1 Mayangna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua, Inter-Am. Ct. H. R. (ser. C) no. 79 (2001). See Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2001).

2 For example, section VII of the preamble to the statute stipulates that the granting of autonomy “makes possible the effective exercise of the right of the Communities of the Atlantic Coast to participate in working out how to make use of the region’s natural resources and how to reinvest the benefits from these in the Atlantic Coast and the nation, thereby creating the material basis for the survival and development of the cultural expressions”: Autonomy Statute for the Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (Law No. 28), http://calpi.nativeweb.org/doc_3.xhtml. The rights of the Indigenous peoples of the Atlantic Coast region were further affirmed in Nicaragua’s Constitution, also promulgated in 1987.

3 The concept of property is enshrined in Nicaragua’s Family Code (1987), according to which all property brought into or acquired during marriage is jointly held. In the event of separation or divorce, all property and income are divided equally between the spouses, and, in case of death, half remains with the surviving spouse. At the same time, customary practices can prevent a widow from inheriting her husband’s property. In a study of gender and land tenure in Bolivia, for example, Lastarria-Cornhiel et al. (2003) note that, when a husband dies, all of the couple’s property is sometimes passed directly to his heirs, without taking the widow into account. Further research is needed to determine whether Mayangna women face similar situations or, more generally, into what happens when customary practices surrounding personal property conflict with state law.