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Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA) -or Sons of Mother Earth- is an indigenous party from Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast. YATAMA has its roots in the MISURASATA (Miskito, Sumo and Rama Sandinista Alliance) and the MISURA/KISAN (Nicaraguan Coast Indian Unity) organisations. In 1988, in response to the Central American peace accords, the remnants of MISURASATA and MISURA/KISAN in Honduras, Costa Rica and Miami reorganized as YATAMA, united the traditional Miskitu leaders Steadman Fagoth and Brooklyn Rivera.

YATAMA has participated in several regional elections since 1990. Its best electoral result was in the autonomous elections on the Caribbean Coast in 1990 where they won 26 Regional Council member seat (out of 90).

BRIEF PROFILE OF THE PEOPLES OF YAPTI TASBA

The eastern part of Nicaragua along the Caribbean,
which is commonly known as the Atlantic Coast, is inhabited
by various native peoples and other populations of the
country. The Miskito, Sumo and Rama are the three indigenous
peoples found on the Atlantic Coast. Others in the region
include the creoles, garifunas and ladinos. The peoples of
the Atlantic coast, each of which has its own culture,
language and traditions, live in harmony. Their traditional
territory is Yapti Tasba (Mother Earth), which was passed to
them over millennia from their ancestors.

Yapti Tasba makes up approximately 38% of Nicaragua’s
territory and is inhabited by around 10% of the country’s
population. The indigenous peoples of the region comprise a
population of some 145,000 people who live primarily in
their traditional communities along the rivers, lagoons and
coastal areas of the region. The creole population is around
40,000 Caribbean-English speaking people who live primarily
in the urban centers in the southern part of the region.

The Garifuna (caribe) live in four communities located
near Pearl Lagoon and are estimated at around 1,500 people.
The ladino population totals some 80,000 inhabitants, is
part of the Nicaraguan Mestizo majority and is concentrated
primarily in the mining areas and in Bluefields.

Yapti Tasba has had an historical development entirely
different from that of the rest of Nicaragua, a factor which
today is manifest by its own cultural, social, economic and
ideological reality. The territory and the indigenous
peoples were not submitted to European colonization during
the 16th through 19th centuries. Instead, the indigenous
peoples enjoyed their self-determination until 1860, when
external forces arbitrarily reduced their territory to a
reserve with political and economic autonomous status. But
even that status was abolished entirely as a result of
military intervention on the part of forces from Managua in
1894.

From that time on, the indigenous peoples and the
creoles have been subjected to a long period of
marginalization, ethnocide and internal colonization by the
liberal-conservative governments and the Somocista
dictatorship. Furthermore, the natural resources of the
Yapti Tasba were pillaged during the irrational exploitation
by North American transnational companies acting in concert
with Managua governments.

Nonetheless, our peoples always have resisted all
colonial or neocolonial domination or submission, thus
preserving their survival and historical continuity as the
original peoples of the region. In 1973, ALPROMISU was
founded as the first ethno-political movement for the
defense and the promotion of the indigenous rights of the
Miskito and Sumo to their lands and resources.

With the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979,
the peoples of the Yapti Tasba enthusiastically and with
great expectation participated in the new national process,
promoting their collective aspirations. In November of the
same year, ALPROMISU became MISURASATA with the inclusion of
the Rama and the Sandinista term within the name of the
organization. Although at the beginning it appeared to
tolerate MISURASATA, the Sandinista Front from the start was
in fact intent on substituting itself through mass
organizations.

Similarly, Sandinistas were not sensitive to the
aspirations of our people nor to the nature of our society.
Instead, they reacted violently against the just claims of
the indigenous peoples in Yapti Tasba. Nonetheless, during
the first eighteen months the Sandinista government was in
power the native peoples participated in various aspects of
the revolutionary process of the country.

As the waters recede following more than 50 days of biblically proportioned rains that claimed more than 200 lives and caused an estimated $392 million in damage, a political storm is gathering over Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s handling of the disaster.

Allegations that the Sandinista Front is politicizing the distribution of humanitarian aid for Hurricane Felix has led to rumblings of rebellion on the coast and calls for an investigation by opposition lawmakers in Managua.

On Oct. 31, several hundred Miskito Indians from the northern Caribbean regional capital of Bilwi took over the airport’s storage warehouses in search of relief aid, which they claim is not getting to the communities that were devastated by the Category 5 storm two months ago.

Another group of angry citizens clashed with government sympathizers in front of city hall, while others threatened to ransack church storage facilities in search of food and relief supplies.

`TIME BOMB’

Osorno Coleman, a former anti-Sandinista rebel leader still known by the nom de guerre ”Blas,” told The Miami Herald that the situation on the Caribbean coast has become a “time bomb.”

