This essay explores the forms of feminist politics and practice among Creole and Garífuna women in Nicaragua’s South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). It focuses on two key areas: the everyday experiences of racial and gender-based marginalization, and the active political engagement of Afro-Nicaraguan women in formal and grassroots movements. These include struggles for communal land rights, bilingual education, reproductive health, and protection against gender-based violence. The essay highlights how their activism centers not only gender justice but also racial, economic, and regional justice, outlining the contours of a distinct Afro-Nicaraguan feminism.
June Beer's poem "Ressarection a' de Wud" draws on liberation theology to celebrate Nicaragua as a nation that has resurrected the word of God through revolutionary action. Written in Miskito Coast Creole, the poem critiques hollow religiosity and calls for a living, active faith—one rooted not in church rituals but in justice, solidarity, and struggle. By taking the word “outa de church” and into the streets, rivers, and frontiers, the poem honors Nicaragua’s revolutionary project as a spiritual and moral awakening, contrasting it with the violence and hypocrisy of those who fail to live by the word.
Nicola Foote's "Rethinking Race, Gender and Citizenship" (Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2004) brings Afro-Caribbean women to the fore of a discussion of Costa Rican citizenship. It explores the relationship between ideologies of gender, imageries of black womanhood, and the dialectic of citizen ship and exclusion. It examines how the efforts of the black elite to achieve citizenship through assimilation generated inter-class tension which centred on ideas of female morality. It explores the absence of political platforms for poor black women excluded by such strategies and argues that while Costa Rican feminists succeeded in challenging the ideological system of gender they failed to challenge issues of race and class.
In “Rotundamente Negra,” Black Costa Rican poet, writer, and activist Shirley Campbell Barr gives voice to a speaker who proudly and unapologetically affirms her identity as a Black woman. Rejecting Eurocentric beauty standards and anti-Blackness, the speaker embraces her Blackness “rotundamente” (unequivocally), celebrating her body, ancestry, and voice. The poem is a landmark of Afro-Latin American feminist literature, resonating across Central America, Latin America, and beyond as a powerful declaration of Black womanhood, resistance, and self-definition.
Carlos Rigby’s “Sinfonía para los peces en sim-saima–si mayor” (1968) is a lyrical, dreamlike meditation on memory, ancestral knowledge, and the mystical power of the sea. In this early and defining work, Rigby lays the foundation for a poetic voice that breaks from Hispanic literary conventions and instead embraces the rhythms, languages, and worldviews of the Afro-Caribbean coast. Told through the intimate voice of a grandson recalling his grandmother’s spiritual warnings and prayers, the poem centers the Caribbean as poetic subject—its waters, customs, and oral knowledge—while honoring a deep communion with nature and ancestral wisdom. Blending Creole-inflected language, surrealism, and sonic experimentation, Sinfonía offers a radical poetics rooted in coastal Black life and freed from the dominant aesthetic norms (in Nicaragua) of his time.
This article presents a selection of poetry by Nicaraguan Creole poets, the largest Afro-descendant community in the country. It explores the historical development of the Creole population, tracing their origins to British settlements on Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast in the 18th century and their subsequent cultural evolution. The article discusses the challenges faced by Creole poets, including language barriers and marginalization, and highlights their contributions to Nicaraguan literature.
Maya Doig-Acuña's "The Most Caribbean of Stories" (Southern Cultures, 2020) traces her great-grandmother’s life—born on a United Fruit plantation in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica in 1900—as an entry point into broader histories of Black migration, imperialism, and diasporic identity across the Caribbean and Central America. Through intimate family memory and archival reflection, Doig-Acuña examines how West Indian migrations to Costa Rica, Panama, and later the United States are part of a hemispheric story of Black labor, displacement, and resistance. The essay weaves together narrative, scholarship, and intergenerational reflection to show how diaspora is shaped not only by movement and empire, but also by memory, kinship, and survival.
This article traces the cultural and political history of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, highlighting its distinct development shaped by colonialism, African and Indigenous presence, and isolation from the Hispanic Pacific region. Long marginalized in national narratives, the region gained partial recognition through the creation of two autonomous zones in the 1980s. Focusing on poetry as a vehicle of self-definition, the article examines its evolution from exoticized depictions to affirmations of Black pride, autonomy, and multiethnic identity, emphasizing the Coast’s assertion of belonging as both Nicaraguan and culturally distinct.
This chapter offers a comprehensive portrait of Elizabeth Forbes Brooks, known as Miss Lizzie, a revered Creole teacher, choreographer, and cultural activist from Bluefields, Nicaragua. It traces her pivotal role in reviving and preserving the palo de mayo tradition—a dance rooted in European May Pole rituals and transformed through Afro-Caribbean and Creole expression. Positioned at the intersection of performance, memory, and politics, Miss Lizzie’s decades-long work infused the palo de mayo with historical depth, artistic innovation, and community pride. Through teaching, storytelling, and performance, she cultivated a cultural revival that emphasized Creole heritage, Afro-descendant identity, and gender empowerment. The chapter situates her within broader struggles for autonomy, cultural preservation, and racial justice on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, framing her legacy as both deeply local and symbolically national.
This paper analyzes the transnational circulation and impact of “Rotundamente negra” by Afro-Costa Rican poet and cultural activist Shirley Campbell Barr. Originally published in 1994 with limited circulation in Costa Rica, the poem has since become a powerful tool for Afro-descendant women across Latin America and the Americas. Through social movements, conferences, and digital platforms, the poem has been embraced as both a personal affirmation and a collective political statement. Its widespread recitation and interpretation reflect how Black women use it for identity formation, consciousness-raising, and activism, transforming it into a shared instrument of empowerment in the face of racial and gendered marginalization.
