Recognizing Indigenous Miskitu Territory in Honduras

This is a descriptive case study and concrete example of a peaceful and successful five‐decade campaign to title ancestral indigenous territory in one of Central America's most conflictive regions: the Honduran Muskitia. The region and its native Miskitu communities are menaced by global and local powers vying for control over land and marine resources, including Central America's largest and most active colonization front of lumber barons, ladino settlers, and other land‐grabbers who encroach onto indigenous lands; the multinational Patuca III hydroelectric dam project, whose completion will have untold consequences on the river ecology and indigenous communities downstream; drug trafficking, with narco‐traffickers and their associates laundering money by purchasing lands illegally; and oil and natural‐gas explorations. Remarkably, faced with such powerful opposition, the Miskitu won territorial control in Honduras.

As the Miskitu struggle has transpired, significant expanses of ancestral indigenous lands have been titled elsewhere by Latin American states. These areas previously administered as “national lands,” municipalities, conservation areas, or indigenous reserves encompass important forestry, agricultural, hydrological, maritime, and mineral resources. They are also the homelands with sacred sites and subsistence areas of native peoples. Scholars question whether indigenous governance is functioning inside these territories (Herlihy Citation1989; Stevens and De Lacy Citation1997; Hale Citation2011; Bixler and others Citation2015). Cultural and political ecologists (Bebbington Citation1991; Herlihy Citation1997; Aagesen Citation1998; Zimmerer and Bassett Citation2003; Zimmerer Citation2010; Larson and Lewis‐Mendoza Citation2012, Finley‐Brook Citation2016) examine the complexities of indigenous natural‐resource management and confirm that indigenous communities often lack territorial governance structures over their lands being titled (Larson and Lewis‐Mendoza Citation2012).

Here we focus on a “quiet revolution” in Honduras that is overshadowed today by the country's notoriety for homicides fueled by narco‐trafficking, contested presidential elections, and outmigration. It came from peaceful legislative and administrative changes that gave native communities titles to their lands. While examining a single population and region—the Miskitu from MuskitiaFootnote¹ —we present a globally significant paradigm for how territoriality can be peacefully negotiated between native peoples and modern states. We situate this study within pertinent legal documentation and scholarly research, but we do not compare it to indigenous territorial issues elsewhere. We remain skeptical of many government initiatives, especially megadevelopment, land privatization, and conservation projects, and we share concerns over possible misappropriation of indigenous intellectual property. We embrace, however, Miskitu leaders’ optimism for the success of their newly titled homelands.

We detail how the Miskitu have engaged with state and other actors to gain legal title over their ancestral homelands through the creation of a new tenure category called territorial councils (concejos territoriales, CTs). These CTs reflect a unique indigenous‐state interaction characterized by progressive changes to landownership and territoriality in the country's most conflictive region that also encompasses significant land, forest, and water resources. In contrast to destructive, deceptive, or ambivalent state policies towards the lands and resources of indigenous communities, this example signals a willingness of Honduran authorities to fulfill an historic promise to protect the land rights of the native peoples in Muskitia.

Long‐term field observations, participatory mapping, and analysis of archival documents inform this article. While it provides empirical examples of the conflictive processes and unequal power structures surrounding the titling of indigenous lands (see, for example, Sletto and others Citation2013; Norris 2014), it does not engage in critical debates surrounding these or broader issues of boundary delimitations, mapping or legal procedures, participatory research, or other political geographical theory related to these complex issues. Instead, we contribute substantively to this debate by providing a concrete empirical example. We chronicle the emergence of the Miskitu territorial model within an historic framework of state politics, conservation initiatives, and native empowerment in eastern Honduras. Geographic knowledge and standard maps produced through participatory research mapping (PRM) helped Miskitu authorities to conceptualize their new territorial model.

Concepts of Indigenous Territory

Today indigenous groups have a multiplicity of strategies for engaging with state governments. New districts, reserves, and other territorial jurisdictions with shared governance structures have proliferated since the 1980s (Herlihy Citation1992; Plant and Hvalkof Citation2001, 5) as part of a broader “territorial turn” toward defining ethnic territories (Offen Citation2003a, 47). Since the 1990s, the World Bank has encouraged Latin American governments to map and legalize the customary land use and occupancy of indigenous populations in a move to “stabilize” them through privatization for development and capital markets (Gordon and others Citation2003; Smith Citation2003; Hale Citation2011).