”The government is politicizing the relief aid and the majority of the population is not receiving anything,” said Coleman, who leads an indigenous group called Yatama No Sandinista. “If the government continues this behavior, there could be more uprisings and it could start to get out of control.”

The relationship between Nicaragua’s Caribbean indigenous communities and the Sandinistas has been historically rocky. The Miskito communities suffered innumerable human rights abuses at the hands of the Sandinista government in the 1980s, some of which were outlined in a suit filed by the Miskitos with the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Some South Florida aid organizations said that they were aware that some of the aid sent to Nicaragua was not getting through for political reasons, though they added that political meddling with relief aid is common when disasters occur.

”Unfortunately, it’s part of the business. It’s the way governments work everywhere,” said one relief agency representative, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid straining the relationship between the organization and the Nicaraguan government.

The main South Florida organization helping Nicaragua, the American Nicaraguan Foundation, said that it was not facing any problems with distribution of its aid.

”Our aid is getting where it needs to go,” said Federico Cuadra, an ANF spokesman.

Government opponents claim the Sandinistas are using the controversial Councils of Citizen Power (CPCs) — citizen partisan groups that the Sandinista government is creating all over the country — to control the distribution of government aid to party loyalists. Critics claim that the CPCs are using aid distribution to recruit others to join their organization, and thereby strengthen the Sandinista party base heading into next year’s municipal elections.

In the depressed inland region known as the mining triangle, frustration with the Sandinistas’ tactics is also reaching a boiling point, according to opposition party officials and community leaders.

POLITICAL MANEUVER

Víctor Manuel Duarte, a Liberal Party lawmaker from the mining town of Siuna, said the Sandinistas are attempting to use relief aid to undermine local government officials and win over voters.

Duarte said he fears the Sandinistas’ meddling and alleged harassment of local officials could lead to a resurgence of small groups of rearmed Contras in a region that was haunted by rearmed groups throughout the 1990s.

The situation is equally grim for the Miskito communities living in the nearby forests.

Nicanor Polanco, a former anti-Sandinista rebel leader who represents 340 demobilized Miskito combatants, says his community has received no government assistance since the hurricane destroyed their village and crops, and now his people are getting sick. Instead of helping, he says, the government is making recovery impossible by prohibiting the indigenous communities from harvesting and selling the fallen timber from trees leveled by the storm.

The government says the logging ban is to prevent uncontrolled cutting and timber trafficking, but indigenous communities like Polanco’s claim that if they can’t sell their wood, they won’t have money to buy seeds to replant basic food crops.

”It’s ugly and now it’s organized,” he said, referring to the growing opposition movement. “This could get violent and who knows where it will lead.”

Hurricane Felix ripped across the northeastern corner of Nicaragua on Sept. 4, leaving 244 people dead or missing and 22,000 homes damaged or destroyed, in addition to obliterating crops and leveling huge swaths of virgin forest. The region’s fishing and lobster industry — one of the main sources of economic livelihood in the region — has been all but wiped out.

Nicaragua is not the only region that suffered from recent natural disasters.

In Hispaniola, Tropical Storm Noel last month killed 142 people. At least 100 communities are still cut off by water two weeks after the storm.

In Cuba, Noel caused more than $500 million in damages to crops, homes and roads, the government reported last week.

Beyond Nicaragua’s northeastern region, six weeks of subsequent rains throughout the rest of the country resulted in thousand of people relocated to shelters, massive crop and cattle loss, and thousands of miles of roads washed out, prompting Ortega to declare a nationwide state of disaster Oct. 19.

GLOBAL HELP

The international community has provided millions in relief aid and funding to Nicaragua.

The United States has contributed more than $4.7 million in humanitarian relief, plus helicopter transportation to isolated communities and $7 million in funding for low-interest rate loans for reconstruction.

The World Food Program, which is helping to distribute international aid directly to the communities hit hardest by the storm, said the process is “going fairly well.”

”We have a distribution system that works and we’re confident with it,” said William Hart, resident representative of the World Food Program.

However, Hart said the aid his group is distributing is covering less than half of the 200,000 people affected by the storm.

”As in most emergencies, when people are severely affected and hungry, it’s never fast enough,” Hart said, “and it’s never enough for enough people.”

