Our social movement

The Batallón Cívico Indio-Maíz is an environmental movement, independent and founded by citizens who are looking for the preservation of water and the forest in the southwest of Nicaragua, especially protecting Indio-Maíz Biological Reserve.

The Batallón Cívico Indio-Maíz has been created by citizens that are part of organizations within the Environmental Organizations Union from the Southwest of Nicaragua (UOA). In this movement people participate as individuals and they would like to get more local people involved to protect Indio-Maíz.

When did we start?

Our movement was born in 2014 in the southeast of Nicaragua, where two associations of cocoa producers (Cooprocafuc R.L. y Cosemucrim R.L) created the Environmental Organizations Union from the Southwest of Nicaragua (UOA).

Additionally, other groups joined the union, a sustainable tourism association (Coopeturs R.L.), a non-profit organization, Fundación del Río, and Red Municipal de los Comité de Agua Potable y Saneamiento (Red CAPS – El Castillo).

Other organizations interested in protecting Indio-Maíz Reserve have joined us too, like Fundación La Esperancita, la Asociación de Productores Agroecológicos Sano y Salvo and Fundación Luz en la Selva.

In 2017, the territorial government of Indian River, an indigenous Rama community; and Greytown, an afro-descendant Kriol community, joined this initiative where they now have an important role in the protection of their territory and Indio-Maíz Reserve.

Activism to save the reserve

This alliance is a strategy to gather all the efforts towards the conservation of our natural resources in the southeast and also to support personal goals of each of the member organizations.

The Unión de Organizaciones Ambientalistas next to the Territorial Government Rama-Kriol and the support of all the organizations allied, decided to launch on April 2015 the campaign “Let’s Save Indio-Maíz Reserve, the Lung of Central American.”

This initiative has the goal to raise awareness about the deforestation and invasion of the reserve, due to the illegal moving forward of settlers and farmers. Since 2017 the Batallón Cívico Indio-Maíz is in charge of this awareness campaign.