The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century. Independence from Spain was declared in 1821 and the country became an independent republic in 1838. Britain occupied the Caribbean Coast in the first half of the 19th century, but gradually ceded control of the region in subsequent decades. Violent opposition to governmental manipulation and corruption spread to all classes by 1978 and resulted in a short-lived civil war that brought a civic-military coalition, spearheaded by the Marxist Sandinista guerrillas led by Daniel Ortega Saavedra to power in 1979. Nicaraguan aid to leftist rebels in El Salvador prompted the US to sponsor anti-Sandinista contra guerrillas through much of the 1980s. After losing free and fair elections in 1990, 1996, and 2001, former Sandinista President Daniel Ortega was elected president in 2006, 2011, 2016, and most recently in 2021. Municipal, regional, and national-level elections since 2008 have been marred by widespread irregularities. Democratic institutions have weakened under the Ortega regime as the president has garnered full control over all branches of government, especially after cracking down on a nationwide pro-democracy protest movement in 2018. In the lead-up to the 2021 presidential election, authorities arrested over 40 individuals linked to the political opposition, including presidential candidates, private sector leaders, NGO workers, human rights defenders, and journalists. Only five lesser-known presidential candidates of mostly small parties allied to Ortega’s Sandinistas were allowed to run against Ortega in the November 2021 election.
Economy
low-income Central American economy; until 2018, nearly 20 years of sustained GDP growth; recent struggles due to COVID-19, political instability, and hurricanes; significant remittances; increasing poverty and food scarcity since 2005; sanctions limit investment.
Population
The population is 6,359,689 (2023 est.) which consists of Mestizo (mixed Amerindian and White) 69%, White 17%, Black 9%, Amerindian 5%
Afro-Nicaraguans are Nicaraguans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Five main distinct ethnic groups exist: The Creoles who descend from Anglo-Caribbean countries and many of whom still speak Nicaragua English Creole, the Miskito Sambus descendants of Spanish slaves and indigenous Central Americans who still speak Miskito and/or Miskito Coast Creole, the Garifunas descendants of Zambos (Caribs, Arawaks, and shipwrecked maroons) expelled from St. Vincent who speak Garifuna, the Rama Cay zambos a subset of the Miskito who speak Rama Cay Creole,[6] and the descendants of those enslaved by the Spanish.
The first African slaves transported to Nicaragua were taken by Gil González Dávila, who purchased them for 300 pesos in Panama from Pedrarias Dávila´s colonial administrator. From there they took eleven enslaved individuals to the newly founded Nicaragua. They were already baptized before being taken to Nicaragua. In 1531, the council of Leon asked the King of Spain for authorization to extract a thousand slaves, tax-free, to give to the neighbors. The council of Granada, Spain – in November 24, 1544 – asked the same authorization to import 50 people to enslave them in the opening of the “rapids of the drain”. Also, Spanish colonists, who could no longer enslave the Native Americans following the New Laws of 1542, required workers in their newly formed haciendas. So, from 1558, Bishop Lazaro Carrasco, meeting with the Native Americans “almost all consumed” and less than a hundred Spanish neighbors without enough real entries, asked for the King’s license to import 600 people of African descent to enslave them, they would remedy the situation, i.e., could produce the earth.
The number of the first African people enslaved were imported must have been considerable, perhaps thousands. Because most Spanish who emigrated to America were men, soldiers and colonists took indigenous and African women as partners and concubines. As early as the 18th century, most people who were enslaved born in the territory were mulattoes. According to colonial documents, people of African descent who had been enslaved came from such ethnic groups such as Arara, mainly the Ewe and Fon from Ghana, Togo, Benin, the Yoruba people from Yorubaland, now located in Nigeria, Togo and Benin, the Ashanti (of Ghana), those from what is now known as “Angola“, the Congo region, the “mina” and “Mandinga” of the Gambia. The proportion of men and women slaves was very similar.
Miscegenation caused a large release of enslaved people. Thus emerged middle classes formed by Zambo, mulatto and quadroon (those with a quarter African blood) and other mixtures. By 1820, persons of some African descent made up 84 percent of the population.
But many of them were kept as slaves, probably hundreds. Thus, during the first half of the 17th century, many of the slaves were used in the indigo mills. Since the 17th century, several groups of slaves rebelled against their owners and migrated to other places and settled in small clandestine colonies, free from Spanish rule. Therefore, these slaves, the “Cimarrons” (cimarrones) were affected by several royal orders issued against them. One of them agreed to raise an army against those colonies and return enslaved people to their owners. This law was fulfilled in Nicaragua.
However, the Spanish were not the only people to import people to make them slaves to Nicaragua. The English, who were colonists on the coast of Nicaragua since 1633, also imported groups of people to enslave since the late 17th century. The English began cultivating sugar cane and indigo around Bluefields and on the banks of the Rio Coco, which were labor-intensive crops. The slaves were also used for cotton plantations and especially for cutting mahogany. As in the case of slaves imported by the Spanish, the African slaves of the English mixed with the Miskito, Sumu, and Rama indigenous peoples of the area.
Most “caseros” (derived from Spanish “Casa” -house- i.e., men assigned to domestic service in the homes of Creoles and Spaniards) enslaved African and mulatto people who also performed agricultural and cattle, but were not the main operating system. Finally, following independence, slavery was abolished by the decree of the Constituent Assembly of April 17, 1824.
However, in the early 19th century slaves arrived from Jamaica to the Nicaraguan Caribbean coasts, when the region was a British protectorate. They became “creoles”. Later, in 1832, some groups of Garifuna people came to the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua from Honduras to fight for their land, to be recognized as ethnic, and to preserve their cultural identity. However, the Garifuna were met with fierce opposition from the Miskito people, as indigenous of these territories, and of the Creole, who forced them to accept English as the language for business transactions and a half for insertion and recognition in society.
Most enslaved people imported by the Spanish to Nicaragua were mixed during the colonial era and their mulatto and Quadroon descendants also re-mixed with the majority indigenous, mestizo and white. For this reason, today, the descendants of black enslaved people who were imported by the Spanish in Nicaragua are mostly white people or Amerindians with some black ancestors. So, most Black Nicaraguans are descended from the enslaved people who were imported by the British and the West Indian immigrants who arrived on the shores of the country in the 17th century. Most Afro-Nicaraguans reside on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which is also the vast and sparsely populated region that had British occupation from 1635 to 1860. The Afro-Nicaraguans are fundamentally divided into three groups, also present in Honduras: Creoles (majority group), Garifuna, and Indigenous zambos. The Afro-Nicaraguan population is descended from enslaved people who were exported from places such as Panama, Nigeria, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamaica.