Nicarágua e La Mosquitia: dificuldades e tensões no processo de incorporação da faixa atlântica ao projeto nacional (1894-1987)

This article proposes a comparative reflection on the mechanisms and discourses put into practice at two key moments in the process of articulating the Atlantic Coast within the Nicaraguan national state: in 1894, under the government of José Santos Zelaya, and between 1979 and 1987, in the context of the Sandinista Revolution. The analysis, based primarily on a broad review of the existing bibliography and hemerography on the subject, seeks to highlight ideological and political differences, as well as shared elements, in the approach to the “Atlantic question” during two central and, to some extent, contrasting moments of Nicaragua’s nation-building project. Throughout the analysis, it was possible to establish that, in both cases, the principle of national territorial sovereignty pursued by the government based in Managua prevailed as an imperative over the pursuit of autonomy and self-determination by the coastal population, from which multiple tensions and obstacles in the process of integration emerged.