Honduras

G

Defense

The armed forces in 2004 numbered 12,000, comprising an army of 8,300, a navy of 1,400, and an air force of 2,300. As of 1994 military service was no longer mandatory.

VI

History

Western Honduras was at the southeastern edge of the great Maya civilization during the 1st millennium ad, and the ruins at Copán attest to the advanced stage of the country’s culture. The Maya, however, were already in decline by the time Christopher Columbus reached their shores on his fourth voyage in 1502. Several non-Maya tribes also inhabited the Caribbean coastal region. The indigenous population was decimated by the Spanish conquest and by the European diseases the Spaniards introduced, but the number of Spanish settlers was small and included few women. As a result, marriage between Spaniards and Native Americans was common, and mestizos became Honduras’s dominant ethnic group.

A

The Colonial Period

The conquest of Honduras began in 1524 and was characterized by bitter struggles among rivals representing Spanish power centers in Mexico, Panama, and Hispaniola. Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, went to Honduras in 1525 to establish a firm claim, but the discovery of gold there made the region a center of intrigue and conflict for several years. The conquerors also met with considerable opposition from Lempira, a Native American chief whose heroic resistance inspired later movements toward freedom and whose name was given to the monetary unit of the country.

Pedro de Alvarado, governor of the kingdom of Guatemala, finally overcame all challengers in 1539 to gain control of Honduras. The province became a part of the Guatemalan kingdom, which encompassed almost all of Central America and was itself a part of the vast Spanish colony known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The town of Comayagua, established in 1540, served as the province’s capital during most of the colonial period. An early mining boom around Gracias gave the town such importance that in 1544 it became the capital for the Kingdom of Guatemala. The gold and silver deposits of Honduras were more limited than Spanish explorers had originally believed, however. As a result Honduras lost its early importance, and the regional capital was moved to Guatemala in 1549.

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Flurries of mining activity around Tegucigalpa encouraged that town also to challenge Comayagua, especially in the late colonial period, creating a rivalry that grew in intensity after Honduras gained independence. For the most part, however, colonial Honduras was a sparsely populated province, with most of its population dedicated to subsistence agriculture or ranching. By the end of the colonial period Honduras was an important supplier of foodstuffs and livestock to the indigo-exporting regions of El Salvador and Guatemala.

B

The Central American Federation

In 1821 Honduras, along with other Central American countries and Mexico, declared its independence from Spain. Soon afterward Mexico annexed Honduras and the other countries of Central America. In 1823 the regime in Mexico collapsed, and Honduras joined its neighbors in forming the United Provinces of Central America. Political dissension between the conservative Spanish aristocracy and the more liberal intellectual and Creole landowners soon became evident. (Creoles were people of Spanish ancestry born in the Western Hemisphere.) In Honduras the bitter rivalry between conservatives and liberals was reflected in violent quarrels for supremacy between the mostly conservative city of Comayagua and the more liberal city of Tegucigalpa.

In 1825 a Salvadoran liberal, Manuel José Arce, was elected first president of the United Provinces of Central America, but the following year he bolted his party and turned conservative. A civil war within the United Provinces followed. From the civil war a great Honduran liberal and national hero, Francisco Morazán, emerged. Morazán led liberal forces to victory in 1829 and restored order.

In 1830 Morazán was elected president of the United Provinces. Though an able leader, he was too hasty in establishing reform measures. In addition, the federated states still feared the preeminence of Guatemala, even though Morazán transferred the capital from Guatemala City to San Salvador in El Salvador. Finally, in 1838 the Central American states formally dissolved their federation.

C

Independence

An assembly meeting at Comayagua declared Honduras an independent republic on October 26, 1838. The course of independence, however, was stormy. Stronger neighbors, especially Guatemala, exercised great influence in Honduran politics throughout the 19th century. Rafael Carrera, the dictator who held power in Guatemala from 1844 to 1865, unseated liberal regimes in both Honduras and El Salvador. Perhaps because of this, but also because there was still sentiment strongly in favor of union, the three neighboring republics—El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua—formed a loose confederation in 1849. The alliance stayed in effect until 1863, when a three-way war among its members destroyed the union. Conservative dictators held power for most of the first four decades of independence, and the nation’s capital was Comayagua.

Liberal dictators, beginning with Marcos A. Soto in 1876, dominated the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and they began to emphasize modernization and exports. The transfer of the capital from conservative Comayagua to liberal Tegucigalpa reflected both the triumph of the liberals and a renewed emphasis on mining, which the government stimulated by attracting foreign investment. Mining companies from the United States played a major role in late-19th-century Honduran economic growth, although Honduras remained the least developed state in Central America.

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