Philip A. Dennis

Grisi Siknis in Miskito Culture

Miskito villages line the Atlantic coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras. Nietschmann (1973: 47) estimated the number of Miskito speakers in Nicaragua at 35,000 in the early 1970s, and the population has been increasing. “Miskito” is a cultural category more than a racial one. Long contact with outsiders has resulted in racial mixture with Europeans, creole blacks from the Caribbean, and Chinese merchants. As a result, a wide variety of physical types are found among the modern Miskito. Culturally, however, all those people identified as Miskito share such common core elements as a matrilocal residence pattern and a strong kinship ethic, a Miskito variety of Christianity, belief in the world of Miskito supernaturals, and use of the Miskito language itself.

THE ANTI-CHINESE CAMPAIGNS IN SONORA, MEXICO1

This paper summarizes the history of the Chinese in Sonora, Mexico and describes the anti-Chinese campaigns and propaganda leading to their expulsion in 1931. While Chinese racial and cultural differences became focal symbols for hostility, this inter-ethnic conflict masked an underlying class conflict. Anti-Chinese political propaganda intensified after many Mexicans returned to Mexico from the United States unable to acquire jobs there because of the Great Depression. In Sonora they discovered that the Chinese controlled jobs and wealth that they wanted. Discriminatory laws were passed and in 1931 the Chinese were forced to liquidate their holdings and leave. It is suggested that it is easier to generate class conflict when cultural and racial differences separate the groups involved than where members of the working class identify with the upper-class landowners.