All events · Cold War Proxies

Forced Relocation of the Miskito from the Río Coco, Nicaragua

c. 1981–1987 · Americas

Displacement

Displaced

40,000

About 8,500 people from 42 Río Coco villages were moved to the Tasba Pri settlements between 1 January and 20 February 1982, and roughly half the Río Coco population fled to Honduras instead (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). Cultural Survival records about 18,000 Miskito and Sumo refugees receiving UNHCR assistance in Honduras in 1984-85 and a further wave of some 10,500 in 1986, giving a total of roughly 35,000-40,000 displaced across the period.

Share of the population affected

57%

of the Miskito population of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast at the start of the relocations, 1981

Open on the interactive map →

What happened

In late 1981 the Sandinista government, facing contra incursions from Honduras and an armed Miskito insurgency, ordered the evacuation of Miskito settlements along the Río Coco, which forms the border. Between 1 January and 20 February 1982 about 8,500 people from 42 villages were moved inland to camps grouped under the name Tasba Pri; upriver communities walked out because no road existed, houses were burned and livestock left behind, and roughly half the river's population crossed into Honduras rather than comply. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which investigated and reported in 1983, found that the government had killed a considerable number of Miskito at Leimus in reprisal for the killing of soldiers at San Carlos, that hundreds had been detained arbitrarily on vague counter-revolutionary accusations, and that around 70 people had disappeared, while also finding that the relocation itself was carried out in a context of armed attack from across the border. Refugee flows into the Honduran Mosquitia continued through the mid-1980s, with a further wave of about 10,500 in 1986. The 1987 autonomy statute for the Atlantic coast regions and subsequent negotiations allowed many Miskito to return to the Río Coco.

Parties

The Sandinista government emptied Miskito villages along the Honduran border and moved their inhabitants to inland resettlement camps during the contra war

Disputed

The characterisation of the relocation is disputed: the Nicaraguan government argued it was a temporary wartime evacuation to protect civilians in a combat zone, while Miskito organisations and the Inter-American Commission treated it as a forced transfer accompanied by unlawful killings and detentions, and US and Nicaraguan officials advanced sharply different accounts of what drove the exodus into Honduras.

The denominator

Estimates of the Miskito in Nicaragua in the early 1980s run from about 65,000 to 75,000. The Rio Coco villages emptied in the 1982 Operation Red Christmas held on the order of 8,500-10,000 people, moved to the Tasba Pri settlements; far larger numbers left the coast over the following years.

The 40,000 figure combines those moved to inland camps with Miskito who fled across the border into Honduras as refugees, two distinct movements.

Where the baseline comes from

Miskito peopleopen-edited
Contrasopen-edited

On the death toll

No agreed death toll exists for the relocation. The Inter-American Commission established that a considerable number of Miskito were unlawfully killed at Leimus in December 1981 and that around 70 people disappeared, but it did not put a total figure on deaths, and the wider contra war's toll is not separable from these events.

Documented forms of violence

Summary ExecutionEnforced DisappearanceArbitrary DetentionDestruction of Property

All four forms were documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in its 1983 report on the Miskito, which recorded the Leimus killings, some 70 disappearances, mass arbitrary detention and the burning of evacuated villages.

Formal findings

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (1983) — The Government of Nicaragua illegally killed a considerable number of Miskitos at Leimus in retaliation for killings at San Carlos; hundreds of Miskitos were arbitrarily detained without formalities and around 70 disappeared. — source