R e s u m e n Este artículo examina la ciudadanía multicultural y la vigilancia antinarcóticos en Nicaragua como dos formas contradictorias de gubermentalidad posrevolucionaria dirigida a la población afrodescendiente en la Costa Atlántica de este país. Mientras el multiculturalismo representa una modalidad de gobernanza y diferencia cultural, la vigilancia antinarcóticos se basa en tecnologías de control que codifican las diferencias raciales, particularmente la negritud, como negativo y amenazante para el cuerpo político mestizo. El efecto político de estas estrategias coemergentes de gobernanza es profundo, simultáneamente empoderando, estigmatizando y radicalizando el activismo multicultural y la resistencia dentro de las comunidades afrodescendientes. Esos efectos respaldan el argumento central de este trabajo: para entender cómo el multiculturalismo posrevolucionario opera políticamente debemos mirar más allá de las iniciativas multiculturales y examinar otras tácticas de gobernanza que involucran a los sujetos multiculturales. [vigilancia antinarcóticos, multiculturalismo, Nicaragua, raza] A b s t r a c tThis article examines multicultural citizenship and counternarcotics policing in Nicaragua as two contradictory forms of postrevolutionary governmentality directed at Afro-descendant peoples from the Atlantic Coast region. While multiculturalism represents a modality of governance and political activism that holds new possibilities for the recognition and valorization of racial and cultural difference, counternarcotics policing relies on technologies of control that code racial difference, particularly 354J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y blackness, as negative and threatening to the mestizo body politic. The political effects of these coemergent governance strategies are profound, serving to simultaneously empower, stigmatize, and radicalize multicultural activism and resistance within Afrodescendant communities. Such effects support the central argument here that in order to understand how postrevolutionary multiculturalism operates politically, we must look beyond overtly multicultural initiatives to examine other tactics of government that implicate multicultural subjects. [counternarcotics policing, multiculturalism, Nicaragua, race]

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Renewed violence in Nicaragua in the aftermath of the 1980s Contra War is tied to the drug trade, drug war militarization, and the rise of the postwar security state. State sexual violence in an Afro‐Nicaraguan community under counternarcotics military occupation vividly demonstrates this linkage. I argue that state sexual violence in this case has served as a mechanism for asserting mestizo state sovereignty in a minoritized security zone. The forms of racial and patriarchal power that enabled the violence permeate the social body and structure political life in Nicaragua, and their diffuse nature has made it difficult for local people to find political redress for the abuses of state power that occurred in their community. Politically engaged feminist ethnography can illuminate the relationship between state security projects, preexisting social hierarchies, and endemic forms of insecurity and violence that remain difficult to politicize in postwar Central America.

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