Honduras

C

Education

Education in Honduras is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 7 and 12. The government has pledged to raise the literacy rate, which stands at 77.2 percent. In 2000, 1.09 million pupils were enrolled in 8,114 primary schools. However, only 32 percent of secondary school-age children were enrolled in school. The number of secondary schools and teachers is inadequate in rural areas.

The National Autonomous University of Honduras (founded in 1847), in Tegucigalpa, is the country’s major institution of higher learning. The José Cecilio del Valle University in Tegucigalpa (1978) offers training in engineering, administration, and computer science.

D

Culture

The interaction of both Native American and Spanish strains in Honduran cultural history is clearly visible in the architecture. Many colonial buildings show strong Native American influences combined with baroque, Renaissance, and Moorish styles imported by Spanish colonists.

Traditional languages and customs have been preserved in a few isolated Native American settlements in the highlands. However, the culture of Honduras is primarily Spanish today. The marimba is the most popular instrument and forms the core of many bands. Native folklore, folk music, and dances are limited, and artistic activity is concentrated around the School of Fine Arts in Comayagua, the old capital. In northwestern Honduras lies Copán, a ceremonial center of the Old Empire of the Maya and one of the most important archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere.

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The most important painters of the 20th century included Arturo López Rodezno, founder of the School of Fine Arts in Comayagua; Antonio Velásquez, who painted scenes of Honduran village life; and Carlos Garay, noted for landscape paintings. The most-respected Honduran literary figures of the 20th century were poet, historian, and essayist Rafael Heliodoro Valle; novelist and short-story writer Argentina Díaz Lozano; and poet and publisher Clementina Suarez.

IV

Economy

Honduras is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the Western Hemisphere. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy. The country’s extreme dependence on the export of agricultural products with constantly fluctuating world prices has made the economy highly unstable. The government sought to diversify the economy during the 1990s by developing tourism, new agricultural exports, and manufacturing industries based on assembly of clothing and textiles for export. Despite some success in these areas, unemployment has remained high. Devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 delivered a major setback to the country’s development.

The gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the total value of goods and services produced, was $8.3 billion in 2005. Per capita GDP was $1,150.80 in 2005. The national budget in 1995 included $713 million in revenue and $591 million in expenditure.

A

Agriculture

Some 12.8 percent of the total land area of Honduras is cultivated or used for plantation agriculture, most of it on the coastal plains. Because of the country’s rugged terrain, much of the land is unsuitable for agriculture. Poor transportation and the lack of modern production methods have left farms in the highlands physically isolated and economically backward. Along the Caribbean coast, United States companies developed vast plantations on which to grow bananas for export. The banana companies introduced modern methods and transport systems to serve their plantations.

The U.S. fruit companies were granted vast concessions of land along the fertile coastal plain around 1900. The region’s easy access to the southern ports of the United States helped it to become the world’s second largest banana exporting area, following Ecuador. Until the middle of the 20th century, the U.S. banana companies completely dominated the Honduran economy. The government and large landowners who shared the wealth from the banana trade made few efforts to promote other crops.

Coffee first became an important commercial crop in the 1950s. It is grown throughout the mountainous area of the interior. Honduran coffee farms tend to be small. Cotton, which is grown on the Pacific coastal plain, became important in the late 1950s.

Today, the leading cash crops grown in Honduras (with annual production for 2005 in metric tons) are fruits such as bananas and plantains (1,696,578) and coffee (190,640). Other important crops include sugarcane (5.63 million), cantaloupes and other melons, oranges, and oil palm fruit. The principal food crops are corn (568,973), beans (86,406), and rice (13,700). Production of these food staples is carried out principally by small subsistence farmers on the infertile soils of the mountainous interior.

Cattle have been raised on large ranches in the highlands and the Caribbean lowlands since colonial times. Beef production rose significantly after 1960 with the opening of the country’s first modern meat-packing plants. Exports of beef declined in the 1980s as local consumption grew. The livestock population in 2005 numbered 2.50 million cattle and 490,000 pigs. Chickens are raised for local consumption.

B

Forestry and Fishing

Honduras once had abundant forests. As in much of Central America, the forests have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Poor, landless farmers cleared land to raise crops, cattle ranchers cleared vast tracts for grazing land, and loggers cut down trees for lumber. Most of the wood exported by Honduras is pine and other softwoods. A reforestation program has been hampered by rudimentary lumbering methods and poor transportation facilities. In 2005 roundwood production was 9.63 million cubic meters (340 million cubic feet).

Exports of shellfish, primarily shrimp and lobsters, grew in importance during the 1990s and early 2000s, with shrimp farming joining the country’s industries. The fish catch in 2004 of 37,459 metric tons was primarily shellfish.

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