In 1990-91, several toxic waste dumping schemes threatened to foul and pollute the fish-filled coastal lagoons of Yapti Tasba. Yapti Tasba was seen as being an ideal dumping site because it had all four of the requisites: it was too poor to say no, and had a sea-side location, ready dumps in the coastal lagoons, and a few self-styled "leaders" in Puerto Cabézas who would take payoffs and issue dumping permits. At least six waste schemes were attempted: Miami garbage, New York City hospital wastes, human waste ("fertilizer") from Texas, used automobile tires ("fuel to generate electrical energy") from Texas, low-grade nuclear wastes from undisclosed US sites, and chemical wastes from the US East Coast. These schemes were stopped when Nicaraguan and international activists and Miskito communities discovered the plans which led Nicaragua (and other Central American countries) to pass legislation banning toxic and hazardous waste dumping.

Two large-scale illegal deals have been attempted to sell out Miskito resources: Caribbean 2000 and Equipe de Nicaragua. In 1991, the US-owned fishing company Caribbean 2000 signed an illegal contract with RAAN leaders for "exclusive rights" to all sea resources (fish, shrimp, lobsters, turtles, crabs) in exchange for 75 fishing jobs on three company boats, and an appliance store and a video transmission station in Puerto Cabézas. The Nicaraguan government discovered and nullified the deal because it was not based on discussions and agreement with the central government and Miskito communities, as required in the Autonomy Law. However, the central government itself then ignored the Autonomy Law when it signed a secret deal on August 5, 1991, that would give Taiwan (Equipe de Nicaragua) logging rights to 90 percent of Miskito Nation territory in Nicaragua. International environmentalists and Miskito activists pressured the Nicaraguan Government to reject the deal, which it did on February 4, 1992. (The Chicago-based Stone Container Corporation had also made a deal in 1991 with Tegucigalpa for Miskito timber resources in the northern one-third of the Miskito Nation claimed by Honduras. This deal, too, was reversed by international and national pressure in early 1992.)

The most troublesome threat to Miskito control of resources is foreign "pirate" vessels that invaded Miskito-Nicaraguan waters as the war wound down in late 1989. No longer with superpower backers, neither the outgoing Sandinista nor incoming UNO governments could afford the costs of coastal air and sea surveillance. Lobster and shrimp boats from at least 12 different countries converged on Yapti Tasba waters, which contain the richest and largest continental shelf in the Caribbean. Resource piracy takes out an estimated $2 million monthly in stolen lobsters and shrimp, the "red gold" of the Caribbean. Many of the lobster boats from Colombia and Honduras brutally exploit and injure young Miskito divers, using broken-down, dangerous scuba equipment, contaminated air tank fills, and forcing excessive repetitive dives that cause air embolisms and decompression sickness (the bends). Some lobster pirate captains give cocaine to keep Miskito divers underwater all day. Cocaine is also laundered by exchanging it for lobster tails. In addition, the undefended Yapti Tasba coast has become an increasingly important refueling and trans-shipment route for cocaine trafficking from Colombia and Panama, through coastal Yapti Tasba-Nicaragua, then overland north to the United States through Mexico, or by sea in lobster shipments to Florida.

A parallel strategy to further autonomy is to link self-determination to grassroots-controlled protected areas, initially financed by international conservation organizations. To this end, the Miskito Coast Protected Area project was initiated in 1990, an 11,000 km2 land-sea zone, the largest coastal protected area in Indian-Latin America. Made up of former Miskito resistance combatants, the environmentalist NGO Mikupia (Miskito Heart) was formed in 1991 and began to work in the 23 coastal communities between Walpasiksa north to Old Cape at the Honduras border. On November 1, 1991, Nicaraguan President Barrios de Chamorro decreed provisional status to the protected area. Some $1.5 million has been raised of a needed $5 million from the World Wildlife Fund, Cultural Survival, the MacArthur Foundation, USAID, and the Liz Claiborne Foundation toward training of Mikupia personnel and producing a management plan.

Autonomy for Yapti Tasba probably will never be finished or finalized. Progressively it will be amplified, consolidated, and defended. Many different paths exist toward a stronger autonomy: political, economic, development, conservation, and territorial defense. Several problems that hamper the development of autonomy need to be solved: 1) resource piracy that is robbing Yapti Tasba of the wealth to rebuild, develop, and become more economically independent, a necessary foundation for autonomy building; 2) the economic dependence of the RAAN and RAAS governments on the state government they are supposed to be autonomous from (instead, the communities should pay the salaries so that if their leaders don't lead, they can be fired); and 3) a permanent commission representing central and regional governments and indigenous communities to be established to set guidelines and to hear proposals for commercial exploitation of resources in Yapti Tasba (in order to avoid the unilateral and illegal resource schemes attempted by Caribbean 2000 with RAAN and Equipe de Nicaragua with Managua.)

These and other solutions will surely evolve as Yapti Tasba's principal resource, human capital, weathers the chaos and aftermath of war, economic collapse, and the slow rebuilding of the infrastructure of nations. Meanwhile, the sea and lagoons are filled with fish, agricultural land is abundant and reasonably productive, and no group from Nicaraguathe Government, the Sandinistas, the re-contras, the re-compas, the revueltos (mixed group of compas and contras)is willing to attempt to enter Yapti Tasba by force to take resources and to stifle autonomy.

Fourth World Bulletin • February 1993

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