Nicaragua - Context and Land Governance

^{Photo: Ana Quezada}

Nicaragua's Pacific and Central area holds most of the mestizo population, white descendants, and some indigenous communities. Most of the urbanized land in the country is also concentrated in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the Caribbean coast concentrates on most indigenous populations and African descendant communities, where some groups live in a traditional lifestyle, while others live in cities like Bluefields, Greytown, or Puerto Cabezas. In the Nicaraguan Caribbean, most of the forests and natural resources are located, turning this area of ​​the country into a territory in constant dispute between national and international extractive industries, urban projects, and traditional communities that face violent conflicts and forced mobilizations. The Northern Caribbean of Nicaragua contains the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, inserted within the Biosphere Reserve Heart of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. This trans-border area, between Honduras and Nicaragua, represents the second-largest tropical rainforest in the continent ⁴ after the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

The organization of Nicaraguan territory involves great complexity. The country experienced two distinct colonization processes, and the country is divided into two cultural matrices: The Chibchas and the Mesoamericans. Ethnicities belonging to the Mesoamerican culture in which power was centered around a leader and his family⁵, were settled on the Pacific coast. The Pacific and Central areas belonged to the domains of the Spanish crown during the conquest in 1502. The Caribbean Coast was populated by groups of the Chibcha cultural matrix, characterized by relating to power through group decision-making ⁶. In this area of ​​the country, English colonization prevailed. The Spanish crown failed to relate its authority to the Nicaraguan Chibcha areas, exercising its colonial power only in the Pacific and parts of the country's Central areas. The cultural and racial division between the Pacific and the Caribbean remains until today

Historical backdrop

^{Photo: Ana Quezada.} 

Located in the center of the world border that divides the regions occupied by developed countries and the so-called third world, Nicaragua has a strategic location with natural characteristics in its territory, making it a perfect scenario for capital flows. What is unique in the geographical situation of Nicaragua is the fact that the San Juan River⁷, which starts in the Caribbean Sea and runs through much of the country connecting with the great Lake Cocibolca ⁸, makes it economically viable to build a canal linking the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 

This geographical condition and the country's location caused great powers of the northern hemisphere to be interested in constructing an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua over the centuries, placing the country in the middle of a geopolitical dispute between these countries for control of the world maritime power. The canal has been an engine of internal division that has aggravated the conflictual relations between the Pacific and the Caribbean, since the Grand Canal threatens traditional indigenous and Afro-descendant territories and provokes land conflicts and invasions of these ancestral territories by diverse national and international groups with different economic interests.

During the colonial period, the distribution, legislation, and regulation of the Nicaraguan territory developed in two scales, a macro-scale influenced by geopolitical disputes due to the search for an interoceanic canal through Central America, and a micro-scale where land was distributed according to a logic based on ethnicity, racial and gender hierarchies. The macro-scale was carried out by signing treaties in which rights over the Nicaraguan territory were negotiated between the State and the interests of great powers. The micro-scale occurred through specific laws generated by Nicaragua's State to categorize the type of land and its uses.

Land distribution during the colonial period was directly related to a caste system based on race. In Nicaragua, the caste society was made up of peninsular, criollos⁹, indigenous, African slaves, and ladinos. The peninsular and criollos were the castes with the highest right to own land. The indigenous people, in some cases, were recognized within their traditional hierarchies since they supported the Spanish crown. The indigenous survivors of the colonial period in the Pacific were grouped into 198 communities, transferring these populations to the new urban centers, densely populated and whose activities could be monitored by the colonial authorities¹⁰. Ladinos¹¹, African slaves, and indigenous groups did not have the right to buy land.

Nicaragua went through two independence processes: independence, where the Central American Federation was created in 1824. The second was when the country left the federation to become an independent republic in 1838. Despite the proclamation of the Central American Federal Republic's independence, the Nicaraguan Chibcha area, better known as La Mosquitia, was still considered a British protectorate and was not recognized as part of the State of Nicaragua. The dispute for territorial control of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast had its roots in the struggles for appropriation and search for an interoceanic route. In 1850 the Clayton-Bulwer treaty negotiated by the United States and Great Britain was signed, causing the withdrawal of the English from the Mosquitia Coast in Nicaragua. However, this treaty determined that the two nations would control a projected canal in Central America. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty was superseded in 1901 by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty's signature that establishes that the United States would control and construct a canal in the isthmus. 

