Honduras

Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It borders Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. To the south is the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north is Gulf of Honduras. Its capital and largest city is Tegucigalpa.

Etymology
The literal meaning of the term "Honduras" is "depths" in Spanish. The name could either refer to the bay of Trujillo as an anchorage, fondura in the Leonese dialect of Spanish, or to Columbus's alleged.
It was not until the end of the 16th century that Honduras was used for the whole province. Prior to 1580, Honduras referred to only the eastern part of the province, and Higueras referred to the western part. Another early name is Guaymuras, Hondurans are often referred to as Catracho or Catracha.

History

Pre-colonial period

In pre-Columbian times, almost all of modern Honduras was part of the Mesoamerican cultural area, with the exception of La Mosquitia in the extreme east, which seems to have been more connected to the Isthmo-Colombian area although also in contact with and influenced by Mesoamerican societies. In the extreme west, Mayan civilization flourished for hundreds of years. The dominant and most well-known and well-studied state within Honduras's borders was in Copán, which was located in a mainly non-Maya area, or on the frontier between Maya and non-Maya areas. Copán declined with other Lowland centres during the conflagrations of the Terminal Classic in the 9th century. The Maya of this civilization survive in western Honduras as the Ch'orti', isolated from their Choltian linguistic peers to the west.

However, Copán represents only a fraction of Honduran pre-Columbian history. Remnants of other civilizations are found throughout the country. Archaeologists have studied sites such as  and La Sierra in the Naco Valley, Los Naranjos on Lake Yojoa, Yarumela in the Comayagua Valley, La Ceiba and Salitron Viejo (both now under the Cajón Dam reservoir), Selin Farm and Cuyamel in the Aguan valley, Cerro Palenque, Travesia, Curruste, Ticamaya, Despoloncal, and Playa de los Muertos in the lower Ulúa River valley, and many others.

In 2012, LiDAR scanning revealed that several previously unknown high density settlements existed in La Mosquitia, corresponding to the legend of "La Ciudad Blanca". Excavation and study has since improved knowledge of the region's history. It is estimated that these settlements reached their zenith from 500 to 1000 AD.

 Spanish conquest (1524–1539) 

On his fourth and the final voyage to the New World in 1502, Christopher Columbus landed near the modern town of Trujillo, near Guaimoreto Lagoon, becoming the first European to visit the Bay Islands on the coast of Honduras. On 30 July 1502, Columbus sent his brother Bartholomew to explore the islands and Bartholomew encountered a Mayan trading vessel from Yucatán, carrying well-dressed Maya and a rich cargo
Spanish Honduras (1524–1821)
Honduras was organized as a province of the Kingdom of Guatemala and the capital was fixed, first at Trujillo on the Atlantic coast, and later at Comayagua, and finally at Tegucigalpa in the central part of the country.

Silver mining was a key factor in the Spanish conquest and settlement of Honduras. Initially the mines were worked by local people through the encomienda system, but as disease and resistance made this option less available, slaves from other parts of Central America were brought in. When local slave trading stopped at the end of the sixteenth century, African slaves, mostly from Angola, and Senegambia, were imported. It was in the early nineteenth century when slavery was abolished in Honduras. By the end of the 19th century as many as 230,000 enslaved Africans or more, had been brought to Honduras, directly from Africa or from other colonies in the Americas, eventually mixing with amerindians and Europeans creating different ethnic categories that would eventually become the mestizo identifying people of Honduras today.

The Spanish Crown considered Ladinos as those subjects of the Crown, originally non-Hispanics, and they learned the official languages of the empire or Vulgar Latin. In the Americas, the Ladinos were often identified as those groups of nonwhites who were Amerindian or Spanish - speaking (and most people who were not white or Amerindians in the Americas at the time were mestizos and Afro-descendants), including possibilities such as "black ladino," "mulatto Ladin", etc. According to Barahona, Black Ladinos were the majority of the population in 1800 (70% of the population).

Because these days, most African - Hondurans were mulatto, sambo, and browns. Although the seventeenth century had five categories in the census of Spanish America, "white", "Indians", "mestizos", "black" and "mulatto", already in the eighteenth century, the last three categories alone in a bind: "Ladino". During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Spanish authorities considered Honduran even entire regions populated mostly as mulatto, sambo, or brown. Such is the case of places like Olancho, Yoro, Colon and Atlántida, regions that eventually mixed in with more white Europeans arriving from Spain, Portugal, and others during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Although the Spanish conquered the southern or Pacific portion of Honduras fairly quickly, they were less successful on the northern, or Atlantic side. They managed to found a few towns along the coast, at Puerto Caballos and Trujillo in particular, but failed to conquer the eastern portion of the region and many pockets of independent Afro-indigenous people as well. The Miskito Kingdom in the northeast was particularly effective at resisting Spanish conquest due to help by the British.

In the 1800s, five years before independence, "the Mayor Don Juan Antonio Tomos issued a report of his visit in 1815, in which he indicated 100,000 inhabitants in the cities of Puerto Cortés, San Pedro Sula, Tela, La Ceiba, and 39 curatos and 8 villages of Caribbean blacks from countries like Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Belize, and Haiti. Plus additional inhabitants near Trujillo (estimated at 10,000) for a total of 110,000 inhabitants. After independence" the population of 1826 (200,000 people) is based on the calculation made by Mr. Dionisio de Herrera, former head of the state of Honduras. By the early 1900s more 300,000 people had came to Honduras to work mainly in the booming banana cultivation and other agricultural sectors.

Independence (1821)
Honduras gained independence from Spain in 1821 and was a part of the First Mexican Empire until 1823, when it became part of the United Provinces of Central America. It has been an independent republic and has held regular elections since 1838. In the 1840s and 1850s Honduras participated in several failed attempts at Central American unity, such as the Confederation of Central America (1842–1845), the covenant of Guatemala (1842), the Diet of Sonsonate (1846), the Diet of Nacaome (1847) and National Representation in Central America (1849–1852). Although Honduras eventually adopted the name Republic of Honduras, the unionist ideal never waned, and Honduras was one of the Central American countries that pushed the hardest for a policy of regional unity.

20th century

In the late nineteenth century, Honduras granted land and substantial exemptions to several US-based fruit and infrastructure companies in return for developing the country's northern regions. Thousands of workers came to the north coast as a result to work in banana plantations and other businesses that grew up around the export industry. Banana-exporting companies, dominated until 1930 by the Cuyamel Fruit Company, as well as the United Fruit Company, and Standard Fruit Company, built an enclave economy in northern Honduras, controlling infrastructure and creating self-sufficient, tax-exempt sectors that contributed relatively little to economic growth. American troops landed in Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925.

In The Admiral, O.Henry refers to the nation as a "small maritime banana republic"; naturally, the fruit was the entire basis of its economy.
In 1969, Honduras and El Salvador fought what became known as the Football War. Border tensions led to acrimony between the two countries after Oswaldo López Arellano, the president of Honduras, blamed the deteriorating Honduran economy on immigrants from El Salvador. The relationship reached a low when El Salvador met Honduras for a three-round football elimination match preliminary to the World Cup
In 1979, the country returned to civilian rule. A constituent assembly was popularly elected in April 1980 to write a new constitution, and general elections were held in November 1981. The constitution was approved in 1982 and the PLH government of Roberto Suazo won the election with a promise to carry out an ambitious program of economic and social development to tackle the recession in which Honduras found itself. 
During the early 1980s, the United States established a continuing military presence in Honduras to support El Salvador, the Contra guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan government.

21st century
In 2007, President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya and President of the United States George W. Bush began talks on US assistance to Honduras to tackle the latter's growing drug cartels in Mosquito, Eastern Honduras using US Special Forces. This marked the beginning of a new foothold for the US Military's continued presence in Central America.

Geography


The interior highlands are the most prominent feature of Honduran topography. This mountain area makes up about 80% of the country's area, and is home to the majority of the population. Because the rugged terrain has made the land difficult to traverse and equally difficult to cultivate, this area has not been highly developed. The soil here is poor: Honduras lacks the rich volcanic ash found in other Central American countries. Until the early 20th century, the highland economy consisted primarily of mining and livestock.
an elevation of  and the Cerro Las Minas at .
In the east, the mountains merge with those in Nicaragua. Although generally not as high as the mountains near the Guatemalan border, the eastern ranges possess some high peaks, such as the Montaña de la Flor at , El Boquerón (Monte El Boquerón) at , and Pepe Bonito at .
The north coast of Honduras borders the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean lies south through the Gulf of Fonseca. Honduras consists mainly of mountains, with narrow plains along the coasts

 Climate 

The climate varies from tropical in the lowlands to temperate in the mountains. The central and southern regions are relatively hotter and less humid than the northern coast.
In the Pacific lowlands, April, the last month of the dry season, brings the warmest temperatures; the rainy season is slightly cooler, although higher humidity during the rainy season makes these months feel more uncomfortable. In the Caribbean lowlands, the only relief from the year-round heat and humidity comes during December or January when an occasional strong cold front from the north (a norte) brings several days of strong northwest winds and slightly cooler temperatures.

The interior highlands range from tierra templada to tierra fría. Intibucá, in a sheltered valley and at an elevation of , has a pleasant climate, with an average high temperature ranging from  in April, the warmest month, to  in January, the coolest. Above , temperatures can fall to near freezing at night, and frost sometimes occurs.

Rain falls year round in the Caribbean lowlands but is seasonal throughout the rest of the country. Amounts are copious along the north coast, especially in the Mosquitia, where the average rainfall is . Nearer San Pedro Sula, amounts are slightly less from November to April, but each month still has considerable precipitation. The interior highlands and Pacific lowlands have a dry season, known locally as "summer," from November to April. Almost all the rain in these regions falls during the "winter," from May to September. Total yearly amounts depend on surrounding topography; Tegucigalpa, in a sheltered valley, averages only  of precipitation.

Ecology

The region is considered a biodiversity hotspot because of the many plant and animal species found there. Like other countries in the region, it contains vast biological resources. Honduras hosts more than 6,000 species of vascular plants, of which 630 (described so far) are orchids; around 250 reptiles and amphibians, more than 700 bird species, and 110 mammalian species, of which half are bats.

In the northeastern region of La Mosquitia lies the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a lowland rainforest which is home to a great diversity of life. The reserve was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites List in 1982.

Honduras has rain forests, cloud forests (which can rise up to nearly  above sea level), mangroves, savannas and mountain ranges with pine and oak trees, and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. In the Bay Islands there are bottlenose dolphins, manta rays, parrot fish, schools of blue tang and whale shark.

 Environmental issues 
Deforestation resulting from logging is rampant in Olancho Department. The clearing of land for agriculture is prevalent in the largely undeveloped La Mosquitia region, causing land degradation and soil erosion.

Lake Yojoa, which is Honduras's largest source of fresh water, is polluted by heavy metals produced from mining activities. Some rivers and streams are also polluted by mining.

Government and politics

Honduras is governed within a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic. The President of Honduras is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the Honduran government. Legislative power is vested in the National Congress of Honduras. The judiciary is independent of both the executive branch and the legislature.

The National Congress of Honduras (Congreso Nacional) has 128 members (diputados), elected for a four-year term by proportional representation. Congressional seats are assigned the parties' candidates on a departmental basis in proportion to the number of votes each party receives.

 Political culture 
In 1963, a military coup removed the democratically elected president, Ramón Villeda Morales. A string of authoritarian military governments held power uninterrupted until 1981, when Roberto Suazo Córdova was elected president.

The party system was dominated by the conservative National Party of Honduras (Partido Nacional de Honduras: PNH) and the liberal Liberal Party of Honduras (Partido Liberal de Honduras: PLH) until the 2009 Honduran coup d'état removed Manuel Zelaya from office and put Roberto Micheletti in his place.
In late 2012, 1540 persons were interviewed by ERIC in collaboration with the Jesuit university, as reported by Associated Press. This survey found that 60.3% believed the police were involved in crime, 44.9% had "no confidence" in the Supreme Court, and 72% thought there was electoral fraud in the primary elections of November 2012. Also, 56% expected the presidential, legislative and municipal elections of 2013 to be fraudulent.

Current Honduran president Xiomara Castro took office on 27 January 2022.

 Foreign relations 

Honduras and Nicaragua had tense relations throughout 2000 and early 2001 due to a boundary dispute off the Atlantic coast. Nicaragua imposed a 35% tariff against Honduran goods due to the dispute.

In June 2009 a coup d'état ousted President Manuel Zelaya; he was taken in a military aircraft to Costa Rica. The General Assembly of the United Nations voted to denounce the coup and called for the restoration of Zelaya. Several Latin American nations, including Mexico, temporarily severed diplomatic relations with Honduras.

Administrative divisions


Honduras is divided into 18 departments. The capital city is Tegucigalpa in the Central District within the department of Francisco Morazán.

 Atlántida
 Choluteca
 Colón
 Comayagua
 Copán
 Cortés
 El Paraíso
 Francisco Morazán
 Gracias a Dios
 Intibucá
 Bay Islands Department
 La Paz
 Lempira
 Ocotepeque
 Olancho Department
 Santa Bárbara
 Valle
 Yoro

A new administrative division called ZEDE (Zonas de empleo y desarrollo económico) was created in 2013. ZEDEs have a high level of autonomy with their own political system at a judicial, economic and administrative level, and are based on free market capitalism.

Economy

Economic growth in the last few years has averaged 7% a year, one of the highest rates in Latin America (2010). Despite this, Honduras has seen the least development amongst all Central American countries. Honduras is ranked 130 of 188 countries with a Human Development Index of .625 that classifies the nation as having medium development (2015).

 Trade 

The currency is the Honduran lempira.

The government operates both the electrical grid, Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENEE) and the land-line telephone service, Hondutel. ENEE receives heavy subsidies to counter its chronic financial problems, but Hondutel is no longer a monopoly. The telecommunication sector was opened to private investment on 25 December 2005, as required under CAFTA. The price of petroleum is regulated, and the Congress often ratifies temporary price regulation for basic commodities.


Energy

About half of the electricity sector in Honduras is privately owned. The remaining generation capacity is run by ENEE (Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica).
Key challenges in the sector are:
 Financing investments in generation and transmission without either a financially healthy utility or concessionary funds from external donors
 Re-balancing tariffs, cutting arrears and reducing losses, including electricity theft, without social unrest
 Reconciling environmental concerns with government objectives – two large new dams and associated hydropower plants.
 Improving access to electricity in rural areas.

Transportation
Infrastructure for transportation in Honduras consists of:  of railways;  of roadways; seven ports and harbors; and 112 airports altogether (12 Paved, 100 unpaved). The Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing (SOPRTRAVI in Spanish acronym) is responsible for transport sector policy.

Race and ethnicity
The ethnic breakdown of Honduran society was 90% Mestizo, 7% American Indian, 2% Black and 1% White (2017). The 1927 Honduran census provides no racial data but in 1930 five classifications were created: white, Indian, Negro, yellow, and mestizo.Vandiver, Marylee Mason. "Racial Classifications in Latin American Censuses." Social Forces, vol. 28, no. 2, 1949, pp. 138–146. JSTOR, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2572639. This system was used in the 1935 and 1940 census. Mestizo was used to describe individuals that did not fit neatly into the categories of white, Indian, negro or yellow or who are of mixed white-Indian descent.

Languages
Spanish is the official, national language, spoken by virtually all Hondurans. In addition to Spanish, a number of indigenous languages are spoken in some small communities. Other languages spoken by some include Honduran sign language and Bay Islands Creole English.

 Largest cities 

Religion

Although most Hondurans are nominally Roman Catholic (which would be considered the main religion), membership in the Roman Catholic Church is declining while membership in Protestant churches is increasing. The International Religious Freedom Report, 2008, notes that a CID Gallup poll reported that 51.4% of the population identified themselves as Catholic, 36.2% as evangelical Protestant, 1.3% claiming to be from other religions, including Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Rastafarians, etc. and 11.1% do not belong to any religion or unresponsive. 8% reported as being either atheistic or agnostic. Customary Catholic church tallies and membership estimates 81% Catholic where the priest (in more than 185 parishes) is required to fill out a pastoral account of the parish each year.

Education

About 83.6% of the population are literate and the net primary enrollment rate was 94% in 2004. In 2014, the primary school completion rate was 90.7%. Honduras has bilingual (Spanish and English) and even trilingual (Spanish with English, Arabic, or German) schools and numerous universities.

The higher education is governed by the National Autonomous University of Honduras which has centers in the most important cities of Honduras.

Culture

Art

The most renowned Honduran painter is José Antonio Velásquez. Other important painters include Carlos Garay, and Roque Zelaya. Some of Honduras's most notable writers are Lucila Gamero de Medina, Froylán Turcios, Ramón Amaya Amador and Juan Pablo Suazo Euceda, Marco Antonio Rosa,

 Cuisine 

Honduran cuisine is a fusion of indigenous Lenca cuisine, Spanish cuisine, Caribbean cuisine and African cuisine. There are also dishes from the Garifuna people. Coconut and coconut milk are featured in both sweet and savory dishes. Regional specialties include fried fish, tamales, carne asada and baleadas.

Other popular dishes include: meat roasted with chismol and carne asada, chicken with rice and corn, and fried fish with pickled onions and jalapeños. Some of the ways seafood and some meats are prepared in coastal areas and in the Bay Islands involve coconut milk.

 Media 

At least half of Honduran households have at least one television. Public television has a far smaller role than in most other countries. Honduras's main newspapers are La Prensa, El Heraldo, La Tribuna and Diario Tiempo. The official newspaper is .

 Music 

Punta is the main music of Honduras, with other sounds such as Caribbean salsa, merengue, reggae, and reggaeton all widely heard, especially in the north, and Mexican rancheras heard in the rural interior of the country. The most well known musicians are Guillermo Anderson and Polache. 

National symbols
The flag of Honduras is composed of three equal horizontal stripes. The blue upper and lower stripes represent the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The central stripe is white. It contains five blue stars representing the five states of the Central American Union. The middle star represents Honduras, located in the center of the Central American Union.

The national flower is the famous orchid, Rhyncholaelia digbyana (formerly known as Brassavola digbyana), which replaced the rose in 1969. The change of the national flower was carried out during the administration of general Oswaldo López Arellano, thinking that Brassavola digbyana "is an indigenous plant of Honduras; having this flower exceptional characteristics of beauty, vigor and distinction", as the decree dictates it.

Folklore
Legends and fairy tales are paramount in Honduran culture. Lluvia de Peces (Rain of Fish) is an example of this. The legends of El Cadejo and La Llorona are also popular.

Sports
The major sports in Honduras are football, basketball, rugby, volleyball and cycling, with smaller followings for athletics, softball and handball. Information about some of the sports organisations in Honduras are listed below:
 Football in Honduras
 Honduran Football Federation
 Honduras national baseball team
 Honduras national football team
 Honduras national under-20 football team
 Honduras U-17 national football team
 Rugby union in Honduras

Notes

References

Other websites

 Government of Honduras 
 Official Site of the Tourism Institute of Honduras (English) 
 Chief of State and Cabinet Members

 Honduras at University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries GovPubs

 Honduras profile from the BBC News

 Honduran Biodiversity Database 
 Honduras Tips Travel Info (English)
 Honduras Weekly
 Travel and Tourism Info on Honduras (English)
 Humanitarian Aid in Honduras
 Answers.com
 Project Honduras
 Interactive Maps Honduras
 Key Development Forecasts for Honduras from International Futures



Category:Spanish-speaking countries