Honduras History

Honduras was inhabited by indigenous tribes of a great linguistic and cultural diversity. The most powerful and advanced of these were the Mayans, who also populated Yucatán, Belize, and the northeast of Guatemala and built their sacred city and ceremonial metropolis in Copán, in the western part of Honduras.

The Garifuna people of Honduras have an additional history, which can be found by visiting Garifuna.com.

After the collapse of Mayan culture, different groups slowly settled in various parts of the Honduran territory. Their languages reveal a relationship with the Toltecs and Aztecs of Mexico, the Chibchas of Colombia, and even tribes from the southwestern United States. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, who spoke a language of unknown origin. These autonomous groups had their conflicts but maintained their commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico.

Descendants of these peoples and of the Mayas were the aborigines, who would later oppose the Spanish conquest and produce the legendary figures of Tecún Uman, Lempira, Atlacatl, Diriagúacutan, Nicarao and Urraca, leaders for autonomy among the native populations of Central America.

Lempira

By October 1537, the Lenca chief, Lempira, a warrior of great renown, had managed to unify more than two hundred Indian tribes that had been ancient rivals in order to offer an organized resistance against further penetration by the Spanish conquerors. In the village of Etempica he announced his plans to expel the Spaniards and gave instructions to all his allies for a general uprising when he gave the signal. On top of the great rock of Cerquín, an impenetrable fortress, he gathered all the neighboring tribes as well as abundant supplies and made trenches and fortifications. He finally gave the signal to attack by killing three unsuspecting Spaniards, who happened to be in the region.

While Montejo sought help desperately from Santiago de los Caballeros in Guatemala, San Salvador, and San Miguel and even from Spain, Alonso de Cáceres resorted to treason to get rid of Lempira. He invited the chief to a peace conference; and when Lempira reaffirmed his desire to continue the fight, a hidden marksman shot him in the forehead. Lempira fell from the highcliffs; and with his death, his 30,000 warriors either fled or surrendered.

Montejo regained the Valley of Comayagua, established Comayagua city in another location, and vanquished the natives in Tenampúa, Guaxeregui, and Ojuera. The conquest of Honduras was consummated and later consolidated by the founding of new settlements.

Christopher Columbus

On July 30, 1502, during his fourth and last trip through the Americas, Christopher Columbus reached the Bay Islands and soon afterwards the coast of the mainland. This was the first time he saw Honduran soil. From the Island of Guanaja, which he is said to have named Columbus set sail toward the northern continental coast and in Punta Caxinas, now Puerto Castilla, he ordered the celebration of the first mass on the Honduran main land. In the Rio Tinto (Tinto River), which he named Rio de la Posesion, he claimed the territory in the name of his sovereigns, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

It is said that Columbus, while exploring the eastern coasts of the region, reached a cape where he found shelter from the inclemencies of a tropical storm and declared, Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de estas honduras! [Thank God we've escaped these treacherous depths!]. According to many historians, as a result of this exclamation the cape became known as Gracias a Dios and the territory as Honduras.

The first expeditionary forces arrived in Honduras in 1523 under the command of Gil Gonzáles de Avila, who hoped to rule the new territory. In 1524 Cristóbal de Olid arrived heading a well organized regiment sent by the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés. On Honduran soil, Olid founded the colony Triunfo de la Cruz and tried to establish an independent government. When Cortés learned of this, he decided to reestablish his own authority by sending a new expedition, headed by Francisco de las Casas. Olid, who managed to capture his rivals, was betrayed by his men and assassinated. Cortés had to travel to Honduras to resolve the struggle for power in the new colony. He established his government in the city of Trujillo and returned to Mexico in 1526.