In the mid-19th century, the United States (in Nicaragua) and France (in Panama) began building and financing two interoceanic canal projects in Central America. This is how the Mosquitia was incorporated into the Republic of Nicaragua's territory by signing the document "Decree of Reincorporation," enacted in 1894. Simultaneously, the State of Nicaragua was negotiating the construction of an interoceanic canal with the United States at the end of the 19th century¹². The Mosquitia Convention was legally signed, incorporating this territory into Nicaragua's State and changing its name to Department of Zelaya; however, the right to economic autonomy was reserved for indigenous populations. This reincorporation was legalized in 1905 through the Harrison-Altamirano treaty, which legitimized this territorial reincorporation before the international community¹³. A curious fact is the use of the terms incorporation and reincorporation in the signed treaties about the Mosquitia, since Nicaragua's geographic limits belong to a colonial and western division of the territory in Central America that excludes ancestral logics, in the past and present, of land use and occupation. Many of the ratifications signed in this agreement  were not complied with by the Nicaraguan central government, leading indigenous peoples and black Creole communities of the Caribbean to perceive their relationship with the Nicaraguan State as a second colonization process. The establishment of this treaty is valid until today.

The two canal projects were not concluded, and finally, the United States bought the French concession in Panama and built a canal in this country at the end of the 19th century. To eliminate any possibility of another power building a canal through Nicaragua, the United States signed the Chamorro-Bryan treaty in 1914. This treaty established the United States' dominion over the territories of Nicaragua where a canal route could be constructed and authorized the installation of military and naval bases of the United States in Nicaraguan to protect the Panama Canal¹⁴. In July of 1970, the treaty was abolished after a negotiation between the president of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and US president Richard Nixon.

Land legislation and regulations

The first legal regulations in Nicaragua, with the emergence of the new republic, concentrated land in the elites' hands, mainly those of Spanish descent, and maintained colonial principles in this distribution. Until 1909, state land was privatized, and 50% of this became the property of 30 elite families of European descendent¹⁵. Subsequently, agrarian reforms and land legislations were generated in an attempt to combat this uneven land distribution, such as:

1. Agrarian Reform Law under The Somoza’s family dictatorship – 1960s–1970s. The Somoza’a family remained in power from 1943-1979 within a dictatorial regime. Due to the outrageous uneven concentration of land, they created a modest agrarian reform by distributing 55,111 hectares of land on the agricultural border between the Department of Zelaya (The Mosquitia) and Nueva Guinea; however, this was not enough to solve the serious problem of inequality of wealth distribution¹⁶.

2. Agrarian Reform during the Sandinista Revolution – 1980's. To level land distribution inequalities during the Somoza regime, the Sandinista Revolution government created a second agrarian reform. In the first years of the revolution, which accompanied a civil war (linked to the political confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War), guerilla columns took possession of Somocista families' properties. They generated a distribution of these lands and the cattle among the peasant combatants¹⁷. Due to this initial redistribution, the Agrarian Reform Institute (Instituto de Reforma Agraria - INRA) was created to recover many farms taken by the guerrilla combatants.

3. Law 14 of Agrarian Reform – 1980’s. This Law introduced the category of "abandoned or idle lands" as a reason for expropriation. As a result, 50% of the country's arable land passed to the State, 42% to peasant cooperatives, and 8% to new individual owners¹⁸.

4. Laws 85 and 86 – 1990’s. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN – Acronym in Spanish) lost the presidential elections. Before handing over power, it created these laws to guarantee tenure security to redistributed lands during the 1980s. By the time of the loss, thousands of Nicaraguans sympathetic to the FSLN lived in confiscated houses that lacked legal property titles¹⁹.

5. Laws No. 11 and 90 – 1990s. These laws, established during the government of Violeta Barrios, determined that all confiscations made in the previous government would have to be reviewed.

