Displaced Minorities: The Wayuu and Miskito People 82 Christian Cwik Contents Introduction ..................................................................................... 1594 The Making of the Miskito and Wayuu People ................................................ 1595 The Wayuu of the Guajira Peninsula ....................................................... 1596 The Miskito on the Mosquito Coast ........................................................ 1599 Displacement During the Long Twentieth Century ............................................ 1603 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 1605 References ...................................................................................... 1606 Abstract Among the many displaced indigenous minorities in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Wayuu of northern South America and the Miskito of eastern Central America took on a specific role. On the one hand, both ethnic groups are the result of displacement triggered by the Conquista and the transatlantic slave trade, and on the other hand both kept strong ties to non-Spanish European powers such as the English, the Dutch, and the French which gave them access to alternative markets. During the so-called independence period of the early nineteenth century, the territories of the Miskito and the Wayuu remained largely autonomous because of British protection. It was not until the mid of the nineteenth century that the young Latin American nation states succeeded in invading the area in their struggle for territorial integrity but failed because the British protected them against all these attempts. The situation changed when the USA came into dispute with the UK over steamship routes, coal storages, and the establishment of interoceanic connections, although both Nicaragua and Hondu- ras and Colombia and Venezuela finally succeeded in incorporating the still unconquered areas into their state territory at the beginning of the twentieth C. Cwik (*) Department of History, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago e-mail: christian.cwik@sta.uwi.edu; christian.cwik@uni-graz.at © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 S. Ratuva (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_117 1593