Tradition, law, autonomy

Customary law in the indigenous communities of the RAAN

Abstract

Since the Statute of Rights and Guarantees of the Nicaraguans was dictated, in 1979, it is enough the creation of the autonomous regions as new political administrative entities of the country (under the protection of the Political Constitution and the Autonomy Statute), in 1989, the most notable and forceful advance of a new legal and political reality on the multiethnicity and the recognition of the “historical rights of the peoples” has been, without a doubt, the official installation of the regional autonomous governments, celebrated on May 4, 1991. Hence, the most renowned specialists in Latin America on the issue of the rights of Jos indigenous peoples (Stavenhagen 1988: 69), recognize the significant degree of progress that the Nicaraguan legislation represents in this respect.  But this is not enough to think that the complex problem of cultural, economic and political relations between the elements of national diversity has been solved. Autonomy, its organization and the effective exercise of its principles is not an exclusive issue of the coastal regions, nor of the central government or the state in the abstract but has diverse spheres of action that involve practically all the instances and institutions of life.