6. The Land Management Office (Oficina de Ordenamiento Territorial - OOT) was created in the 1990s. A process of review of land and housing acquisitions protected by Laws 85 and 86 is established. This process generated an enormous internal debt that Nicaraguans continue to pay to this day.

7. Law 445 of communal property regime of indigenous peoples and ethnic communities - 2004. This law recognizes the communal governments of the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of the Caribbean Coast, establishes a titling procedure, and territorial recognition to these peoples.

8. General Law of Cooperatives - 2005. This law determines an important advance on land legislation based on gender since it establishes equal rights for both sexes in cooperatives land.

Land tenure classification

Nicaragua's political constitution recognizes six forms of property: public, private, associative, cooperative, community, communal, family, and mixed. These categories can be accessed through the different tenure systems.

Private property 

Private properties are those acquired by individuals, be they natural or legal persons, for the legitimate benefit of their specific and personal interests. Nationals and foreign citizens can access private property in Nicaragua²⁰. From 1990 to the present, the Public Registry of Real Estate and Commercial Property is the entity responsible for registering and regularizing property titles throughout the country.

Associative property

It occurs when the ownership and the right to the land or property belong to several associated persons. These lands are destined for the use and exploitation of the different forms of organizational articulation and social interest in Nicaragua.

Cooperative property

It represents the joint property that belongs to an autonomous association of people who come together voluntarily to meet their economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations

Community property

They are those for collective use, whose owners may be the municipal mayors, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, mestizos, and other ethnic communities.

Family property

According to art. 75 of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua²¹, family patrimony is understood to be the property that is separated from a person's private patrimony and is directly linked to a family with limited economic resources to ensure the best satisfaction of their needs. There are two classes of family patrimony: urban and rural.

Mixed property

Regarding mixed ownership, the only existing reference is the one contained in the III CENAGRO (Censo Nacional Agropecuario), which refers to mixed tenure referring to agricultural holdings with the land of one or more forms of tenure or combinations of all the previous ones.

Communal property

According to the Constitution of Nicaragua, Art. 89.- "The State recognizes the communal forms of land ownership of the communities of the Caribbean Coast.  It also recognizes the enjoyment, use, and benefits of the waters and forests of their communal lands"²². 

There are 71 protected areas and nature reserves in Nicaragua, and most of them are located at the RACCN (Region Autonoma de la Costa Caribe Norte) and RACCS (Region Autonoma de la Costa Caribe Sur). The authority that administers these reserves is the National System of Protected Areas, and it is part of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA – Acronym in Spanish). The state's presence in these reserves is the engine of conflict since traditional communities live within them with a completely different relationship with nature and the use of the land in these areas.

Community land

^{Photo: Ana Quezada}

Nicaragua is a country with a rich ethnic and cultural diversity, and the Caribbean Coast being the place where most indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples are concentrated. The main ethnic groups in this area are: indigenous -Miskitus, Mayangnas-Sumu-Ulwas, and Ramas-, Kriols, Garifunas, and a mestizo population. There are some indigenous peoples located in the Pacific, Central and Northern regions of the country; and although the Constitution recognizes them since the reform of 2015²³ and through the ratification of Convention 169 of the ILO (International Labor Organization)²⁴, to this day they struggle for the recognition of their identity and their territory. Unlike the Caribbean Coast populations, these indigenous peoples still do not have legislation that develops their constitutional rights and determines a regime of autonomy. To unify forces towards different forms of recognition of various traditional communities, the APIAN (Nicaraguan Alliance of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples) was created in 2015.

Disputes over the recognition of ancestral territories have taken place during different governments, at different times, even during the Sandinista popular revolution. In December of 1981, the Nicaraguan government removed thousands of indigenous peoples, mostly Miskitu, from their villages close to the border with Honduras. These provoked that some indigenous peoples joined guerrilla groups to fight against Sandinistas²⁵. After a series of conflicts and negotiations between the FSLN and various indigenous groups of the Caribbean coast, it was approved in the Constitution in 1987, the recognition of the right of indigenous communities to preserve their cultural identity and their communal lands, but only for the Caribbean Coast communities. This was the first time that the State of Nicaragua recognized indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples' autonomy over their territory through Law 28 of 1987, after many years of struggle of these communities²⁶.