Most indigenous territories in Latin America are jointly administered by state and indigenous authorities through what we call “indigenous territorial jurisdictions” (ITJs). Geographer John Agnew recognizes that states now participate in “sovereignty regimes” that “exhibit distinctive combinations of central state authority and political territoriality” (Citation2005, 437). We define ITJs as sovereignty regimes with functional and legal expressions for providing indigenous territoriality within the context of modern states. ITJs have unique land tenure structures and range in areal extent from village to provincial scales. Some have well‐defined and demarcated boundaries; others do not. ITJs determine to varying degrees how indigenous communities access resources and engage with state actors. Some ITJs result from imposition and others from negotiation. They provide greater autonomy to local populations and can become defining territorial units, such as comarcas in Panama, resguardos in Colombia, and now concejos territoriales (CTs) in Honduras.

The creation of CTs with intercommunity titles required decades of dialogue between Miskitu and state authorities. We show how the Miskitu formalized understanding of their customary land use and tenure to define a distinctive titling modality and way of governing; and how they successfully engaged state, university, and NGO actors to do this. Ours is an alternative narrative challenging the critical discourses of some scholars (Hale Citation2005; Wainwright and Bryan Citation2009; Mollett Citation2013; Sletto and others Citation2013) who claim that differences between indigenous peoples and state governments regarding concepts of property and territory invariably run so deep that any indigenous engagement using state‐defined legal tools must result in more harm than good. Instead, we join scholars (for example Plant and Hvalkof Citation2001; Herlihy and Knapp Citation2003; Kelly and others Citation2010; Liffman Citation2011; Larson and Lewis‐Mendoza Citation2012) who demonstrate how such engagements are actually nuanced, practical, and two‐way. We show how the Miskitu harnessed maps and other legal tools to gain rights over their lands and resources.

Miskitu Territory and Land Use in Eastern Honduras

La Muskitia is an ancestral homeland of the Miskitu people in eastern Honduras and Nicaragua. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Miskitu leveraged British support to extend their settlements along the Caribbean coastal lowlands from Honduras to Costa Rica (Helms Citation1971; Nietschmann Citation1973). This expansion resulted in the enslavement, dislocation, and assimilation of neighboring Pech and Tawahka. Today the Miskitu are the largest indigenous population in the region, while Garífuna, Pech, Tawahka, and nonindigenous Ladino (mestizo) settlements buffer their lands to the north and west (Figure 1).

Our study examines the Miskitu territory in the Honduran Department of Gracias a Dios (approximately 17,000 km²). Based on the 2013 Honduran census, 2017 figures from MASTA, and our own research, we estimate roughly 125,000 people in 300 Miskitu communities in the department's six municipalities (INE Citation2016, MASTA personal communication 2017; see Table 1). These communities range from small clusters of houses to semiurban centers of a few thousand people, with Puerto Lempira the capital and largest with over 15,000 people. They are usually situated on slightly elevated spots along the coasts, inland lagoons, and river margins extending deep into the rainforests and pine savannas (Tillman Citation2011).

The coast is the hub of Miskitu economic and social activity, but families also spend considerable time inland at their kiamps (from English “camp”) during the December‐April dry season. Here they hunt, fish, and cultivate most of their produce through swidden‐fallow agriculture (Cochran Citation2008). After cultivation, fields are managed as secondary regrowth (guamiles) containing relic palms, fruit trees, fiber, and medicinal plants as part of a human‐modified habitat attracting many edible game animals (Dunn and Smith Citation2011). The guamil plots remain under the ownership of the individuals who cleared them, providing they are continually managed. Any given family may have many cultivated plots that produce a checkerboard pattern of cultivated banana, rice, and yuca clearings among managed guamil and tall forest. Inland communities maintain their fields mostly within a day's roundtrip walking distance, but our research also shows extensive land uses (hunting, fishing, and collecting) reach much farther (ten kilometers or more) under the rainforest canopy and across open pine savannas.

