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A DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE TAWAHKA
AMERINDIANS
OF
HONDURAS*
KENDRA McSWEENEY
ABSTRACT.
Latin America’s lowland indigenous groups have been characterized in contra-
dictory ways. Are populations shrinking or growing?
Do
groups face cultural extinction, or
are they increasingly asserting their ethnic identities? This article uses a case study of the
Tawahka Amerindians of Honduras to show how basic demographic techniques can shed
light on these issues. A multimethod approach resolves conflicting reports
of
population
growth and ethnic admixture within the 1,000-strong population. Household surveys indi-
cate a contemporary growth rate in excess of
4
percent; a review of historical sources suggests
that this rapid growth has been building for more than
fifty
years. Although genealogical
evidence shows high levels of interethnic mixing since 1900, the Tawahka retain their lan-
guage and identity. The potentially negative effects of rapid population growth on local re-
sources are likely to be mitigated as the Tawahka translate their renewed ethnic identity into
political gains, which in turn have increased educational and economic opportunities. Closer
attention to microdemographic processes is recommended for those involved in the long-
term management of Latin America’s indigenous homelands.
Keywords: demography, Hon-
duras, indigenous peoples, population, Tawahka.
Contradictions abound in the characterization of indigenous groups living in the
biodiverse landscapes of Latin America. Although Amerindian populations are of-
ten perceived, after decades of decline, to be as endangered as the biodiverse forests
they inhabit (Stonich
2001),
recent evidence
of
rapid growth suggests otherwise
(Gomes
2000).
Similarly, cultural erosion among native groups is lamented even as
resurgent indigenous groups celebrate new gains in territorial control and political
autonomy (Fisher
1994;
Cultural Survival
2001).
Meanwhile, indigenous peoples
have never wielded more power to manage their communities, futures, and envi-
ronments and have never been considered
so
integral to successful biodiversity con-
servation
(IWGIA
1998;
Colchester
2000).
There is therefore a strong need for basic
demographic information to guide policy for conservation and development plan-
ning in native homelands. Yet such information remains elusive. State census data
are notoriously problematic for the study of remote indigenous populations, and
finer-grained assessments are often difficult in distant tropical forests
(CELADE
1994;
Kennedy and Perz
2000).
As a result, we know very little about the population tra-
jectories of indigenous groups, about how these relate to politically freighted issues
of
self-identity, and about how they effect resource use (Folldr
1995).
These issues are exemplified in the case of the Tawahka of Honduras. The Tawahka
are an Amerindian group
of
just over
1,000
people, living within the newly created
My
1998
dissertation research was funded
by
aYoung Canadian Researchers Award from the International Devel-
opment Research Centre (Ottawa),
by
a grant for overseas research from
FCAR
QuCbec (Fonds pour la formation
de chercheurs et I’aide
A
la recherche), and
by
a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Grant, McGill University.
%b
DR.
MCSWEENEY is an assistant professor of geography at the Ohio State University, Columbus,
Ohio
43210-1361.
The
Geographical
Review
92
(3):
398-414,
July
2002
Copyright
0
2003 by the American Geographical Society
of
New
York
399
THE TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
FIG.
1-Location map situating the Mosquitia
of
northeastern Honduras and the Tawahka Asangni
Biosphere Reserve within that region.
2,300-square-kilometer Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve
(
TABR)
of eastern Hon-
duras (Figure
1).
The reserve’s biodiverse forests lie at the heart of the binational
“Solidaridad” system of protected areas (Herlihy 1997). Although the Tawahka and
their territory have recently received much attention from scholars, development
practitioners, and conservationists, basic understanding
of
their population dynam-
ics is minimal. Existing evidence is particularly inconclusive in
two
key respects.
First, there is confusion about how the group’s population is changing. On one hand,
the Tawahka have been depicted as an “endangered” people (Eldridge and Strome
1987), whose tiny population suggests vulnerability to cultural loss (Herlihy and Leake
1990; Herlihy i993), particularly because their homeland is increasingly circumscribed
by nonindigenous agricultural colonists (Herlihy 1997). In contrast to this view, local
health workers in the Tawahka village of Krausirpi report evidence of a rapidly grow-
ing
population: In 1995, for example, 35 babies were born to the village’s base popula-
tion of only 520, amounting to a staggering birthrate of 67 per
1,000
(Figure
2).
400
THE
GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
Second, there is confusion about the Tawahka’s ethnic composition. According
to the neighboring Miskito, the Tawahka are an isolated, ethnically homogeneous
population whose numbers are
so
small that they risk marrying cousins. The Tawah-
ka’s geographical isolation and their shyness with outsiders appear to support this
FIG.
