Mr Edgar Coulsen, otherwise known as ‘Rasta’, was born in the village of Greytown – a small, now extinct Creole settlement perched between the Caribbean sea and the mouth of the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua.
He left for the port of Bluefields when he was 8 years old, gaining an education and later taking to the seas where he found employment, like so many other Creole Costeños, on North American cruise-ships. During his 27 year absence from Nicaragua, the country was twice torn apart – once by the revolution, and once again by the Contra war.
He returned to find his childhood home of Greytown bombed out of existence by the Sandinistas. Nearby, a new settlement had flourished; San Juan del Norte. Although his hometown had risen from ashes, the Creole culture he’d grown up with had practically vanished from the area. Many of his old friends and neighbours had fled the fighting to the Costa Rican towns of Puerto Limón and Puerto Viejo.
“It’s totally, totally different to when I was growing up,” he said. “We all mostly was black people. More English than Spanish-speaking. Everybody was like family…”
Rasta is today a well-known and respected member of the San Juan community. He works as a guide, leading groups to the Indio-Maíz rainforest reserve, or to indigenous Rama settlements along the banks of the Rio Indio. He is also heavily involved with turtle conservation and makes regular trips along the coast to monitor nest sites. Rasta, it should also be noted, is an excellent chef.
At the end of a two-day expedition into the jungle, I talked to him about then and now, the changing face of San Juan del Norte, and the future. Speaking of the past, he described a community in harmony with nature, where vast herds of wild pigs would sometimes drift out of the rainforest and into town, followed, occasionally, by a big cat or two. Precious woods, seafood and game were plenty.
“When we was growing up we took care of our resources,” he said.
But today, this harmonious relationship has vanished. Today, San Juan del Norte has an entirely different ethnic composition to the Greytown of his youth – a different population, a different attitude and a different set of values.
“A large quantity of mestizos has been arriving,” explained Rasta. “Every day, more and more… [and] they already destroyed where they’re coming from…”
Since the 1990s, waves of mestizo farmers have been migrating from the Pacific side of Nicaragua to San Juan del Norte and other Caribbean towns. This has left many Creole and indigenous inhabitants marginalised in their own ancestral lands. In some areas, including the nearby Indio-Maíz reserve, settlers have been clearing protected virgin forests at an astonishing rate.
In explaining this devastation, Rasta talked about a different ‘mentality’ among the mestizos. Back when he was growing up, people would hunt one or two animals in the whole season, sharing the kill amongst families. But today’s settlers hunt for profit, bringing a new kind of commercialism and modern-day ‘selfishness’.
More than this, according to Rasta, Creole traditions have been critically damaged by the large-scale descent of Spanish-speaking outsiders.
“They’ve taken away our culture, I can feel that.” Said Rasta. “Games like Kitty Alley, and the May Pole… they don’t care about those things…”
Alarmingly, a significant proportion of new arrivals are ‘cocaine hunters’. Ever since the Colombians consolidated the trafficking lanes off the Caribbean coast, packages of merchandise have been washing up on San Juan’s beaches. Often worth many thousands of dollars, these packages are being sought out by increasing numbers of poor Nicaraguans, all enticed by stories of ‘white gold’ just waiting to be found, like lost treasure in the sand.
“We’ve had the gold rush,” explained Rasta, referring to the stream of 49ers who passed through town during the era of the Californian gold rush. “Now we’re having the cocaine rush.”
Ultimately, however, Rasta was optimistic for the future.
“It’s gonna be a very hard struggle between us and the mestizos, but I think in the long-term… maybe one day we can go back to being, well, not exactly the same as when I was growing up, but very close.” He paused for a moment and reflected. “I’m just saying… we’re all Nicaraguans… let’s unite all of us and run this ship together…”
The challenge for San Juan del Norte, like the rest of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, is preserving its cultural and environmental riches in the face of mass migration. Central government, it seems, could do more to address the legitimate concerns of the region’s natives – and the mounting ethnic tensions.