Overlapping land use and tenure patterns are a hallmark of Miskitu subsistence livelihoods. Both private and communal lands are customarily recognized in and among communities. Historically, Miskitu families enjoy usufruct rights attained through these practices. Guamiles are then passed on through inheritance, usually along female lineages. These ancestral land use customs have come under threat in recent decades as outsiders have purchased land from Miskitu owners or occupied them illegally (Conzemius Citation1932; Herlihy and Hobson Herlihy Citation1991; Herlihy Citation1997; Dodds Citation1998; Cochran Citation2008; McSweeney and Pearson Citation2013; McSweeney and others Citation2017).

Territorial Threats

The colonization of Muskitia has had profound impacts on its cultural heritage and environment. Until the 1950s, the interior of the region was sparsely settled, with limited human influence (Helbig Citation1965; Mack Citation1998; Revels Citation2003; Tillman Citation2011). Only small Miskitu, Pech, Tawahka, and a few nonindigenous Ladino communities dotted the landscape and maintained their customary subsistence livelihoods and agroforestry practices. By mid‐1960s, loggers were extending tractor trails deep into the Muskitia forest corridor near the headwaters of the Paulaya, Wampú, and Patuca rivers. These road cuts provided access routes for landless Ladino farmers from the heavily populated south of the country. Government‐sponsored colonization projects in the 1970s, along with upgraded access roads, brought large numbers of Ladino families eastward into Muskitia. Military installations and refugee camps from the Contra‐Sandinista conflict pushed even more settlement into the Patuca and Coco River basins in the 1980s (Herlihy and Leake Citation1992).

Agrarian and property reform laws of the 1950s–1960s focused on privatizing and titling individual land parcels (parcelas or predios) and colonizing sparsely populated parts of the country. Colonization projects didn't reach Muskitia until 1970s‐1980s when Ladino settlers from Olancho and Colón pushed eastward into Gracias a Dios. State agencies freely allowed land‐grabbing in these “open lands” by farmers from other parts of Honduras, resulting in Central America's most aggressive agricultural frontier (Herlihy and Leake Citation1992, Herlihy Citation1997).

Ladino farmers who cleared forests for farms became de facto landowners following the concept of mejoras (improvements) through which a cleared and settled parcel becomes private property. “Market friendly” land liberalization policies of the 1990s then titled these “improved” lands as a way of providing capital and credit to individual farmers (Boucher and others Citation2005).

These land policies have brought the wanton destruction of the region's forests and natural resources. State and international conservation organizations reacted during the 1990s with concerted efforts to control this spontaneous colonization by establishing a protected‐areas corridor, composed of the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve (BRP), the Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve, and the Patuca National Park. Nevertheless, a lack of government vigilance allowed Ladino settlers to continue extending agricultural plots and grazing lands deep inside the corridor (Herlihy Citation2001). Filling the void, narco‐traffickers found sanctuary in the region. They have accelerated deforestation and land privatization by paying laborers to clear forest for agriculture, thereafter acquiring property titles (McSweeney and Pearson Citation2013; McSweeney and others Citation2017; Sesnie and others Citation2017).

These destructive practices were accompanied by the dispossession of indigenous subsistence lands within these “protected” conservation units. Citing the state's inability or unwillingness to safeguard the biosphere corridor, indigenous communities of Muskitia and their representative political organizations denounced state‐sponsored conservation paradigms. A serious reconfiguration was needed.

Miskitu Territorial Movement

Today, CTs have emerged as a principal territorial jurisdiction, jointly sponsored by state and indigenous communities, for resource conservation and the protection of indigenous lands in Muskitia. They represent a dramatic design change to the former protected‐area and biosphere‐reserve models. Nineteenth‐century Honduran legislation provided the initial statutory foundation enabling the creation of the CTs. The Muskitia region and the Bay Islands were ceded to Honduras by the British Crown via the 1859 Wyke‐Cruz Treaty. Native peoples’ rights to this territory were to be protected under the agreement. An official inventory of land titles published by the National Agrarian Institute (INA) as recently as 1976 did not list a single land title inside Gracias a Dios, suggesting the state, at least on paper, had respected the treaty (Davidson and Cruz Citation1988).