2-Four generations
of
Tawahka women in Krausirpi, Tawah-
ka Asangni Biosphere Reserve, Honduras,
1996.
(Photograph
by
the
author)
view, but others depict the opposite: a population
so
culturally intermixed that it
faces language
loss
and imminent disappearance as a distinct society (Conzemius
1938;
Eldridge and Strome
1987;
Herlihy
1997).
As any observant visitor to Tawahka
territory may note, Honduran Tawahka physiognomies range from nearly blonde
to dark skinned and curly haired, and Spanish and Miskitu ate frequently spoken in
Tawahka communities.
THE
TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
401
These contrasting narratives give rise to the questions that frame this article.
Is,
in fact, the Tawahka population growing? Do recent birthrates represent an anoma-
lous
boom,
or
are they part
of
a sustained pattern? What is the Tawahka’s history of
ethnic intermixing, and how is it related to their cultural identity and demographic
trajectory? What implications
do
demographic and cultural dynamics have for re-
source use in the TABR, and what might they illustrate about the links between popu-
lation dynamism, natural resource management, and indigenous identity?
To answer these questions.
I
draw from research
I
conducted in the five Tawahka
villages of the
TABR
between
1994
and
1996
and during four months in early
1998.’
I
use data from household surveys, genealogies, oral histories, and personal inter-
views
to
establish the Tawahka‘s basic demographic structure circa
1998,
to estimate
their growth rates during the twentieth century, and to tie ongoing trends to the
group’s history
of
ethnic admixture.
ETHNOHISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Tawahka in Honduras are part of a subgroup of the Sumu, or Mayangna, a
Misumalpan-speaking people
of
whom the majority live in Nicaragua (Herlihy
1995;
Stocks
1996).’
The Honduran Tawahka were historically
forager-horticulturalists
who lived in mobile kin groups (Conzemius
1932;
Newson
1986).
Their first contact
with Europeans, in
1604,
initiated their decline and depopulation (Davidson and
Cruz
1995).
Throughout the seventeenth century they were treated brutally
by
Span-
ish missionaries based to the southwest (M.W.
1732, 286;
Wright
1808,24;
Newson
1986),
and they appear to have been among the native groups that were killed or
enslaved by the coastal Miskito (M.W.
1732,288;
Roberts
1827,116;
Helms
1983).
During
the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century the Tawahka were sub-
jected to forced labor and demands of tribute under the Miskito, which disrupted
subsistence patterns and fragmented the population (Roberts
1827,116;
Young
1842,
81,87;
Bell
1862).’
During the first half of the twentieth century harassment by well-
armed Hispanic “authorities” and gold seekers caused families to flee and villages
to relocate (Cruz and Benitez
1994’3: 302,312).
Disease also took its toll. The first record to specify Tawahka deaths from disease
comes from the late
1830s
(Young
1842, 87).4
In the early
1920s
David Harrower found
the Honduran Tawahka “terribly degenerated, and disease is playing havoc with them”
(1925,@).
Tawahka elders corroborate this: They describe a time, perhaps in the
i93os,
when disease killed daily (Cruz and Benitez
i994,3: 303,312;
informants
IS,
RC).5
As
of early
1998
the Honduran Tawahka were settled in five permanent commu-
nities (Figure
I),
where their subsistence revolved around lowland agroforestry and
upland swidden-fallow agriculture, supplemented by animal husbandry, fishing,
hunting, and foraging. There are no roads in the
TABR;
through a riverine trade
network the Tawahka sell cash crops, gold, livestock, and forest products and also
engage in business and wage labor. Contact with Nicaragua is facilitated by an inter-
montane trail that links the
TABR
to the Rio Coco. The Tawahka’s largest commu-
402
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
nity, Krausirpi, has had a school since 1958, a Catholic church since the 1980s, and a
government health clinic since 1992.
A
maternity clinic is within a day’s travel of
Krausirpi by river, and a larger, mission hospital is within
two
days’ travel. Most
Tawahka children have access to basic primary education in their villages but must
board in downriver Miskito communities in order to attend secondary school. In
1997 forty-five Tawahka students were studying outside the
TABR.
The traditional nexus of Tawahka settlement is the confluence of the Wampu
and Patuca Rivers, and it remains
so
today (Davidson and Cruz 1995). This core has
been sporadically penetrated by Spanish-speaking ladino agricultural colonists for
decades (Cruz and Benitez 1994). But aggressive land grabs by colonists in the late
1980s inspired the Tawahka to organize and assert their territorial rights (Herlihy
and bake 1990; Herlihy 1993).