Those first years of the conquest were filled with many perils. The colony was almost abandoned. Upon the arrival from Guatemala of the adelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado, the foundation of San Pedro de Puerto Caballos, now San Pedro Sula, was established. Alvarado also ordered the founding of the city of Gracias a Dios, where he began to exploit the gold mines. Later, with the arrival of the adelantado Don Francisco de Montejo, the conquest was consummated, the city of Santa Maria de Comayagua was founded, the great insurrection stirred up by Lempira was put down, and the city of Gracias a Dios was refounded where it is now located.

Columbus landed at mainland Honduras (Trujillo) in 1502. He named the area "Honduras" (meaning "depths") for the deep water off the coast. Spaniard Hernan Cortes arrived in 1524. The Spanish founded several settlements along the coast, and Honduras formed part of the colonial era Captaincy General of Guatemala. The cities of Comayagua and Tegucigalpa developed as early mining centers.

Discovery and Conquest

On July 30, 1502, during his fourth and last trip through the Americas, Christopher Columbus reached the Bay Islands and soon afterwards the coast of the mainland. This was the first time he saw Honduran soil. From the Island of Guanaja, which he is said to have named Columbus set sail toward the northern continental coast and in Punta Caxinas, now Puerto Castilla, he ordered the celebration of the first mass on the Honduran main land. In the Rio Tinto (Tinto River), which he named Rio de la Posesion, he claimed the territory in the name of his sovereigns, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

It is said that Columbus, while exploring the eastern coasts of the region, reached a cape where he found shelter from the inclemencies of a tropical storm and declared, Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de estas honduras! [Thank God we've escaped these treacherous depths!]. According to many historians, as a result of this exclamation the cape became known as Gracias a Dios and the territory as Honduras.

The first expeditionary forces arrived in Honduras in 1523 under the command of Gil Gonzáles de Avila, who hoped to rule the new territory. In 1524 Cristóbal de Olid arrived heading a well organized regiment sent by the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés. On Honduran soil, Olid founded the colony Triunfo de la Cruz and tried to establish an independent government. When Cortés learned of this, he decided to reestablish his own authority by sending a new expedition, headed by Francisco de las Casas. Olid, who managed to capture his rivals, was betrayed by his men and assassinated. Cortés had to travel to Honduras to resolve the struggle for power in the new colony. He established his government in the city of Trujillo and returned to Mexico in 1526.

Those first years of the conquest were filled with many perils. The colony was almost abandoned. Upon the arrival from Guatemala of the adelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado, the foundation of San Pedro de Puerto Caballos, now San Pedro Sula, was established. Alvarado also ordered the founding of the city of Gracias a Dios, where he began to exploit the gold mines. Later, with the arrival of the adelantado Don Francisco de Montejo, the conquest was consummated, the city of Santa Maria de Comayagua was founded, the great insurrection stirred up by Lempira was put down, and the city of Gracias a Dios was refounded where it is now located.

Honduras, along with many other Central American provinces, gained independence from Spain in 1821. The country was then briefly annexed to the Mexican Empire. In 1823, Honduras joined the newly formed United Provinces of Central America. Social and economic differences between Honduras and its regional neighbors exacerbated harsh partisan strife among Central American leaders and brought on the federation's collapse in 1838. General Francisco Morazan--a Honduran national hero--led unsuccessful efforts to maintain the federation, and restoring Central American unity remained the chief aim of Honduran foreign policy until after World War I.

Independence

Since independence, Honduras has been plagued with nearly 300 incidents of unrest, including internal rebellions, civil wars, and changes of government--more than half of which occurred during the 20th century. The country traditionally lacked both an economic infrastructure and social and political integration. Its agriculture-based economy was dominated in the 1900s by U.S. companies that established vast banana plantations along the north coast. Foreign capital, plantation life, and conservative politics held sway in Honduras from the late 19th century until the mid-20th century. During the relatively stable years of the Great Depression, authoritarian Gen. Tiburcio Carias Andino controlled Honduras. His ties to dictators in neighboring countries and to U.S. banana companies helped him maintain power until 1948. By then, provincial military leaders had begun to gain control of the two major parties, the Nationalists and the Liberals.

