Walking for hours through pouring rain, chest-high water and dense forests, people living on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast are using GPS (the global positioning system) to create the first-ever maps showing land claims in their remote region.

The inhabitants of the resource-rich area include indigenous peoples and mixed-race, Spanish-speaking Mestizos. But no one has ever mapped the communities' borders in detail, and as economic pressure mounts to develop and exploit the area's resources, the ownership issue has become critical.