A Miskitu boy from Orinoco, NicaraguaThe Miskitus are an Indigenous people living alongside the Misk

A Miskitu boy from Orinoco, Nicaragua

The Miskitus are an Indigenous people living alongside the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. The majority of the Miskitu people are zambos; a racial category used in most Spanish speaking Latin American countries, to refer to people who are the product of Indigenous and black African intermixing, and who lack any apparent European admixture in phenotype.

The origin of the Afro-Indigenous ancestry of the Miskitu people derives from the time of British control of the coast. The British colonials brought enslaved Africans from their Caribbean colonies and also directly from Africa to this area. These Africans shorty made up the majority of the population on the coast, and came to be known as Creoles. Many of the Afrodescendants began to intermix with the Indigenous people of the coast, namely the Miskitus, but also smaller groups like the Rama and the Mayangna. The African and Indigenous input into the Miskitus likewise came from the Garifuna, an Afro-Indigenous ethnic group who sought refuge on the Miskito Coast from Spanish military conscription in Honduras.

Unlike the Garifuna who identify with both their African and Indigenous ancestry, and who display cultural traits from both groups; the Miskitus are largely seen as simply an Indigenous people, and their African descent is often ignored. The reason for this is largely due to the colonial powers during the British occupation, who feared that the Miskitus given their African-descent, would join other Afro-descendants like the Garifuna and the Creoles in revolts; so they went to extreme measures to install a solely Indigenous identity unto the Miskitus which survives until today.