CLICK HERE FOR A LISTING OF THE RULERS OF HONDURAS FROM 1933 TO PRESENT

In October 1955--after two authoritarian administrations and a 1954 general strike by banana workers on the north coast--young military reformists staged a palace coup that installed a provisional junta and paved the way for constituent assembly elections in 1957. This assembly appointed Dr. Ramon Villeda Morales as President and transformed itself into a national legislature with a 6-year term. The Liberal Party ruled during 1957-63. At the same time, the military took its first steps to become a professional institution independent of leadership from any one political party, and the first class of the newly created military academy graduated in 1960. In October 1963, conservative military officers preempted constitutional elections and deposed Villeda in a bloody coup. These officers exiled Liberal Party members and took control of the national police. The armed forces, led by Gen. Lopez Arellano, governed until 1970. Popular discontent continued to rise after a 1969 border war with El Salvador.

Soccer War of 1969

The Honduran government and some private groups came increasingly to place blame for the nation's economic problems on the approximately 300,000 undocumented Salvadoran immigrants in Honduras. Fenagh began to associate Salvadoran immigrants with illegal land invasions, and in January 1969, the Honduran government refused to renew the 1967 Bilateral Treaty on Immigration with El Salvador that had been designed to regulate the flow of individuals across their common border. In April INA announced that it would begin to expel from their lands those who had acquired property under agrarian reform without fulfilling the legal requirement that they be Honduran by birth. Attacks were also launched in the media on the impact of Salvadoran immigrant labor on unemployment and wages on the Caribbean coast. By late May, Salvadorans began to stream out of Honduras back to an overpopulated El Salvador.

Tensions continued to mount during June 1969. The soccer teams of the two nations were engaged that month in a three-game elimination match as a preliminary to the World Cup. Disturbances broke out during the first game in Tegucigalpa, but the situation got considerably worse during the second match in San Salvador. Honduran fans were roughed up, the Honduran flag and national anthem were insulted, and the emotions of both nations became considerably agitated. Actions against Salvadoran residents in Honduras, including several vice consuls, became increasingly violent. An unknown number of Salvadorans were killed or brutalized, and tens of thousands began fleeing the country. The press of both nations contributed to a growing climate of near- hysteria, and on June 27, 1969, Honduras broke diplomatic relations with El Salvador.

Early on the morning of July 14, 1969, concerted military action began in what came to be known as the Soccer War. The Salvadoran air force attacked targets inside Honduras and the Salvadoran army launched major offensives along the main road connecting the two nations and against the Honduran islands in the Golfo de Fonseca. At first, the Salvadorans made fairly rapid progress. By the evening of July 15, the Salvadoran army, which was considerably larger and better equipped than its Honduran opponent, pushed the Honduran army back over eight kilometers and captured the departmental capital of Nueva Ocotepeque. Thereafter, the attack bogged down, and the Salvadorans began to experience fuel and ammunition shortages. A major reason for the fuel shortage was the action of the Honduran air force, which--in addition to largely destroying the smaller Salvadoran air force--had severely damaged El Salvador's oil storage facilities.

The day after the fighting had begun, the OAS met in an urgent session and called for an immediate cease-fire and a withdrawal of El Salvador's forces from Honduras. El Salvador resisted the pressures from the OAS for several days, demanding that Honduras first agree to pay reparations for the attacks on Salvadoran citizens and guarantee the safety of those Salvadorans remaining in Honduras. A cease-fire was arranged on the night of July 18; it took full effect only on July 20. El Salvador continued until July 29 to resist pressures to withdraw its troops. Then a combination of pressures led El Salvador to agree to a withdrawal in the first days of August. Those persuasive pressures included the possibility of OAS economic sanctions against El Salvador and the dispatch of OAS observers to Honduras to oversee the security of Salvadorans remaining in that country. The actual war had lasted just over four days, but it would take more than a decade to arrive at a final peace settlement.