In 2003, Law 445 (Law on the communal property regime and ethnic communities of the Autonomous Region of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and the Bocay, Coco, Indio, and Maíz Rivers) was approved in Nicaragua, defining specific and operational regulations which allow indigenous peoples and ethnic groups (afro descendants)²⁷ to gain control of the land. This law also created the National Demarcation and Titling Commission (Comisión Nacional de Demarcación y Titulación - CONADETI) and the intersectoral Demarcation and Titling Commissions (Comisiones intersectoriales de Demarcación y Titulación - CIDT) that are in charge of executing the demarcation and titling of land on the Caribbean Coast of the country. This legislation has not prevented the existence of territorial conflicts in the indigenous and Creole communal lands of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua that has been threatened to this day by the invasion of their territories by settlers from other parts of the country or megaprojects such as the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal, approved in 2013 with the return to the FSLN presidency from 2006 to the present.

Land use trends

Nicaraguan territory has an area of ​​13,037,347 hectares of land. The mainland corresponds to 12,034,000 hectares, 1,003,347 hectares correspond to lakes and lagoons, and 895 626 hectares of forest. Nicaragua has a low density compared to other countries in the isthmus, which is why the country has the highest availability of land per inhabitants in Central America²⁸. According to the Agricultural Census carried out in 2003 by the National Institute of Information, and Development (INIDE – Acronym in Spanish), 82.16% of Nicaraguan land is for agricultural use, 39.94% is natural pasture and 23.12% is resting, or tacotales. 

Agricultural land and production were the main engines to sustain the Nicaraguan economy in the last century. In the 1950s and 1960s, cotton was the crop that modified the Pacific region economy. The land distribution for the crops was based on the racial distribution inherited from the colony. The most important cotton producers came from the old cattle families of this period. The unequal distribution of land is reflected in data from 1978. It is stated that 36% of the total cultivated area belonged to large latitudinarians; 46% of the land was also distributed in medium producers, and the rest belonged to small owners²⁹. Peasants occupied 2% of the total area of ​​cultivated lands. Those who did not have land for cultivation were forced to cultivate rented lands or establish themselves as colonos on the larger farms. Likewise, the production of coffee, sugar cane, and livestock were agents that influenced land use and distribution, leaving large deforested areas as a consequence.

Even after the agrarian reform of the 1980s, the land remains in an unequal distribution. In the 2000s, 72% of rural households hold only 16% of total land, with landholdings of 3.5 hectares or less. According to a World Bank Report, 28% percent of rural households have 84% of all land. The Gini coefficient of concentration of property in Nicaragua is 0.86³⁰. That same study shows that in 2003, thirty-eight percent of the rural population was landless. Due to the agriculture frontier, illegal settlers and large infrastructure projects contributed to massive deforestation in Nicaraguan forests. According to an analysis of the Humbolt Center from 2011-2018, Nicaragua lost 1 million and 400 hectares of forestland³¹.

Beyond the unequal distribution of land, thousands of Nicaraguan peasants suffer from serious health consequences of the intensive use of pesticides, promoted by large companies such as The Standard Fruit Company, in the country's plantations. The use of pesticides like Nemagon and Fumazune, whose toxic effects can last between 80 and 200 years, contributed to serious diseases. As a consequence, children with genetic malformations were born in peasant families³². 

Nicaragua is the third country with the largest urban population in Central America. In 2019, according to data from the World Bank, 58.76% of its population lived in urban areas³³, and 41.24% lived in rural areas³⁴. As reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), it is expected that by 2050 the population in urban areas of the country will be 63.1%. 

