be said that this State does not respect the rights of other citizens as well. Let us say that it is more egalitarian in its abuse.
The crisis of the indigenous is not from 2018. We were already experiencing it and it was getting worse, from intimidation, death threats to murders, kidnappings and disappeared indigenous. The Nicaragua society was not sensitive to the fact that they were killing us. It was in 2018, with the human right crisis which got worse in the country, that many of the civil society organizations have recognized it. The students even have apologized, “We would hear about that, but we didn´t pay attention to it.” And we continue struggling within this crisis because in the midst of the struggle of the country, the struggle of the indigenous and Afro-descendent people can be made invisible.
What does the prize that you just received mean for you?
I have accepted this recognition with a lot of humility, because first of all I am not taking it on in my personal capacity. I have accepted it in the name of the indigenous peoples of Nicaragua. And in particular for those people who have given their lives defending the land. I could not do what I do without those human rights defenders within the communities. This prize comes to make visible this crucial context of the people of Nicaragua. It is not the same to say it, the humanitarian, the food crisis that exists. You hear mothers say that they only have food for one meal and that meal is just bananas with salt.
Personal plane
Lottie Cunningham Wren was born 61 years ago in Bilwaskarma, a community along the shore of the Rio Coco, bordering on Honduras, which is known as the Nicaraguan Mosquitia.
She was born outside of marriage but was raised since the age of four months by her paternal grandmother, Elvida Cunningham Davis, a fundamental person in her life. She did not meet her mother until she was 20 years old.
She decided to study Nursing, influenced by an aunt who was a nurse, and because in Bilwaskarma there was a nursing school administered by the Moravian Church. In 1979 when she was one semester short of finishing her major, the Sandinistas closed the school of Bilwaskarma and Lottie Cunningham went to the UPOLI to finish her studies in 1980.
In the home of her grandfather she lived with 11 other cousins. She spoke Mískito and Creole English. When she started school she was forced to learn to speak Spanish. “For us Spanish was very difficult,” she says.
She has studied Nursing, has a Licentiate in Public Health Administration, Law and Masters degrees in Local Law and another in International Environmental and Human Rights Law. In 1997 she cofounded the Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN), which she currently directs and is the legal representative of 197 communal governments and nine territorial governments.
She is married to an Afro-descendent person and has one son and two granddaughters. “When we got married I told him, “You are clear that you are marrying a woman from the countryside? Are you willing to go with me to my community when I go back?”
[1] In Spanish it is a play on words, “Moscos” means flies, but the area is also known as the Mosquitia