Toward a Geography of Solidarity: Afro-Nicaraguan Women's Land Activism and Autonomy in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region

This article explores efforts by Afro-Nicaraguan women activists to enact their communal land rights in Bluefields during a 2009 land occupation. Creole women's interpretation of state power, underdevelopment, and the failure of the autonomy process suggest that a critical race understanding of regional politics not only reveals the persistence of structural anti-black racism but also demonstrates how the state's disregard for the region as the nation's imagined site of racial Otherness harms all Costeños, including poor Mestizos. Creole women's articulation of a geography of solidarity rooted in racial justice rather than blame offers new strategies for confronting regional inequality and state neglect in the construction of regional autonomy.