Solid legal standing for indigenous land rights in Honduras came through legislation of the past fifty years.Footnote² Formal titling didn't begin until the 1980s, when the government issued titles to Lenca, Tolupán, and Maya‐Ch'orti’ communities (Herranz Citation1996; Barahona Citation2009). The titles, however, did not include sufficient land to meet the communities’ subsistence demands.

INA records show that between 1993 and 2015 a total of 507 community titles were awarded to indigenous groups in all of Honduras; not one belonged to the Miskitu (CONPAH and Del Gatto Citation2015, 2). Of these, 496 were community titles awarding only small areas for subsistence around them, with an average of fewer than 600 hectares each. Four Tawahka communities received titles covering a total of 5,138 hectares in 1997. Two of these were in Gracias a Dios, representing the first indigenous titles in the department. Despite these advances, the Honduran government had failed to meet its statutory obligations to award sufficient land for their subsistence.Footnote³

The Miskitu territorial movement began in mid‐1970s when leaders opened dialogue with the Honduran government over the legal control of their lands in Gracias a Dios. In 1976, Miskitu university students and teachers formed the country's first indigenous federation, called MASTA (Miskitu Asla Takanka, or Unity of Muskitia). MASTA received its personería jurídica (PJ) or legal charter in 1987 and again petitioned the Honduran government for Miskitu territorial rights. Until then, the state had no formal indigenous politics or real inclinations toward developing them, which permitted uncontrolled land‐grabbing by Ladino colonists in Muskitia.

The NGO MOPAWI (Mosquitia Pawisa or development in Muskitia) bolstered the Miskitu movement by creating its Land Legalization Program in 1987, which was designed “to raise awareness among indigenous communities for the consequences that immigration would have on their lands” (MOPAWI Citation1990, 14). The program aimed at legalizing indigenous lands to provide communities with the resources needed for their livelihoods. MASTA representatives actively participated in MOPAWI's Land Legalization Program and went on influential exchanges to observe indigenous land tenure elsewhere in Honduras and among the Kuna in Panama (MOPAWI Citation1990, 16). These exchanges heightened Miskitu understanding of their own land tenure situation in Gracias a Dios.

MASTA leaders presented the first “Declaration about Indigenous Lands” to the Honduran government in 1988, petitioning for the legalization of Miskitu territory. The document formally declared, “The indigenous people of Honduras, and specifically the Honduran Muskitia, are deprived of one of their most basic rights: legal ownership of land. A process of legalization of land tenure in favor of indigenous Muskitia is necessary” (MASTA Citation1988, 1). In this foundational document, Miskitu leaders clarified fundamental distinctions about indigenous subsistence life and land tenure in the region:

These essential understandings of their own customary land uses became core to the Miskitu territorial claim and ultimately core to the legal title itself. They also set a precedent for both national and international legislation on the protection of indigenous land rights.

Mapping and Defining Territory

MASTA engaged in the first participatory research mapping (PRM) of Muskitia in 1992 to understand its constituent communities’ land uses in Gracias a Dios. The activity aimed at the empowerment of native peoples through the decolonization and production of cartographic information. Its results became core to the Miskitu land legalization model (MASTA Citation1995; Herlihy and Leake Citation1997; Knapp and Herlihy Citation2002; MASTA Citation2012a, 45–46; Galeana and Pantoja Citation2013).Through an iterative process of workshops and fieldwork, the PRM trained twenty‐two indigenous, community‐elected local investigators in basic geographic techniques of drawing sketch maps and applying land use questionnaires to collect toponyms identifying use location. The investigators worked with geographersFootnote⁴ to convert Miskitu cognitive geographic knowledge of place into consensual formats and then into standardized maps and tables. The effort led to the first cartographic depiction of subsistence land use zones (functional habitats) of indigenous communities throughout Muskitia (Figure 2).Footnote⁵ Resulting maps showed for the first time the overlapping land use sites and the porous, fuzzy nature of the boundaries between them (Figure 3: Herlihy and Leake Citation1997, 736). The maps demonstrated how indigenous communities respected these ownership overlaps among the large expanses of forested lands, open lagoons, rivers, and coastal waters (MASTA and MOPAWI Citation1993). The final 1:500,000‐scale map entitled “Tierras Indígenas de la Mosquitia Hondureña—1992: Zonas de Subsistencia” (shortened to “Tierras Indígenas map” below) became a key component of the Miskitu territorial struggle (MASTA and MOPAWI Citation1993). The PRM collaboration was a formative experience for Miskitu leaders and marked the first attempt to understand their community‐based territoriality (Herlihy and Leake Citation1997).

