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“Give thanks, my people—give thanks, give thanks, give thanks,” Ariel Hamilton often begins, greeting his listeners each week on his Creole Talk radio program. Blending reggae rhythms with reflections and guest interviews on the history of Moskitia, Hamilton transmits his programs live on Bluefields Radio before uploading them to SoundCloud. A Moskitian communicator and podcaster, Hamilton’s Creole Talk and Rasta Reggae Talk keep Moskitian communities connected to the region’s politics, culture, and contemporary struggles for the preservation and dissemination of its historical memory.
For Moskitian independence advocates and community historians like Hamilton, Moskitia spans the vast expanse of the Central American Caribbean littoral, extending from the Aguán River south of Cape Honduras to Bocas del Toro, encompassing the Colombian archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina. This radical remapping of the far western Caribbean breaks from the arbitrary colonial borders and impositions of settler states like Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, and Colombia, and corresponds instead to the historical travel, subsistence, and trade patterns of Indigenous groups like the Miskitu. The ethno-toponym “Moskitia/Muskitia” dwindled in usage following the occupation of the last remaining autonomous Moskitian enclave by Nicaragua in 1894; however, recent efforts like Hamilton’s are reinvigorating its usage.
“We usin’ terms nowadays,” Hamilton explains on a recent episode of Rasta Reggae Talk. “Like say for example, you know, when you listen to my program I always talking about ‘Moskitia,’ I always talking about ‘Creole pride’ and these different things them. So of course when people hear these things them they want to know what the background is, where it come, you know, where all of these things originate from, because we know that there was a interruption in our culture, there was a rupture in our history, and so we have to connect these dots.” Hamilton’s articulation of historical rupture speaks directly to centuries of colonial and state-sponsored epistemic violence that have deliberately suppressed and manipulated Moskitian history and identity. From the warding off of the Spanish Empire to British imperial negotiations and the annexation of the region by various republics, Moskitian communities have been subjected to ongoing efforts to obscure their past and deny their sovereignty. Hamilton makes clear that this erasure is not just about the past, but about the present, too: “If we no know where we coming from, if we don’t know who we is, you goin’ always have somebody else telling us who we are,” he explains.
This manipulation of history—through the erasure and rewriting of narratives to justify land dispossession, cultural assimilation, and political marginalization—has been central to settler colonial strategies in Moskitia. Hamilton’s digital radio programs confront this ongoing coloniality by cultivating alternative archives of knowledge rooted in oral histories, ancestral memory, and community scholarship. By wielding digital media as a tool, Hamilton creates counter-archives that amplify Moskitian voices and makes them accessible beyond the constraints of geographic distance and displacement, traditional archival limitations, and the frameworks of settler-state control. When used with intentionality, the digital sphere becomes an instrument of anti-colonial pedagogy and knowledge building, enabling Moskitian communities to challenge imposed narratives and reclaim their rightful place in history. This essay explores how Moskitian communities are leveraging digital platforms not only as repositories of information, but as spaces of resistance, cultural survival, and radical world-building.
An Autonomous Airspace for Greater Moskitia
“My name is Ariel Hamilton, and I come from Moskitia,” Hamilton introduces himself in a January 2025 interview about his candidacy for the African Union’s African Diaspora Representative for Central America. “Moskitia is an ancient kingdom… invaded by Nicaragua in 1894. It’s not part of a lot of people history book because the state of Nicaragua continuously trying to hide that we even exist and that we ever existed, even though Moskitia is the only nation in this part of the world that was never colonized.” With these words, Hamilton asserts his detachment from Nicaragua and other Central American settler states, positioning himself not as a citizen of any imposed nation but as a Moskitian committed to reclaiming the region’s historical memory and sovereignty. “We share borders with Nicaragua, and I don’t even recognize Nicaragua as my country or anything as such because I am firmly standing on Moskitia will be a country again… that is something I am very much convicted with.”
