Word: miskitos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...weeks, Honduran soldiers stationed across the Coco River from the Nicaraguan village of Leimus watched with mounting concern as Sandinista troops began moving into the bustling town, a stronghold of the country's independent-minded Miskito Indians. Then, on a moonlit night just before Christmas, the Hondurans began hearing bursts of automatic rifle fire. An Indian mineworker, Roberto Vidal Poveda, 18, recounted his ordeal to TIME Correspondent James Willwerth, who talked to a number of Miskito refugees: "During the night, the Sandinistas took us out and started to kill us, one by one. They made me stand...
...reported bloodbath in Leimus, in which as many as 50 Miskito Indians were shot or drowned, was part of an operation ordered by the Sandinista high command in Managua to evacuate a zone some 50 miles deep on the Nicaragua-Honduras border from Santa Isabel eastward along the Coco River to the coast. Beginning in mid-December, Sandinista forces evacuated or burned between 25 and 40 Miskito villages, allegedly killed an estimated 200 inhabitants and resettled 8,500 to 10,000 more at internment camps in the Nicaraguan interior near Rosita and Siuna. Reason for the Sandinista campaign: the Miskitos...
...Everybody has the same story," said Tom Hawk, the director of the overflowing United Nations-sponsored refugee camp at Mocoron, Honduras. "You hear it again and again." The camp is in a muddy meadow of thatched lean-tos surrounded by jungle. It has become home for 5,100 Miskito Indians who fled across the border into Honduras. Another 3,000 to 5,000 are expected in coming weeks. Food shipments are infrequent, and many of the refugees had not eaten in three days when Willwerth visited...
...Sandinista operation was the regime's first concerted military effort to neutralize the Miskito minority, which makes up some 4% of Nicaragua's population of 2.7 million and occupies most of the country's vulnerable northeast region. The Sandinistas fear that the porous Honduras border, and the 336-mile Caribbean coastline, might eventually be used as a staging area for an invasion led by anti-Sandinista units. The forcible resettlement of the Miskitos was designed to prevent them from providing food, shelter and intelligence to the anti-Sandinistas. Whatever the reason, the Sandinista action against the Indian...
Besides those killed or forced to abandon their homes, 160 Miskitos were jailed in the coastal town of Puerto Cabezas and 71 were found guilty of counterrevolutionary activity. Early in February the northern part of the department of Zelaya was declared a "military security zone." Even so, the Managua government still has cause for concern. A small but growing number of Miskito refugees who have escaped into Honduras are arming for revenge...