The project concluded with a national conference in Tegucigalpa to present results and to bring environmental issues in Muskitia to the forefront. Local investigators presented the PRM methodology and cartographic results to government authorities and the press. They demonstrated how the community‐based methodology produced maps of greater precision and accuracy than official topographic sheets. They articulated concerns about the destructiveness of the expanding colonization front and the need to legalize their lands, presenting their own set of resolutions concerning land tenure, environmental conservation, and the exploitation of natural resources in Muskitia. One investigator explained: “The map caused a sensation…. All the people are very enthusiastic. Now I notice that the people are starting to become more aware of their natural resources, and they feel the need to unite and protect their lands” (Swenarski de Herrera Citation1992, 11; Herlihy and Leake Citation1997, 730–731).

A broad reconsideration of the entire political organization of Gracias a Dios followed. As a first step, state and indigenous authorities divided the department into six new municipalities in 1996. These divisions reflected major population centers but not indigenous settlement and land use patterns. MASTA and MOPAWI held community assemblies to design “regional federations” as their foundational geopolitical units.Footnote⁶ This marked the first significant Miskitu attempt to establish a geopolitical jurisdiction. The new federations were to control local land use and to thwart the invasion of colonists onto indigenous lands. MASTA leaders then inaugurated a campaign to form additional federations throughout Muskitia based on community locations and subsistence zones. MASTA proposed its first land legalization model to INA in 1995 and finished establishing seven federations by the next year (MASTA Citation1995; CAHDEA and MOPAWI Citation1997).Footnote⁷

Territoriality was the central tenet of the Miskitu land legalization model. The proposal included conceptualizations of the “functional habitat” (subsistence zone) with its system of guamiles and overlapping use rights and a copy of the 1992 Tierras Indígenas map (MASTA Citation1995, Herlihy and Leake Citation1997, Galeana and Pantoja Citation2013). Without specifics of how land legalization would be implemented, the proposal sat idle for years, prompting MASTA leaders to reconfigure their geopolitical organization. The difficulty for one governing body to manage such a vast geographic area prompted MASTA's 1997 Congress to approve the concejos territoriales as its internal governance units (MASTA Citation2012a, 14).

The geographic areas and boundaries of the CTs came from the reconfiguration of the initial seven regional federations. Communities in each CT shared historic, cultural, and logistical ties and areas of marine and terrestrial resource use. CT delimitations were based on these “similar features” and “common interests” (MASTA Citation2012a, 14). Between 1998 and 2011, twelve CTsFootnote⁸ were organized in Gracias a Dios (MASTA Citation2012b). Initially the fledgling CTs had no legal titles and lacked precise boundaries and internal political structures.

Titling What, How, and to Whom

MASTA authorities continued lobbying the Honduran government for a solution, but the question of what area to title and to whom lingered. Powerful national and international stakeholders tried to force models of individual land privatization, but MASTA consistently denounced such proposals.