Land investments and acquisitions

A study by the World Bank carried out between 1993-1998³⁵ in Nicaragua detected a dynamic of buying and selling land in the country in the real estate market, which has caused its reconcentration by wealthy classes. This study observed that farms of various sizes participated in buying and selling land, but the buyers were mostly large producers of mainly coffee, cattle, corn, and beans. According to this study, there was no purchase of land by small farmers³⁶. On the other hand, the land rental process occurs between a large farmer who rents a plot to a small landless producer³⁷. In this sense, acquisitions of land through purchase are made by large farmers, and the rent occurs in young, poor, and landless families.

In the last decade, two projects have generated a lot of debate due to their impacts on the affected local communities: the Tumarin Hydroelectric Power Plant and the Nicaragua Grand Interoceanic Canal. The Tumarin Hydroelectric would be a project carried out in partnership with Brazil's government in 2014³⁸. The Interoceanic Canal Project would have been carried out with Chinese businessman Wang Ying. Consequently, Law 800 (Law of the Legal Regime of the Grand Interoceanic Canal of Nicaragua, and Creation of the Authority of the Great Interoceanic Canal of Nicaragua)³⁹ was created. Through Law 840, a concession was granted to the company HKND (Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development), with the exclusive right to build a 276 km long interoceanic canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The megaproject also has subprojects such as airports, ports, highways, free trade areas, among others. The project was not executed yet due to financial difficulties; however, HKND maintains legal concessions established by Law 840.

Article 27 of Nicaragua's political Constitution establishes that foreign citizens can buy land, properties and invest in Nicaragua. Investments such as Free Trade Zones from China have entered under this law and have been located in various parts of the country in the last two decades.

Women’s land rights

The land titles granted to cooperatives are the form of tenure where most women are registered as beneficiaries in Nicaragua. Another form of access that women can use to obtain land ownership is through the handover of state lands for subsistence. Women can access this right either as agricultural workers or as widows of workers. 10% of the cooperative land amount belongs to women who obtained access as agricultural workers⁴⁰.

The agrarian reform of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, which distributed different forms of tenure in the country, placed 67% in cooperatives' hands and the remaining in individual properties. In cooperatives, most of the members were men, these being the greatest beneficiaries of the agrarian reform⁴¹. The Agrarian Reform Law established equal rights for both sexes and placed women as direct beneficiaries of this new redistribution of land; however, discriminatory gender practices prevented this law from being implemented in practice.

In the 1990s, there was a 31% increase in land titling in the name of women⁴². In 1997 Law 278 on Reformed Urban and Agrarian Property was passed, which established the joint titling of lands obtained by marriage or de facto union. Despite this legislation, access to land by women decreased by 7%⁴³ because, even with the existence of laws that protect women, the patriarchal social structure prevents them from owning land.

In 2010, the Fund for the purchase of land with gender equity for rural women was created. The distribution of land in this country is still mostly in male hands, with access to credit sources being one of the main factors that determine the unequal distribution. Microfinance credit sources would be the main resource to buy land; however, they include more expensive fees than formal banking⁴⁴. The financial system requires an agrarian pledge to access credit to buy land, making it difficult for women farmers to access it⁴⁵.

Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Tenure (VGGT)

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forest in the Context of National Food Security⁴⁶ (VVGT) were introduced through a one-year program for Central America, carried out between 2015 and 2016 where participants from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama were present. During this period, a partnership was made between FAO and the Center for the Autonomy and Development of Indigenous Peoples (Centro para la Autonomía y Desarrollo de Pueblos Indígenas - CADPI). The VGGT was translated into Miskitu, an indigenous language of Nicaragua⁴⁷. The workshop was held in two meetings, one on February 14, 2016, and a second workshop on August 8-11 of the same year held in Panama City with 20 participants from different indigenous peoples, representatives, and experts on these issues. In 2018 a political crisis began in Nicaragua with an uprising against President Daniel Ortega leaving, many people dead, imprison, or in exile. The crisis remains until today, making it difficult to register any further evidence of how the VGGT was adopted in the country.

Where to go next?

