Tensions over natural resources in Nicaragua’s northeast have sparked violent skirmishes that have resulted in the deaths of at least 30 indigenous Miskito people in the past 12 months. Miskito leaders say thousands of illegal settlers, whom they refer to as “colonists,” have moved onto their land to remove valuable hardwood timber, mine gold and clear-cut woodlands so they can engage in cattle ranching. “The environmental damage is palpable,” Porfirio Zamora, a municipal-court judge in the Miskito village of San Jerónimo, told the Nicaraguan news site Confidencial. “The rivers where we drink water, the places we fish and hunt, they are in agony.” The Miskitos’ autonomous region in the country’s northeast, one of Nicaragua’s most biodiverse and ecologically important areas, is rich in... [Log in to read more]