From 2004–2010 the World Bank‐funded PATH (Honduran Land Administration Program) project of the Honduran Property Institute (IP) provided an opening. PATH broadly aimed to modernize the property rights system in Honduras through institutional strengthening, land surveying, titling, and registration. The project included a pilot effort to delimit and title lands of selected Garífuna and Miskitu communities. The Bank contracted university scholars from the Caribbean Central American Research Council (CCARC) to conduct a feasibility study to do this. Their diagnóstico was purportedly a survey of land tenure. Bryan (Citation2011, 45‐46) asserts that the results “spatially coincided with the seventeen subsistence zones” from the original 1992 Tierras Indígenas map (CCARC Citation2003), but the study contributed little new understanding. In fact, both CCARC and PATH were heavily criticized by indigenous leaders for not providing a single title or tangible result in Muskitia (Paton and others Citation2007: PATH Citation2009). In 2006 the indigenous federation representing Garífuna communities, OFRANEH (Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña), demanded an investigation of the PATH project, alleging that the bank had not considered the rights and interests of the Garífuna people (PATH Citation2009). MASTA's president and Miskitu leaders issued their own related denouncement. PATH consultants acknowledged these concerns and the need to build trust between the Miskitu and the Honduran government (Álvarez and others Citation2017).

New leadership came to MASTA in 2010 with the election of a young university‐educated Miskitu man, Norvin Goff. He brought new community‐based approaches to strengthen boundaries and geopolitical organizations in the twelve CTs. MASTA reinvigorated its lobbying efforts to develop a proposal for Miskitu collective territoriality based on intercommunity ownership. Goff found Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa (2010–2014), who formerly led the Honduran Forestry Agency (ICF), a surprisingly strong advocate.

Lobo supported MASTA's solution for fulfilling the country's historic commitment to the 1859 Wyke‐Cruz Treaty and, responding to earlier criticisms, he established a second generation “PATH II” in 2011 within the IP, again financed by the World Bank. The program contained a central component for strengthening Miskitu land rights and for carrying out the delimitation, demarcation, collective titling, and registration of the CTs (República de Honduras Citation2011). A “Miskitu Titling Sub‐commission,” established and chaired by INA, assigned responsibilities to IP, ICF, PATH II, and MASTA for operationalizing the titling process in each CT (IP and PATH II Citation2015, 5).Footnote⁹

Territorial Model Defined

The Miskitu land use and tenure model is embodied in INA's new intercommunity land title whose geographic area includes the functional habitats and overlapping ownership patterns of its constituent communities (INA Citation2012; PATH II Citation2014). The intercommunity land titles respond to two previously unresolved characteristics of Miskitu subsistence: their extensive use of the forest and its resources and their overlapping land use and ownership. The titles are legally inalienable, imprescriptible, indefeasible, and indivisible (INA Citation2012). The intercommunity land titles accommodate and legalize historic Miskitu territoriality through the establishment of the twelve contiguous CTs in which local governance is situated under the umbrella political structure of MASTA.

By 2013, all background studies were completed and the polygons delimited for Miskitu lands outside the BRP. However, titling the seven CTs with lands inside the BRP meant transferring ownership from ICF to INA,Footnote¹⁰ thus complicating and delaying the process. A Lobo administration decree—Congreso Nacional, 17 May 2013—separated these lands from the original title and allowed them to be titled to the CTs inside the reserve.

The first intercommunity title (título de propiedad intercomunitario) in Honduras was issued to CT KATAINASTA by INA in August 2012. It was explicitly based on the Wyke‐Cruz Treaty, Honduran Constitution, International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169, and the Agrarian Reform, Modernization, Property, and Forestry laws. KATAINASTA covers 553 km² with about fifty communities and 7,000 residents (INA Citation2012; PATH II Citation2014). Unprecedented technical and legal coordination with broad institutional support made titling possible. The achievement marked the first time the Miskitu people received a legal property title in Honduras. In 2013, INA issued a second intercommunity title to the adjacent CT Auhya Yari covering another 520 km², consolidating over 1,000 km² of territory, while solidifying the Miskitu intercommunity land model for all the CTs.

