Citizens or Anticitizens? Afro‐Descendants and Counternarcotics Policing in Multicultural Nicaragua

Abstract

R e s u m e n Este artículo examina la ciudadanía multicultural y la vigilancia antinarcóticos en Nicaragua como dos formas contradictorias de gubermentalidad posrevolucionaria dirigida a la población afrodescendiente en la Costa Atlántica de este país. Mientras el multiculturalismo representa una modalidad de gobernanza y diferencia cultural, la vigilancia antinarcóticos se basa en tecnologías de control que codifican las diferencias raciales, particularmente la negritud, como negativo y amenazante para el cuerpo político mestizo. El efecto político de estas estrategias coemergentes de gobernanza es profundo, simultáneamente empoderando, estigmatizando y radicalizando el activismo multicultural y la resistencia dentro de las comunidades afrodescendientes. Esos efectos respaldan el argumento central de este trabajo: para entender cómo el multiculturalismo posrevolucionario opera políticamente debemos mirar más allá de las iniciativas multiculturales y examinar otras tácticas de gobernanza que involucran a los sujetos multiculturales. [vigilancia antinarcóticos, multiculturalismo, Nicaragua, raza] A b s t r a c tThis article examines multicultural citizenship and counternarcotics policing in Nicaragua as two contradictory forms of postrevolutionary governmentality directed at Afro-descendant peoples from the Atlantic Coast region. While multiculturalism represents a modality of governance and political activism that holds new possibilities for the recognition and valorization of racial and cultural difference, counternarcotics policing relies on technologies of control that code racial difference, particularly 354J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y blackness, as negative and threatening to the mestizo body politic. The political effects of these coemergent governance strategies are profound, serving to simultaneously empower, stigmatize, and radicalize multicultural activism and resistance within Afrodescendant communities. Such effects support the central argument here that in order to understand how postrevolutionary multiculturalism operates politically, we must look beyond overtly multicultural initiatives to examine other tactics of government that implicate multicultural subjects. [counternarcotics policing, multiculturalism, Nicaragua, race]

Conservation by racialized dispossession: The making of an eco-destination on Honduras’s North Coast

“…In Honduras these practices are closely related to processes of racialized dispossession, especially because the majority of protected areas within the Honduras Caribbean Biological Corridor overlap with black and indigenous territories, as is the case of Garífuna and Miskito on the North Coast. These processes have been further exacerbated by the growing presence of drug traffickers in the region, and proliferating discourses that conflate black and indigenous peoples with the narcos (Goett, 2011). In Honduras, this is most visible in the Mosquitia, where Miskito Indians have been subjected to racialized dispossession via processes of agricultural modernization (Mollet, 2014) and through the militarization of the Rio Platano Biosphere (Bird and Main, 2012).…”

Securing social difference: Militarization and sexual violence in an Afro‐Nicaraguan community

“…Ideologies of mestizaje supported Nicaragua's annexation of the Atlantic coast region at the turn of the 20th century and continue to legitimate the colonization and economic exploitation of indigenous and Afrodescendant territories (Hooker :15). Local men avoid military service because they see the Nicaraguan army as a repressive force that serves the interests of the mestizo state and undermines their rights to territory and self‐determination (Goett :371).…”

“…In the process, the abuse charges were embedded in a mestizo nationalist script that associates Atlantic coast blackness with drug trafficking and criminality. I argue elsewhere that this script now shapes most debates about the region and has become one of the principal ways that racial difference is produced in the Nicaraguan political imaginary (Goett ). The following exchange between a local mestiza journalist and a navy commander illustrates the official response to the abuse charges in its early stages:

Commander: There may have been some abuses on the part of a few compañeros in years past.

…”

“…Nicaragua is frequently lauded for low homicide rates and its success with community policing, departing from the mano dura , or “iron fist,” tactics and soaring homicide rates that have plagued El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in recent years. But homicide rates vary dramatically from region to region, and community policing is absent in Atlantic coast communities, where the adversarial logics of 1980s ethnic conflict persist and militarization and incarceration predominate over rehabilitation and prevention (Goett ).…”

“…Under the Sandinista‐led drug war, the nation's incarceration rate has climbed from 119 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2007 to 153 in 2012 (International Centre for Prison Studies ). In the Bluefields penitentiary system, one‐third of inmates were incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses in 2009, and 50 percent of all inmates were of African descent in a city where they represent a quarter to a third of the population and a department where they represent just 5.4 percent of the population (Goett :361; INEC ).…”