Rio Coco UNESCO Global Geopark, Nicaragua
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Rio Coco progress presentation
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About the geopark
The Rio Coco Geopark UNESCO Global Geopark is located in the mountainous region of north- western Nicaragua, on the border with Honduras. Its area covers 954 km 2 and it consists of a substantial part of the Madriz Department. Its 74,224 inhabitants live in five municipalities, three of them recognized as indigenous communities: San José de Cusmapa, San Lucas, and Totogalpa. The Rio Coco Geopark headquarters is located in the town of Somoto, which is the capital of the Madriz Department.
The climate of the aspiring geopark is dry subtropical, being located in the dry corridor of the region, which produce its high vulnerability to climate change and heavy rains. The geoheritage of the aspiring geopark “belongs to the Caribbean Plate, comprising several structural levels from Palaeozoic greenschist-facies metamorphic terrane intruded with Cretaceous granite pluton to Upper Tertiary volcanic sequences”. The indigenous inhabitants of the Rio Coco territory are defined by the state as Chorotegas, who were descendants of Maya ethnics migrating around the eighth century to the Northern and Pacific region of Nicaragua from the area of present Chiapas or Cholula (Mexico). They had received their official land titles (“Titulos Reales”) already in 1662. However, according to some recent anthropological findings the indigenous peoples of Central and Northern Nicaragua had not been Chorotegas, but Matagalpas. As explained by Navarro-Genie, “they call themselves Chorotegas because of the lack of anthropological knowledge regarding their roots“. Local indigenous people are living in small dispersed communities that are characterized by a diet based on the “basic grains” (corn, beans, and sorghum) and by the use of traditional ceramics and textile handcrafts. They speak vernacular, which is a kind of mixture of Latin American Spanish with Nahuat (one informant has termed it as “Pupuluca” dialect). Nahuat, as a dialect of the Nahuatl language, was the Nicaraguan “lingua franca” between the 16th and 19th centuries.