i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

once-bustling colonial center of Nueva Segovia, from which gold was sent to Spain and
Indian slaves were boarded onto ships destined for South America. Eventually, the
colonial capital of Nueva Segovia proved too vulnerable to attack by sea, and it was
abandoned after 1789.
Today, certain communities in the Segovias region—such as Telpaneca, El
Mozonte, and Ducualí—are recognized by the state and by local inhabitants as
indigenous settlements, and a significant portion of local inhabitants makes no claim to
Spanish ancestry. Nevertheless, the majority of Segovian inhabitants (many of whose
ancestors already represented a mixture of Spanish and native when they moved to the
region) have long been subsumed into Nicaraguan mestizo culture. Although some
communities have made claims for indigenous recognition, in general, Segovian
communities’ identity formation has been an arduous process of “deindianization” or
“ladinization” as indigenous groups became peasants, or campesinos (Gould 1997;
Wheelock 1981; Kearney 1996).
The identity formations of the scattered populations who inhabit this precipitous
northern frontier have been constructed in response to larger political entities and the elite
sectors of Nicaraguan society. The anthropological discussion of ethnic identities in
Nicaragua does not coincide with the historiography of indigeneity in rural communities
in Las Segovias. The patchy historical record of Segovian populations ranges from the
conquest and the Spanish colonial government through independence, liberalization,
dictatorship, revolution, and into the present neoliberal phase of Nicaragua’s national
agenda. Through all of these periods, little has changed in terms of Segovians’ social
relations and productive capacity.
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