In the Shadow of the Empire – The Emergence of Afro-Creole Societies in Belize and Nicaragua

Abstract

This article has two primary aims. The first part discusses the history of English-speaking Afro-Americans (Creoles) in two regions of the Central American mainland, focusing on their role in regional society and their relationship to Hispanic Central Americans. Creoles have always been a numerical minority in the Caribbean coastal region of Nicaragua (the Mosquitia) but since the nineteenth century they have become the national people in Belize. Earlier studies of the Creoles in both countries treated them as ethnic communities emphasizing them as mostly urban, Protestant and edu­cated middle-class groups. In a short second section, the article stresses, in contrast, the cultural and social heterogeneity among the Afro-American population, and the protracted and contradictory process of their ethnogenesis, focusing on the Creoles in Caribbean Nicaragua.