In a country that’s nutty about gossip, veteran barbers Cesar Larios and Manuel Rodriguez run the engine room of the national rumor mill — Managua’s landmark Imperial Barbershop. Since this modest three-chair barbershop opened its doors 35 years ago, Rodriguez and Larios have seated, aproned and lathered some of Nicaragua’s most important politicians, bankers and powerbrokers. Right-wing former president Arnoldo Alemin and ex-communist guerrilla leader Henry “Modesto” Ruiz are both on the client list. His Eminence, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the country’s top religious authority, has been getting the same haircut here for 30 years. Managua’s Sandinista Mayor, Nicho Marenco, comes in for a trim every month, as do the publishers of the two leading opposition dailies, and a flurry of politicians, businessmen and financial leaders.

Once seated comfortably in the red-cushioned barber’s chair, even the most powerful member of the elite becomes just another guy in need of grooming. And it’s a common-man experience whose relaxed intimacy most of them seem to relish. “They come in and gossip and joke around,” says the 61-year-old Rodriguez, as he deftly moves a straight blade around the ears of a lesser-known patron. “The politicians want to know what other people say about them, and what they say about others.”

The politicians, of course, also do some politicking of their own.

“The Liberals says bad things about the Sandinistas, and the Sandinistas say bad things about the Liberals — it’s a crossfire,” says Larios, 56, the barbershop’s founder and owner. “When they are sitting in chairs next to each other, they hug and act like friends. But as soon as one of them leaves, the other starts to say bad things again.”

The Imperial may simply be the elite’s answer to the village barbershop, which has a time-honored role in Nicaraguan society as a place where ideas are exchanged, jokes are tested, names are smeared and rumors are born. All subject matter is open to discussion off the mirror, from politics and sports, to women and weather.

Walking into a Nicaraguan barbershop is a bit like stepping back into the colonial era, and some of the equipment in use is not that much newer. My neighborhood barber gives me a straight-blade shave, proceeded by several rounds of ointments and creams, and then a full facial and head massages with some sort of ancient vibrating contraption that looks like a Thomas Edison prototype. I don’t know what that thing is, but it keeps me going back.

And just as the scuttlebutt at the Imperial is a window into Nicaragua’s corridors of power, my local barbershop is the best place to take the pulse of the street. Here, news rolls easily off the tongues of those who know what they’re talking about, and those who don’t. Sometimes, the barbershop itself becomes part of the news: When legendary newspaper publisher and opposition leader Pedro Joaquin Chamorro was gunned down by unknown shooters in January 1978, the leading suspect — one of Larios’ clients — told the police he had been getting a haircut at the Imperial Barbershop at the time of the murder. Larios later had to testify that the suspect had not in fact been in his chair that day.

Unless served a summons, however, Larios and Rodriguez prefer to respect barber-client privilege, especially with their bigger clients — the ones who have outgrown the chair, so to speak. Arnoldo Alemin, the portly former president convicted on embezzlement charges, now sends a car and driver to fetch Rodriguez to do a home haircut, for which the barber charges double, or $9. Miguel Obando y Bravo, who used to come into the shop when he was just Archbishop of Managua, started sending the car after the Pope named him cardinal in 1985.

“You build up a confidence with the clients,” Rodriguez says, politely declining to discuss any of the really juicy tidbits that have been entrusted to him from the barber’s chair over the years. “You hear so much, it’s hard to remember everything they say,” he adds diplomatically, with a revealing twinkle in his eye. In fact, the reason his clients feel so free to express themselves may be that the whatever they say is carefully swept up with the hair clippings and discarded at the end of the day.

Thailand is turning pink.

Some people in the Southeast Asian country have begun donning pink shirts as a tribute to their beloved 79-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The trend started when he checked out of a hospital Wednesday wearing a pale pink collar-less shirt and pink blazer.

For about two years, Thais have shown their respect for the monarch by wearing yellow — the color that in Buddhist tradition symbolizes Monday, the weekday he was born. That fashion statement began during the 2006 celebrations of Bhumibol’s 60th anniversary on the throne.

But it looks like pink is becoming the new yellow for Thais.

There was already a trend toward pink because astrologers had declared it an auspicious color for the king’s 80th year. A royal emblem, using pink among other colors, was specially designed for his birthday.

But Bhumibol’s appearance in pink attire has spurred interest in the new color.

The Commerce Ministry is preparing to produce 30,000 pink shirts in coming weeks to meet rising demand, said Yanyong Phuangrat, chief of the agency’s domestic trade department.

“There is a high demand for pink T-shirts because it’s an auspicious color for the king,” Yanyong said.

O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
Hi. I’m not home right now. But if you want to leave a
message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you
coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don’t know me,
but I know you.
And I’ve got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come
as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.

And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the
hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They’re American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom
of night shall stay these couriers from the swift
completion of their appointed rounds.

‘Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice.
And when justive is gone, there’s always force.
And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me,
Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.