The war produced only losses for both sides. Between 60,000 and 130,000 Salvadorans had been forcibly expelled or had fled from Honduras, producing serious economic disruption in some areas. Trade between the two nations had been totally disrupted and the border closed, damaging the economies of both nations and threatening the future of the Central American Common Market (CACM). Up to 2,000 people, the majority Honduran civilians, had been killed, and thousands of other Hondurans in the border area had been made homeless. Airline service between the two nations was also disrupted for over a decade.

After the war, public support for the military plummeted. Although the air force had performed well, the army had not. Criticism of the army was not limited to the public; junior officers were often vocal in their criticism of superiors, and a rift developed between junior and senior officers.

The war, however, led to a new sense of Honduran nationalism and national pride. Tens of thousands of Honduran workers and peasants had gone to the government to beg for arms to defend their nation. Local defense committees had sprung up, with thousands of ordinary citizens, often armed only with machetes, taking over local security duties. This response to the fighting made a strong impression on a sector of the officer corps and contributed to an increased concern over national development and social welfare among the armed forces.

History After 1970

A civilian President--Ramon Cruz of the National Party--took power briefly in 1970 but proved unable to manage the government. In December 1972, Gen. Lopez staged another coup. Lopez adopted more progressive policies, including land reform, but his regime was brought down in the mid-1970s by corruption scandals.

Gen. Lopez's successors continued armed forces modernization programs, built army and security forces, and concentrated on Honduran Air Force superiority over its neighbors. The regimes of Gen. Melgar Castro (1975-78) and Gen. Paz Garcia (1978-83) largely built the current physical infrastructure and telecommunications system of Honduras. The country also enjoyed its most rapid economic growth during this period, due to greater international demand for its products and the availability of foreign commercial lending.

Following the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979 and general instability in El Salvador at the time, the Honduran military accelerated plans to return the country to civilian rule. A constituent assembly was popularly elected in April 1980, and general elections were held in November 1981. A new constitution was approved in 1982, and the Liberal Party government of President Roberto Suazo Cordoba took office following free and fair elections.

Suazo relied on U.S. support to help during a severe economic recession which was the result of regional instability caused by the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the chaos of the brutal civil war in El Salvador. Close cooperation on political and military issues with the United States was complemented by ambitious social and economic development projects sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Honduras became host to the largest Peace Corps mission in the world, and nongovernmental and international voluntary agencies proliferated.

El Salvador and Honduras formally signed a peace treaty on October 30, 1980, which put the border dispute before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

As the November 1985 election approached, the Liberal Party had difficulty settling on a candidate, and interpreted election law as permitting multiple presidential candidates from one party. The Liberal Party claimed victory when its presidential candidates, who received 42% of the vote, collectively outpolled the National Party candidate, Rafael Leonardo Callejas. Jose Azcona Hoyo, the candidate receiving the most votes among the Liberals, assumed the presidency in January 1986. With the endorsement of the Honduran military, the Azcona administration ushered in the first peaceful transfer of power between civilian presidents in more than 30 years. Four years later, Rafael Callejas won the presidential election, taking office in January 1990. Callejas concentrated on economic reform, reducing the deficit, and taking steps to deal with an overvalued exchange rate and major structural barriers to investment. He began the movement to place the military under civilian control and laid the groundwork for the creation of the public ministry (attorney general's office).

In September 1992, the border dispute between Honduras and El Salvador reached a culmination, as the Court awarded most of the disputed territory to Honduras.

Despite his administration's economic reforms, the nation's fiscal deficit ballooned during Callejas' last year in office. Growing public dissatisfaction with the rising cost of living and with widespread government corruption led voters in 1993 to elect Liberal Party candidate Carlos Roberto Reina over National Party contender Oswaldo Ramos Soto, with Reina winning 56% of the vote.

