Map - Bluefields

Bluefields is the capital of the South Caribbean Autonomous Region in Nicaragua. It was also the capital of the former Kingdom of Mosquitia, and later the Zelaya Department, which was divided into North and South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Regions. It is located on Bluefields Bay at the mouth of the Bluefields River in the municipality of the same name.

It was named after Abraham Blauvelt, a Dutch-Jewish pirate, privateer, and explorer of Central America and the western Caribbean. It has a population of 55,575 (2021 estimate) and its inhabitants are mostly Afro-descendant Creoles, Miskitu, Mestizo, as well as smaller communities of Garinagu, Chinese, Mayangna, and Rama. Bluefields is the chief Caribbean port, from which hardwood, seafood, shrimp and lobster are exported. Bluefields was a rendezvous for European buccaneers in the 16th and 17th century and became capital of the English protectorate of the Kingdom of Mosquitia in 1678.

During United States interventions (1912–15, 1926–33) in Nicaragua, US Marines were stationed there. In 1984, the United States mined the harbor (along with those of Corinto and Puerto Sandino) as part of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Bluefields was destroyed by Hurricane Joan in 1988 but was rebuilt.

The origin of the city of Bluefields is connected with the presence of European pirates on the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast, subjects of powers at the time hostile to Spain. These pirates used the Escondido River to rest, to repair damages and to be provisioned. By then, the territory of the present municipality was populated by the native towns of Kukra and Branch.

In 1602, one of these soldiers of fortune chose the bay of Bluefields as his center of operations due to its tactical advantages, a Dutchman named Abraham Blauvelt, and from the phonetic sounding of his surname originates the name of the municipality.

Black Africans first appeared in the Caribbean coast in 1641, when a Portuguese ship that was transporting slaves wrecked in the Miskito Cays. From the original settlement the bay began to be populated; the English subjects first started emigrating to the region in 1633 and from 1666 they were already organized into colonies, and by 1705 there were authorities established. In 1730 the Kingdom of Moskitia came to depend on the British administration in Jamaica. For this, an alliance with the Miskito people was decisive, and the British supplied them with armaments which the Miskito used in conflicts with the other ethnic groups of the Caribbean coast—the Afro-descendant Creoles and the indigenous Mayangnas, Ulwas, and Ramas.

In 1740, the Miskitos yielded to British sovereignty over the territory, and in 1744 a transfer of White colonists was organized from Jamaica to the Kingdom of Moskitia; they brought along with them black slaves. French colonists were also installed. The area was a British protectorate until 1796, when Britain, with an offer from the Spanish Monarch to extend the territory in the Yucatán Peninsula for the cutting of logwood for the British settlers, decided to remove all English settlers from the Kingdom of Moskitia; the British subjects also abandoned the islands, but the Spaniards did not take firm positions in them.

With the independence of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, the Kingdom of Moskitia became de jure part of Gran Colombia until its dissolution in 1831. Thereafter it became part of the Republic of New Granada, now Colombia, until, through the Esguerra-Bárcenas Treaty, the Colombian state formally ceded the territory to Nicaragua.

The Moravian Church was installed in 1847, and in 1860 through the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty, mostly known as the Treaty of Managua, the Miskito Reserve was created from the territory of the Kingdom of Moskitia, by an agreement between the British and Nicaragua government. The city of Bluefields was declared capital of that Reserve.

The “Europeanization” of the natives was completed by the 1880s, when British and Americans expanded the production of bananas and wood, creating an enclave economy; by the 1880 Bluefields was already a city of cosmopolitan character, with an intense commercial activity.