Hamilton has spent over 25 years using communication as a transformative tool for advancing political and economic inclusion within his community. Recognizing that Black and Indigenous Moskitians have been systematically marginalized and excluded from governing their own territory, he has dedicated himself to mobilizing people through broadcasting and fostering dialogue about Moskitian rights and the ongoing struggle for territorial sovereignty. Hamilton describes his run for the role of Central American African Diaspora Representative—a position that advocates for the interests of African-descended communities in Central America—as a critical opportunity for his people: “We have a space within the African Union to reveal ourselves… because we don’t have that kind of thinking of independence, we don’t have that kind of thinking that we can actually do this. And outside of a state, first of all. It’s like somebody always have to legitimize us, like we can’t legitimize ourselves. For me to even be able to say that I come from Moskitia and it’s accepted as a candidate and nobody is going to challenge that and say you can’t do that… that gives validity.” Hamilton was elected as Deputy Representative on February 1 of this year.
When Hamilton states that Moskitia was “never colonized,” he refers to its distinct history within the broader context of the Americas. Unlike much of Central America, which fell under Spanish rule, Moskitia successfully resisted Spanish colonization. Instead, the Afro-Indigenous Moskitian Kingdom forged a strategic alliance with the British, who established a protectorate rather than a formal colony. This arrangement allowed Moskitian leadership to maintain a degree of autonomy, even as British interests shaped the region’s political and economic landscape. However, this autonomy was later threatened and ultimately dismantled when Nicaragua and Honduras annexed the largest, most populated portion of the territory in the 19th century. While Hamilton refers to the annexation as an “invasion,” many Mosquitians view it as a pivotal episode in the longer struggle against coloniality.
Hamilton underscores how Moskitia’s forced integration into Central American republics (and Colombia) was not only a matter of territorial control but also of historical erasure and renaming. “Well right now in this moment, we are not recognized, we are recognized simply by ourselves,” he explains, highlighting the lack of formal recognition of Moskitia as an independent entity. He describes how Honduras retained control over a portion of the territory, recognizing Moskitia within its own national framework, while Nicaragua attempted to erase its identity entirely. “In Nicaragua, they changed the name—they invaded it, they changed it to Zelaya, they changed it to the Atlantic Coast, they changed it to autonomous regions, and so forth.” These shifting names reflect Nicaragua’s ongoing attempts to overwrite Moskitian sovereignty with new administrative labels, detaching the people from their own political history and ancestral territory.
Hamilton also draws attention to the geopolitical stakes of Moskitia’s erasure, pointing to how other Central American and Caribbean states have approached its history. “Costa Rica, they never did anything with it at all, at all, they just destroyed it. And well, Colombia, as a matter of fact, this Colombian president [Gustavo Petro] has suggested that they should return the San Andrés islands back to Moskitia. Because they know the history.” The acknowledgment by Colombian officials of San Andrés as part of Moskitia—despite its present status as Colombian territory—suggests that Moskitian sovereignty is not a lost cause but rather a history that remains known, even if politically inconvenient. “But it’s not a very popular history among the Central American countries,” Hamilton adds, “because Moskitia was there before they were established.” This statement cuts to the heart of why Moskitia remains unrecognized: its historical existence predates the very states that have claimed it, and its continued assertion of sovereignty poses a direct challenge to their territorial legitimacy.
Through his radio programs, Hamilton challenges the imposed territorial divisions that have fragmented Moskitia, including Miskitu, Creole, Garinagu, and Raizal communities (among others), across the western Caribbean. For Hamilton, Moskitia is not merely a geographic region subjected to the political whims of settler states, it is its own nation that exists beyond colonial borders. His work is in sync with other, interconnected struggles for sovereignty in the region, such as The Archipelago Movement for Ethnic Native Self-Determination (AMEN-SD), a separatist group advocating for independence and self-determination for the Raizal/Creole community of the San Andrés Archipelago.
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Melanie White is a Black Studies scholar and cultural historian of Caribbean Central America. She is an Assistant Professor of Afro-Caribbean Studies in the Department of Black Studies and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. Her research traces Black and Afro-Indigenous women’s anti-colonial performance, visual culture, and political organizing on the Miskitu Coast.