Post‐Sandinista Ethnic Identities in Western Nicaragua

Abstract

The meanings of the ethnic labels Indian and mestizo in Latin America are often treated as stable, bounded, and clearly marked by anthropologists, nationalists, and indigenous intellectuals alike. In Nicaragua, the post‐Sandinista emergence of a discourse of indigenous identity in the western region, where successive state elites have considered that identity erased, underscores the dynamic mutability of both indigenous and mestizo ethnicities. This reconsideration derives from dialogue between anthropological analysis and an indigenous intellectual involved in organizing in the western region.