To understand Nicaragua's land distribution issues, it is important to comprehend the geopolitical and historical context that influenced the internal distribution. For this, we recommend reading the book, The Imaginary of the Canal and the Cosmopolitan Nation by Frances Kinloch Tijerino⁴⁸. On the communal territories of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, we recommend the book Territorial Demarcation of Communal Property of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, organized by Álvaro Rivas and Rikke Broeggard⁴⁹. Concerning women and land in Nicaragua, we suggest the FAO report: Land tenure, housing rights, and gender in Nicaragua⁵⁰. Finally, on the disputes between territories on the Caribbean coast and the proposal of the Chinese Interoceanic Canal in the last decade, we recommend the article: La Autoridad del Gran Canal Interoceanico por Nicaragua ya no se apoya en la Obsoleta Ley 840 sino en la Ley 800 by Maria Luisa Acosta⁵¹.

Timeline - milestones in land governance

Political and cultural organization of Nicaragua at the end of the 15th century: Mesoamerican and Chibcha Societies

1502 – Beginning of the colonial period and the search for an interoceanic route through Central America

1838 – Separation of the Central America Federation. Nicaragua becomes a Republic. 
There were unoccupied parcels that were categorized as “vacant lands” and considered state property.

1905 – Harrison-Altamirano Treaty. Territorial reincorporation of the Mosquitia to the State of Nicaragua. 

1963 – Somoza’s Agrarian Reform
Distribution of 55,111 hectares of land on the agricultural border between the Department of Zelaya (The Mosquitia) and Nueva Guinea

1980’s – Sandinista’s Agrarian Reform and creation of INRA – Nicaraguan Instituto of Agrarian Reform
Around 60,000 peasant families in the Pacific of Nicaragua received lands either collectively or individually owned

1990’s – Laws No. 11 and 90
Established that all confiscations that were made in the previous government would have to be reviewed

2003 –Law 445 (Law on the communal property regime and ethnic communities of the Autonomous Region of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and the Bocay, Coco, Indio, and Maíz Rivers). 

2013 – Law 800 and 840
A concession was granted to the company HKND, with the exclusive right to build a 276 km long interoceanic canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

*** References

[1] FAO. (2007). Situación de las mujeres rurales, Nicaragua. Santiago de Chile.

[2] "Migration Information Source – Remittance Trends in Central America". Migrationinformation.org. April 2006. Retrieved 2010-06-26.

[3] Nordea (2020). Nicaragua: Economic Outline. https://www.nordeatrade.com/en/explore-new-market/nicaragua/economy

[4] Gros. P. y Nakashima, D. (2008) El conocimiento de los Mayangna en el corazón de Mesoamérica. Un Mundo de Ciencia, Vol. 6, No. 4, Octubre-Diciembre. Availabel: http://www.unesco.org/new/es/natural-sciences/priority-areas/links/biodiversity/projects/mayangna/publications/articles/article-mayangna-knowledge-deep-in-the-heart-of-mesoamerica/

[5]Fowler, W. (1989). The Cultural Evolution of Ancient Nahua Civilizations: the Pipil-Nicarao of Central America. Norman, University of Oklahoma.

[6]Kinloch, F. (2016) Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[7]The San Juan River, also known as “the drain, " is a 192 km river that flows east out of the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. 

[8] Lake Nicaragua, or Cocibolca, is a freshwater lake in Nicaragua of tectonic origin. It has an area of 8,264 km2, slightly smaller than Lake Titicaca.

[9] A term that refers to people from a Spanish father and mother, but born in America

[10] Kinloch,F. (2016). Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[11] Ladinos were people born with a Spanish father and indigenous or African mother

[12] Post, J. G. El largo y sinuoso camino: razones por las que no ha sido construído el canal de Nicaragua. IHNCA, UCA, Managua, 2014. 

[13] Kinloch, F. (2015) El imaginário del canal y la nación cosmopolita. Nicaragua, Siglo XIX. IHCA-UCA.

[14] Pasos A., L. (1982). Los conflictos internacionales de Nicaragua. Managua, Banco de America.

[15] Kinloch, F. (2016). Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[16] Kinloch, F. (2016). Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[17] Baumeinster, E. (1994). Estructura y Reforma Agraria en Nicaragua (1979-1993) Managua, UCA.

[18] Baumeinster, E. (1994). Estructura y Reforma Agraria en Nicaragua (1979-1993) Managua, UCA.