A
decade-long struggle resulted in ratification of the
Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve (Fiallos 1999). Mapping and zoning of the re-
serve has been based on community participation and was initiated in 1996 as part
of a management plan being developed for the adjacent
Rio
Platano Biosphere Re-
serve (Herlihy 1997; Herlihy and Leake 1997).
MET
H
o
D
o
LOGY
To assess contemporary demographic trends among the Tawahka,
I
draw primarily
from household surveys that
I
conducted in Miskitu and/or Spanish in 1998 with 88
percent
of
Tawahka households in the
TABR.
I
asked respondents about household
composition by age, sex, and relationships, and about
all
household live births, deaths,
and migrations to or from the
TABR
between 1994 and 1998.
I
distinguished migra-
tion from temporary visits/absences by whether family members expected the per-
son to leaveheturn.
I
also asked adults (persons aged fifteen or more) about their
competence in the Tawahka language. Because few adults know their exact age, es-
timates were based on relative measures, such as children’s age; dated photographs
and notes taken by other researchers in the 1970s helped to anchor ages (Adams
1972; Cruz 1977).
I
also asked about the basic reproductive history of every woman
of childbearing age, expanding on notes and a census
I
conducted in 1994-1996.
The histories are incomplete with regard to age of menarche and birth intervals.
For the sixteen households
I
did not visit personally,
I
obtained data (often incom-
plete, especially for infant sex or child age) from family or neighbors.
I
calculated demographic indicators as outlined by Arthur Haupt and Thomas
Kane (1986). Although intended for large populations, these indicators are stan-
dard in microdemographic studies (Hill and Hurtado 1996; Early and Headland
1998).
I
averaged vital rates over three years (1995-1997) to partially mitigate the
natural fluctuations typical of small populations (following Early and Peters 1990);
results must still be interpreted with caution.
I
used period rates rather than cohort
rates to calculate total fertility, even though the latter are more common in studies
of small populations (Bentley, Jasienska, and Goldberg 1993).
I
grouped the few
mothers who were under the age of fifteen into the
fifteen-nineteen-year-old
age
cohort.
THE
TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
403
I
reconstructed the Tawahka’s historical demography from oral-history inter-
views
(n
=
30),
old photographs, population estimates from the primary literature,
and, most important, twenty-six family genealogies
I
assembled in
1998.
These were
sufficient to trace most of the living Tawahka back at least
two
generations and
some as many as six generations.
In this article
I
define “Tawahka” broadly, to refer to anyone living within the
Tawahka’s five communities
as
of
1998,
as well as three Tegucigalpa-based “elite”
households that maintain a toehold in the
TABR.
Ability to speak Tawahka is not a
criterion, for reasons that will later be clear. The descendants of three Miskito fami-
lies who settled in Krausirpi in the
1950s
and intermarried with Tawahka are counted.
I
exclude, however, purely ladino families who settled relatively recently in scattered
locales within the reserve, and
I
also omit the thirty-one-plus living Tawahka who
married “out” of Tawahka territory over the past forty years and formed house-
holds elsewhere. My population figures should therefore be considered conserva-
tive estimates of the total number of ethnic Tawahka in Honduras.
CONTEMPORARY DEMOGRAPHIC
STRUCTURE
AND
GROWTH
ESTIMATES
In May
1998
about
1,030
Tawahka made their permanent home in the five Tawahka
communities of the
TABR.
Approximately
60
percent of them lived in Krausirpi; the
other four villages accounted for about
10
percent each. The
132
Tawahka house-
holds comprised about
8
members each (mean,
7.8;
median,
7;
range,
2-18),
and
many included extended-family members. Single women headed
18
percent of the
households. Tawakha is the mother tongue of
61
percent of male household heads
(n
=
66)
and
66.4
percent
of
female household heads
(n
=
87).
Most adults are
bilingual or multilingual, as the Tawahka were for much of the twentieth century
(Lander0
1935;
Conzemius
1938,938);
Miskitu is the most common “public” lan-
guage.
The Tawahka population is very young. The median age is twelve; the average
age, about sixteen. Three-quarters of Tawahka are less than twenty-four years old,
and
56.4
percent are under the age of fifteen. The Tawahka’s youthfulness is
illus-
trated in a population pyramid, which appears exaggeratedly expansive, even by
Honduras’s national rural standard (Figure
3).
