Bridget Boudir remembers hearing as a little girl that she needed "to lift her color" by marrying someone with whiter skin. She not only didn't heed the advice, she has started working with other Afro-Caribbean women to cultivate pride in their ethnic and cultural roots.
     A resident of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, Boudir is one of more than 30 women who two years ago formed a black women's group in Bluefields. According to Angelica Brown, an educator who participates in the group, the women came together in order "to revive, preserve, and promote our culture."
     Brown points out that Bluefields "is no longer the black community we were once proud of. We're being swallowed up by mestizos, and our culture is in danger. Since women play an important role in preserving culture, we decided to do something about it."
     The women gather regularly for study sessions, discussing the ethnic dimensions of local problems as well as looking at black movements in other parts of the world. They're begun collecting oral histories from older black women in the area. 
     Brown admits that several of her black women neighbors don't feel related to Africa, preferring to think of themselves as descendants of free British colonists rather than Africans who made the journey to the Americas in slave ships. "A lot of blacks don't see in themselves a product of the African diaspora," said Brown. "Some claim that since their surname is Scottish that somehow changes the color of their skin. Yet whether we want to believe it or not, we're here because of slavery."
     "We want to take black history and value it as we should," said Brown. "If we can do that, perhaps our grandchildren will look differently on being black."
     The group is also encouraging black women to take a more prominent role in local politics.
     "Women are more than 50 percent of the population but we're missing from the key positions," stated Brown. "So we're beginning to prepare black women for leadership, encourage them to go to the university, to study, and to look for careers that the region needs."
     Boudir is one such example. A development specialist with the Moravian Church, she studies at a local university in the evenings. Last year ran for vice-mayor of Bluefields, coming in second.
     Black women in neighboring Honduras see gaining political power as one way to overcome the racial discrimination that Elida Rocha, president of the Asociacion Hondurena de Mujeres Negras, describes as "our daily bread."
     Yet Rocha said traditional political parties tend to see blacks only as potential voters and not potential candidates. She cited the case of Zole Labonel, a black woman in Colon who was asked by the Partido Nacional to be a candidate for Congress. After Labonel campaigned hard and showed well in last November's primaries, largely on the strength of black votes, party officials dropped her from the list. "They only reinstated her after we protested," reported Rocha. "They don't think we're capable of holding public office, but they sure want our votes."
     Some black women wanting to organize also face opposition closer to home.
     "I'm worried that they're creating a barrier between family women and independent women," said Roberto Hodgson, an Afro-Caribbean cultural activist in Bluefields. "If I want to be part of a family I have to give up some rights." Hodgson griped that many of the women in Boudir's group decided to go to a recent Afro-Caribbean gathering in Honduras without first consulting their spouses.
     Brown insists members of the women's group aren't anti-family, and said the group sponsors workshops for young black mothers. "The family is the basis of society," said Brown, "and if we can strengthen the black family then black people can be strong and respect themselves. But before I can participate in a family or in a community, first I need to learn who I am and why I'm who I am."