[19] Kinloch, F. (2016). Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[20] Rojas, S. Tenencia de la propiedad en la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua. Revista Ciencia e Interculturalidad . Año 11, Volumen 22, No. 1, Enero-Junio 2018 Diponible en:

<https://www.camjol.info/index.php/RCI/article/view/6558/7531#:~:text=La%20Constituci%C3%B3n%20Pol%C3%ADtica%20de%20Nicaragua,los%20diferentes%20sistemas%20de%20tenencia.>

[21] Ley Orgánica del Patrimonio Familiar y de las Asignaciones forzosas y Testamentarias. Normas Jurídicas de Nicaragua. Available in: <http://legislacion.asamblea.gob.ni/normaweb.nsf/9e314815a08d4a6206257265005d21f9/c2fafafea35b0af10625715700640a39?OpenDocument>

[22] Article 89 of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua. Available in: <https://nicaragua.justia.com/nacionales/constitucion-politica-de-nicaragua/titulo-iv/capitulo-vi/#articulo-89> 

In this regard, we also recommend reading article 11, numerals 3, 4, and 6 of the Statute of Autonomy Law No. 28.

[23] Political Constitution of the Republic of Nicaragua, Article 5.

[24] Convention Number 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries

[25] Diskin, M.; Bossert, T.; Nahmad, S. and Varese, S. Peace and Autonomy on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. A report of the LASA Task Force on Human Rights and Academic Freedom.  Latin American Studies Association. September, 1986. Page 1. Available in: <https://www.lasaweb.org/uploads/reports/peacenicaragua.pdf>  [Accessed 15 August, 2020]

[26] Baumeinster, E. (1998) Estructura y Reforma Agraria en Nicaragua (1979-89) Managua, CDR, ULA 1998.

[27] Law 445 Art.3.- Definitions - Ethnic Community: It is the group of Afro-Caribbean descent families that share the same ethnic conscience due to their culture, values, and traditions linked to their cultural roots and forms of land and natural resources tenure.

[28] Vivas V., E. Análisis de la utilización del recurso suelo en Nicaragua. La Calera, vol. 9 n. 12, p 46-54. 2009

[29] Kinloch, F. (2016). Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[30] A Gini of zero indicates perfect equality, and a Gini of one indicates total inequality. 

World Bank. (2003). Land policies for growth and poverty reduction. A World Bank Policy Research Report, New York, 2003.

[31] González, M. (2019) Nicaragua perdió 1 millón 400 mil hectáreas de bosques, según Centro Humbolt. El Nuevo Diario, Junio. Available in: <https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/493840-deforestacion-nicaragua-centro-humbolt/>

[32] Kinloch, F. (2016) Historia de Nicaragua. – 5a. ed- Managua: IHNCA – UCA.

[33] United Nations Population Division. World Urbanization Prospects: 2018 Revision.

[34] World Bank staff estimates based on the United Nations Population Division's World Urbanization Prospects: 2018 Revision.

[35] World Bank, (2003a): Nicaragua - Land Policy and Administration: Towards a More Secure

Property Rights Regime.

[36] Hoolinger, F. & Daviss, R. (2007) Programas y Proyectos, Nicaragua. Nota de política sobre el acceso a la tierra. Programa de Cooperación FAO/Banco Mundial.

[37]Carter, M., Boucher, S, Bradford, L. (2005): The Impact of “Market-Friendly” Reforms on Credit

and Land Market in Honduras and Nicaragua. World Development, Vol. 33, No.1, p. 107-128.

[38]Roque, W. Dilma libera construção de usina hidrelétrica na Nicarágua. Exame, April 1st, 2014. Available in: <https://exame.com/mundo/dilma-libera-construcao-de-usina-hidreletrica-da-nicaragua/>

[39]Acosta, M. L. (2019) La Autoridad del Gran Canal Interoceanico por Nicaragua ya no se apoya en la Obsoleta Ley 840 sino en la Ley 800. Calpi.

[40] FAO. 2005. Género y sistemas de producción campesina Lecciones de Nicaragua, Roma, (Italia)

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