The Tawahka’s dependency ratio-
essentially, child dependency-is
135
dependents (people under the age
of
fifteen
and over the age of sixty-four) for every
100
productive adults.
The sex ratio is
104
males per
100
females. This male bias holds even if the eight
infants whose sex
I
did not determine are counted as females. The Tawahka do not
practice infanticide and generally do not favor male children. Although the result
may be a construct
of
the small sample size and the population’s youth bias, it is
identical to the ratio calculated for Brazil’s indigenous population from state cen-
sus
data (Kennedy and Perz
2000).
The most influential factor in explaining the youth of the population is the
Tawahka’s very high fertility rate. Birthrates averaged
56
per
1,000,
and general fer-
404
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
tility averaged 298. That is, during the three years studied, about one in three women
of childbearing age gave birth each year. Total fertility rates indicate that by the end
of her childbearing years, the Tawahka woman can be expected to have experienced,
on average, 8.8 live births. This rate is more than twice the 4.1 of the average Hondu-
ran woman, in a country considered a laggard in Latin America’s “fertility transi-
tion” (Chackiel and Schkolnik 1996). But the rate is comparable to those reported
for other indigenous groups in northeastern Honduras and in studies of Brazilian
Amerindians (Dodds 1998a; Kennedy and Perz
2000).
The reasons for high fertility among traditional
forager/agriculturalists
are nu-
merous (Hern 1977; Bentley, Goldberg, and Jasienska 1993; Bentley, Jasienska, and
Goldberg 1993; Early and Headland 1998). Contributing factors in the modern
Tawahka context include the following. First, medical professionals have been avail-
able in the mid-Patuca region on and
off
since the 1980% which may have reduced
the number of stillbirths and decreased maternal morbidity. Nevertheless, only one
of
the thirty-five births in Krausirpi in 1995 was attended by a trained health worker;
in 1997, a fifteen-year-old woman died in childbirth. Second, the incidence of natu-
ral female sterility seems nil: Every living Tawahka woman over the age of twenty-
two has successfully delivered a baby. Third, social tolerance of casual sexual
relationships among youth is high, resulting in high fertility rates in the youngest
maternal cohort. Fourth and perhaps most important, modern contraceptive op-
tions have been haphazardly introduced by health workers and remain poorly un-
derstood and only occasionally available. Some women claim contraceptive success
with herbs and the rhythm method; others have paid for expensive sterilization at a
regional hospital. Abortions appear to be extremely rare. In informal discussion,
many Tawahka women-both young and old-expressed interest in spacing births
more widely and in having fewer children.
Compared with births, deaths were rare during the study period, averaging
5.1
per 1,000. Emic explanations for the five adult deaths that occurred between 1995
and 1997 were cholera, tuberculosis, cancer, childbirth, and old age. Tawahka mor-
tality rates are close to the Honduran average. Low death rates are likely the result
of
improved health-care provisioning on the Patuca, as well as the availability of
antimalarials and antibiotics that are regularly sold by itinerant traders. Tawahka
morbidity may also be lowered by their heavy reliance on herbal therapies, for which
they often eschew clinic visits (House and Sanchez 1997). Infant deaths, especially
deaths of older infants (six-twelve months) are more common. At
52
per
1,000
live
births, the Tawahka’s infant mortality rate appeared slightly higher than both the
national average and the rates reported for other indigenous groups in northeast-
ern Honduras (Dodds 1998a).
All
of
the four infant deaths that
I
witnessed ap-
peared to have been due to diarrhea from intestinal infection.
Net migration from the
TABR
was negligible during the study period, because
in-migration (averaging nine persons per year) nearly balanced out-migration (eight
persons per year). Among the Tawahka, out-migration is generally the result of
young women marrying outsiders or, occasionally, of an entire family relocating.
THE
TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
405
Young men often leave for brief periods, usually as seasonal laborers, but they rarely
settle away from their village (Padilla 1995). In-migration is socially controlled and
limited to households with at least one Tawahka head.
~-
~
__
-
TAWAHKA
POPULATION
orthc
TABR.
IIONDURASIPP~
Age
in
yeas
Toul
Popllsrim
=
1030
(sex
untnom
-
8)
70.75
6045
50.55
40.45
30-35
20-25
10.15
4
1412108
6
4
20
2
4
6
8
101214
K
loul
Poplllllon
Pyramids for the Tawahka Population
and for Rural Honduras (1 998 and 1988)
Age
in
:
70-75
60.65
RURAL
HONDURAS.~~~~
n
Toul
Popllslm
-
2.J73.617
50.55
4045
30-35
20-25
10-15
4
1412108
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
1OI214
K
td
Poplkion
FIG.