President Reina, elected on a platform calling for a "moral revolution," actively prosecuted corruption and pursued those responsible for human rights abuses in the 1980s. He created a modern attorney general's office and an investigative police force and was successful in increasing civilian control over the armed forces and transferring the police from military to civilian authority.

Reina also restored national fiscal health by substantially increasing Central Bank net international reserves, reducing inflation, restoring economic growth, and, perhaps most importantly, holding down spending.

In January 1998, Honduras and El Salvador signed a border demarcation treaty to implement the terms of the ICJ decree although delays continue due to technical difficulties. Honduras and El Salvador maintain normal diplomatic and trade relations; however, they continue to disagree over the status of their maritime borders in the Gulf of Fonseca.

Carlos Roberto Flores Facusse took office on January 27, 1998, as Honduras' fifth democratically elected President since democratic institutions were restored in 1981. Like three of his four predecessors, Flores was a member of the Liberal Party. He was elected by a 10% margin over his main opponent, National Party nominee Nora de Melgar. Upon taking office on January 27, 1998, Flores inaugurated programs of reform and modernization of the Honduran government and economy, with emphasis on helping Honduras' poorest citizens while maintaining the country's fiscal health and improving international competitiveness.

In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras, leaving more than 5,000 people dead and 1.5 million displaced. Damages totaled nearly ’3 billion. The Honduran Government agreed to a new transparent process to manage relief funds, which included significant donor oversight. This open process greatly facilitated the relief and reconstruction effort. President Flores and his administration successfully managed more than ’600 million in international assistance. Civil society's role in the government-coordinated reconstruction process was lauded internationally. President Flores also moved judicial and penal reforms forward. He established an anticorruption commission, supported passage of a new penal code based on the oral accusatorial system, and saw passage of a law that created an independent Supreme Court. Flores cemented the transition from military to civilian rule by eliminating the military's commander in chief position, and by signing a law that established a civilian Minister of Defense with formal authority over the military.

Honduras and Nicaragua had tense relations throughout 2000 and early 2001 due to a maritime boundary dispute off the Atlantic Coast. Relations between the two countries have since improved, although some animosity remains.

Ricardo Maduro Joest of the National Party was elected to the Honduran presidency on November 25, 2001, outpolling the Liberal candidate, Rafael Pineda Ponce, by 8 percentage points. He was inaugurated on January 27, 2002. The elections, characterized by international observer teams as free, fair, and peaceful, reflected the maturing of Honduras' democratic institutions. During his campaign, President Maduro promised to reduce crime, reinvigorate the economy, and fight corruption. Working to fulfill this promise, Maduro's first act as President was to deploy a joint police-military force to the streets to permit wider neighborhood patrols in the ongoing fight against the country's massive crime problem. While the initial result of this policy was overwhelmingly positive, the policy appears to have had only a minimally positive long-term effect on the country's crime rate. President Maduro was a strong supporter of the global war on terrorism and joined the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq with a contribution of 370 troops. Under President Maduro's guidance, Honduras also participated in the successful Central America Free Trade Agreement talks and actively promoted greater Central American economic integration.

Manuel "Mel" Zelaya of the Partido Liberal (PL) was the president-elect of Honduras. His victory was suspected soon after the Nov. 27 election, but the failure of the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) to produce the data led his opponent, Porfirio Lobo Sosa of the ruling Partido Nacional (PN), to refuse to concede until Dec. 5, 2005 when the data became available, abundant, and overwhelming. Even then, however, the TSE had still not published the full count or certified the results.

Zelaya assumed the mantle of president-elect early on, even before the concession, and had already chosen most of his Cabinet. From the look of it, commentators have taken the view that he has not only defeated the ruling party but he has beaten the conservative wing of his own party, too.

On June 28, 2009, Manuel Zelaya Rosales was ejected from office by order of the Supreme Court of Justice. Up-to-date information on the political crisis can be found here: Wikipedia Documentation on Honduras Political Crisis