NEW PARTNERS ON SHIFTING SHORES.

• Author: Sletto, Bjorn

THE MISKITO OF COASTAL HONDURAS ARE HELPING TO CREATE A BIOSPHERE RESERVE THAT COULD BRIGHTEN THEIR ECONOMIC FUTURE

THEIR ORIGIN MAY BE SHROUDED in legend, but the Miskito are still very much a reality in Honduras. In the 1640s, so the story goes, when shipwrecked West African slaves scrambled ashore near Cabo Gracias a Dios, Indians along the Coco River accepted them as their own. For centuries, the descendants of these people maintained their unique culture, a blend of African, indigenous, and northern European--mostly English--influences. They jealously guarded their close economic, political, and cultural relationship with England and the United States, and resisted "the Spanyards'" attempt to incorporate them into the modern Honduran state. And for the most part, they have succeeded in remaining a people apart. They still fish the sea and the freshwater lagoons along what is now known as the Mosquito Coast. They plant small gardens in the rain forest or on the sandy coastal plains, and hunt along the murky rivers of the interior. And they work, when jobs are available, as loggers, sailors, or lobster divers.

But life is slowly changing on the Mosquito Coast. Once a remote, impenetrable wilderness ignored by the rest of the country, the coast and the northern forests have become Honduras's last frontiers. Landless peasants from the overpopulated highlands or the Pacific coast arrive in the Mosquitia every day. Logging firms eye the hardwood forests, and mining companies file concessions to Mosquito Coast lands in faraway Tegucigalpa.

To the Miskito, these are troubling developments. Their culture--in fact, their de-facto autonomy from the Honduran state--depends on the health of the natural environment of the region: on the untouched forests where peccary still roam, on the unspoiled lagoons where crabs are still plentiful. So when the government created the 1,930-square mile-Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in 1980 to combat the growing destruction of this area, the Miskito became the government's most effective partners in conservation. Miskito leaders know that although the biosphere swallows much of Miskito territory, it may nevertheless be their last chance to protect their culture and autonomy.

Says Donaldo Allen, a Miskito teacher and political leader in Belin, a village just east of Palacios: "The Honduran government does not have the resources to protect the reserve alone, so it needs our help. This is a great opportunity for the Miskito people. This project allows us to protect our land, but also to protect our culture. Without our land, we are nothing."

Miskito culture still survives in Raista, one of the many small villages that dot the Honduran coast from Palacios east to the Nicaraguan border. Raista is a cluster of a half-dozen, unpainted stilt houses and palm-thatched kitchens, perched on the sandbar between the Caribbean Sea and the Ibans Lagoon, an hour's canoe ride east of Palacios. Life here still revolves around the rising and the setting of the sun, and the coming and going of the rainy season, just as in centuries past.

At sunup, the village awakens to the murmured chatter of sleep-weary children, picking newly fallen nances--a small fruit that tastes like an overripe apple--to make a favorite sweet drink. Young men chop firewood, their machetes flashing in the stealthy rays of the morning sun. Women collect wash water from wells dug in the slippery banks of the Ibans Lagoon. Soon they are joined by the children who scramble into old and cracked dugout canoes to clean their nances with lukewarm lagoon water. On some mornings, a motorized canoe, or tuk-tuk, may glide slowly past on its way to a nearby village, or perhaps stop to drop off a bag of flour, or coffee, or even a rare piece of mail. But on most mornings, there are just the muted sounds of the village and the whisper of the trade winds.

Wilyans Bodden, Raista's patriarch, takes his first cup of the day of instant coffee at the kitchen table, just a few feet from the traditional mud stove his wife, Yudaina de Bodden, built nine years ago. The palm roof has begun to leak, and during rains the kitchen table and the mud floor are spattered with fat, tepid raindrops. Smoke from the mud stove billows up to the smoke-blackened ceiling. Two of the Boddens' children drop by--Eddy, who lives just behind his parents, and Cornelio, who lives across the clearing. The men greet...