3-Population pyramids
for
the Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve
in 1998 (top) and
for
rural Honduras as a whole (bottom), in 1988.
ESTIMATING
GROWTH
RATES
Calculated from vital rates, the Tawahka’s growth rate averaged
5.1
percent between
1994 and 1997, indicating a doubling time
of
13.7 years. This staggering rate is prob-
ably an artifact of the small sample size; it is higher than that
of
other indigenous
groups in northeastern Honduras, which David Dodds estimates at 3.7-4.3 percent
(1998a), or that in Nicaragua, where Anthony Stocks estimates a 3.5 percent growth
rate for the Miskito of the mid-Rio COCO region (1998). Furthermore, a
5
percent
growth rate is more than twice the Honduran national average
(U.S.
Census Bureau
406
THE
GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
TABLE I-POPULATION
ESTIMATES
FOR
THE
TAWAHKA
OF
THE
MID-PATUCA
REGION
OF
HONDURAS
TAWAHKA
TERRITORY
KRAUSI
RPI
Growth Growth
Population Rateb Population Rateb
YEAR
Estimatea
(96)
Estimatea
(%)
SOURCE
1916
1940
1967
1972
1977
1983
1986
1989
1990
1992
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1916-1998
mean
1972-1998
mean
150
100
162
167
300-375d
-
519e
-
650-750d
726
902
916d
936d
-
1
,oo
1
1,030
-1.7
1.8
0.6
15.1
4.9
7.8
1.8
7.5
-
-
-
2.7
6.9
2.9
4.6
125‘
253
324
376
390
445
482
517
552
-
-
625
-
15.1
4.2
3.4
3.7
6.8
4.1
7.3
6.8
-
-
6.4
6.4
Landero
1935
Hypothesized from histori-
cal accounts
Anonymous
1994
(in
Caicedo
1993)
Adams
1972
Cruz
1977
Melhdez and others
1983
Eldridge and Strome
1987
FITH
1994
(in Caicedo
1993)
Herlihy
1993
Caicedo
1993
Padilla
1995
This study
FITH
1996
This study
This study
This
study
a
Except for “This study,”survey methods are not known.
Growth rates calculated using a formula for geometric, compound population change (after Dodds
Includes individuals described as “Miskito” or “Ladino.”
Figures averaged for growth calculations.
Only the communities of Krausirpi and Krautara were included in the census.
1994).
1999).
Although the precise figure may exaggerate longer-term trends, it neverthe-
less conveys a population that is undergoing rapid, and unsustainable, cultural and
environmental change (Hern
1977;
Hill and Hurtado
1996).
How long have the Tawahka been increasing? Historical population estimates
offer clues. The first estimate dates from
1916,
when a Honduran teacher estimated
only about
150
Tawahka in Honduras (Landero
1935).
Disease probably brought the
number even lower by the mid- to late
1930s
(Harrower
ig25,48;
Cruz
and Benitez
i994,3: 303,312;
informants
CC,
ES).
Assuming that the Tawahka population had
been reduced to a low
of
about
100
by
1940,
then the next estimate,
from
1967,
sug-
gests that the population grew by
2
percent per year in the intervening three de-
cades. Twelve subsequent estimates indicate steady growth, averaging
5
percent,
between
1940
and
1998
(Table
I).6
The growth rate in Krausirpi over the past two
decades has averaged
6.4
percent.
THE
TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
407
These rough estimates suggest that the Tawahka’s tiny modern population be-
lies very rapid growth, both today and over the past several decades. The apparent
tenfold demographic rebound since
1940
was probably facilitated by a variety of
health-care advances, which are credited with having reduced mortality (Adams
1972;
informants ES, AS, RS, OH). In-migration has played a role, too, as remotely
scattered Tawahka families moved to the core villages. Particularly significant was
the Tawahka Federation’s push in the
1980s
to consolidate Tawahka families from
the upper Patuca and Cuyamel watersheds into a contiguous and defensible area
(Cruz and Benitez
i994,3:
313).