The Honduran government completed the intercommunity land titling of all twelve Miskitu CTs by 2016 (Table 1). They benefit over 17,500 families and cover approximately 14,000 km², or 83 percent of the Gracias a Dios Department and 12.5 percent of Honduras. This Miskitu model formalizes a detailed geopolitical organization MASTA developed for the governance of each CT by combining Miskitu customary land use practices with Honduran legal norms. The legal charter for the concejo territorial aims to solidify boundaries and improve the quality of life of its constituents (KATAINASTA Citation2013, 2). The organizational structure of each includes a general assembly, directive council, executive committee, council of elders, and committee for transparency. The general assembly is the maximum authority of the CT. It holds meetings; establishes measures for managing territory and resources; and resolves social, economic, and cultural issues in coordination with corresponding state agencies.Footnote¹¹

The CT governance structures are situated within the geopolitical structure of the Honduran state, but they truly represent the grassroots bases of MASTA. MASTA successfully integrated its political and territorial structures after developing a nuanced spatial understanding of Miskitu settlement and land use patterns.

Discussion and Conclusion

The Miskitu territorial model exemplifies recent global trends in the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights in Latin America. It's another example of the “territorial turn” (Offen Citation2003a, 43) of titling collective lands to indigenous and Afro‐descendant populations in Latin America. As part of this trend, the World Bank began supporting the titling of indigenous community lands in Peru during the 1970s (Plant and Hvalkof Citation2001), in Colombia during the 1990s (Offen Citation2003a), in Nicaragua during the 2000s (Larson and others Citation2016), and now in Honduras during the 2010s. The Miskitu titling model, though, was born before World Bank participation. Remarkably, the Miskitu sculpted a new ITJ with a titling modality that conformed to their own conceptualization of territoriality. To consider their model an outcome of World Bank or other influences diminishes the peaceful territorial struggle they waged for fifty years—and won.

The incipient Miskitu territorial movement of the 1970s offers tangible evidence of their collective agency in seeking territorial rights. It developed gradually through dedicated, nonviolent activism by Miskitu leaders and their constituent communities, aided by long‐term national and international support for biodiversity conservation and protection of indigenous lands in the region. Remarkably, the Miskitu model may have influenced World Bank policy more than the reciprocal. Indeed, the bank responded to indigenous communities’ harsh criticism of PATH activities, as outlined above, by approving the Honduran PATH II project with a mandate to title indigenous Miskitu lands.

An unprecedented cooperation and political goodwill among government agencies, indigenous organizations, and international actors drove the complicated land titling process in Muskitia. MASTA provided the conceptual territorial model that PATH II formalized with INA to issue the first intercommunity land title in Honduras. MASTA's President Goff led the pilot initiative in KATAINASTA with PATH II technicians and local Miskitu CT President and Vice President, Gilberto Maibet and Duval HaylockFootnote¹² to complete the delimitation and titling of the first CT in a highly participatory way. MASTA and PATH II emphasized community involvement with “more than 100 consultations” (Álvarez and others Citation2017, 7). Dedicated experts from MASTA and PATH II developed and led the methodological process with the communities. They also coordinated activities with the Honduran forestry and agrarian agencies to advance the complicated legal, political, and technical work.

MASTA provided the cohesive glue binding state agencies and NGOs during the process. Initially Honduras had no precedent or specific legislation for free, prior, and informed community consultations, so the Miskitu Titling Sub‐Commission established a procedure for their implementation in the CTs (Álvarez and others Citation2017). Nevertheless, the geographic isolation of Muskitia and community members skeptical of state agendas made for an arduous titling process. MASTA provided an indispensable role in the community‐based work with conflict resolution; free, prior, and informed community consultations; delimitation of polygons for each CT; completion of socioeconomic questionnaires; and background studies on Miskitu history and agriculture (PATH II Citation2014; IP and PATH II Citation2015, 6).

MASTA leadership—over the past five decades—has formalized a Miskitu territorial model and singlehandedly forged unique institutional and professional alliances to gain legal collective title to Miskitu territory in Honduras. When KATAINASTA received its intercommunity title, the concept and function of the concejo territorial was well understood by its community members because they had participatory involvement in the initial definitions, changing historic delimitations, and final demarcation. Miskitu leaders knew that contiguous CTs would formalize and legalize their territoriality in Honduras. This plays out in contrast to the violent territorial struggles suffered by Miskitu communities in Nicaragua, where community members have felt disenfranchised from participation in the development of the governance structure in their territorios indígenas (Larson and others Citation2016).

