This chapter traces the cultural, historical, and literary significance of the figure Mayaya (goddess of fertility and spring) within the Creole tradition of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, particularly as embodied in the palo de mayo ritual and the iconic folk song “Mayaya las im key.” Duke explores how Mayaya serves as a symbolic conduit for gendered, racial, and communal memory, linking oral traditions, dance, music, and poetry across generations. Through close readings of popular songs, oral histories, and contemporary poems, especially by Creole women, Duke shows how the figure of Mayaya becomes a site of cultural resilience, erotic expression, and political critique. The chapter culminates in a rich analysis of Creole women’s poetry, underscoring how their writings reclaim ancestral legacies, assert autonomy, and challenge marginalization within the broader Nicaraguan national narrative.
Paul Thomas Lokken's "From Black to Ladino" (PhD diss., University of Florida, 2000) explores the experiences of people of African descent in rural colonial Guatemala between 1600 and 1730, focusing on their transformation and integration into the racial and social structure.
Ella Jean Downs, “Historia oral de los creoles de Corn Island” (Wani: Revista del Caribe Nicaragüense, no. 65, 2012: 41–53) presents a concise yet powerful account of Corn Island’s Creole community through oral history. Drawing on the testimonies of island residents, Downs highlights cultural traditions, collective memory, and the everyday experiences that shape Creole identity. The article sheds light on the community’s language, values, and historical consciousness, offering an intimate portrait of Afro-Caribbean life on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.
"I've never Shared this with Anybody" centers the lived experiences of Creole women in Nicaragua’s South Atlantic Autonomous Region, confronting the daily racial and sexual discrimination they face in silence. Drawing from Black feminist scholar Socorro Woods’s interdisciplinary research, the book explores the contradictions between public and private life, the burden of unspoken traumas, and the urgency of creating spaces for Creole women to speak, be heard, and lead. Published by CEIMM-URACCAN, this book is both testimony and call to action, offering critical reflection and advocating for social change through the voices of Afro-descendant women on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.
"La melodía de los cantos creoles del Set-Up en la ciudad de Bluefields" by Nydia Taylor and Wellene Campbell, published in Wani, documents the traditional Afro-Creole funeral practice known as the Set Up in the neighborhoods of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Based on oral history and testimonies from cultural bearers, the article explores the rituals of mourning—including singing, food preparation, body care, and communal labor—as expressions of ancestral solidarity and Afro-descendant cultural identity. It highlights the spiritual, social, and musical elements of the Set Up and traces how modernization, economic hardship, and migration have led to the erosion of these practices, while some elders continue to advocate for their preservation.
Javier L. Wallace's "Lost in Translation" connects the ways Black Panamanians of West Indian ancestry used their athletic talents within a de jure racially segregated US Panama Canal Zone to forge opportunities with HBCU athletic programs in the US South. Black physical educators and coaches forged these connections to assist Black Panamanian youth in circumventing the discriminatory treatment within the PCZ and the Republic of Panama. Also, this essay focuses on the decline of the transnational athletic pipelines due to the reversion of parts of the PCZ and the closure of the predominately Black segregated schools. This essay argues that translating community names and institutions from English to Spanish during the reversion was part of a larger Panamanian mestizo nationalism project that was forcing a singular Spanish-speaking Panamanian ideology, which played a significant role in the pipeline’s decline.
June Beer’s poem “Love Poem” is a powerful declaration of love that expands beyond the personal to embrace national and collective belonging. Written in Miskito Coast Creole, the poem begins as a response to a request for a traditional love poem but shifts to center love for Nicaragua and its diverse peoples—Black, Miskito, Sumu, Rama, and Mestizo. Beer ties romantic love to revolutionary struggle, honoring the labor and sacrifice of those defending the country's freedom. In doing so, the poem redefines love as both intimate and political, grounded in solidarity, sovereignty, and a vision of a liberated future.
Nicole Ramsey's "Marketing Culture and the Belizean Nation" (Callaloo, 2024) examines how the Belizean nation and national belonging are constructed in the representational politics of Belizean Belikin Beer campaign advertisements. In 2012, Belikin Beer released a series of commercials showcasing the “culture of Belize,” while addressing themes related to Belizean national identity, labor, heritage, and commemoration. Contrary to national constructions of Belize as a multicultural and plural society, the Belizean identity performed in Belikin’s campaign located Belize within an ambiguous regional geography, portraying it as a unique site within Central America and the broader Circum-Caribbean that provides the space for the reconciliation of diasporic and transnational Black and Indigenous identities. Belize provides a complex framework for the examination of Central American Caribbean identities and the utilization of Blackness and Indigeneity by the tourism industry. In tourism industry-driven cultural projects, competing ideals of Belizean identity, Belizean Blackness(es) and Indigeneities are heightened in new media and cultural productions that draw on the peculiarities of Belizean ethnic relations and ideology of national identity.
Vielka Cecilia Hoy's "Negotiating among Invisibilities" (The Afro-Latin@ Reader, 2009) reflects on the lived experience of being Afro-Latina—of Nicaraguan and Panamanian descent—within racial and ethnic frameworks that often render Black Central Americans invisible. Drawing from family memory, diaspora theory, and personal narrative, Hoy examines the complexities of Afro-Latinx identity formation in California, where Latinidad is often defined through Mexicentric and non-Black paradigms. Through scenes of community gatherings, census debates, and classroom encounters, she explores how Black Central Americans negotiate U.S. racial logics, nationalist ideologies from their countries of origin, and the erasure of Afro-Latinidades in both.
Idalia Wilmoth's "Neva Fah Get Home" (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2023) examines how Black Roatánins construct and negotiate their racial and cultural identities within the historical and geographic context of Honduras and the broader diaspora. Centering a population often overlooked in Afro-Latin American and Africana Studies, Wilmoth uses narrative inquiry, podcasting, and interviews to explore how first- and second-generation Roatánins experience race, nationalism, and displacement, particularly as their identities are reshaped through migration to the United States. Grounded in Black geography, the dissertation identifies themes such as cultural memory, spatial belonging, triple consciousness, and the enduring impact of colonialism on Black identity formation in the Bay Islands.