ETHNIC
ADMIXTURE
Historical accounts emphasize that the Tawahka, like most Sumu/Mayangna and in
sharp contrast to the “contact culture” of neighboring Miskito, were “unmixed”
because they shunned interethnic marriage; as late as the
1930s
the Tawahka were
known to flee at the approach of foreigners (Roberts
1827, 156;
Conzemius
1932,
1938;
Landero
1935;
Keenagh
1938;
Helms
1971;
informant HM). Among the Hondu-
ran Miskito, the Tawahka still have this reputation, which appears to be supported
by the lack of variety in modern Tawahka surnames and by the fact that the coethnic
Sumu/Mayangna in Nicaragua are among Central America’s least intermixed popu-
lations (Matson and Swanson
1963;
Stocks
1996).
Yet available evidence suggests otherwise. Oral histories indicate that, as early as
the turn of the twentieth century, Tawahka women had married ladinos, as well as
Honduran and Nicaraguan Miskito, perhaps in response to the reduced availability
of Tawahka men (Landero
1935;
Conzemius
1938,938;
Adams
1972, is).
Genealogies
corroborate this and show that genetic admixture became more frequent three to
five generations ago. At that time the increasing geopolitical and economic status of
the Mosquitia led to a swelling of the marriage pool as an influx of peripatetic,
mostly male outsiders into the Tawahka homeland began.
For
example, Tawahka
women had children with the Miskito, Mayangna, and ladinos who fled Nicaragua
during the Sandino era of the late
igzos-early
1930s
(Cruz and Benitez
i994,3:
312);
with Honduran military personnel who were stationed on the Patuca in the
1930s
and again in the late
1950s;
with Honduran ladino gold seekers, agricultural mi-
grants, and traders from the
1920s
to the
1950s;
with the Miskito, Creole, Pech, and
Nicaraguan Mayangna who were involved in a variety
of
resource-extraction epi-
sodes on the Patuca, including mahogany cutting and World War II-era rubber
extraction; and with coastal Miskito who fled the destruction caused by the hurri-
canes of
1935
and
1941
(Cruz and Benitez
1994;
informant ES).
Most of these exogamous unions appear to have lasted for only a few years.
Some of the outsiders died in Tawahka territory, but most moved on, and only
rarely did the Tawahka women leave. As a result, some Tawahka women had chil-
dren by as many as five husbands. One woman’s story shows that these serial mar-
riages happened less by design than by circumstance: The father of her first three
children was a Nicaraguan Sumu who died of snakebite. She then had twins by a
408
THE
GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
ladino from Nicaragua who later left the region. The Honduran ladino father of her
next child was murdered. She then had three more children as a secondary wife,
first to a Tawahka and then to a Nicaraguan Sumu/Miskito.
Exogamy continues among Tawahka women and men. For example, the gene-
alogies of two extended Tawahka families show that,
of
their female descendants’
forty husbands,
60
percent have been non-Tawahka (from outside the
TABR)
and
that
66
percent of male descendants’ wives
(n
=
29)
have been non-Tawahka. It is
especially common for Tawahka men to have Miskito wives; the majority of such
couples continue to reside in Tawahka villages.
Much ethnic admixture occurred in the
1980s,
when some
10,ooo
Nicaraguan
Miskito and Mayangna refugees resided along the mid-Patuca. Today, marriages
between Tawahka women and agricultural migrants from the Honduran interior
are increasing: By
1998,10.6
percent of the TABR’S Tawahka households were headed
by nonindigenous ladino men, most
of
whom had migrated to the region over the
preceding thirty years (Adams
1972;
Cruz and Benitez
1994).
One result
of
this history of interethnic marriage is that within the reserve to-
day,
40
percent
of
adults over the age of fifteen are children of a non-Tawahka fa-
ther, and
10
percent of children under the age of fifteen have a non-Tawahka father
who lives outside the
TABR.
The fact that children
of
“passing” non-Tawahka men
are commonly known by their mothers’ surname gives an impression
of
a high
degree
of
relatedness among the Tawahka that obscures their rich genetic heritage.
POPULATION GROWTH
AND
ETHNIC MIXING
The Tawahka’s
post-1940
demographic rebound coincides with the increase in inter-
ethnic marriage. Are the two phenomena related? Rapid growth among traditional
populations is more commonly associated with other forms of rapid cultural change,
such as increased sedentization, increased market involvement, and improved health
care, usually due to the positive effects on fertility and negative effects on mortality
(Bentley, Goldberg, and Jasienska
1993).
Indeed, all of these factors are known to
have been concurrent with the Tawahka’s rapid growth (Cruz and Benitez
1994;
informants RS,
ES,
CC). But two intermediate factors may also explain why the
Tawahka’s history of interethnic marriage affected their explosive growth in the twen-
tieth century.
