Bosawás Biosphere Reserve

History

Located within the state of Jinotega in northern Nicaragua, Bosawás overlaps the homelands of two of Nicaragua's indigenous peoples, the Mayangna and the Miskito, in an area which has abundant natural resources, most notably timber and gold. About 130,000 inhabitants practice subsistence farming within the boundaries, about 35,000 of them indigenous Miskito and Mayangna people.

The Bosawás Biosphere Reserve developed over time out of conflicts between the Sandinista government and indigenous Miskitu and Mayangna. As part of the peace process coming out of armed conflict between the Sandanistas and the Mayangna and Miskitu, the Nicaraguan government signed the 1987 Autonomy Law of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (Law 28) that formally recognized indigenous and Afro-descendant communities' territorial rights in the region. The subsequent Chamorro government set aside three large reserves, Bosawás being the largest, with its nucleus comprising approximately 7% of Nicaragua's total land area (the rest constitutes the reserve's buffer zone). The creation of Bosawás, declared without indigenous consultation, was initially considered a violation of the region's constitutionally guaranteed territorial autonomy. However, after negotiation and consultation with local Mayangna and Miskitu communities, by the late 1990s, indigenous territorial boundaries were demarcated, title was granted to the indigenous communities, and the idea of Bosawás as a biosphere reserve was embraced.

In January 2020, as part of an ongoing series of murders of indigenous people in Bosawás over land conflicts, several Mayangna people living in Bosawás were killed and kidnapped by mestizo settlers (colonos) seeking to steal indigenous land. This has repeated many times, including the August 2021 massacre of nine indigenous people and sexual assaults of indigenous women in Sauni As.