Racial narratives: Miskito and colono land struggles in the Honduran Mosquitia

Abstract

This article examines the multiple ways race and racialized processes are embedded in Miskito Indian and ladino colono land struggles in Honduras. In the context of more than 30 years of state refusals to formalize the boundaries of Miskito ancestral territories, this article interrogates the ways in which the state accommodates ladino colono encroachments inside Miskito space. State and colono challenges to Miskito customary claims echo early post-colonial narratives of integration under the Civilization Program. Drawing from ethnographic accounts, this article illuminates how meanings and practices are intertwined in the way land use production and racial hierarchies are mutually constituted. Thus, I argue that Miskito, state and colono narratives of land struggle draw on, contest and reinvigorate a longstanding state nationalist project of ‘whitening’ where racial imaginaries are encoded in environmental arrangements and assessed through ascendant conceptions of suitable and unsuitable land use practices.