First, exogamous marriage by Tawahka women signaled a breakdown of the
Tawahka’s traditionally polygynous conjugal organization. In
1916
Francisco Lander0
observed that Tawahka men “may have two or three wives under the same roof”
(193545;
my translation). But genealogies show that although polygynous relation-
ships persisted after the
igzos,
many were short-lived rather than steady. Records
show that some women entered into a polygynous unions only as widows or until
they formed their own monogamous union. The trend was probably reinforced by
the growing influence of the Catholic Church in the mid-Patuca after
1950.
Today
only
10
percent
of
Tawahka women have ever been in a polygynous relationship
(about one-third
of
which were sororally polygynous). In contrast, multiple, serial
?‘HE
TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
409
marriages appear to be more common. One-quarter
of
all Tawahka women over
the age of fifteen have had children by at least two men, and many remain “unat-
tached”: In
1998,23
percent of women were single mothers or widows. The decline
of polygyny is significant beciluse, among other neotropical indigenous groups, low-
ered polygyny rates have been linked to increased fertility (Hern
1992).
This has
been attributed in part to the shorter birth intervals among women who are not in
polygynous relationships. The erosion of polygyny among the Tawahka may have
pushed fertility upward and, therefore, contributed to their high growth rate.
Second, interethnic unions could increase Tawahka numbers only
if
biracial
children grew up with a Tawahka identity, rather than as a Miskito or a nonindigenous
mestizo or ladino. This was ensured as long as biracial children remained in Tawahka
territory, as was routine among the children of Tawahka women and outsiders. The
genealogies of two Tawahka matriarchs, both of whom are now in their
70s,
illus-
trate the important long-term effects of this effectively matrilocal organization: Be-
tween about
1936
and
1973
these two women had a total of seventeen children by
eight husbands, of whom only three were Tawahka Sumu. Their surviving direct
descendants all self-identify as Tawahka and in
1998
constituted almost
20
percent
of the Tawahka population of the
TABR.
Not only did the children
of
mixed marriages remain with their mother in the
Tawahka cultural core, but, if the mother spoke Tawahka, the children typically
learned that language. Thus
43
percent of the
183
adults with non-Tawahka fathers
speak Tawahka because they learned it from their mother. In contrast, children
of
Tawahka fathers and non-Tawahka-usually Miskitemothers do not speak the lan-
guage, even if they live in the
TABR
and self-identify as Tawahka (Figure
4).
As a
result, about two-thirds of adult Tawahka remain proficient in their native language.
In other words, erosion
of
Tawahka culture through genetic admixture appears to
have been mitigated by the fact that much of mixture occurred through exogamy by
Tawahka women.
CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that the Tawahka, since surviving a demographic bottleneck in
the
1930s
and
i94os,
have made a remarkable, and sustained, comeback. This tri-
umph of cultural survival was consolidated in the late
1980s
when the Tawahka
were driven to assert their indigenous identity in defense of their homeland, and it
has since been consolidated by their rising political profile, which has led most re-
cently to the creation of their biosphere reserve (Herlihy
1995;
FITH
1996).
At the same time, the Tawahka’s accelerated growth within a finite and pro-
tected area raises new challenges. At stake is their ability to live in the traditionally
sustainable manner that has led to their being dubbed “forest guardians” (House
1997):
Internal pressure now adds to the exogenous forces that threaten their re-
source base. Already, Tawahka in all villages report that fertile lowland areas are
increasingly scarce and that the surrounding forests are yielding fewer and fewer
extractive goods. Scarcity of local resources was traditionally accommodated by
410
THE
GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
Partial Genealogy
of
a
Tawahka Family,
1998
Showing How Language Skills Are
Passed
on
by
the
Mother
tbll’
b.
-
1922
I
I
Marriage Bond
0
Female Known
to
Speak Tawahka
11
Siblings
A
Male
0
Deceased
FIG.
4-Partial genealogy of a Tawahka family,
1998.
The Tawahka-speaking matriarch was born to a
Honduran ladino father and a Tawahka mother (a). She had twin sons (b) by a passing Nicaraguan
ladino; the twins remain in Tawahka territory and speak Tawahka. Twin
I
married a Tawahka-speak-
ing woman
(c),
and the couple had three Tawahka-speaking daughters. The oldest daughter married
a Miskito and moved away; their children do not speak Tawahka. The second and third daughters had
children with both Tawahka and non-Tawahka men; the children remain with their mothers in Tawahka
territory and all speak the language. Twin
2
married a Miskita (d). Their daughter did not learn Tawahka;
although she has since married a Tawahka man, her children are monolingual Miskitu. Twin
z
then had
three children by a second Miskito wife (e). The second wife died, leaving her daughters to be raised by
his third wife (not shown), a Tawahka speaker. Despite a considerable non-Tawahka heritage, then, all
three daughters of Twin
2
and his second wife speak Tawahka, as do their twelve children (not shown).
moving villages, but such relocation is no longer possible, due to colonist encroach-
ment (Herlihy
1997;
House
1997).
The Tawahka’s rapid growth has other implications. First, doctors who visit
Krausirpi report high rates
of
maternal anemia and infant malnutrition, both
of
which are characteristic of shortened birth intervals in high-fertility populations.
Second, the Tawahka may have maintained their ethnic identity despite admixture,
but at a cultural cost. Tawahka elders note that youth prefer to speak Miskito or
Spanish and lament the (relative) lack
of
old people as cultural guides for the in-
creasingly young population (informant
GD).
As
a result, they claim, some tradi-
tional Tawahka ways have disappeared (informants
ES,
CC).
THE
TAWAHKA
OF
HONDURAS
41’
This said, the ability
of
the Tawahka to adapt to new challenges should not be
underestimated. For example, the Tawahka place a high value on education, hoping
that it will lead to off-farm
or
out-of-forest opportunities for their children. In
1998
four Tawahka had received nursing training in order to better meet local health
needs; two had graduated from high school and were teaching in village schools.
With government and
NGO
support, the Tawahka Federation runs a program of
intercultural education to produce teachers of Tawahka language and culture. Edu-
cational attainment has already been positively linked to more intensive land use by
the Tawahka, suggesting adaptation to scarcity of land (Godoy and others
1997).
Anecdotal evidence indicates that better-educated Tawahka women are having fewer
children.
Finally, the rapid growth rates recorded here join other microdemographic re-
search indicating that Latin America’s much-lauded “fertility transition” hides an
opposite trend: unprecedented growth among lowland indigenous groups, even as
their territories become increasingly circumscribed. Where Amerindians live within
protected areas, these data suggest that conservationists’ concerns about population-
driven overharvest may be well founded (Red ford and Mansour
1996;
Brandon,
Redford, and Sanderson
1998).
But although such data have the worrisome potential
to justify exclusionary conservation policies, they can also bolster comanagement
efforts by allowing park managers and indigenous groups themselves to better an-
ticipate future population needs and
so
more effectively mitigate expected environ-
mental impacts. Also, the study reminds us that demographic processes are
inextricable from resurgent indigenist politics, which have been instrumental in the
creation of reserves.
Overall, findings point to the potential for microdemographic study to reveal
unexpected insights into the links between cultural identity, landscape change, and
demography-topics that are too often addressed in isolation. Ultimately, this type
of interdisciplinary approach brings
us
closer to developing the dynamic conceptu-
alization of people-environment relationships that is essential for effective man-
agement of those landscapes where people and biodiversity overlap.
NOTES
I.
Between
1994
and
1996
I
worked in Krausirpi as part of a National Science Foundation-funded
study of reliance on rain forests. The study was run by Ricardo Godoy of the Harvard Institute for
International Development (Godoy
2001).
In
1998
I
returned to the region to conduct dissertation
research on local livelihoods (McSweeney
2000).
2.
Another group of Tawahka in Nicaragua probably split from the
Rio
Patuca Tawahka in the
mid-nineteenth century (Conzemius
1938;
Herlihy
1995).
The
two
groups are now effectively sepa-
rated by distance, different recent histories, and languages that are barely mutually intelligible (infor-
mants CC,
a).
3.
For example, a group
of
Tawahka men who were captured by the Miskito and taken to distant
Black River seem to have died or remained stranded there (Wood
1840,
51;
Young
1842, 87).
Also,
problems with the Miskito in the mid-nineteenth century caused large numbers of Tawahka to leave
Honduras permanently for Nicaragua (Conzernius
1938,938).
4.
It is also likely that the Tawahka were affected by a smallpox epidemic that reportedly killed
“great numbers” of Miskito, probably about
1816
(Young
1842,73;
Newson
1986).
412
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
5.
To protect their identity,
I
cite my informants only by their initials.
6.
Growth estimates are calculated using the following formula for geometric, compound popu-
lation change:
P,
=
Po
(1
+
r)n,
where
Po
is the population at time
0,
P,
is the population after a time
interval,
n,
and
r
is the rate of growth over the intercensal period (after Dodds
1994).
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