Basic Facts
Capital: Tegucigalpa is the capital and largest city of Honduras. Roatan is the capital of the Department called Las Islas de la Bahia which includes the Swan Islands, Guanaja, Roatan, Utila, and the Cayos Cochinos.
People/Customs: The population of Honduras is 9,112,867 while the Bay Islands’ population is 65,932. There are many different people groups living in Honduras, such as the indigenous Chortí, the Copán, the Lenca, the Jicaque, the Pech, the Tawahka, and the Miskitos of the coast, which have a mixed heritage including British and African. There are the mestizos, of mixed Spanish and Indian descent, and the Garifuna, descendants of a tribe of black Caribs from St. Vincent which was transported here 200 years ago. Most of the population practices Catholicism, but several protestant denominations can also be found in Honduras and the Bay Islands, including Anglican, Pentecostal, and Seventh-Day Adventist.
Language: The official language of Honduras is Spanish, although English is spoken in the Bay Islands, because they once belonged to Great Britain. An English Creole is also spoken in the islands.
Climate: Honduras is both tropical and mountainous, and has a wet and dry season. Wet season coincides with hurricane season (June 1-November 30). The Bay Islands enjoy the cooling effects of the trade-winds.
Food/Farming: Typical Honduran food consists of rice and beans, corn tortillas, chicken, beef, pork, or fish, cabbage, and Conch soup. Many tropical fruits are grown in Honduras for consumption and export: bananas, mangoes, melons, pineapples, papayas, and citrus fruits. Coffee is grown at high altitudes on the mainland.
Government: Honduras has a democratic republic with three branches of government, many political parties, and an elected president.
Currency: The currency is Lempira. 1 USD=23 Lempira. The currency “Lempira” is named after one of the native heroes. When the Spanish found that they could not defeat the Indian chief Lempira, they raised the white flag, and invited him to sign a peace treaty, but when he entered the conference room the Spanish leader shot him, which led to the defeat of the native armies.
Art/Music/Culture: The culture of Honduras and the Bay Islands is influenced not only by the native and Latino peoples, but also by the African slaves, Spanish rulers, British invaders, Cayman fishermen, and American fruit companies. Popular music consists of merengue, calypso, salsa, punta, and Mexican ranchero. Hondurans love to play and watch soccer, or “futbol.”
History
Honduras was found by Christopher Columbus whose first stop was Guanaja (in the Bay Islands) in 1504. When Columbus ventured out of Guanaja he came to Punta Caxinas on the mainland, which he named Honduras, or “depths” in Spanish, for the deep water he found off-shore. In 1524, Gil Gonzalez Davila came to Honduras and Guatemala to make a small community near the mouth of the Rio Dulce. The next year, the Spanish settled on the northern coast of Trujillo and started to explore the central highlands where Comayagua was established. In 1570, the Spanish found gold and silver, and began shipping their treasure back to Spain; the treasure also drew pirates to the area, who were using a bay they called “Port Royal” (after the famous pirate port in Jamaica) to stage raids on passing ships. The Spanish also used Roatan as a shipping base.
Although the Spanish held the interior of Honduras, in 1572, after an appeal was made by the chiefs in the Miskito region, the British more or less took the coastal waters of Honduras, and a British protectorate was declared over the Bay Islands until 1859, when they were relinquished to Honduran control.
On the 15th of September 1821, Honduras declared its independence from Spain, and in 1822 Honduras declared loyalty to the Emperor of Mexico, Augustin de Iturbide. Later that same year, he was deposed and the five central American nations: Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, joined into the United Provinces of Central America. But in 1838, after many quarrels between the five nations ended the Federation, Honduras became a separate republic. Thus began a series of political changes which resulted in decades of instability. Between 1853 and 1860, an American named William Walker hired an army and made several attempts to take control over territory in Central America and lower California. He had a few successes, declaring himself President of Sonora, Mexico and Emperor of Nicaragua, but was always driven out and he was eventually caught by the British and executed in Trujillo, Honduras.
In 1888, the first rail-road was built in Honduras; it ran from the Caribbean coast to a town named San Pedro Sula which grew to be the second-largest city and main industrial center of Honduras. At the beginning of the 1900s, three large American fruit companies (United Fruit, Standard Fruit, and Cuyamel Fruit) bought up about 75 percent of Honduras’s banana plantations and exported fruit back to the United States. The remaining 25 percent, smaller plantations, were either bought out or forced out of business. Because 60 percent of the exports were bananas, this gave great economic and political power to a few foreign “invaders” and Honduras became known as the “Banana Republic.”
Honduras in the 20th century has been characterized by violence due to government corruption, political unrest, border disputes, crime, and gang warfare. For example, in 1969, El Salvador invaded Honduras during a border dispute which is now known as the Football War, because the conflict became violent during the World Cup qualifying matches between the two countries. Honduras was a staging area for the United States during their involvement in Nicaragua during the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. While violence and crime on the mainland made it unsafe for tourists, the Bay Islands enjoyed relative safety, and developed their diving industry and built beach resorts so that today they are a popular tourist destination.
In October of 1998, Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras and the Bay Islands. Three days of torrential rain caused continuous landslides and floods that buried several towns and destroyed about 100 bridges throughout the country. Mitch was said to have killed 13,000 people in the whole of central America. Today, you can still see evidence of Mitch’s destructive forces on the landscape, though the country has largely recovered.
Land forms/Flora and Fauna
Honduras has several habitat zones, including mangrove islands along the coast, rain forests, cloud forests, and tropical dry forests. There are many colorful bird species, including parrots and macaws (guacamaya). Animals such as jaguars, panthers, many species of monkeys, tapirs, and reptiles like snakes and iguanas can be found in Honduras. Underwater one will find coral reefs with many varieties of tropical fish, reef sharks, nurse sharks, and rays, and just offshore whale sharks can be spotted feeding on plankton.
Things to Do
Here is a list of fun things to do in Honduras: white-water rafting in the Rio Cangrejal, ziplining in La Campa, camping or hiking on Pico Bonito (the tallest peak in Honduras), and horseback riding in the forests. In the Bay Islands, there are beaches, coral reefs, hiking to waterfalls in Guanaja, scuba diving or fishing in Roatan, and freediving or swimming with whale sharks in Utila.
Bibliography
Pavlidis, Stephen J. “Honduras.” A Cruising Guide to the Northwestern Caribbean. Seaworthy Publications, Cocoa Beach Florida, 2014.
“Honduras.” www.CentralAmerica.com . May 2018.
“The Culture of Honduras” from Countries and Their Cultures. http://www.everyculture.com/Ge-It/Honduras.html . May 2018.