A BRIEF BACKGROUND OF THE MISKITO PEOPLE
(Taken from the work done by the Cardinal Stritch University and published on their website. Minor amendments were made in this article as a result of the personal experiences of the team members of SALT, Inc.)
Along the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras there is a small indigenous tribe of people numbering around 300,000 known as the Miskito people. The Miskito people have their own language, traditions, lifestyle, and customs that culminate into a special type of culture known as “Miskito Culture”. Despite the small number of the Miskito tribe, they have had an impact on Nicaragua and Honduras through adaptation of their lifestyle and folklore. The Miskito people have brought an air of family and sense of community to the inhospitable rainforests through the development of their small village communities that center around friendship and unity. These people have come to share their food, clothes, housing with one another as brothers and sisters of humanity overcoming the burdens of competitiveness to embrace a simpler lifestyle.
Yet there lies an air of contradiction surrounding the Miskito people. The Miskito people live, surrounded by immense natural beauty, within a tightly woven family community composed of loving, caring individuals. Nevertheless, they face borderline starvation, a total and utter lack of modern conveniences and devastating poverty. All Miskito people face a choice, a choice between leaving their communities and traditional way of life or breaking away from their heritage and encompassing modern life and society. Yet not everyone can leave and go to the urban cities and successfully find work while, at the same time, not everyone can stay in the jungle and continue their current traditional way of life either. A choice between these two options must be made by every family and individual and sacrifices are faced on both sides of the dilemma.
The Miskito people show an inner goodness that radiates about them, stemming from their respect and appreciation of their fellow man. These people live what many would consider a meager existence. Instead, the Miskito people choose to live close to nature, the land, and the wild animals of the rain forest, living a truly sustenance based lifestyle, relying solely on what they themselves can produce and dominate. In many ways, the Miskito people live a life of yesterday. They do not face the pressure to advance, compete with one another or exceed their current circumstances.
Foods of the Miskito people include a diet of mostly boiled fish and bananas. On their small plots of cleared land, the Miskito tribes grow rice, beans, cassava, and bananas. Rather than speak the Spanish language as most of Nicaragua does, the Miskito people speak their own dialect. The Miskito people are a tribe native to Nicaragua; they are an indigenous group that lived in this same area before the Spaniards arrived from Spain and colonized the area.
Along the coastal villages of the Caribbean, coconut, cassava, mango, and oranges grow. Along with these, a plentitude of fish are available from the sea. Inland, the rivers offer lush rainforest jungle for growing rice, beans and bananas. The children of the Miskito tribe learn early in childhood how to clear and farm the land as their survival depends on it. All farming is done manually using traditional methods. The only tools available to them are axes, machetes, and hoes. A small group of men from a village usually sets out on foot to clear a small plot of one or two hectares. The men begin by chopping down all the trees and