The Miskitu first visualized their collective territoriality on standard maps during the PRM project in 1992 (Herlihy and Leake Citation1997) and then again in 1997–98 (Herlihy Citation2001). Through the careful transformation of Miskitu cognitive knowledge of customary land use and tenure into standard maps, the study enabled the Miskitu to visualize their conceptualization of territory and to document their land claim in a way that could communicate effectively with state authorities. Cartographic depiction of their settlements and subsistence zones triggered Miskitu leaders to reflect spatially upon their territoriality. The Tierras Indígenas map became a vital tool for the first Miskitu land legalization proposal (MASTA Citation1995; Herlihy and Leake Citation1997).

MASTA used the 1992 PRM cartographic results to help delimit its “regional federations” that become the CTs. These results—derived from Miskitu cognitive spatial knowledge—first documented: Miskitu subsistence zones (functional habitats) with their spatial patterns of overlapping land uses and ownership, and their porous community boundaries and extensive use of forests. These features became defining components of the intercommunity title. Moreover, and as part of the new PRM methodology, hundreds of Miskitu “local investigators” received geographic training that empowered them to diffuse these understandings across the region.

The Miskitu CT model with intercommunity titles responds to the territorial ambitions of MASTA and constituent Miskitu communities in Honduras. Miskitu territoriality merges cultural identity, community life, settlement distributions, and subsistence patterns (Offen Citation2003b; Finley‐Brook and Offen Citation2009; Tillman Citation2011). MASTA worked with MOPAWI and other partners to organize local federations that became the concejos territoriales of today.

Miskitu authorities held an uncompromising political stance towards the Honduran state as they sought legalization of Miskitu territory. They lobbied for a territorial jurisdiction with a distinct titling “modality” to encompass overlapping subsistence zones of their communities (MASTA Citation1995). MASTA often found itself in difficult political positions, denouncing programs that offered to title parcels or plots to the individual, family, or community.

The Miskitu territorial model shows how geographic knowledge and maps can be harnessed by indigenous peoples to gain control over their lands. Fulfilling a prophecy of geographer Barney Nietschmann that “more indigenous territory can be re‐claimed and defended by maps than by guns” (Nietschmann Citation1995, 37), Miskitu leader and CONPAH President, Donaldo Allen, explained the central role maps continue to play for MASTA and the Honduran Miskitu:

Today the Honduran government hopes the Miskitu territorial model will allow for self‐determination of communities and their control over natural resource management (MiAmbiente Citation2016). The titling of the CTs opens a new chapter in the governance of Muskitia. State, NGO, and private organizations working there acknowledge the need for defining the legal structure and institutional responsibilities for governing the CTs within the framework of the Honduran constitution (IP and PATH II Citation2015, 8). CT statutes do not adequately contemplate relationships with established departmental or municipal governance structures. Nevertheless, communities in each CT will govern themselves under the loose political structure outlined in their intercommunity title and legal charter. MASTA provides guidance in this arena and has already reached interinstitutional agreements for resource conservation and management (MiAmbiente Citation2016).

Outdated paradigms of state‐sanctioned conservation areas on indigenous lands are no longer acceptable to Miskitu communities. A look back shows how state and multinational investments to create a contiguous biosphere reserve corridor failed to stop logging and colonization of forested lands. The Miskitu model of CTs with intercommunity titles confronts this reality and reflects the sustained leadership of MASTA to consolidate control and protect Miskitu ancestral territory.

Undoubtedly, challenges including the ever‐expanding colonization front, land privatization initiatives, resource exploitation agendas, mega development projects, and narco‐trafficking will continue to threaten the fledgling CTs. However, the new governance structures, along with unprecedented interinstitutional cooperation among state and indigenous organizations, now decentralize decision‐making to the local level allowing indigenous communities to manage and protect their tropical biodiversity and cultural heritage while dealing with delicate issues of land grabbing, saneamiento (relocation of trespassers), and narco‐trafficking. Whatever the future, the titling of Miskitu territory in Honduras marks the fulfillment of an historic promise and a refreshingly novel solution to an indigenous territorial struggle.